Has anyone else decided to root against Manticore?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Before his death via pulser, the head admiral of the SLN briefed his staff on "Raging Justice 2", with >600 SDs forming at Tasmania as a follow up blow in case Raging Justice 1 failed. With Crandall's 73, Tang's 100, Filareta's 427, RG2's 600+, we were looking at 1200 Wallers, or 1/2 of all the ships active, in Maintenance, and working up or cycling down, Being moved by a navy that exercised ships 3 previous times in 250 years, and no one noticed!

The 100 ship in Tang's force probably were destroyed with the 400 in Sol. The 600+ moving to Tasmania are essentially out of pocket for ~5-6 months, and completely usless, during that period- it's not like they could be intercepted with new movement orders before they reached Tasmania, no they had to travel to the base there, wait for orders ( which would take. Couple weeks to reach them), then come back to third new station. All the while, they were completely off the table. Even if it was a fair fight, their absence would have allowed wormhole assisted GA SDs to attack the cord world's, with that many fewer defensive SDs for nearly 1/2 a year.

Oh, I didn't remember that. Could it be that Rajampet was rambling about an operation still in planning stages? Quite clearly after Raging Justice no one would send an SLN SD against a GF SD(P).

You're right that Tang's SDs were probably sent back to Sol and are part of the 400 scuttled after the Battle of Sol. Still, we can account for ~900 of the SDs. Hiding an operation that uses over half of the remaining SDs in active service would be quite difficult.

But maybe at this time it didn't need to be hidden in the first place.

I believe they were given their movement orders at the same time Filareta was given his to move on to Manticore from Tasmania - the strike announcement and the planned follow-up were announced to the Naval brass at the same time. RJ2 should have started forming at Tasmania about the same time Filareta got his butt handed to him.

Theemile wrote:I believe they were given their movement orders at the same time Filareta was given his to move on to Manticore from Tasmania - the strike announcement and the planned follow-up were announced to the Naval brass at the same time. RJ2 should have started forming at Tasmania about the same time Filareta got his butt handed to him.

Okay, but what was RJ2 going to do? If Filareta succeeded, there would be no need for 600 more SDs. Were they expecting him to fail but erode Manticoran defences sufficiently that a second attack could succeed?

Didn't they think the public would have been angered at losing 430 SDs to take on a single system?

GS, all I can think of regarding human views on the matter is the famous Air Force drills in the Cold War where only 2/3rds of the missileers would actually turn the key when they thought it was real. While obviously this lead to massive changes to how the US chooses its key-turners, at the time 2/3rds of the nuclear stockpile would have had some pretty drastic global effects.

Besides the real world implication, that might give us a view into how many SL types would fire. With only one fragment of one missile needing to hit a planet, I suspect the answer is “not all of them, but enough”.

As Cthia notes, in a way deterrence is a giant game of chicken. Only in this case it’s a cement truck playing chicken with a Chevy. It won’t end well for either of them if no one blinks, but the cement truck might still be recoverable when it’s all over...the Chevy not so much.

And ironically, all the “look how wrong bad they are” that’s been heaped on the mandarins would increase the validity of the threat. Because while no good moralist manty would consider EEVing first, it’s pretty easy to believe the mandarins might. (Also, until the end of the Cold War, all of the major democratic nuclear powers were absolutely on a “shoot first” policy. It was counter-intuitively the USSR that had a no-first-use policy. Probably because they knew they would win a conventional war in Germany until the late 80s. And maybe even then)

TFTSNBN wrote:One aspect of the EE that mystifies me is the lack of understanding that simply destroying industrial infrastructure will result in genocidal casualties.

Interesting thought that has many threads attached to it. For instance, I certainly understand GloriousRuse's thoughts. If an enemy has nothing to lose, what should hold it back?

Why die in a warship with unfired weapons? Likewise, why die as a superpower without pushing every last button of survival? But the human element is strong as a force. That isn't to say the thought has no merit. It does. The SLN showed that it does, that it has some inkling of EE desperation. Which brings me back to the Fly's notion . . .

I don't see why the SLN can't split the difference, and go after civilians in masse. Not so much the planet, but killing every Manticoran civilian it can. The deaths of civilians has a way of sobering the government, the people that run the government, and the Navy. I think that's the strategy the Mandarins were using. They couldn't scare the navy, the RMN, but they can scare the people.

It's the same thing that's happening with Iran. People are afraid Iran won't play by the rules of war and start targeting civilians. The US is highly vulnerable to those kinds of attacks. The same thing is accomplished, short of nuclear escalation.

The same strategy is open to the MA. Target civilians in masse. Turn Towers into rubble. Same dividend.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:I believe they were given their movement orders at the same time Filareta was given his to move on to Manticore from Tasmania - the strike announcement and the planned follow-up were announced to the Naval brass at the same time. RJ2 should have started forming at Tasmania about the same time Filareta got his butt handed to him.

Okay, but what was RJ2 going to do? If Filareta succeeded, there would be no need for 600 more SDs. Were they expecting him to fail but erode Manticoran defences sufficiently that a second attack could succeed?

<Snip>

Exactly. The force was either not needed, or was designed to overwhelm the defenses already weakened by the Oyster Bay attack, and then by Raging Justice.

The crazy thing is no intel was used in the planning. No dispatch boat crews were questioned about Manticore's defenses, or a Special DB with super sensitive passives was sent to pick up the ordinary mail.... And examine the remaining defenses.

Totally idiotic.

Theemile wrote:Exactly. The force was either not needed, or was designed to overwhelm the defenses already weakened by the Oyster Bay attack, and then by Raging Justice.

The crazy thing is no intel was used in the planning. No dispatch boat crews were questioned about Manticore's defenses, or a Special DB with super sensitive passives was sent to pick up the ordinary mail.... And examine the remaining defenses.

Totally idiotic.

Of course there wasn't any, because if there were any intel suggesting Raging Justice 2 were needed, then the same intel would have said that Raging Justice The First was suicide. If there was any chance mobilising 600 more SDs within 3 months, then any sane commander would have made Filareta wait even more. 1000 SDs can, after all, do more than 400 + 600 can separately (defeat in detail).

Wait, did you mean that they didn't use direct intel for the first Raging Justice? Hmm... that's a good point, but it's not too difficult for Rajampet to make an excuse for it. There were plenty of intel reports saying that there had to have been defence erosion -- no one believed in stealth torpedoes bypassing the entire defence network. Even DBs with special sensors aren't going to find a lot of defensive capabilities unless said defence is evident (a deterrence) and I doubt there was a lot of that in Manticore in the first place. Then all Rajampet had to do was claim Raging Justice was time-critical.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Exactly. The force was either not needed, or was designed to overwhelm the defenses already weakened by the Oyster Bay attack, and then by Raging Justice.

The crazy thing is no intel was used in the planning. No dispatch boat crews were questioned about Manticore's defenses, or a Special DB with super sensitive passives was sent to pick up the ordinary mail.... And examine the remaining defenses.

Totally idiotic.

Of course there wasn't any, because if there were any intel suggesting Raging Justice 2 were needed, then the same intel would have said that Raging Justice The First was suicide. If there was any chance mobilising 600 more SDs within 3 months, then any sane commander would have made Filareta wait even more. 1000 SDs can, after all, do more than 400 + 600 can separately (defeat in detail).

Wait, did you mean that they didn't use direct intel for the first Raging Justice? Hmm... that's a good point, but it's not too difficult for Rajampet to make an excuse for it. There were plenty of intel reports saying that there had to have been defence erosion -- no one believed in stealth torpedoes bypassing the entire defence network. Even DBs with special sensors aren't going to find a lot of defensive capabilities unless said defence is evident (a deterrence) and I doubt there was a lot of that in Manticore in the first place. Then all Rajampet had to do was claim Raging Justice was time-critical.

There was a SLN mil DB in Manty space- it's job was to signal Tang when Filareta showed up.

Even standard nav sensors should see 120 forts around the Junction, hundred to thousands of LACs running around, and nav bouys marking mine fields and pod shoals as a merchant ship tries to use the junction. The moment the case Zulu is called and all the nav becons turn off would be telling... And chilling...

GloriousRuse wrote:GS, all I can think of regarding human views on the matter is the famous Air Force drills in the Cold War where only 2/3rds of the missileers would actually turn the key when they thought it was real. While obviously this lead to massive changes to how the US chooses its key-turners, at the time 2/3rds of the nuclear stockpile would have had some pretty drastic global effects.

Besides the real world implication, that might give us a view into how many SL types would fire. With only one fragment of one missile needing to hit a planet, I suspect the answer is “not all of them, but enough”.

As Cthia notes, in a way deterrence is a giant game of chicken. Only in this case it’s a cement truck playing chicken with a Chevy. It won’t end well for either of them if no one blinks, but the cement truck might still be recoverable when it’s all over...the Chevy not so much.

Once saw a large dump truck partially full of gravel try to take a left turn too quickly, the gravel shifted and the truck flipped on it's side. Unfortunately, it fell on a white Chevy Corvette going the other direction.

The results were.... Predictable. Let's just say that an 80's Corvette will flatten to ~4" when enough pressure is applied.

Theemile wrote:There was a SLN mil DB in Manty space- it's job was to signal Tang when Filareta showed up.

Even standard nav sensors should see 120 forts around the Junction, hundred to thousands of LACs running around, and nav bouys marking mine fields and pod shoals as a merchant ship tries to use the junction. The moment the case Zulu is called and all the nav becons turn off would be telling... And chilling...

That was at the Junction and there was never any claim that Oyster Bay had attacked it. What they were deluding themselves over was whether the system defences were gone, both the Home Fleet and the system defence pods. I don't know how well one can hide Home Fleet -- you probably don't want to, since it is deterrence. And that should have been readily visible to the planners: there were still multiple dozen SD-sized vessels running around in the system. And when Filareta arrived, that's exactly what Honor showed him.

But the system defence pods, those shouldn't be visible. No one, not even with milspec sensors, should be able to find them unless you're within a half a light-second or so. And system defence pods is what the SLN planners were thinking caused Crandall's defeat. So the story went that if someone got to the space stations, the pods should have been emptied.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:There was a SLN mil DB in Manty space- it's job was to signal Tang when Filareta showed up.

Even standard nav sensors should see 120 forts around the Junction, hundred to thousands of LACs running around, and nav bouys marking mine fields and pod shoals as a merchant ship tries to use the junction. The moment the case Zulu is called and all the nav becons turn off would be telling... And chilling...

That was at the Junction and there was never any claim that Oyster Bay had attacked it. What they were deluding themselves over was whether the system defences were gone, both the Home Fleet and the system defence pods. I don't know how well one can hide Home Fleet -- you probably don't want to, since it is deterrence. And that should have been readily visible to the planners: there were still multiple dozen SD-sized vessels running around in the system. And when Filareta arrived, that's exactly what Honor showed him.

But the system defence pods, those shouldn't be visible. No one, not even with milspec sensors, should be able to find them unless you're within a half a light-second or so. And system defence pods is what the SLN planners were thinking caused Crandall's defeat. So the story went that if someone got to the space stations, the pods should have been emptied.

About the junction...if it was believed there was no damage, whose idea was it to believe that 100 SlN SDs and 36 BSDF SDs could survive a junction assault.

Once again, no real planning, no intel.