Is the Detweiler Plan off the rails?

Is the plan off the rails at the end of Uncompromising Honor?

What do we know of the Plan anyway?

Background and strategic goals

As far as we understand, Leonard Detweiler himself created the Detweiler Plan and the onion. There appear to be three aspects to the plan:

1. Continue to enhance the genome, especially of his own descendants, with possibly some preset goals (eliminating diseases, increasing stamina, intelligence, life expectancy, etc.)
2. Create the political environment where genetic tinkering is allowed and/or genetically superior humans are welcome
3. Rub the noses of Beowulf on their achievements

Tactical goals

I don't think we can talk much about the Strategic Goal #1. We know they have had successes (alpha, beta and gamma lines), we know they continued tinkering (as evidenced by Francesca Simões' condition), and I think they were close to their goals because they decided to start the final phase of Goal #2.

For Goal #2, it seems they decided the Solarian League was too big to be changed into accepting their vision, so it needed to be replaced. This goal appears to be sub-divided in two:

1. Prop up and control a rogue entity that would fight the SL to the death
2. Create a successor state to rise from the ashes of the SL (the Renaissance Factor)

For centuries, the most prosperous region outside of the Solarian League Core Worlds was the Haven Sector, with Haven as the "interstellar Athens." So they saw an opportunity with the mismanagement after the Economic Bill of Rights, which would have caused the Havenite government to fall when the policy failed, and propped up said government. They incentivised the DuQuesne Plan, getting the PRH to grow more and more powerful. It would probably have come into conflict with the SL anyway.

So when that happened, they'd pour oil into the fire, cause the conflict to be more devastating. The PRH would probably be destroyed, the SL would be in shambles, with the populace shocked. Out of that, the RF rises like a phoenix as the "shining beacon in the night".

And for Goal #3, once the PRH conquered Manticore, Beowulf would be isolated, with its biggest trading partner gone.

How did it go wrong?

I think the first important mistake, one that almost everyone made, including Manticore, was to not realise the growing power of the Star Kingdom. In the essay at the of of House of Steel, RFC wrote:

House of Steel wrote:During that seventy year window (1580-1650), the Star Kingdom became an ever more potent economic force [...] What was not immediately apparent to either Manticore or Haven was that in the process, the Star Kingdom was replacing the Republic as the region's dominating economic power.

The shift was subtle and gradual. Most planners in the Onion probably missed it and those who didn't probably believed they had created an unstoppable juggernaut with the PRH. Manticore would fall, the PRH would get a breather.

The second important mistake, with far more operational consequences, was to underestimate Manticore's technical base, its political prowess in setting up the Manticore Alliance, and how quickly a war evolves war-fighting technology. They probably never had a whiff of Project Gram, so they couldn't predict how quickly the changes would come. They had observers following the war closely and spies inside the governments, but both Haven and Manticore outpaced their ability to follow.

Consequences

Their planned war between the PRH and the SL never happened. They had to make do by getting the SKM/SEM to fight the SL, but by that time the RMN was so far ahead of the SLN that there was no fight: they lost 8 hyper-capable ships total in the war, the 3 Rolands at New Tuscany and the 5 ships under Kotouč at Hypatia.

Thanks to Mike Henke, the plots to tarnish Manticore's image failed. Thanks to the treecats, the Maya Sector didn't fall to the MAlign's predations. Thanks to Cachat and Zilwicki, instead of finishing Manticore after Oyster Bay, Haven instead offered an alliance, which in turn left Beowulf in a very strong position instead of isolated. Thanks to Henke again, Operation Houdini was accelerated and the MAlign access to Mesa cut off. Thanks to the treecats and the Ghost Hunters, their infiltration networks outside the RF are gone.

And thanks to Honor, the SL wasn't pulverised and the war wasn't too bloody. The SL still exists, and though it'll likely diminish in size, power and prestige, it'll come out with a stronger central government. The SEM and RoH still exist, in very good terms with each other, experiencing an economic boom.

The RF is behind the SEM, the RoH, the Andermani Empire, the SL, and possibly even the Maya Sector in terms of population, economic might, political power, and pure prestige. It's behind those and Grayson militarily. Instead of the "shining beacon in the night", it's one of the smaller lights in a crowd of bright spotlights. In fact, the only advantages the MAlign & RF have are things that the Plan simply couldn't predict: Darius, nanotech, and the streak drive.

So how far off the rails is the Detweiler Plan? Are the Detweilers now making up as they go?

The shift was subtle and gradual. Most planners in the Onion probably missed it and those who didn't probably believed they had created an unstoppable juggernaut with the PRH. Manticore would fall, the PRH would get a breather.

I don´t know. The Detweilers are not so dumb as the solarians.
Manticore was a single star nation, but with their wormhole junction they are the center of galactic traffic and trade.
Haven is far away from manticore, that make an sucsessful attack difficult.

Everyone could see the success of the manticorian trade fleet. You can guess or even prove, that their tecnology is equall to the solarian tecnology. You don´t have to be a genuis to see the modernisation of the manticorian navy. The solarian warships (Wallers) are 150 years old and the manticorians only a few years old with current tecnology.

So, you can see that the tecnology base of manticore is better than Haven. Haven could try to outnumber them, but it would still be a hard fight and a success woulnd´t be sure. If they want that haven wins, they should secretly support them to improve their tec.

But even the Detweilers didn´t know, even guess that the manticorian war tecnology would be so much better than the solarian standard.

If we take what rfc said about the original schism between the Beowulf medical establishment and Detweiler, the plan is definitely off the rails.

If we take the plan as it was before everything became unglued it's somewhat off the rails.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Is the plan off the rails at the end of Uncompromising Honor?

What do we know of the Plan anyway?

Background and strategic goals

As far as we understand, Leonard Detweiler himself created the Detweiler Plan and the onion. There appear to be three aspects to the plan:

1. Continue to enhance the genome, especially of his own descendants, with possibly some preset goals (eliminating diseases, increasing stamina, intelligence, life expectancy, etc.)
2. Create the political environment where genetic tinkering is allowed and/or genetically superior humans are welcome
3. Rub the noses of Beowulf on their achievements

Tactical goals

I don't think we can talk much about the Strategic Goal #1. We know they have had successes (alpha, beta and gamma lines), we know they continued tinkering (as evidenced by Francesca Simões' condition), and I think they were close to their goals because they decided to start the final phase of Goal #2.

For Goal #2, it seems they decided the Solarian League was too big to be changed into accepting their vision, so it needed to be replaced. This goal appears to be sub-divided in two:

1. Prop up and control a rogue entity that would fight the SL to the death
2. Create a successor state to rise from the ashes of the SL (the Renaissance Factor)

For centuries, the most prosperous region outside of the Solarian League Core Worlds was the Haven Sector, with Haven as the "interstellar Athens." So they saw an opportunity with the mismanagement after the Economic Bill of Rights, which would have caused the Havenite government to fall when the policy failed, and propped up said government. They incentivised the DuQuesne Plan, getting the PRH to grow more and more powerful. It would probably have come into conflict with the SL anyway.

So when that happened, they'd pour oil into the fire, cause the conflict to be more devastating. The PRH would probably be destroyed, the SL would be in shambles, with the populace shocked. Out of that, the RF rises like a phoenix as the "shining beacon in the night".

And for Goal #3, once the PRH conquered Manticore, Beowulf would be isolated, with its biggest trading partner gone.

How did it go wrong?

I think the first important mistake, one that almost everyone made, including Manticore, was to not realise the growing power of the Star Kingdom. In the essay at the of of House of Steel, RFC wrote:

House of Steel wrote:During that seventy year window (1580-1650), the Star Kingdom became an ever more potent economic force [...] What was not immediately apparent to either Manticore or Haven was that in the process, the Star Kingdom was replacing the Republic as the region's dominating economic power.

The shift was subtle and gradual. Most planners in the Onion probably missed it and those who didn't probably believed they had created an unstoppable juggernaut with the PRH. Manticore would fall, the PRH would get a breather.

The second important mistake, with far more operational consequences, was to underestimate Manticore's technical base, its political prowess in setting up the Manticore Alliance, and how quickly a war evolves war-fighting technology. They probably never had a whiff of Project Gram, so they couldn't predict how quickly the changes would come. They had observers following the war closely and spies inside the governments, but both Haven and Manticore outpaced their ability to follow.

Consequences

Their planned war between the PRH and the SL never happened. They had to make do by getting the SKM/SEM to fight the SL, but by that time the RMN was so far ahead of the SLN that there was no fight: they lost 8 hyper-capable ships total in the war, the 3 Rolands at New Tuscany and the 5 ships under Kotouč at Hypatia.

Thanks to Mike Henke, the plots to tarnish Manticore's image failed. Thanks to the treecats, the Maya Sector didn't fall to the MAlign's predations. Thanks to Cachat and Zilwicki, instead of finishing Manticore after Oyster Bay, Haven instead offered an alliance, which in turn left Beowulf in a very strong position instead of isolated. Thanks to Henke again, Operation Houdini was accelerated and the MAlign access to Mesa cut off. Thanks to the treecats and the Ghost Hunters, their infiltration networks outside the RF are gone.

And thanks to Honor, the SL wasn't pulverised and the war wasn't too bloody. The SL still exists, and though it'll likely diminish in size, power and prestige, it'll come out with a stronger central government. The SEM and RoH still exist, in very good terms with each other, experiencing an economic boom.

The RF is behind the SEM, the RoH, the Andermani Empire, the SL, and possibly even the Maya Sector in terms of population, economic might, political power, and pure prestige. It's behind those and Grayson militarily. Instead of the "shining beacon in the night", it's one of the smaller lights in a crowd of bright spotlights. In fact, the only advantages the MAlign & RF have are things that the Plan simply couldn't predict: Darius, nanotech, and the streak drive.

So how far off the rails is the Detweiler Plan? Are the Detweilers now making up as they go?

I wouldn't say the inflitration networks are gone - the main Military network of an important major cell is gone - arguably the most important current cell, but only one. There could be other cells not noticed on Terra, in both the Military and Politics. There could be cells on EVERY planet. We already know there are Alphas in positions in companies and the news networks - they wern't captured or even noticed.

The leadership of the GA has been vetted, and the GA bureaucracies and militaries are slowly being vetted - there are only so many tree-cats and so many hours in a day. Slowly, the GA will be "mostly vetted" - there will always be places where the vetting will not take place (say, a small town on Gryphon), and someone from ther could in time move up the ranks, calling for perpetual dilligence.

The current Terran Military Command is currently using a chapter out of the show "Scare Tactics" to clear their forces using brute force tactics, but it will take months to clear Terra alone (Their military there is the size of a medium sized country today). After that is done, teams will be built to start to clear the major commands outside of Sol, and in a year or 2 it will percolate across the SL.

But local govt? Companies? News Organizations? Baristas? The Malign could be invested in ways no one could imagine - and if the Malign decides to sacrifices some cells and plan a cool off generation, fresh attacks in 50-100 years would allow the Malign to attack an unwary enemy.

Maldorian wrote:I don´t know. The Detweilers are not so dunb as the solarians.
Manticore was a single star nation, but with their wormhole junction they are the center of galactic traffic and trade.
Haven is far away from manticore, that make an sucsessful attack difficult.

Everyone could see the success of the manticorian trade fleet. You can guess or even prove, that their tecnology is equall to the solarian tecnology. You don´t have to be a genuis to see the modernisation of the manticorian navy. The solarian warships (Wallers) are 150 years old and the manticorians only a few years old with current tecnology.

So, you can see that the tecnology base of manticore is better than Haven. Haven could try to outnumber them, but it would still be a hard fight and a success woulnd´t be sure. If they want that haven wins, they should secretly support them to improve their tec.

But even the Detweilers didn´t know, even guess that the manticorian war tecnology would be so much better than the solarian standard.

They may be geniuses (they are), but even geniuses can have biases, expectations, make mistakes. And it depends a lot on the data they get: garbage in, garbage out.

My point was that no one knew that Manticore could hold off the PRH, not even Manticore. They knew they had to because there was no alternative. But they didn't know. Some of the technology they got came from Grayson, like the compact fission bottles, which no Manticore planner (much less anyone outside) knew about before 1903. The MAlign still doesn't have something equivalent in 1923!

The MAlign planners were probably aware that Manticore was not going to be a walk in the park; everyone else simply looked at a single star system and thought it could never resist a 300-star system entity.

Theemile wrote:I wouldn't say the inflitration networks are gone - the main Military network of an important major cell is gone - arguably the most important current cell, but only one. There could be other cells not noticed on Terra, in both the Military and Politics. There could be cells on EVERY planet. We already know there are Alphas in positions in companies and the news networks - they wern't captured or even noticed.

The leadership of the GA has been vetted, and the GA bureaucracies and militaries are slowly being vetted - there are only so many tree-cats and so many hours in a day. Slowly, the GA will be "mostly vetted" - there will always be places where the vetting will not take place (say, a small town on Gryphon), and someone from ther could in time move up the ranks, calling for perpetual dilligence.

The current Terran Military Command is currently using a chapter out of the show "Scare Tactics" to clear their forces using brute force tactics, but it will take months to clear Terra alone (Their military there is the size of a medium sized country today). After that is done, teams will be built to start to clear the major commands outside of Sol, and in a year or 2 it will percolate across the SL.

But local govt? Companies? News Organizations? Baristas? The Malign could be invested in ways no one could imagine - and if the Malign decides to sacrifices some cells and plan a cool off generation, fresh attacks in 50-100 years would allow the Malign to attack an unwary enemy.

Fair enough, you can't root out all infiltrators, especially those who are unwitting patsies or even middle-Onion members, like Audrey O'Hanrahan. But how much good can baristas and small Gryphon townspeople help your strategic objectives? They could be sources of HUMINT, but that's usually low-level intel.

The bigger problem is the communication channels. The Ghost Hunters were clued in that "the other guys" existed much earlier than their first confrontation resulted in a sudden, natural death. They, with the resources of a team that didn't exactly know they were looking for, managed to find out enough outlier patterns to identify the main Mesan handler in the investment/financial firm. Now that the leadership has been vetted, they can dedicate more resources, both flesh-and-blood and cybernetic, to pay attention to such patterns. More agents will be found and the channels will be cut.

To make matters worse, add the fact that the source of communications is now also unreachable. Operation Houdini cut many lines, with middle-Onion operatives now without handlers. Plus, Mesa is under occupation and the MAlign does not want to draw attention to itself. There's too much of a risk of connecting the dots back to the RF or to the Felix Junction. They can't afford to have none, probably going through third-parties, and I surely hope Anton, Victor, Daud and Irene get together and find this channel. But as before, the more you have, the bigger the chances of it being discovered.

Joat42 wrote:If we take what rfc said about the original schism between the Beowulf medical establishment and Detweiler, the plan is definitely off the rails.

If we take the plan as it was before everything became unglued it's somewhat off the rails.

Here are some of the threads that I could find which discuss the Mesan Alignment and/or Detweiler Plans:
Re: About the Alignment
Re: Detweiler Vision vs Beowulf Code: "Right" and "Wrong"
Re: Mesa is the Boogy Man it wasn't meant to be
Re: Has the Mesan Alignment already lost?
Re: Speculation on the MA 'Master Plan' and other toys
Re: Honorverse Ramblings and Musings
(Note: this thread is huge!)
How many Alpha Line individuals are in the RF Systems?
Re: Mesan Alignment Questions...
Re: League Survival
Re: Misalignment of MA plans?
Re: Just for the halibut... What of the RD post GA victory
Re: The Alignment's next step
Re: Filetra'a missiles -- why??
(contains long post by RFC on origin of Detweiler Plan)
Re: Spoiler end of the MA
Re: Mesan Alignment - back on balance
Re: Has anyone else decided to root against Manticore?
Enemies of the Alignment
Re: Post-Yawata Strike survivors in Grayson

As you say, the plan started to go off the rails with King Roger's push to build the navy, including the push for technological advantage. Importantly there were Malign eyes on both sides of the Havenite war with Manticore that would have kept the Onion apprised of advances in fighting (in UH they knew to base their Silver Bullet on Mistletoe). Since the plan required the SL and its opponent to fight to a point where League disintegrates without creating a victor that could replace the League, they should have been able to predict that the SLN had no chance to scrape the paint on the ships of the victor. For several books the SLN had been painted as the 800 pound gorilla in human space, then in just a few battles it was exposed as a façade. Why did the Malign not give the SLN more support to carry out its intended task?

The extension of Manticore into the Talbot Quadrant explains the panicky response of the Onion. So they threw Byng and Crandall into the fray and that only emphasized how hopeless the situation was for the SLN. Those failures triggered Houdini.

Meanwhile it appeared that Manticore had such a technical advantage over Haven, due to Apollo, that the war would end in a way the Onion planners did not want. Their solution was to rush Oyster Bay hoping to temporarily erase that advantage so Haven would prevail. Even if successful, this was not the Haven of their plans, but a new Haven under a resurrected constitution. In any case the exposure of Malign planning resulted in an alliance between Haven and Manticore.

Perhaps at this point the Malign leadership could have seen that things were not to plan and temporarily cooled the tension between the Solarian League and the Grand Alliance; allowing the SLN to put in crash programs to close the technology gap. But they did not, whether due to arrogance or the pressures of Houdini. So Filetra went to his destruction and the charade of SLN dominance finally ended with Honor in command of the Sol System.

So here we are at the end of UH, with the Renaissance Factor still a non-factor. The Onion is at Darius where they still have undetectable warships; but their intelligence net is being rolled up. A pretty dilemma for the next book(s).

And by the way, there's a good chance that the Felix Junction has already been compromised, even if we weren't told. Operation Houdini had to be accelerated, which means someone may have noticed something. There may be records in Mesa that help corroborate hypotheses and identify which transportation mechanisms and waypoints should be investigated further.

The MAlign should have used one of the other three termini of the Junction, not Felix itself, so as to insulate it even further. But we don't know if those termini were accessible in the time available for evacuation.

RFC spent a lot of words talking about the Parmley Station and setting it up as a trap to slaver ships with the help from the BSC. It may be building up to something.

tlb wrote:Here are some of the threads that I could find which discuss the Mesan Alignment and/or Detweiler Plans:
Re: About the Alignment
Re: Detweiler Vision vs Beowulf Code: "Right" and "Wrong"
Re: Mesa is the Boogy Man it wasn't meant to be
Re: Has the Mesan Alignment already lost?
Re: Speculation on the MA 'Master Plan' and other toys
Re: Honorverse Ramblings and Musings
(Note: this thread is huge!)
How many Alpha Line individuals are in the RF Systems?
Re: Mesan Alignment Questions...
Re: League Survival
Re: Misalignment of MA plans?
Re: Just for the halibut... What of the RD post GA victory
Re: The Alignment's next step
Re: Filetra'a missiles -- why??
(contains long post by RFC on origin of Detweiler Plan)
Re: Spoiler end of the MA
Re: Mesan Alignment - back on balance
Re: Has anyone else decided to root against Manticore?
Enemies of the Alignment
Re: Post-Yawata Strike survivors in Grayson

Oh boy, there are a lot more than I've read. I'll probably go over some of the more interesting ones in the next few days/weeks...

tlb wrote:As you say, the plan started to go off the rails with King Roger's push to build the navy, including the push for technological advantage. Importantly there were Malign eyes on both sides of the Havenite war with Manticore that would have kept the Onion apprised of advances in fighting (in UH they knew to base their Silver Bullet on Mistletoe). Since the plan required the SL and its opponent to fight to a point where League disintegrates without creating a victor that could replace the League, they should have been able to predict that the SLN had no chance to scrape the paint on the ships of the victor. For several books the SLN had been painted as the 800 pound gorilla in human space, then in just a few battles it was exposed as a façade. Why did the Malign not give the SLN more support to carry out its intended task?

The MAlign knowing about Mistletoe and Mycroft is very worrisome. Mistletoe is pre-Alliance, so no treecat bodyguards and interrogators, but simultaneous with Operation Rat Poison, when Honor knew there was nanotech. Mycroft is Alliance tech, developed at Bolthole. It's possible the MAlign made a very educated guess when Gweon informed Kingsford of it coming online at Beowulf, without knowing for sure, but worrying nonetheless.

As for knowing whether the SLN could hope to fight or not...

tlb wrote:The extension of Manticore into the Talbot Quadrant explains the panicky response of the Onion. So they threw Byng and Crandall into the fray and that only emphasized how hopeless the situation was for the SLN. Those failures triggered Houdini.

Meanwhile it appeared that Manticore had such a technical advantage over Haven, due to Apollo, that the war would end in a way the Onion planners did not want. Their solution was to rush Oyster Bay hoping to temporarily erase that advantage so Haven would prevail. Even if successful, this was not the Haven of their plans, but a new Haven under a resurrected constitution. In any case the exposure of Malign planning resulted in an alliance between Haven and Manticore.

My conclusion is that the Onion planners had no idea the technological gap was so big, despite having eyes in both sides of the war. There was talk at some point at whether Crandall was expected to succeed or not, instead of just how badly she'd be crushed. Manticore didn't know how well they'd succeed, which is why the DD sent to Meyers rushed back to Spindle: if they knew they had such superiority, the reaction would have been different.

It was a huge blunder, possibly the most fatal mistake the MAlign made, even if there were mitigating circumstances. They probably thought they had closed the gap enough to fight against 1914 (Buttercup era) technology, as they had Cataphract missiles. That's also the time when the main lines of military tech communication closed from Haven, when Theisman kicked the SL contractors away in favour of Erewhon.

I've never understood panicking over the Talbott expansion. It always seemed to me that was an excuse, something that the inner Onion used to justify their intervention in Monica, Split and Montana to the outer Onion. Mesa was not in danger, no one besides Torch was at war with it. But maybe it really was that: panic (thus irrational).

tlb wrote:Perhaps at this point the Malign leadership could have seen that things were not to plan and temporarily cooled the tension between the Solarian League and the Grand Alliance; allowing the SLN to put in crash programs to close the technology gap. But they did not, whether due to arrogance or the pressures of Houdini. So Filetra went to his destruction and the charade of SLN dominance finally ended with Honor in command of the Sol System.

So here we are at the end of UH, with the Renaissance Factor still a non-factor. The Onion is at Darius where they still have undetectable warships; but their intelligence net is being rolled up. A pretty dilemma for the next book(s).

Ha! Nice pun!

Completely agreed and I can't wait to read the next books. I predict one CS where they find out a lot more and one Saganami where we see Henke and Tourville take action. I wouldn't oppose some Andermani participating too.

So why do you think they didn't cool things down? The most logical step would have been after the Battle of Spindle: 8 (?) heavy cruisers defeating 70 superdreadnoughts should give anyone pause, system defence missiles or no. It couldn't be earlier, as Henke taking Byng out in New Tuscany could be explained. But no, they continued with Filaretta, then with Operation Buccaneer and the Parthian Option, then Fabius. They continued to provoke the GA.

Was the snowball already too big? Once stoked, the Solarian League arrogance couldn't be quenched, the Mandarins wouldn't quiet down and "lose face to neobarbs"?

Or did the MAlign have other time constraints? They had triggered the Renaissance Factor, by bringing Ford, Hitchcock, Stanley H., Kubrick, Lucas, Polanski, Tarantino, Stone, Monticelli, and King Clinton III into the details. The genetic goal appears to be nearing its objectives.

Or was it just pure arrogance?

I feel that RFC has expressed a number of times that the Detweiler's suffer from echo-room syndrome a lot in recent years. They've spent a long time running around in the background, hiding and quite successfully manipulating others. This has allowed them fling fleets around, topple governments and drastically change regimes.

They're arrogant and it's really bitten them in the rump. The plan is definitely off the rails but until Manticore and Co can produce the Onion they're not out of the game yet.

RF can continue to peel off systems and build their own base. The Haven sector is going to stabilize and calm down. Who knows what will happen with the Andies, there might be a changing of the guard. There's been plenty of foreshadowing that the Andies could be very unhappy long term about the growth of the SEM and how it englobes their empire. That could become a real sticking point in the future.

I believe that at all the Onion needs to do is to go dormant for a while. Play catch up on tech while re-weaving it's networks. To get over their own assumed supremacy while starting to really pay attention to reality and not the echoes they want to believe.