ThinksMarkedly wrote:
What was the reason to launch Cutworm? To keep the RHN off-balance, having to spread their forces thin to parry any assault which they didn't know where would land. In that sense, it was a success: no major RHN operations were launched between Thunderbolt and Beatrice. It also restored the initiative to the MA.
But why did they need to keep the RHN off balance and dispersed if they were so near parity? If the MA and the RHN had ~420 SD(P)'s each and the MA SD(P)'s were as good as 1.3 RHN SD(P)'s why were they worried? Even if the RHN had 620 SD(P)'s the MA and their 420 SD(P)'s will still be within shouting distance of the RHN. The reason they were tried so hard to disperse the RHN's concentrated strength was because it was overwhelming.
The main reason that the RoH did not launch too many offensives before Beatrice was because they regained most of their territory lost from the first war, had to consolidate their gains and the fact that the Andermani threw in with the Alliance threw their plans off. At the beginning of the war the Alliance had 232 SD(P)'s to the RHN's 318 SD(P)'s and the Alliance enjoyed a technological advantage which brought the odds closer than they were numerically, once Bolthole started pumping out ships in late 1920-early 1921 and the rest of the republic finished the construction of their SD(P)'s in early 1921 they had sufficient forces to launch offensives. Plus the president had learned she went back to war on forged documents, documents forget by HER government so there was restraint on her part trying to get back to the negotiating table.
Why select those targets? They were targets the RHN could not ignore, they had to defend. They were not critical like Haven or Bolthole, but important enough it could not yield without a fight.
They were targets that were unlikely to have modern wallers, most of them were important enough to warrant a picket just not a picket made up of SD(P)'s. Sending 2 SD(P)'s and a squadron of CLAC's to a system to face off against nothing stronger than an old style SD gives the Alliance the chance to launch an offensive when they don't have the ships to touch first rate pickets.
Why such a small Eighth Fleet? It was all the MA could put together.
Because in 1921 the RHN was significantly stronger than the Alliance and the RHN can afford to picket their most important systems and maintain a powerful offensive force. The Alliance didn't have the ships to send to 8th Fleet because everything was used to picket the handful of Alliance systems. The RHN covered their most important systems, and had a substantial force on the front, the Alliance used a handful of SD(P)'s and CLAC's to attack the rear to disperse the concentrated firepower of the RHN. If the fleets of the 2 sides were even remotely close, 8th Fleet would have been significantly stronger from the get go like 6th Fleet was in the first war.
I agree with your first paragraph and disagree with the second. If Theisman said that there was a good chance the forces sent to Manticore could extricate themselves, he had very good reason to believe so. He wasn't padding the numbers or trying to tell Pritchart what she wanted to hear. He was being honest. And as I said before: he was right, until Apollo changed everything.
If I gave you a parachute and told you to jump from 10,000 feet with the understanding that there is "a good chance" the parachute will open will you do it?
Gambling the future of your nation on "a good chance" doesn't seem to promising.
Attacking Trevor's Star does not achieve Beatrice's objectives: it does not end the war. Even trashing Grayson is doubtful that could end the war. Trashing the Manticoran shipyards, preferably with Home Fleet as a bonus, would.
Attacking Trevor's Star and crushing 3rd Fleet and 8th Fleet when they are outnumbered by the RHN 4.2 to 1 and even with their tech advantage it is 3.2 to 1. The RHN gets to crush 20% of the Alliance capital ships and suffer significantly less casualties, they remove the forward operations base from the middle of their territory and then can launch against Manticore with a newly reinforced fleet of 330 SD(P)'s. At that point Manticore might be warned ahead of time but what exactly are they going to do? They can strip all their wallers from Alizon and Zanzibar, they can beg Grayson for some wallers and they can speed up refits and half-ass it but can they really form a fleet of 100 SD(P)'s or more in a month or two after Trevor's Star? Probably not, so the RHN goes into Manticore with overwhelming firepower and crushes Home Fleet without worrying about Trevor's Star. But at that point of cancelation of the summit the RHN crushing the defences of Trevor's Star and then asking for another summit might accomplish more than going to Manticore, trashing their industry to prove that you are the good guy and are being manipulated.
I agree: the MA was operating from a position of weakness, which is why Honor was getting all the new construction as fast as it could be rushed to her. She was doing all her tactical brilliance allowed her to keep the RHN off-balance.
And the position of weakeness was not because the RHN and the MA had numerical parity or anywhere close to it. They might have had something like that in early to mid 1920 but by late 1920 into 1921 it evaporated quickly.
But the MA did not have 420 SD(P)s. See
Fleet Strengths in 1920 where it adds up to only 232, with most of the RMN's SD(P) only Medusas. There was new construction since this datum and the planning of Beatrice, I agree, but there were also losses. Theisman says the MA had lost 20 SD(P)s since Thunderbolt. Furthermore, there were three home systems to protect, not just one, and most of the Andermani wall of battle wasn't able to fight.
There were 90 SD(P)'s of the IAN under construction, there were 35 SD(P)'s at various levels of construction in Manticore and we can assume that Grayson had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50 SD(P)'s under construction as well, since they saw the war coming well ahead of time. That right there was 175 SD(P)'s under construction. If the war started in late 1919 and the SKM immediately started preparations to build more SD(P)'s in 1919 by early 1921 those SD(P)'s that were laid down in 1919 should be coming in, mind you there wont be many of them but the initial batch would be enough. So that's 175+232 SD(P)'s brings us to 407, if the SKM and the Protectorate were able to lay down another 20 or 30 SD(P)'s very quickly they would be close to if not at 420.
At All costs Ch.7
"So," Caparelli said, "looking at every pod-laying waller we can scrape up between us, Grayson, and the Andies, and including all of the Any current SD(P)'s currently in commission as fully effective units, we have a total of two hundred thirty-two. Assuming out construction times hold up, and allowing for working up time, we can have a total of 400 within the next 11 to 18 months."....
Also in the same chapter they discuss how there could be 400-450 SD(P)'s under construction in Bolthole alone that started aafter the announcement by the Republic about having SD(P)'s. Then there were an estimated 400 SD(P)'s under construction in Haven and 2-3 other central systems. According to the book the construction of those SD(P)'s started in late 1919 6-8 months after the RoH announced possession of SD(P)'s.
So it is definitely not out of the realm of possibilities for the MA to have 390-420 SD(P)'s and the RHN to have as many as 950 SD(P)'s in service by the BoM.
I understand you wouldn't. But Theisman did and he said so himself.
Where exactly did he say he counted them in the total? He said they have a good chance to retreat if the enemy is stronger than estimated, where did he say that half or a third of the forces are counted in those 620 SD(P)'s used for defence of the republic? And how exactly does that work? I have 620 SD(P)'s for defence of the nation, but I have 335 of them in offensive operations against the heaviest defended system in history but since they have a good chance of extracting themselves from anything I will use them in my defensive deployments because I just know they will come back.
But once again, the important thing is that if the objective was achieved (destroying the Manticoran yards and Home Fleet), it doesn't matter if very few ships return. He'd still have 300 SD(P)s undamaged, with his yards intact, while the MA would have lost a significant portion of theirs with no ability to replace in the short-term. The mobile forces would have to be redispositioned to cover the MBS, leaving none to attack the Republic. As a result, we wouldn't have Honor coming to Haven to negotiate with Pritchart, it would have been Theisman coming to Manticore to negotiate with Elizabeth.
And if things didn't go as planned they would be in a significantly worse position than the Alliance. They are gambling, if things go well they win the war, if things go bad they end up facing the 250-290 SD(P)'s of the MA with ~180 fully Operational SD(P)'s and 100 working up SD(P)'s. And they are gambling even worse if they only have 80 SD(P)'s left over after Beatrice.
I don't see how it is so complicated, yes Beatrice COULD bring about immediate or near immediate victory IF everything goes according to plan, but if it doesn't? What do you think happens with congress if the attack fails and they figure out that the President just lost between 50 and 80% of all the wallers in one gamble, what do you think happens when Congress is briefed one day that the Republic is doing well in the war, and a couple of months later they find out that the RHN is crushed with 40%, 50%, 60% or 80% of their SD(P)'s are destroyed or heavily damaged? Even if the RHN has bearly enough SD(P)'s to keep from outright defeat Congress would be up in arms and they would have a legitimate constitutional crisis within 5 years of restoration of the constitution. Its bad enough when they lose 30% of the fleet in one go, but they would have a 65-70% of the Fleet to fall back on...one day you are winning the war going about your daily business and the next day you find out that the president authorized an attack that gutted your fleet.
When you are planning something like this, don't look at what happens if everything goes right, look at what happens if everything goes wrong.
Too small a chance. Tourville (and Giscard before him) could control the initiative and fly exactly where he wanted to. If he found sometheing he couldn't chew, he could withdraw and the assessment was that he had enough firepower to do so.
How is it too small a chance? Does Theisman know every variable involved in the defence? Does Tourville know everything he is facing? Giscard? Do the two sides get together once a month to compare notes and keep each other appraised of what the other is doing? What if they run into the MA's version of Moriarty? Get inside the hyper limit and find out that there is a hell of a lot more firepower thanks to that platform for them to handle.
An officer should plan for that small chance of complete failure, and how to deal with the repercussions should it come about, hoping it doesn't happen doesn't count as planning.
And if 5th Fleet didn't intervene, then Fifth Fleet leaves undamaged -- one third the ships come home.
And if and if and if and if and if... What if the system's fixed defences were stronger than expected, 5th fleet was called in and a fleet no one expected showed up behind them, maybe there was another fleet of SD(P)'s in Trevor's Star that the RHN did not know about comes in behind 5th Fleet and crushed them. Maybe the MA has a well placed spy who finds out about the mission and they plan an ambush, place mines right where the RHN is coming through.
You give them the best chance they have to come home. He did two things: he gave them as many ships as he could, and 2nd Fleet alone was the largest gathering of SDs ever, and he gave them his best CO.
And there is ALWAYS the chance that something goes wrong, so leaving yourself no fallback is criminal.
Even so, 2nd Fleet wouldn't sell themselves short. Even if they ran into the combined forces of Home Fleet, Eighth Fleet, the new construction and the IAN, that adds up to only as many hulls as 2nd Fleet itself.
So? Throw in fixed defences that everyone is so worried about...maybe the MA has their own version of Moriarty that only becomes apparent after its too late.
First of all, that is not going to happen.
Didn't the French say the same thing about Armoured Attacks coming through Ardennes? How well that work out for them?
Second, if none of the 2nd Fleet comes home, then at least half of those massed forces don't either.
Wasn't it you who argued that the RHN had only 80 SD(P)'s remaining after committing Beatrice? I'd say the MA would have a hell of a lot more left over than the RHN.
Even if they have 160SD(P)'s left for defence with another 100 SD(P)'s working up the MA can strip all the SD(P)'s from the Andermani Home system, Zanzibar, Alizon, Basilisk half of the Grayson Home Fleet and all of Third Fleet to attack the Republic BEFORE they find out what happened with 2nd and 5th Fleet. And they can be back before the RHN can react. Yeah its a gamble but very quickly you can gather 145 SD(P)'s into one force, hit 2 or 3 of the RHN's most important systems and be back in Trevor's Star before the RHN hears about the BoM. In the process the MA crushes another 50-60 RHN SD(P)'s along with 20% of their SD(P) construction, they will be back defending Grayson, Trevor's Star and Manticore before an attack could be mounted on any of those systems, by the time they are back the RMN Python Lump should be ready for deployment. RoH moral is fully in the crapper because they lost 60-90% of their fleet in 20% of their shipyards.
That reduces the MA wall of battle by half in modern hulls, but the RHN wall of battle by only a third in modern hulls. It's a horrible price to pay, but not immediately fatal.
Only if the RHN wall of Battle was 920 SD(P)'s. If it's 620 SD(P)'s you run the potential to lose either 54% of your modern wall or 80% of your modern wall...both of which are well north of 1/3.
This plan was risky, there's no doubt about it. But the rewards were great.
When the stakes are the future of your entire nation and people, risky plans should be avoided unless no other choice is given.
And the plan was not authorised to be executed until Lovat. We don't know what Pritchart would have ordered if Operation Sanskrit had been done without Apollo.
No, that’s why they forward deployed between 50 and 80% of their SD(P)’s for a mission that wasn’t likely to happen.
An unlikely scenario. How would would 336 SD(P)s be lost almost entirely without getting a significant portion of the defenders and/or the infrastructure?
Home Fleet and 8th Fleet are in Manticore as are the missing IAN SD(P)’s. The Python Lump was pushed through so now there are 100 SD(P)’s at the junction coming through for a planned offensive against all the systems Haven captured during Thunderbolt…oh yeah and the alliance has a version of Moriarty because the RHN forgot to copyright it. So now the system that is the most heavily defended in human history actually uses their fixed defences for something other than an ominous threat. Tourville calls in Chin to break through the 180 Allied SD(P)’s in the system only to be ambushed by 3rd Fleet and the 100 or so SD(P)’s from the Python lump from the rear while the Allied Moriarty chews up 2nd and 5th fleet. Home Fleet, 8th Fleet and the IAN lump SD(P)’s are all gone, but the Alliance has 150+ SD(P)’s from the Python Lump and 3rd Fleet. Before Theisman finds out what happened, a newly reorgznized 8th Fleet backed up by elements of the Grayson Home Fleet, IAN Home Fleet, 3rd Fleet, Alizon picket, Zanzibar picket, Basilisk picket, and the Python lump launches an attack on Haven’s central systems. They can be in the Republic’s Core systems, trash them and back in Trevor’s Star well before the RHN can respond. Manticore has a new Home Fleet(50 SD(P)’s), new 8th Fleet(100 SD(P)’s) and 3rd Fleet with 50 SD(P)’s. They have striped a squadron of SD(P)’s from Alizon, and 1 from Zanzibar, 2 from the Grayson Home Fleet and 2 from the Andermani Home Fleet so right there we are at 48 SD(P)’s. I’m going to guess that there is a squadron at Basilisk as well, or close to it so we are at 56 SD(P)’s for the RMN’s Home Fleet. 3rd Fleet keeps their SD(P)’s and 8th Fleet get the python lump. They wont be at well trained and drilled but they will be facing a significantly smaller force because the RHN has to maintain forces in Haven itself, and Bolthole(Regardless if anyone knows where it is or not) as well as half a dozen important core systems not to mention the front lines. Hell for most of the republic’s space they can send whatever is left over from the IAN/GSN/RMN SD’s to take over, if there is no SD(P)’s defending the alliance can use SD’s instead.
So the tally is:
-2nd Fleet CRUSHED
-5th Fleet CRUSHED
-All the Gains of thunderbolt are slowly being recaptured by the MA
-Reconsituted 8th Fleet crushed two eoncomicly important RoH systems and their industry and picket
All of that happens before any remnants from 2nd and 5th fleet if there are any come back to RHN bases.
Almost any answer to that question is a reason why they had to take the risk. If the Python Lump comes out of the yards and the Andermani finally show up for battle, the balance shifts. If there's some technological advance, the balance shifts.
The only scenario that changes the situation so dramatically that a hail mary is a good option is Apollo, anything else the RHN will be able to catch up shortly. Afterall the MA knows that by end of 1921 the RHN would have 1,200 SD(P)’s with more under construction, even with the python lump we are talking about 600-700 SD(P)’s in the Alliance fleet and that is a maybe, against 1,200 SD(P)’s in the RHN. The RHN still maintains its advantage.
I don't agree it was a Hail Mary Pass before Apollo.
It was if they were sending 335/420 SD(P)’s
It was if they were sending 335/620 SD(P)’s
It was NOT if they were sending 335/930 SD(P)’s
Indeed, the deployment for Beatrice started before Lovat, before Giscard died. But the operation wasn't yet authorised. That means not all ships that eventually were part of Beatrice had yet deployed. So those 2 or 3 other fleets would still be on-station wherever they were.
Most of the ships had to be deployed ahead of time, otherwise the BoM wouldn’t have happened two months after Lovat. I mean you have to get news of what happened in Lovat, take some time to figure out what really happened, make a decision, send orders for the ships in various locations to gather, concentrate that fleet in one location and drill them etc. They had most of the pieces in play except for the last of the fleet, send out the orders and wait. Just getting orders from Haven to the various bases would eat up most of the time, then those ships have to make their way to the rally point.
I disagree with your number. I'd revise it down to 200 SD(P)s pre-deployed. We know the RHN was at least 620 SD(P)s. Yes, 100 were still working up, but they could be used in support of the other ships when defending their systems, if need be. And they're working up somewhere so it might as well be where attacks are expect to happen. Let's also say that Capital Fleet and the Bolthole Picket are 150 ships. That leaves 620 - 150 - 200 = 270 ships for Theisman to cover the important systems. That's sufficient in my book.
Trevor’s Star is in the heart of the republic, he is basically fighting a two front war, one is in the center of the republic against Trevor’s Star and one is on the western front against Manticore. Haven has at least half a dozen other industrially or economically important systems, or systems with enough pull in congress to warrant SD(P)’s. Do you think that the RoH as a democracy can tell its important member systems to f**k off when they demand protection?
Your 270 SD(P)’s are now further reduced because he has to maintain forces around Trevor’s Star, and the front where they would have forward bases, and at least half a dozen if not a dozen important systems within the republic each requiring between 8 and 30 SD(P)’s.
8th Fleet didn’t attack any of their most important systems for a reason, and it wasn’t because they didn’t want to hurt the republic.
Which is why I said that a portion of the remaining ships would be used to trick the Eighth Fleet scouts. And you don't make it easy for the scouts to know where you are (and thus where you're not). I don't expect the scouts could actually see more than a single SD(P) squadron in any system they scouted. The rest would be in stealth in distant parts of the system. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Fire off a couple of Ghost Rider platforms, come back a few days later take their intel and fire off a couple of more, come back in a few days later, fire off a couple of more platforms and pick up the original two. Constant intel flow, the RHN can keep their ships in stealth for a day or two or even a month but not forever.
