OFS vs SLN

tlb wrote:

Potato wrote: https://www.quora.com/Do-US-State-Depar ... ivalencies

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:A nice site to know, thanks!

My problem with the quorum website is that you have to have a Google account to use the internal search.

If we are wondering anything about this thread, it is how he expects to justify the premise. If he is just wasting time, then where are his manners?

Movie trailers and book snippets are as subject to criticism as the movies or books are. It is always possible to say something looks like nonsense.

How often has any of my threads turned out to be instances of "just wasting time?" How many times did I not have an angle to be used like a rag dog to be chomped down on and shaken like a rabid dog? How often is one of my threads spurned, only to find itself trending at the top of the queue some 500+ posts later and still surging! The notion in the ramblings thread alone is demanding loads of my time from friends around the globe. If I cancel a STL conversation, I'm threatened bodily harm. LOL

I've gotta get my hands on more in-system Hermes buoys so I can jack in more often.

But I digress.

When are you all going to learn that my threads and concepts are not to be taken lightly.

Are some of my threads duds? Hell yea. Are some of them far from it? Hell yea. Are many of them record breaking? Gotcha there!

I guess what I'm asking is this. . . How many data points are needed to see a trend? The real trend. ::shrug::

I'm requesting an extension to turn in my homework, teacher. The other rabid dog chewed it up over the weekend.

PHUCKING COMPUTERS. THE QUINTESSENTIAL NEW LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP!

"The only thing I hate worse than my wife is my computer," says my neighbor.

The Disconnect. Mine or yours.

OFS (or its baby gorilla) didn't need any F-35s for frontier work in the Verge, no. But it became her responsibility to be ready for the impending clash with the Titans. The RMN. OFS wasn't wearing rose-colored glasses. They saw the writing on the wall quite clearly. Like it or no, the responsibility to do something about it fell on their heads as it did Grayson's in the shadow of the Manticoran government's temporary High Ridge insanity.

Somebody dropped the ball. And somewhere someone is highly pissed off, other than in the Mandarin camp. I aim to find out who.

This is a WITCH HUNT. I thought I made that clear.

cthia wrote:The Disconnect. Mine or yours.

OFS (or its baby gorilla) didn't need any F-35s for frontier work in the Verge, no. But it became her responsibility to be ready for the impending clash with the Titans. The RMN. OFS wasn't wearing rose-colored glasses. They saw the writing on the wall quite clearly. Like it or no, the responsibility to do something about it fell on their heads as it did Grayson's in the shadow of the Manticoran government's temporary High Ridge insanity.

Somebody dropped the ball. And somewhere someone is highly pissed off, other than in the Mandarin camp. I aim to find out who.

This is a WITCH HUNT. I thought I made that clear.

But what you are saying is the equivalent of stating that the British Colonial Office had responsibility for British military readiness in the fight against Germany.

What is your evidence that OFS "saw the writing on the wall quite clearly"? What in their mission statement meant "the responsibility to do something about it fell on their heads"?

The thing about "witch hunts" is that their victims are usually the powerless.

INTERNECINE POLITICS

I want to focus on the politics between the two factions. The SL military and its civilian masters.

The link included in potatoe's post should assist in this endeavor quite nicely. FF was always at loggerheads with BF. It was a CIA/FBI love story all over again. Yet, just as both of our three letter entities, OFS should have had access to the same huge naval budget as well. After all, they were . . .

"Frontier" Security.

The imminent enemy was literally at the gates. They were the ones on the far fringes of space witnessing this magic tech. Compartmental or no, I can't see how information can be suppressed from the very people who are finding it in the first place. Battle Fleet never went anywhere to witness this tech.

The OFS had to have gotten wind of all of the magical weapons happening in the Haven sector. Heck, some of the RMN's ships had to be operating in shouting distance of FF ships in many places while suppressing piracy, to have gotten wind of the direction of change. OFS had a moral responsibility. A moral responsibility she didn't live up to.

It wasn't OFS's legal responsibility. But at first bite, it sort of tastes like her moral responsibility. She found herself in Grayson's shoes when High Ridge came to power.


P.S. I had a much longer and indepth dissertation but the computer ate my homework over the weekend. I'm trying to reassemble everything from memory. Slowly.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:The Disconnect. Mine or yours.

OFS (or its baby gorilla) didn't need any F-35s for frontier work in the Verge, no. But it became her responsibility to be ready for the impending clash with the Titans. The RMN. OFS wasn't wearing rose-colored glasses. They saw the writing on the wall quite clearly. Like it or no, the responsibility to do something about it fell on their heads as it did Grayson's in the shadow of the Manticoran government's temporary High Ridge insanity.

Somebody dropped the ball. And somewhere someone is highly pissed off, other than in the Mandarin camp. I aim to find out who.

This is a WITCH HUNT. I thought I made that clear.

But what you are saying is the equivalent of stating that the British Colonial Office had responsibility for British military readiness in the fight against Germany.

What is your evidence that OFS "saw the writing on the wall quite clearly"? What in their mission statement meant "the responsibility to do something about it fell on their heads"?

The thing about "witch hunts" is that their victims are usually the powerless.

If the British Colonial Office had vital intel in the manner of OFS, and had access to enormous funds, like OFS, and saw the writing on the wall, like OFS, and saw the gorilla was sleeping at the wheel, like OFS, they should have manned up.


The military lives by the book, but it survives by throwing it out the window. It wasn't a legal responsibility, no. It was a moral one. I agree it wasn't fair that the responsibility fell in their lap. Isn't it an imperfect galaxy? They should have dealt with it. I don't see anyone else so properly poised to have righted the ship before it sank.

Consider the OFS as the US Department of Homeland Security. Nice title but no tanks, aircraft, or ships. Pretty but overall powerless. If a large threat is identified, they call the big boys and girls. OFS/FF is there to deal with very, very little fish. Pirates, systems that don't want to be abused by the SL masters.

Each 'little' Frontier Fleet command wanted to keep quiet and keep their position and power. If they identify a 'problem' and bring it to a higher level, they are out of their job/canned.

The SL had observers throughout the minor powers. Some of them were 'news reporters'. Those observers sent reports back that were ignored or downplayed. But nothing can be as good and great as the SLN.

The FF is the local beat cop, competent but underpowered when the big guns, or more modern warships, come to visit. Add in bigotry and incompetence, against a foe that has been tested in over 40 years of conflict. The end result is inevitable.

Think Italy and Ethiopia or Japan and China in WWII.

cthia wrote:FF would represent OFS in any games. It goes without saying. But FF is only of tangential concern. If traditional wargames are set up between the two, the heads of each faction would be responsible for the arrangement. That means OFS.

As to the purpose of the wargames? Why, it would be to serve the same purpose as it did in the Manticore Binary System. To sharpen and shave the gorilla to excellence. And to highlight the promising officers while exposing the Youngs and Santinos. But bracket that notion, I was simply gathering wool. It is secondary again to 'WTF happened to cause OFS to sit idly by and allow this SituatioN to get All Fucked Up.

That's kind of like scheduling war games between the US Navy and the Coast Guard. It doesn't sharpens neither of their skill at their actual jobs because:
A) the Coast Guard's normal job isn't to fight navies (and certainly not to fight the largest one in the world); so they get nothing out of it except a pointless and disheartening drubbing.
B) the USN gets a cakewalk against an opponent who is almost incapable of detecting or harming its major assets; because that's not what Coast Guard ships are designed to do.

What's the point?


Sure it's not the same things, since the Coast Guard operates cutters not cruisers. But even if FF has more fighting edge (and they do) and their ships are a bit more modern (which they are) that doesn't translate into their BCs and CAs being able to take on BF SDs and DNs -- at least not without overwhelming numbers and ruinous losses. So a head to head fight isn't likely to teach much. And as others pointed out OFS isn't part of that because its a civilian agency that doesn't have it's own warships -- it doesn't need them because it's allowed to get FF units assigned when needed.

Now you could have somewhat useful war games (depending on the rules and how the refs ran things) if you forced BF and FF to work together in their wartime plan of FF screening BF - use half the combined force acting as blue team and half as red team. But that's not FF vs BF; that's learning to work together. And even then its likely only going to expose organizational and communication issues; not that their tactics are sub-par and certainly not that their equipment is no longer cutting edge.

cthia wrote:The Disconnect. Mine or yours.

OFS (or its baby gorilla) didn't need any F-35s for frontier work in the Verge, no. But it became her responsibility to be ready for the impending clash with the Titans. The RMN. OFS wasn't wearing rose-colored glasses. They saw the writing on the wall quite clearly. Like it or no, the responsibility to do something about it fell on their heads as it did Grayson's in the shadow of the Manticoran government's temporary High Ridge insanity.

Somebody dropped the ball. And somewhere someone is highly pissed off, other than in the Mandarin camp. I aim to find out who.

This is a WITCH HUNT. I thought I made that clear.

tlb wrote:But what you are saying is the equivalent of stating that the British Colonial Office had responsibility for British military readiness in the fight against Germany.

What is your evidence that OFS "saw the writing on the wall quite clearly"? What in their mission statement meant "the responsibility to do something about it fell on their heads"?

The thing about "witch hunts" is that their victims are usually the powerless.

cthia wrote:If the British Colonial Office had vital intel in the manner of OFS, and had access to enormous funds, like OFS, and saw the writing on the wall, like OFS, and saw the gorilla was sleeping at the wheel, like OFS, they should have manned up.

The military lives by the book, but it survives by throwing it out the window. It wasn't a legal responsibility, no. It was a moral one. I agree it wasn't fair that the responsibility fell in their lap. Isn't it an imperfect galaxy? They should have dealt with it. I don't see anyone else so properly poised to have righted the ship before it sank.

You keep saying that OFS had "vital intel". You need to produce some evidence for that. The minor FF officer assigned to Admiral Byng had produced a report based on interviews of the survivors of Monica, which is much too late to affect the disasters produced by Byng, Crandall or even Filetra.

The intelligence officer at Sol was pulling together observation reports from Self Defense officers; these would have been more timely, but we have no evidence that OFS knew about them. In any case, the OFS would have had to be convinced up to the Mandarin level, before it could take any action that had an influence on Battle Fleet. A GS-15 may be equivalent to a naval Captain, but that does not mean that they can order an Ensign around.

tlb wrote:You keep saying that OFS had "vital intel". You need to produce some evidence for that. The minor FF officer assigned to Admiral Byng had produced a report based on interviews of the survivors of Monica, which is much too late to affect the disasters produced by Byng, Crandall or even Filetra.

The intelligence officer at Sol was pulling together observation reports from Self Defense officers; these would have been more timely, but we have no evidence that OFS knew about them. In any case, the OFS would have had to be convinced up to the Mandarin level, before it could take any action that had an influence on Battle Fleet. A GS-15 may be equivalent to a naval Captain, but that does not mean that they can order an Ensign around.

Agreed. While the Haven sector is technically "Verge" is that the League doesn't really have a term for anything beyond "Verge" its still, IIRC a hundred+ lightyears from where OFS and FF are currently active.

And those area are reasonably safe for shipping, so Manticoran merchant vessels aren't going to running in escorted convoys. So until the wormhole to the Talbot sector was discovered FF wasn't overlapping with RMN spheres of activity much. (And to the extent that they were, after 1905 PD, they'd be seeing mostly the old non-upgraded escorts. The ones Manticore could spare from facing Haven)

So it seems unlikely to me that FF units saw much (if any) of the RMN's new combat capabilities. Heck, I wouldn't be much surprised if (before the Lynx wormhole) FF hadn't actually directly had sensors on an RMN ship doing even so much as swatting a single pirate in the last 25 years or so.
Space it huge and those two forces are operating it quite separate areas of it.

Jonathan_S wrote:

tlb wrote:You keep saying that OFS had "vital intel". You need to produce some evidence for that. The minor FF officer assigned to Admiral Byng had produced a report based on interviews of the survivors of Monica, which is much too late to affect the disasters produced by Byng, Crandall or even Filetra.

The intelligence officer at Sol was pulling together observation reports from Self Defense officers; these would have been more timely, but we have no evidence that OFS knew about them. In any case, the OFS would have had to be convinced up to the Mandarin level, before it could take any action that had an influence on Battle Fleet. A GS-15 may be equivalent to a naval Captain, but that does not mean that they can order an Ensign around.

Agreed. While the Haven sector is technically "Verge" is that the League doesn't really have a term for anything beyond "Verge" its still, IIRC a hundred+ lightyears from where OFS and FF are currently active.

And those area are reasonably safe for shipping, so Manticoran merchant vessels aren't going to running in escorted convoys. So until the wormhole to the Talbot sector was discovered FF wasn't overlapping with RMN spheres of activity much. (And to the extent that they were, after 1905 PD, they'd be seeing mostly the old non-upgraded escorts. The ones Manticore could spare from facing Haven)

So it seems unlikely to me that FF units saw much (if any) of the RMN's new combat capabilities. Heck, I wouldn't be much surprised if (before the Lynx wormhole) FF hadn't actually directly had sensors on an RMN ship doing even so much as swatting a single pirate in the last 25 years or so.
Space it huge and those two forces are operating it quite separate areas of it.

To further your point, the only advanced ships assigned to Talbot before the summer of 1921 were 1 Sag C and 1 Avalon, alongside 20-30 3rd tier units, with nearly 400 ERM and LERM units and 300 Mk-16 units deployed by that time. Chances are other remaining legacy ships which otherwise would be heading for the reserves, were used in other "safe", but necessary roles - like herding merchies in the SLN or picketing the SLN side of a wormhole, freeing their advanced brethren for the dangerous roles.