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runsforcelery
First Space Lord
Posts: 2425
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:39 am
Location: South Carolina
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Okay, about reserve fleets.
Until and unless pod-deployed munitions become obsolete, then maintaining a reserve of pod-layers makes a lot of sense. One of the advantages of the SD(P) is that, like a current day USN aircraft carrier, you can change out the entire main battery by changing out the air group/missile pods.
Diving a little deeper:
I don't know if you've noticed, but the rate of change in compensator efficiencies has been dropping steadily for the last couple of in-universe years. It's still climbing, but it's climbing at a much lower rate, and inertial compensators are one item that can be changed out pretty easily, so differences in acceleration rate can be dealt with.
Molecular circuitry is a lot less finicky than current-day electronics. Note that usually when something electronic breaks in the Honorverse it's because someone broke it, not because it simply failed. Obviously, heavy usage is going to burn up designed lifetime, but molecular circuitry (Honorverse style) doesn't do a lot of degrading when it's left unused. That isn't to say that there wouldn't be some failures in systems which have been left mothballed for years and years, but the failure rate would be far lower than one would anticipate out of our current-day systems.
One of the things that BuShips did in designing the newer classes was to take cognizance of the fact that things like EW systems, FTL coms, etc., had been changing rapidly for years. So, the more recent ship classes were designed around modular systems, wherever possible, and space was allocated to allow for substantial growth. Energy weapons, broadside missile tubes, counter missile launchers, and other "ported" weapons are a lot trickier, because of the armor systems which might have to be removed/modified if the original weapons are replaced or upgraded. Even there, the SEM's designers tried to allow a margin for growth, although they recognized that success would be a lot more problematical.
The problems that the Sollies had with their Reserve Fleet came in several levels, and the SEM is aware of all of them. One may assume that in any reserve planning on Manticore's part, they would do their best to avoid the Sollies errors. A (partial) catalog of those errors would include:
(1) They simply hadn't done routine maintenance, hadn't cycled ships in and out of reserve status, and had made no attempt to keep onboard systems current.
(2) The ships of the Solarian Reserve Fleet had not been designed with the expectation that technology would be changing significantly. As a consequence, no one worried about "growth space" for new systems or modular installations which could be (relatively) quickly changed out for modern hardware. Replacing and updating would have required a huge investment in yard time to rip out and obsolete systems and then somehow shoehorn in more modern ones.
(3) The ships of the Reserve had old-style inertial compensators, which might have been changed out . . . assuming that the SLN had possessed newer and more efficient compensators to change out. It didn't.
(4) The SLN had never actually expected to need the Reserve. It was a sort of strategic security blanket, the massive threat looming ominously in the background, and officially its units were kept up to modern standards by rotation into and out of active service. In fact, that wasn't happening, because . . . well, because the Invincible Solarian League Navy was invincible, and no one could possibly be insane enough to challenge it.
(5) Most of the mobilization plans envisioned having a minimum of one to two T-years leadtime. It would have taken that long simply to spin up the needed personnel, and that was assuming that the SLN had gone to immediate crash mobilization, retraining of reservists, and training of new recruits.
(6) Most importantly, every ship of the Solarian Reserve was decades old and could not be refitted as a pod-layer. It was physically impossible to do anything of the sort, which meant that in an era of pod-launched missiles, they would have been restricted to the pods they could deploy on tractors. Even if they'd been just as tough defensively as their opposition, that would have been a crippling tactical disadvantage.
The RMN has learned a lot over the last twenty years or so, and in a prolong society, conserving that knowledge is going to be at least a little easier than in a pre-prolong society. Indeed, the problem is going to be avoiding a situation in which lessons learned become dogma received, and the only way to avoid that is to create an institutional bias towards iconoclasm. It's unlikely that even the RMN can avoid losing its edge, but as long as it continues measuring itself against a realistic appreciation of its peer competitors, it should be able to remain sharp enough. Among other things, the RMN has no intention of maintaining a reserve fleet that doesn't cycle through active service on a regular basis and schedule. The Star Empire is prepared to spend the funds and invest the industrial capacity to do that, and the RMN is revamping its attitude towards Reserve status for its personnel to better reflect the realities of prolong-era careers. If you'll recall, Manticore had already begun the practice of cycling admirals through Admiralty or staff billets and active fleet command as early as Basilisk Station. What they are looking at now is a system under which personnel who choose to go the Reserve track will be recalled to active service for a minimum of two T-years at a time on a rotating basis. At the moment, it's looking like reservists will have about five years between recalls, during which they will simulator train two or three times a year. They'll be paid a percentage of their active duty base pay (not half-pay) and have access to Navy services for themselves and their dependents during the interval between activations.
The object here is to have enough readily available personnel with recent active experience and training under their belts to fully man the first tranche of ships activated from the Reserve. Training programs will be spun up to speed to produce the additional personnel needed for subsequent activation waves until the entire Reserve has been demobilized, modernized (where needed) and stood up.
At the same time, ONI, BuPlan, and BuTrain will — hopefully — be keeping a finger on the pulse of potential adversaries' war-fighting technology and doctrine, both in order to keep the RMN's active war-fighting capability current and to ensure (in so much as is humanly possible) that Manticore doesn't get ambushed by someone else's paradigm-smashing innovations.
Now, of course, if I were to allow all of this to work as smoothly as Manticore obviously hopes it will work, it would undermine the challenge I might throw at Our Heroes™ in some future novel. Of course, I would never be so evil as to make sure that it doesn't work smoothly, now would I?
"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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