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ThinksMarkedly wrote:Home Fleet rarely ever sits in orbit. During Oyster Bay, the Battle of Manticore and the position that they pretended to be in the Second Battle of Manticore, they were far from orbit. Home Fleet's objective is to intercept an invader well short of planetary orbit. If it's sitting there, it's not doing its job.

Especially in a time of war, you want to keep your enemy guessing where you'll be, to avoid trapping you against a target you must defend.

Which was why D'Orville was so relieved the new forts were finally operational. Much smaller than the old prewar fortifications which had been decommissioned to provide the manpower to crew new construction, they were actually more powerfully armed, thanks to the same increased automation and weapons developments which had gone into the Navy's new warships. And each of those forts was surrounded by literally hundreds of missile pods, with the fire control to handle stupendous salvos. It would take an attack in overwhelming force to break those defenses, which had freed D'Orville to move Home Fleet closer to a more traditional covering position, locating his command in Sphinx orbit.

"Fortresses" are fortified positions. They are different from the more general and more temporary "fort." A fort is relocatable, movable. They have to be. Honorverse forts are movable as well. They have to be able to adapt with the changing terrain, overall strategy, tactics and situation.

Defense in death comes from projected forces along the axis of threat, supported by fortifications. Sometimes a fort is simply a trench dug out in the ground and furnished with men. To be abandoned as the need arises.

Ok, in this case, the Queen IS the King. I thought that obvious, but your point is correct.

True, you don't spread out all your pieces, and you do keep some home to mind the store. I like your equating forts with rooks. But your rook is more powerful when it is deployed strategically, projecting its force -- operating from the second rank after you've developed (moved the fleet out to intercept) your pieces. The second rank is akin to a million or so kms?

Castling the King, er Queen in this case, is getting Beth below ground. The pawns and rooks left to protect her are her private guard and stingships. The idea of forts and fortifications changes with technology. As does it's strategy, tactics, and use.

Home Fleet's job isn't to patrol. They're above that. Home Fleet is the Lion. Send the lionesses out to patrol. Let the king of the jungle know if you run into trouble.

You can't deploy until you know what's run amok.

US carriers are not forts. They are the legions of firepower you can send out without worry because your home position takes care of itself. It is naturally fortified by location. Carriers are projected hulls of force. And, do recall, they did sit at home once upon a time before the Japanese showed them the error in that. However, there are many forts, bases, littered along the landscape minding the store. They are not surrounding Wash. D.C.

I've been alerted to Kzt's post. True, D'Orville wanted to project Home Fleet out a lot more so he would be in a better position to also cover Sphinx. But you're missing the point. That was only because he actually had two objectives to protect. However, it defaulted right back to protecting Manticore UNTIL the forts were built. And these forts were close enough to protect the planets but they were not sitting in orbit, as Home Fleet [sometimes often] does.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Home Fleet rarely ever sits in orbit. During Oyster Bay, the Battle of Manticore and the position that they pretended to be in the Second Battle of Manticore, they were far from orbit. Home Fleet's objective is to intercept an invader well short of planetary orbit. If it's sitting there, it's not doing its job.

Especially in a time of war, you want to keep your enemy guessing where you'll be, to avoid trapping you against a target you must defend.

Which was why D'Orville was so relieved the new forts were finally operational. Much smaller than the old prewar fortifications which had been decommissioned to provide the manpower to crew new construction, they were actually more powerfully armed, thanks to the same increased automation and weapons developments which had gone into the Navy's new warships. And each of those forts was surrounded by literally hundreds of missile pods, with the fire control to handle stupendous salvos. It would take an attack in overwhelming force to break those defenses, which had freed D'Orville to move Home Fleet closer to a more traditional covering position, locating his command in Sphinx orbit.

Wait, I need to go back and reread that. Are you saying D'Orville wasn't in orbit during the Battle of Manticore?

But he was in orbit around Sphinx? Sounds like much easier pickings for the MA. The detection net to combat MA stealth may not cover Sphinx. Perhaps the Lennys should insert themselves into Sphinx then meander on over in Manticore's yard to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet after bynging Home Fleet.

Galactic coordination of forces should be child's play between Sphinx and Manticore.

cthia wrote:I've been alerted to Kzt's post. True, D'Orville wanted to project Home Fleet out a lot more so he would be in a better position to also cover Sphinx. But you're missing the point. That was only because he actually had two objectives to protect. However, it defaulted right back to protecting Manticore UNTIL the forts were built. And these forts were close enough to protect the planets but they were not sitting in orbit, as Home Fleet [sometimes often] does.

Where do you expect the forts to be?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I've been alerted to Kzt's post. True, D'Orville wanted to project Home Fleet out a lot more so he would be in a better position to also cover Sphinx. But you're missing the point. That was only because he actually had two objectives to protect. However, it defaulted right back to protecting Manticore UNTIL the forts were built. And these forts were close enough to protect the planets but they were not sitting in orbit, as Home Fleet [sometimes often] does.

Where do you expect the forts to be?

Anywhere but handicapped while sitting in orbit. Rooks are more effective when they are developed properly. A rook, much like forts, has the ability to attack and defend in all directions.

You handicap a rook when you leave it on the first row, undeveloped. It cannot defend or attack behind itself, and although it can project its power laterally while on the first row, in the Honorverse, laterally in the same sense means your situation has already gone to hell in a handbasket. Most likely in chess too.

cthia wrote:Anywhere but handicapped while sitting in orbit. Rooks are more effective when they are developed properly. A rook, much like forts, has the ability to attack and defend in all directions.

A fort can't be moved during engagement. It can be moved by tugs, in a slow and tedious process, in which both are vulnerable: the tug can't move the fort while the bubblewall is up and a tug does not have the acceleration of a warship. So I ask again: where do you put it?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
A fort can't be moved during engagement. It can be moved by tugs, in a slow and tedious process, in which both are vulnerable: the tug can't move the fort while the bubblewall is up and a tug does not have the acceleration of a warship. So I ask again: where do you put it?

No, a fort has a wedge and can maneuver itself at 30-50g.

It has no significant tactical mobility, but is is operationally mobile inside the system.

cthia wrote:US carriers are not forts. They are the legions of firepower you can send out without worry because your home position takes care of itself. It is naturally fortified by location. Carriers are projected hulls of force. And, do recall, they did sit at home once upon a time before the Japanese showed them the error in that. However, there are many forts, bases, littered along the landscape minding the store. They are not surrounding Wash. D.C.

I'd agree that carrier's aren't forts. To the extent the US has a significant homeland defense it's the various DoD fighters and bombers at various Air Force bases and Naval air stations. So sometimes the same kinds of planes a weapons a carrier but at a much cheaper fixed airbase.

Though roll back in time about 50 years and DC and plenty of other major US cities were ringed with batteries of conventional and nuclear armed Nike missiles - primarily designed for surface to air against Soviet bomber formations but capable of a secondary role as a surface to surface missile against naval threats. But then the threat switched from bombers - which you could to an extent still fortify against - to ICBMs which you practically couldn't. And then defense switched from fortification to treaties and mutually assured destruction, with focus on 2nd strike capabilities.
Now Nike batteries aren't exactly forts - it wasn't possible to armor the missile launchers and their radars against nuclear bombs. But they were heavy defenses set up to protect cities and the people and industry within them.


But even up into WWII there were more classic gun fortifications protecting major coastal cities (I've hiked up to the 16" batteries on the Marin Headlands that were installed in the 30s to beef up the defenses around the entrance of San Francisco bay. And of course the Hawaiian islands had a fair amount of light, medium, and heavy coast defense artillery (which somehow never gets mentioned in various alternate history stories about Japan following up the attack with an invasion). And then the "concrete battleship" of Fort Drum in the Philippians was a tough nut for Japan to crack (unfortunately successes elsewhere meant they were able to take Manila without having to destroy or get past that particular fortification)


So when the threat to cities and naval bases was primarily from other navies lots of money was spend building fortifications to defend them. (Admittedly the major coastal cities tended to be where the naval shipyards were - so defending them preserved both the economic power of the nation and it's shipbuilding capability. Both as important, long term, as its current fleet.

Now the threat, most places, is from air attack. So the defenses focus on airfields for your fighters and surface to air missile networks - not massive gun armed concrete forts. Also we seem to have reached an oscillation in the tug of war between armor and weapons where it's not possible to armor the critical bits against the precision weapons coming after them. So suitability of defenses it based far more on redundancy, misdirection, and mobility -- avoiding getting hit, or having additional radars and missiles that can come online if as others are lost.

But defenses in the Honorverse are fairly survivable against the best weapons available - so it makes sense again to build fortifications (though in some ways they are conceptually closer to a Crimean war floating ironclad gun battery than a classic coastal defense fort - since they are in many way a very heavily defended, very slow, ship with heavy firepower.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
A fort can't be moved during engagement. It can be moved by tugs, in a slow and tedious process, in which both are vulnerable: the tug can't move the fort while the bubblewall is up and a tug does not have the acceleration of a warship. So I ask again: where do you put it?

No, a fort has a wedge and can maneuver itself at 30-50g.

It has no significant tactical mobility, but is is operationally mobile inside the system.

Thanks for the correction. I didn't remember that.

But it's still a pitiful acceleration. A kid on a bike can run circles around a fort...

So the question stands: unless you preposition the fort somewhere where it'll be of some good before the enemy arrives, it's going to be out of action until either your side has driven off the attackers or has surrendered. So where do you put it so it is of use?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
A fort can't be moved during engagement. It can be moved by tugs, in a slow and tedious process, in which both are vulnerable: the tug can't move the fort while the bubblewall is up and a tug does not have the acceleration of a warship. So I ask again: where do you put it?

kzt wrote:No, a fort has a wedge and can maneuver itself at 30-50g.

It has no significant tactical mobility, but is is operationally mobile inside the system.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Thanks for the correction. I didn't remember that.

But it's still a pitiful acceleration. A kid on a bike can run circles around a fort...

So the question stands: unless you preposition the fort somewhere where it'll be of some good before the enemy arrives, it's going to be out of action until either your side has driven off the attackers or has surrendered. So where do you put it so it is of use?

I wish we all knew, because they're obviously not located where they can be of use during "every" battle. Sometimes I wonder what the point of them really is, except deterrence from certain airspace, which limits and dictates an attacker's tactics and strategy.

I did answer the question, somewhat in that post. I answered the question with a question, of a sort. A rook is more effective from the second rank. I presume that would equate to 1-2M km or so? I'd guess somewhere within real-time control of missiles.

Another point, if that kind of firepower is located too close to the planet, an attacking fleet can use the planet as a shield, blunting the effectiveness of the fort.

I don't know how long OWPs were in use during Manticore's long history. But I presume the position of the forts changed according to the sphere of their influence. Before MDMs and more accurate fire control, I imagine they sat much closer to the planet.

I hardly think the current range and accuracy of missiles, certainly MDMs, would warrant them sitting on top of the planet. I simply can't see that being an efficient allocation of forces. It's akin to Commander Lessen in UH withholding his Mark 23s. Using them in the anticipated battle would have been a waste. Same notion for a fort.

All speculation, of course. The author's mileage will surely vary.

Tourville's fleet? Passed a fort enroute to Sphinx. It certainly wasn't sitting in orbit or anywhere near. Lest I'm sadly mistaken.