Alternate history: PRH-Solarian War

In the spirit of discussing "what ifs" as in the [url=http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10484[/url]"GA-League War" thread[/url], what if the MAlign had got the war it wanted, between the People's Republic of Haven and the Solarian League? Let's say Parnell's Short Victorious War was victorious, but not a walk-over, ending circa 1910. There's no Committee of Public Safety to decimate the PRN's officer corps, but since the Manticoran Alliance was not a walk-over, the incompetent officers did get removed from the board.

As a direct conclusion of winning the war, the PRN has skilled officers with battle experience and has captured some of Manticore's research (see below). The PRH also gets a huge boost from the SKM economy, which will feed its failed state for a couple of decades. Plus they get an educated population, at least that which did not escape to Beowulf or New Berlin.

Speaking of which, the MAlign's hand is forced and the war starts when Beowulf decides to blockade its end of the wormhole after the fall of Manticore. Erewhon also falls, so the peeps control that wormhole, but that likewise triggers a Solarian response.

Let's say Haven has access to the following technologies:

• early, advanced compensators
• FTL transmitters
• Ghost Rider (recon drone)
• missile pods
• early runs of Dazzler, Dragon Teeth and MDMs
• prototypes for Shrike-class LACs, including compact fission reactors
• designs for CLACs and SD(P)s, which the PRN puts into immediate production

Moreover, since these technologies were not widely deployed in the war, the MAlign does not have a lot of intel on them. And as soon as war wraps up, the PRH kicks the Solarian advisors out, so the pipeline of information to the MAlign is only a trickle.

Finally, on the face of a Solarian invasion of the sector, Andermani realpolitik make them ally with the PRH against the Sollies, especially after the peeps let the andies simply annex the entire Silesian Confederacy. (Not sure this is plausible, but I needed to balance the scales a little)

Let's say the PRN has 450 SDs + 150 DNs (including captured RMN and ESN units) and the IAN comes along with 230 SDs and 90 DNs.

If this war starts in 1912-13, how would it play out? Would the PRH/AE alliance have a shot at winning?

Curve ball: Honor escaped to Beowulf with Mike Henke, who is know Queen of Manticore in exile.

The basic question is jow strong are the defenses at haven? When 800 SDs drop in, supported by say 400 BCs and 400 lesser vessels, how will that work out?

Because, despite David’s claim that nobody ever did anything but slow methodical advances prior to the second war, the SLN has traditionally just gone for the throat. They mass a fleet and drop in on the enemie’s home system with an unstoppable amount of firepower. So whatever Peep and IAN forces are not in the Haven system on that day might as well not exist. And I doubt they can handle 40-50% of Battle Force, even as overconfident and underskilled as most BF units might be, with just the Peep Capital Fleet.

Offhand, I’ll go for ‘the peeps are screwed’. Unless the SLN decides to take down the IAN first, but I’d expect they plan to deal with them next.

When, or if, that Haven companion book ever comes out, it'll be possible to duplicate Fester's apologia for Battle Fleet with the Havenite Navy instead of the RMN.

Let's say Haven has access to the following technologies:

early, advanced compensators
FTL transmitters
Ghost Rider (recon drone)
missile pods
early runs of Dazzler, Dragon Teeth and MDMs
prototypes for Shrike-class LACs, including compact fission reactors
designs for CLACs and SD(P)s, which the PRN puts into immediate production

Haven had their own missile pods in 1911, development and deployment was presumably delayed by the Pierre coup and following purges. An intact PRH led to victory by 1910 by Parnell would have had to do that much more quickly.

If they have SDM pods and the SLN does not, the League is toast. By the time the SLN comes back with a second force armed with SDM pods, Haven has had enough time to get all that captured Manticoran innovation into deployment and is able to launch its version of Operation Buttercup against the League.

Pods are one use. Your 100 SDs punch above their own weight and probably get an extra 25% hits before the all die horribly. But they all die horribly.

kzt wrote:The basic question is jow strong are the defenses at haven? When 800 SDs drop in, supported by say 400 BCs and 400 lesser vessels, how will that work out?

Because, despite David’s claim that nobody ever did anything but slow methodical advances prior to the second war, the SLN has traditionally just gone for the throat. They mass a fleet and drop in on the enemie’s home system with an unstoppable amount of firepower. So whatever Peep and IAN forces are not in the Haven system on that day might as well not exist. And I doubt they can handle 40-50% of Battle Force, even as overconfident and underskilled as most BF units might be, with just the Peep Capital Fleet.

Offhand, I’ll go for ‘the peeps are screwed’. Unless the SLN decides to take down the IAN first, but I’d expect they plan to deal with them next.

The SLN might go for the Throat but the throat in this scenario is still the Manticore System because of the Junction. If the SLN takes Manticore, they split the allies so that they cannot mutually support each other, the SLN now has direct access to its core bases and shipyards as well as reinforcements. They Separate Haven from the Empire and whatever forces are deployed in Erewhon, Phoenix and Joshua are now isolated and can be picked off separately.

The Problem for the SLN is that the Junction defences wouldn't necessarily be involved in a battle for the system between Manticore and Haven so they may have been surrendered intact or mostly intact which means that the Junction is heavily fortified by fixed defences(Forts) as well as a hell of a lot of pods and mobile forces.

No matter how arrogant the SLN is, they have to know that if they go straight to Haven they still will need to fight their way in, destroy whatever forces are deployed in the system as well as fixed defences and either occupy the system and fight off whatever rescue forces come in while trying to do field repairs 600 LY away from the nearest bases and potentially run out of ammunition eventually or retreat all the way back into the League for repairs and rearmament once the ammunition colliers are emptied. Either way the risk of losing many of their damaged ships in holding the system or retreating from the system when they cant afford to lose those ships.

kzt wrote:The basic question is jow strong are the defenses at haven? When 800 SDs drop in, supported by say 400 BCs and 400 lesser vessels, how will that work out?

But can the BF get 800 SDs moving? This is before Operation Winter Forage because the MAlign was caught unprepared. There's no Filareta haf-way through to Manticore sitting on his thumbs with a couple hundred SDs. And even then, he only moved 437 SDs. Nearly doubling that number puts a huge strain on the SLN. Filareta also already had pods, which he could and did externally mount plus colliers that could launch them to space for an alpha strike. This version of the SLN does not yet.

And Haven is further away from League space than Manticore is. And so is New Berlin. That means longer in hyper and more fleet train dedicated to consumables instead of missiles. Can anything smaller than a BC even make the journey without resupply?

How big a fleet would the SLN need in order to punch Capital Fleet out? Let's say the PRN keeps 200 SDs, 100 DNs and a good number of BBs (for whatever good they'll do) in Haven. Given that there are likely fixed defences in around the planet (which Harris might have turned on the planet from time to time) and given that the SLN philosophy is to wield overwhelming force, I'd say 800 SDs is their goal number. 500 might devastate Capital Fleet, but also the attacking force resulting in Haven not surrendering.

And even then I'm not sure. In the premise, I stipulated that not only does the PRH/AE have missile pods, they also captured MDM prototypes from Manticore. If New Berlin and Haven are protected by a sufficient number of MDM pods, even early missiles can devastate the SLN fleet from beyond their range. They don't need RMN quality if they can replace quality for quantity.

Parnell and Rabenstrage know that the BF is 2000 SDs. What strategy do they adopt to ensure they win before the SLN can marshal that armada of 800 SDs with their own Cataphract-A to send to their capitals?

The PN might have 450 SD's in their fleet but those SD's are bigger and significantly more missile heavy than their SLN counterparts and also have in many cases heavier PD/CM defences. For example 2 DuQuesne class SD's could easily take 3 Scientist class SD's. Even if we assume that the Havenite DN's are 1 for 1 with an SLN SD just the Havenite SD's and DNs account for an equivalent of 820 Scientist Class SD's.

Throw in the IAN SD's which are a bit smaller but have heavy missile armament which would probably give them same advantage as the PN SD's then we end up with the equivalent of 435 SLN SD's.

Then we come into the at least to me hidden secret weapon of the People's Navy, the Battleships if we assume that 300 BB's survived. Against Manticore they were nothing but moving targets, but they are ~66% of the tonnage of an SLN SD but with actually heavier missile armament with comparable missile defence armament but only 1/3 of the energy firepower of a Scientist. Even if we give them a technological handicap because they are older, lighter missiles because they are BB’s and smaller magazines they would still represent at least 75% of an SLN Scientist Class SD. This add another 225 Equivalent SD’s that the SLN will likely not take them seriously… because BB’s at least the first couple of times.

So if we add all this up, we have PN has the ~ firepower of 1040 Scientist SD’s, the IAN has the ~ firepower of 435 Scientist SD’s for a grand total of 1,475 SD’s. This is before we take into account that the People’s Navy has just fought a major war against a very competent opponent who had better tech and didn’t just roll over so we would have battle hardened PN’s crews, experienced officers. This is also before we take into account that the Republic is probably still heavily fortified and their industry is focused on pumping out missile pods and more SD’s. When we factor in the Experienced officers, battle hardened crews, missile pods that the SLN has no idea about and the distance, I would say that the Alliance in this case would be able to hold their own in the immediate time period.

Problem is that if Honor and Mike escaped, there is also the chance that they escaped with a lot of technology with them, designs for the SD(P)’s, CLAC’s, LAC’s, DDM’s, EW… this eliminates the Alliance’s 1 trump card, they might get the SD(P)’s and CLAC’s and DDM first but the league will be right at their heels and all they will have to do is wait out until they start pumping out SD(P)’s. They may have a small warship building industry when compared to Manticore/Haven but they have the potential to rapidly expand that industry, put shipyards into hundreds of systems in order to build up quickly. Maybe in 2-3 years the PN and IAN will show up with a few hundred SD(P)’s ready to kick ass but will be met with SD’s backed up by anti-missile LAC’s and DDM pods in every system they visit and since the League has 1,700 member systems, many of them heavily industrialized they could build LAC’s and DDM pods a hell of a lot faster than the Andermani or Haven can. If some or most of the RMN’s research staff left with Honor and Mike the Alliance is in much worse shape than before because they might have the technology and designs but if the SLN has the research staff they could give them virtually unlimited resources to do R&D. If they were bad before, imagine what happens when they are backed up by the League’s R&D and they have a budget bigger than the Pre-War RMN’s entire budget. Also depends on what happened to the RMMM, if they were caught in Manticore and they were captured by the PN, it makes it harder on the League economically, but chances are that the majority of the RMMM managed to escape to the League so the situation is significantly better for the League and SLN. The League has no access to the MWJ and Erewhon but with the RMMM they will have enough merchant ships to lessen the blow at least temporarily until they manage to build more to eliminate the need for the MWJ in the short term.

Ultimately I would say the outcome depends on whether the RMMM, RMN research staff, and RMN technology designs ended up in League Hands or was it just Honor and Mike with some SD’s and lighter combatants now based out of Beowulf.

kzt wrote:Pods are one use. Your 100 SDs punch above their own weight and probably get an extra 25% hits before the all die horribly. But they all die horribly.

IF you had 100,000 Pods in Haven each with 10 missiles each that is a hell of a lot of firepower. Even if you have control links for 10,000 missiles, sending a wave of 100,000 missiles at the attacking fleet when they are not expecting it, and hiding your 10,000 missiles in the big blob will do a hell of a lot of damage. If the SLN doesn't know the pods exist, if those pods are stealthy enough and hidden with care, Capital Fleet might have range advantage because the SLN gets close to a group of pods and Capital fleet fires them off, they are still far outside of the SLN's range. So in a journey of 15,000,000 km the SLN could face massive salvos over and over and over again before they even get to the PN's SD's and only then do they get to the point of facing the PN SD's/DN's/BB's...ships that are not bloodied like the SLN are.

By the time the SLN reaches range, they will be facing an unbloodied Capital Fleet that is well trained, well led, has firepower advantage ton for ton and probably still has a hell of a lot of missile pods left over.


They get to the Hyper limit, as soon as they hit the point of no return the PN fires off the nearest pods(50,000 missiles) they can only control a fraction of those but even under their own control those missiles are bound to cause a lot of damage. A million km in and they hit another batch, 1 million km later again etc... hell you can let them bypass some groups of pods and fire from multiple directions.

Sigs wrote:

kzt wrote:Pods are one use. Your 100 SDs punch above their own weight and probably get an extra 25% hits before the all die horribly. But they all die horribly.

IF you had 100,000 Pods in Haven each with 10 missiles each that is a hell of a lot of firepower. Even if you have control links for 10,000 missiles, sending a wave of 100,000 missiles at the attacking fleet when they are not expecting it, and hiding your 10,000 missiles in the big blob will do a hell of a lot of damage. If the SLN doesn't know the pods exist, if those pods are stealthy enough and hidden with care, Capital Fleet might have range advantage because the SLN gets close to a group of pods and Capital fleet fires them off, they are still far outside of the SLN's range. So in a journey of 15,000,000 km the SLN could face massive salvos over and over and over again before they even get to the PN's SD's and only then do they get to the point of facing the PN SD's/DN's/BB's...ships that are not bloodied like the SLN are.

By the time the SLN reaches range, they will be facing an unbloodied Capital Fleet that is well trained, well led, has firepower advantage ton for ton and probably still has a hell of a lot of missile pods left over.


They get to the Hyper limit, as soon as they hit the point of no return the PN fires off the nearest pods(50,000 missiles) they can only control a fraction of those but even under their own control those missiles are bound to cause a lot of damage. A million km in and they hit another batch, 1 million km later again etc... hell you can let them bypass some groups of pods and fire from multiple directions.

we're not discussing MDM's right? Single drive missile won't have the range to hit ships at the hyper limit.

Sigs wrote:Then we come into the at least to me hidden secret weapon of the People's Navy, the Battleships if we assume that 300 BB's survived.

Not sure I'd assign the BBs as much value as you did, but even on the low bar, those ships can be used to tow pods and to control some missiles off them. Maybe the PN can refit them cheaply, removing some broadside launchers and adding more control links.

Ultimately I would say the outcome depends on whether the RMMM, RMN research staff, and RMN technology designs ended up in League Hands or was it just Honor and Mike with some SD’s and lighter combatants now based out of Beowulf.

Indeed. In my OP I intentionally did not say what Honor would do. I wanted to see what others thought, but I also don't know myself. She and Mike would understandably be very angry at the Peeps and wanting to get back at them. But they're at Beowulf and destroying Beowulf is a MAlign objective.

If this research staff that escaped Manticore began working with TIY and other contractors, would they notice the MAlign infiltration? Would then stop cooperating when they noticed how thoroughly corrupt those transstellars are? Remember the BSDF had slightly better SDs than the SLN per se, because they didn't share much.

Similarly, would Honor work with the SLN, knowing what FF does? Do the ends justify the means? Or would she sit out, enjoying a comfortable commission as Commodore in the BSDF? Or maybe a third option: perform sorties against the PN and try to liberate Grayson to establish a beachhead, but not actively collaborate with the SLN?

With this much Manticoran candy dangled before their eyes and the opportunity to accomplish the goals of fragmenting the league and annihilating the PRH, the MAlign would act. They can't let the SLN simply overwhelm the PRH/AE alliance, so they'd try to sabotage. This is way too early for the Ghosts and Sharks, so no Oyster Bay in Beowulf, though.

BUt it may make mistakes because it isn't controlling the tempo or the initiative, allowing the BSDF and BSC to get a whiff of the Alignment's existence. Then the BSDF definitely doesn't join the war, but instead goes at Mesa.