How to downgrade the fleet without upsetting the public?

Sigs wrote:Putting a powerful navy in the hands of the government that just demonstrated that they cant be trusted seems like a terrible idea, putting the only real organized fleet in the hands of the navy that demonstrated that they will follow any order no matter how illegal just shows me that maybe just maybe the member systems should have their own fleet and have what essentially amounts to a defensive alliance, when someone in the League is attacked they go to the aid of the member in question but otherwise they stay out of wars.

One possible split would be to turn the SLN isn't basically a cruise force + fleet support units. It'd be hard for a force with nothing heavier than cruisers (even BCs) to strong arm systems that bothered to build reasonable SDFs. But the League SDFs have no reason to build the fleet trains needed to operate at any significant distance from their base.

An SDF alone wouldn't be able to make trouble too far away because of lack of logistics, while the SLN wouldn't because of lack of firepower. They'd have to work together to project power at a distance.

(And at least while it lasts the Grand Alliance's prohibition against League warships operating outside League space means they won't quickly be back to their OFS games with Frontier Fleet support.

I seem to remember that Hitler's plans included pushing out both East and SouthEast to gain the "living room" (Leibenstram).
While France, England and others were not quite willing to go to war to stop German's moves into the areas of the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire he claimed were natualy part of Germany they finally started to make serious war-line noises when Germany and Russia took and partitioned Poland.
Of course, how the Russians were able to convince themselves that Hitler was going to be satisfied with half of Poland and grabbing off other chunks of Europe (not yet actualy engaged with France and England) when they had his book with the outline of his plan. He was heading for the wheat and petroleum producing areas to the SE because that would give Germany the potential food, energy and expansion space they wanted.
Between the Depression (which was essentialy world wide) and the incremental 1st ingoring in secrete and then abrogating various parts of the WW I treaty over the course of the 30's, Germany rearmed, rebuilt it's army and used Russia as a source of materials and secret training grounds. Russia got technology and information. It also got a free hand to grab that half of Poland. And nobody stopped them. It's the whole bully thing. They get away with the small stuff and they go for bigger things. The more they get their way, the harder it is to do anything and you have reenforced that bad behavior. Nobody was willing to put real sanction in place or enforce the terms of the Treaty or put infantry in to stop them.
One layer of thinking on this is that Russia (Stalin at least) though that they could control or at least limit Germany's abilit to hurt them should it suddenly move in Russia's direction. By the point of the invasiion of Poland, it was probably clear to Russia that Germany really wanted to crush France and possibly expected that it could chop up the British military that would be feed into France to support their treaty agreements. SeaLion (the German plan to invade England) would seem to show a Germany that thought that it could 1st take France and then- given that it should also be able to distract and possibly cripple the British Home Fleet- could invade across the Chanel. Once they had a solid foothold in southern England, the British Navy (they thought) would be crippled by having to rely on support at bases in the British Colonies and no longer be a threat to finishing the conquest of Britain.
That didn't work out that way.

Once Germany started Barbarosa (the invasion of Russia) things got very dicy for Germany. Two Front War, the logistics started to go to Hell and they were not able to bring the various pieces of the Russian Army into a positon to destroy them. Then they got stopped- at the end of really long supply lines with what was in great part a 19th century logistics system (yeah, a lot of it horse drawn)-just short of Moscow in time to say hello to the Russian Winter.

So, how do you "downgrade" the RMN without upsetting the citizens of the Star Empire of Manticore (and all those newly added planets) and it's allied systems?

You don't "downgrade" it, you transition the fleet to what you believe is the best present mix of existing units to meet your short term preceived threats and start building the next sets of classes of RMN units based on new plans to take advantage of your strengths plus apply the lessons learned. Probably mothball a certain percentage of the SD (the oldest and/or most heavily used ships). Shift to a posture that focuses on Commerce Protection- your a Star Nation that lives on the componants of Trade and safety of commerial shipping- along with a big block of Warfighting ships from the recent war to make sure you can kick ass anywhere League members or other Star Nations start doing anything that looks like they are going into the warlord business or expanding by attacking their neighbors.

The Harrington Plan is going to have to come into play as far as making the peices of the old SL (and a whole bunch of therwise old neutral systems or former OFS Protectorates) into trading partners. That means there has to be a level of mutal interest in maintaining peaceful relations. Sure, the SL 2.0 is going to be a lot bigger (presuming it doesn't just start fragmenting anyway) than anybody in Manticore thought would be the case when the Harrington Plan was proposed but: If a significant number of the SL Systems do stay together, the SL is going to have to find itself with some leval of dual/multy level forign policy at a League level and the workings of the member Systems.
Sort of (shudder) a United Nations that actual works.

Unfortunately, the Alignment is going to do it's best (or worst) to screw all of this up and they still have Mannheim and the RF in formation to be their next round of catspaws.

We shall see.

Jonathan_S wrote:One possible split would be to turn the SLN isn't basically a cruise force + fleet support units. It'd be hard for a force with nothing heavier than cruisers (even BCs) to strong arm systems that bothered to build reasonable SDFs. But the League SDFs have no reason to build the fleet trains needed to operate at any significant distance from their base.

An SDF alone wouldn't be able to make trouble too far away because of lack of logistics, while the SLN wouldn't because of lack of firepower. They'd have to work together to project power at a distance.

(And at least while it lasts the Grand Alliance's prohibition against League warships operating outside League space means they won't quickly be back to their OFS games with Frontier Fleet support.

The member systems will feel safe knowing that the League has thousands of SD(P)'s in service but not a single one is directly under the command of the SLN, noone will mess with the League and that includes the SLN while they also can rest assured that the SLN and the League government wont drag them into unnecesary wars.

The SL is like modern Germany. No real interest in actually generating any military power, it's just a jobs program, and some kickbacks to industrial companies.

The idea that every system will decide to spend many trillions per year on this seems questionable.

but can they really afford not to build up their SDFs?

as others have said, given what the SLN did to Hypetia and others I can see many systems being wary of a rebuilt SLN, so even those systems that barely bothered with a SDF before will likely increase the size of their SDF. even if they don't build SDs, I suspect they will at the least build BC and lots of missile pods and build a poor man's non FTL mycroft..

also most Solly core worlds are very rich, they can easily afford a squadron or 2 of SDs. They just have never seen the need with the "invicible" SLN around to protect them.

now that they want protection from the SLN as much as from any outside threat, and that even most of the idiots in the SLN (and most SDFs were said to be much more competent) know that while fixed defences can be useful, you do not rely upon fixed defences alone, thus most systems will build up their SDF more then a smidgen.

Sigs wrote:The member systems will feel safe knowing that the League has thousands of SD(P)'s in service but not a single one is directly under the command of the SLN, noone will mess with the League and that includes the SLN while they also can rest assured that the SLN and the League government wont drag them into unnecesary wars.

Dauntless wrote:but can they really afford not to build up their SDFs?

as others have said, given what the SLN did to Hypetia and others I can see many systems being wary of a rebuilt SLN, so even those systems that barely bothered with a SDF before will likely increase the size of their SDF. even if they don't build SDs, I suspect they will at the least build BC and lots of missile pods and build a poor man's non FTL mycroft..

also most Solly core worlds are very rich, they can easily afford a squadron or 2 of SDs. They just have never seen the need with the "invicible" SLN around to protect them.

now that they want protection from the SLN as much as from any outside threat, and that even most of the idiots in the SLN (and most SDFs were said to be much more competent) know that while fixed defences can be useful, you do not rely upon fixed defences alone, thus most systems will build up their SDF more then a smidgen.

Given that the bad old SLN only did what it was directed to do by the civilian leadership (after the initial Byng and Crandall deployments), why would the core worlds have worries about a federal navy under the restructured League government? The atrocities for which they are specifically accused were ordered by the Mandarins.

Even if each core world built several SDs, that would not be a League defense unless they could be called up in an emergency like our National Guard; which would require that there be a federal command structure. If there is not central design and planning, how would we know that the individual units could even fight together?

Isn't it more likely that those worlds who particularly worry about defense would build something similar to a hardened Mycroft controlling system defense pods and a massive fleet of LACs?

Brigade XO wrote:Of course, how the Russians were able to convince themselves that Hitler was going to be satisfied with half of Poland and grabbing off other chunks of Europe (not yet actualy engaged with France and England) when they had his book with the outline of his plan. He was heading for the wheat and petroleum producing areas to the SE because that would give Germany the potential food, energy and expansion space they wanted.
Between the Depression (which was essentialy world wide) and the incremental 1st ingoring in secrete and then abrogating various parts of the WW I treaty over the course of the 30's, Germany rearmed, rebuilt it's army and used Russia as a source of materials and secret training grounds. Russia got technology and information. It also got a free hand to grab that half of Poland. And nobody stopped them. It's the whole bully thing. They get away with the small stuff and they go for bigger things. The more they get their way, the harder it is to do anything and you have reenforced that bad behavior. Nobody was willing to put real sanction in place or enforce the terms of the Treaty or put infantry in to stop them.[snip]

Once Germany started Barbarosa (the invasion of Russia) things got very dicy for Germany. Two Front War, the logistics started to go to Hell and they were not able to bring the various pieces of the Russian Army into a positon to destroy them. Then they got stopped- at the end of really long supply lines with what was in great part a 19th century logistics system (yeah, a lot of it horse drawn)-just short of Moscow in time to say hello to the Russian Winter.

I don't think Russia thought Germany was going to leave them alone for long - they were just fooled about exactly how long they'd have to rebuild after the '36-'38 purges of the Red Army.
But signing a non-agression pact with Germany, and splitting Poland, did buy Stalin over 2 years to reorganize and reequip. (Sure, his show of force / invasion prep that put most of the Red Army right on the borders just before Germany kicked off the Eastern front led to massive numbers of killed and captured units -- which threw away much of the strength gained in that interval. But in theory buying time when you're not prepared to fight right now isn't always a bad plan)

And it wasn't just when Hitler invaded Russia that things looked dicy for them. We tend to view it as historically inevitable, but there's a pretty good case, made among other places in 'Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France' that Germany defeating France was a significant upset; if they hadn't been very lucky Hitlers gamble would have ended long before he could have gotten around to breaking his treaty with the Soviets.


Still, I tend to view the 1938 Munich Agreement, to force Czechoslovakia to give Germany the Sudetenland as quite possibly the key point where France and Britain screwed up. Yes there were ethnically German people living there; quite a few. But turning it over also turned over Czechoslovakia's defensive forts. If Germany had had to try to seize the Sudetenland in '38 they'd have had a very hard time, even if France and Britain had just cut economic ties with them and hadn't invaded in response. Giving Germany another year to build up before facing the West and simultaneously crippling a potential ally really went a long way towards evening up the sides (though Germany was still the weaker side - until they got lucky and found France's glass jaw)

Dauntless wrote:but can they really afford not to build up their SDFs?

also most Solly core worlds are very rich, they can easily afford a squadron or 2 of SDs. They just have never seen the need with the "invicible" SLN around to protect them.

Germany is very rich.

Number of weapon systems ready for action:

Typhoon jets: 39 of 128
Tornado jets: 26 of 93
CH-53 transport helicopters: 16 of 72
NH-90 transport helicopters: 13 of 58
Tigre attack helicopters: 12 of 62
A400M transport aircraft: 3 of 15
Leopard 2 tanks: 105 of 224
Frigates: 5 of 13
Submarines: 0 out of 6

Specifically, the Bundeswehr’s ninth tank brigade in Münster only has nine operational Leopard 2 tanks — even though it promised to have 44 ready for the VJTF — and only three of the promised 14 Marder armored infantry vehicles.

They use broomsticks on AFVs to replace the machine guns they don't have.

tlb wrote:But I find it interesting that you can state that WW1 was the result of decisions made over the decades; but contrariwise state that WW2 was NOT the result of decisions based on conspiracies and resentments from WW1.

Sigs wrote:By 1939 all of the restrictions from the Treaty of Versailles were gone ad Germany had gained all of their lost territory and then some except for their colonies. The biggest contributions that World War 1 made to Wold War 2 were that the French were gunshy in 1936-1940 so they let the Germans do as they please and Germany wasn't saddled with a victorious Army stuck in 1919.

The decisions of Germany, France and England in 1933-1939 led to only a handful of options in 1939, go to war or let the Germans do as they please which would have just led to a war in 1940 or later...with every decision to appease Germany and with every decision to not confront Germany the French and British limited their options further because Germany became stronger and hungry for more conquests while being less likely to backdown when a confrontation finally did emerge. Germany in 1936 might have backed down relatevly quickly and a war would have been avoided, harder but more manageable in 1938 but with every chance they threw away their options were cut further and further because war between them and Germany was a matter of when, not if.

I do not disagree with most of what you say, but you neglect one other result of WW1: after 1933 the men running the German government and army had come through WW1 with the conviction that with better leadership they would have won and that now it was time for Germany to take its place on the top of the continental order.

tlb wrote:I do not disagree with most of what you say, but you neglect one other result of WW1: after 1933 the men running the German government and army had come through WW1 with the conviction that with better leadership they would have won and that now it was time for Germany to take its place on the top of the continental order.

The only person in Germany really eager for a rematch was Hitler. But after his successful moves into the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia without resistance he was in a strong position to argue that he understood the enemies better than his critics. And he predicted they wouldn't do anything.

Poland was a bit of a goatrope and resulted in the UK an France declaring war, but after Hitler crushed France...