Warship Construction in the Silesian Protectorate.

Warship Construction in the Silesian Protectorate.
In the immediate aftermath of the Yawata Strike I am sure that there would have been some initiatives to produce RMN Warships in the Silesian Yards.
Compared to Talbot these yards would have more to offer if we can assume the following.
1) Due to their location and what's been happening in the area the Silesian Yards would have started been much closer to RMN standards than the Talbot ones when the Protectorate was formed.
2) Warship production would have stopped. The only military work would have been on the occupation forces vessels. The economic impact of that would not be in the best interest of Manticore’s objective of solving the corruption / piracy issues.
3) Manticore oversight stamps down on the corruption and sweetheart deals.
4) Increased Military Production in the Manticore yards would displace Merchant Marine work and thus force up the price of things.
5) Manticore Cartels are familiar with working in Silesia and are cash rich compared to Silesian organizations.
Thus before the Yalta Strike we would expect Manticore Organizations to buy into the better Silesian yards and set them up to do the normal ship maintenance and support roles that have become expensive in Manticore. Even new production to Manticore Civil standards.
The local RMN force would probably have looked to take over some of the old CSN yards to do local repair and refit work. I would not be surprised if there was not a local production site for the older generation missiles for the old ship types being used in the area to free up Manticore facilities to produce the newer ERM, MDM types. E.g. Star Knights, Culverins etc.

Post Strike:-
So:-
1) We have yards at the First Havenite War level (aprox.) of Tech in Silesia under Manticore Control.
2) A hot war with Haven.
3) A developing war situation in Talbot.
4) No production facilities in Manticore and limited "Servicing" facilities in Trevor’s Star.

I would expect the Cartels that have the best facilities and military orders they can no longer fulfill in Manticore space would be looking to switch that construction to Silesia asap but may well have to produce some forms of hybrid designs initially. BuShips would be concerned about Tech Leak but also ship numbers and availability.
As Beowulf parts become available any hybrid designs would develop. With the Havenite Peace Treaty / GA agreement any long term designs would be terminated so no SD(P)'s or probably BC's but we just might get some smaller vessels actually being completed. Both Destroyers and perhaps some form of Patrol Cruiser. Since some of these would be Private Ventures what might appear on the GA export market? A MDM/DDM cruiser design for Beowulf and the original Manticore allies – Since producing new Sag C would take too long to get started. So Silesian Hull and fabrication with components from Manticore planetary production initially with things like Beowulf components and assemblies. Recovered Solarian parts etc. All getting folded in to complete the projects that have got far enough ahead to be worth completing post UH.
Discuss :-

Captain Golding wrote:Warship Construction in the Silesian Protectorate.
In the immediate aftermath of the Yawata Strike I am sure that there would have been some initiatives to produce RMN Warships in the Silesian Yards.

I'm not sure what infrastructure the Silesian yards would have.

Sidemore is supposed to be pulling itself up by its bootstraps as of War of Honor, so I wouldn't be surprised if their orbital infrastructure is approaching Manty standards, but how quickly the ex-confederacy proper is scaling up I'm not sure.

I'd agree they'd be better than Talbott yards, but - compared to what the Manticorans consider 'front line military standard' that's not a huge bar to clear.

Certainly Manticoran companies would probably have descended on the various Silesian yards like a gaggle of vultures and a big proportion of anything not appropriated by the navy is probably either in Manticoran hands or has manticoran partners.

The initial effort of securing and stabilising the place can be done with Silesian-level hardware, but I'd imagine investment to at least produce manticoran-equivalent escort class ships would be something done as a matter of urgency.

We've not heard any reference that I'm aware of to anything heavier than a battlecruiser, and the Silesia class is a name-of-polity unit (which are usually amongst the biggest in a fleet), so I'd be hesitant to assume the Sillies ever had any battleship or dreadnought class units, which means that any infrastructure for ship-of-the-wall yards probably need to be built from scratch.

All of that would depend on the conditions just prior to the Yawata Strike.

Sidemore was already operating a Fleet base operation and doing at least repair work. They would have had a capability to do work and probably there was a supply chain manufacturing system set up for some local production of parts and equipment though probably not missiles. Work on missiles, sure. Produce Mk 16s probabaly not. Also probably not manufacture reactors, nodes etc but having them shipped in from Mantiocre. The biggest asset would have been both the RMN personal running and working in the repair and supply operations plus the Sidmorian nationals who also worked there. It might not have been geared up to handle SDs but likely up to BC levels.

Silesia has a whole different set of challanges. Sarnow and his commands were in the process getting rid of the corrupt politicians, sorting out what the ConFed Navy (and local SDFs) had for ships -and there were apparently some "paper" ships for graft- and cleaning house in at least the ConFed Navy.

In general the Silesian local warships were resented as being variations on SLN designs if probably with local modifications. I suspect that Sarnow would have -if not shut down- taken control and oversight of yards with capability of producing warships for a couple of reasons. One was to stop any further conversion or building of civilian shipping to armed ships probably intended for piracy. Another would be to stop construction on warships ordered by either ConFed Navy or SDFs as the ships would almost automaticly be way less capable and therefor less usable even in Silesia than most RMN ships- even older ones. There would be some considerations of how close to compleation such ships were and if they could be sucessfully used to replace a number of existing ConFed/SDF ships- with former ConFed personal as crew etc- while scrapping the older and questionable ships. That would also depend on the ability and numbers of ConFed people who could be brought into Sarnow's commands under supervison and training by RMN

There must be a number of existing shipyards in the Manticoraian half of Silesia that would have the capability to upgrade to producing things for RMN but they face the same difficulties that Sarnow has with the ConFed Navy and the Silesian politics and corruption. Even if you presume that most of the people are honest, you have to oversee the operations and train up the personal to Manticorian/RMN standards of manufacture plus convert their equipment to make the goods you need. Software and modifications to indivdual machines plus reconfiguring production lines.
The civilian side is somewhat less problematic except for the presumed pervasive corruption at variouis levels. The various tech levels are probably similar to more current SL levels. At the very least, most of the yards, particularly those doing repair and replacement, are going to be familure with working on old and newer civilian starship designs and probably arleady have local sourcing for equipment rather than have to import spares from the League every time they do work. Probably a shallower learning curve and reprograming job to start turning out anything specific to Manticor Merchant Marine since Manticorain flagged ships have been trading here a long time.
I'm not sure how differnt the basic equipment on a generic MMM ship vs a League system (or Transtellar) or Silesian manufactured ship would be. The mil-spec stuff is very differnt but the civiilan is going to be more general and a lot of that could already be being built/manufactured under license.
That various civilian companies from Manticore have already been setting up new- post annexation- relationships and partnerships etc in Silesian is presumed. Give the total loss of orbital manufacturing for the Manticore system, I would guess that those who are already involved in Silesia would look to divert at least part of thier manufactuing there to support the rebuild of Manticore (and get a profit from that) and to get a piece of the export business that was lost because the factories were destroyed in the Yawata Strike.

Setting up an actual RMN yard or two in Silesia is differnt situation mostly because it requires the trained people to do it and essentilay local source of mil-spec equipment and the related security that would go along with that. I don't think we have any actual information about what Sarnow is doing for repair and refit for RMN units though he could easily use existing yard facilities already hadleing the ConFed ships for them and some light work on RMS ships-with a very heavy security component.

Captain Golding wrote:Warship Construction in the Silesian Protectorate.
In the immediate aftermath of the Yawata Strike I am sure that there would have been some initiatives to produce RMN Warships in the Silesian Yards.
Compared to Talbot these yards would have more to offer if we can assume the following.
1) Due to their location and what's been happening in the area the Silesian Yards would have started been much closer to RMN standards than the Talbot ones when the Protectorate was formed.

Yeah, like they're only a century out of date, instead of two, and can build ships up to BCs instead of just CLs.
Still not exactly helpful - and their personnel are still a hell of a potential security risk. I know I wouldn't want to trust their personnel with current military design secrets. (Which you'd have to do if you had them build, or even do most of the service on, modern RMN designs)

Maybe with the newly available, post-strike, treecat assisted vetting you can winnow out the security risks from the workforce and start bringing those old SCN yards up to the point they can work on current RMN tech. But that'll take time and many of the same resourced you'd need to rebuild the yards at Manticore. And all for yards that aren't capable of handing the ships Manticore most needs for the war with Haven - SD(P)s and CLACs. Sure you could build waller sized slips and facilities to match - but that's be almost entirely new construction which could be installed anywhere (like at Manticore where it's more needed)


I'd expect over time, as vetting happens, for more and more maintenance for BC and below to end up being performed by yards in Silesia. But I doubt any significant amount of new construction to happen out there; and certainly not for ships larger than the SCN ever build (even BC(P)s might be too large for their yards)

Captain Golding wrote:1) We have yards at the First Havenite War level (aprox.) of Tech in Silesia under Manticore Control.

The yards are more comparable to pre-first-war Peep tech, back when they were still paying Sollies for tech transfers. Silesian naval tech was significantly behind the Sollie tech Manticore was kicking the crap out of.

It's going to take more than a few years to upgrade that to late-second-war standards, even ignoring the security issues already mentioned.

Captain Golding wrote:1) We have yards at the First Havenite War level (aprox.) of Tech in Silesia under Manticore Control.

Galactic Sapper wrote:The yards are more comparable to pre-first-war Peep tech, back when they were still paying Sollies for tech transfers. Silesian naval tech was significantly behind the Sollie tech Manticore was kicking the crap out of.

It's going to take more than a few years to upgrade that to late-second-war standards, even ignoring the security issues already mentioned.

The difference is probably how highly automated they were. RFC described the production lines that were destroyed as 3D printers (using nanites) creating components that are assembled under human supervision.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9913&hilit=assembly&start=220

Galactic Sapper wrote:The yards are more comparable to pre-first-war Peep tech, back when they were still paying Sollies for tech transfers. Silesian naval tech was significantly behind the Sollie tech Manticore was kicking the crap out of.

It's going to take more than a few years to upgrade that to late-second-war standards, even ignoring the security issues already mentioned.

General comments on the quality of CN ships were that their main issues were not technology, their big problems were motivation, training and corruption in the navy leadership and in the political layer above the navy.

kzt wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:The yards are more comparable to pre-first-war Peep tech, back when they were still paying Sollies for tech transfers. Silesian naval tech was significantly behind the Sollie tech Manticore was kicking the crap out of.

It's going to take more than a few years to upgrade that to late-second-war standards, even ignoring the security issues already mentioned.

General comments on the quality of CN ships were that their main issues were not technology, their big problems were motivation, training and corruption in the navy leadership and in the political layer above the navy.

Well, and their overgunned (and under-defended) designs, and relatively crappy sensors and electronics.

Now overgunned isn't a yard problem, is a design problem. Under defended may be depending on how much of that is lack of mounts (not a yard problem), how much is inability to build CM launchers with reliably low cycle times or PDLCs with as many emitters and as accurately aimed as RMN ones, and how much in unwillingness to pay the volume and cost for sufficient ECM? How much of their crappy electronics is just poor software and home much in inability to manufacture underlying hardware of top of the line capability?
it's hard, from the very little bit we know, to tell how much of the problem was caused by yard capabilities.

But even if they could, with a better set of plans, build something every bit as good as a brand new Nevada-class BC the RMN of 1922 has no use for something so out of date. In most ways that'd be inferior to the RMN designs of 17 years before.

Jonathan_S wrote:
But even if they could, with a better set of plans, build something every bit as good as a brand new Nevada-class BC the RMN of 1922 has no use for something so out of date. In most ways that'd be inferior to the RMN designs of 17 years before.

Sure. And so they will wait for perfect ships because perfection in a half decade will surely help solve their small ship problem that exists today due to their deciding to police another 5-10,000 systems.

Good luck with that plan.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:
But even if they could, with a better set of plans, build something every bit as good as a brand new Nevada-class BC the RMN of 1922 has no use for something so out of date. In most ways that'd be inferior to the RMN designs of 17 years before.

Sure. And so they will wait for perfect ships because perfection in a half decade will surely help solve their small ship problem that exists today due to their deciding to police another 5-10,000 systems.

Good luck with that plan.

Agreed, perfect is the enemy of the good. I think it's likely that the RMN will have repair yards and local component sourcing in both Talbot and Silesia within a few years. We discussed in the dispersed yards thread about Talbott that it didn't make sense for the RMN to build the big ships anywhere but in Manticore, but smaller ships and LACs may make sense in both.

But that's a few years out. The question here is whether Silesia has anything to contribute to the immediate needs post-Yawata Strike. And I think the answer is no: first, the Protectorate is still not a full member of the Star Empire, so technology sharing mustn't be happening, even the shipyards are now in Manticoran hands. Second, though he may have brought investment from the cartels and the government, I doubt any of it included expanding the existing shipyards to handle mil-spec HW or that it was in sufficient quantity before the strike to be an asset in rebuilding. As someone posted up-thread, the conversion required in those yards is going to be damn close to rebuilding from scratch in Manticore, where fewer personnel hurdles can be found.

As I posted in the other thread, I think Talbott and Silesian entrepreneurs with sufficient long-term view will be investing in local production of civilian ships, taking advantage of tax incentives and technology transfer. They should keep an eye out to making military hardware if the RMN changes its mind, but they shouldn't count on it.

One advantage Silesia has over Talbott is that it actually has warship designs of its own. The SCN designs were crappy and out of date, but with a little bit of Manticore updates, they can make effective export versions that wouldn't threaten the GA, yet be effective units for everyone else (besides the League). I don't think there's anything stopping them from building like Carlucci Industries in Erewhon. They probably won't be building wallers because there is no Maya Sector nearby to buy them, but DDs like the Sharpshooter class, CLs and CAs? Sure.

BTW, one advantage Talbott has over Silesia is its proximity to Verge nations that will want to follow Maya's path, found a regional entity for mutual defence and build a decent navy. The newly-liberated Madras Sector, under the leadership of the Kingdom of Meyers comes to mind. But distance or even travel time might not mean much. If Silesian shipyards can get their act together sooner, they can start competing with Carlucci and out-competing Technodyne.