How was Haven supposed to fight the SL (Detweiler Plan)?

Theemile wrote:
Thev Andies were building 120 Adler's total. ~40 were completed pre-war, and required updates to fire capicator MDMs before they could be fielded. The remaining ~80 were moded during construction to fire fusion MDMs and carry Keyhole 2s. They were taking forever and the Emperor halted 1/2 and focused construction in ~40 ships. These were the SD(p)s Honor as getting to flush out 8th fleet just prior to Beatrice. So as of BoMA, the Andermani fielded fewer than 80 SD(p)s, and 1/2 did not have Keyhole. Also, some were held back for defense and not available for Alliance use.

If we take everything you said as 100% right that still puts the alliance at ~360 SD(P)'s or ~340 if we account for losses.

Sigs wrote:[they didn't just deploy 240+ SD(P)'s forward for an attack they had no intention of ever launching, their contingency was if "A" doesn't work we will go with "B", in this case "B" was Beatrice and my argument is that they had 900 SD(P)'s as Pritchart would never authorize the forward deployment of 50+% of the RHN's SD(P)'s especially on a contingency they never actually planned on using while awaiting the result of an operation that may take up to 6 months.

Does the fact that the US and USSR constantly deployed numerous nuclear missile armed subs that individually could 20 major cities imply that they only did that because they intended to use them to attack?

The RHN was massively stronger than the alliance and basically suffered no serious damage from 8th fleet, as 8th fleet was only able to attack minor, lightly defended systems. So sure, they could attack whenever and where ever they wanted and the RMN was restricted to pinprick attacks against their weakest systems. Until Lovat, when the whole situation changed.

So sure, they could move half their forces off somewhere and nobody will notice that they are not launching large-scale offensive or massive attacks because they hadn't launched any large-scale offensives (after the initial attacks) in quite a while.

And yes, I have to agree that demonstrating Apollo was just as stupid as the OB attacks. Both prematurely revealed something way before they were able to handle the predicable response.

tlb wrote:That is exactly what is wrong with your analysis: yes it was planned as a contingency before Lovat; which means that they did not expect to need it, but wanted it ready. After Lovat, it stopped being a contingency and became a necessity because of the changed circumstance. You seem to be saying that military leaders should never have contingent emergency plans!

Sigs wrote:IT's one thing to have contingency plan A through Z, to actively plan to use the contingency if/when circumstances are right. Their plan was to go with Camille, and if that didn't accomplish their goals then go with Beatrice.

I don't know where the author is wrong, whether it's in the book or the post because they contradict each other. Personally the post is wrong because I am going to go by what is written in At All Cost, and there, the plan was to execute Camille with 6 Squadrons of SD(P)'s with CLAC's and escorts, at the same time they will deploy ships for Beatrice as well just in case Camille doesn't get them the results they needed.

There is no indication in At All Costs that they ever began Operation Camille. Perhaps some of the deployed ships would have been used in Camille? If you want to criticize the forward deployment, go ahead and if you want to quibble with the number of ships that is fine too; but don't tell me the reasons for Operation Beatrice are wrong, because the author has been very consistent about them. Here it is again at the end of chapter 58 (which basically gives the book its name):

"Maybe it was. But the way we got here doesn't change where we are, or the options we've got. So, if we can't negotiate, and we can't surrender, what can we do except launch Beatrice? It's an 'all-costs' situation, Eloise, and thanks to your preliminary authorization and the forward redeployments we've already carried out, we can launch it far sooner than the Manties probably expect any response to this. And Beatrice Bravo was specifically designed to take out Eighth Fleet, as well. If we manage that, we knock out the only force we know is equipped with the new missiles, but even that's pretty much beside the point if the main op succeeds. That's really what it comes down to, now. If we wait, we lose; if we attack and I'm wrong about their deployment status, we lose; but if we attack and I'm right, we'll almost certainly win. It's that simple."

All of this would be worked out in advance. All of those contingencies in case of the unexpected and worst-case scenarios.

And there is ALWAYS the chance that something goes wrong, so leaving yourself no fallback is criminal.

I disagree that 184 effective SD(P)s and 100 working up ones, plus CLACs, are "no fallback" and "criminal."

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.

I did and I was wrong. Textev clearly shows at least 620 SD(P)s total.

If the MA had "a hell of a lot more" after Beatrice, that means they had "a bigger hell of a lot more" before Beatrice or they can suddenly deploy the ships they couldn't before. That's balance-shifting and all the more reason to attack than not to.

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.

And that isn't reckless? You're the one arguing against reckless operations; stripping all of your critical systems of their defenders on the chance that there isn't another RHN force doing reckless stuff is even more reckless.

Let me repeat that either Home Fleet is destroyed or Chin never shows up. They are mutually-exclusive options. So if Home Fleet remains, no one in the MA knows that there are another 96 SD(P)s and 30 CLACs out of defensive positions.

Conversely, if Chin made an appearance, then Home Fleet was decimated and Eighth Fleet is redeployed. The Python Lump can't be combat effective for another few months (they were working up when Oyster Bay hit), so they wouldn't be left as the only defence of the critical systems. And there's only one system they could reach in time to take up defence: the Manticore Binary System.

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.

Only if you lose all of them. My calculation was that they lost two thirds of Beatrice, so one third comes back, in exchange for destroying Home Fleet and half of Third Fleet. By the time they do come back, the 100 SD(P)s working up are near done, so that's 284 + 112 = 396 ships left. That's 63% of the original 620.

When the stakes are the future of your entire nation and people, risky plans should be avoided unless no other choice is given.

I agree. And there was no other choice when they launched Beatrice.

We're not arguing that. We're arguing whether a) preparing for Beatrice was reasonable and b) if Beatrice had a good chance of success after whatever prompted its launch revealed itself.

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…

First, if the Python Lump is out, then the operation is different or scrubbed. Everyone in the Manticore System can tell when dozens of SD(P)s start leaving Hephaestus, so the Havenite spies would advise the Second Fleet CO when it emerges.

Second, Eighth Fleet would not come into the Manticore-A hyperlimit. Why would they be 38 hours out of position? And reveal their strength to the spies in the Junction, which they would have to pass through? Similarly as above, the Second Fleet CO would know that Eighth Fleet had transited into the MBS before he crossed the hyper-limit.

Third, any offensive against the RoH would be launched from Trevor's Star, so those 100 SD(P)s are not coming into Manticore, but out of it. Even if that's what you meant, there's no reason for those SD(P)s to be parked at the Junction. They'd be transiting as quickly as they arrived. And where did these 100 SD(P)s that are not the Python Lump come from? The Andermani? If it's the Andermani, they're coming from the Gregor terminus and are therefore not sticking around the Junction. For there to be 100 SD(P)s at the Junction, they can't be Andermani or Grayson because they need to come via hyperspace. And Beatrice would have to be incredibly unlucky to commence in the half hour between their arrival and their transit.

And again like above, but this time with textev to prove it, the attack scouted the Junction, so they'd see those 100 SD(P)s and immediately fly to Manticore to advise Second Fleet that there's a force that is at least as big as Third and Eighth Fleets combined coming their way.

Finally, that also means that Eighth Fleet is suddenly 3x bigger than before. All the more reason to end the war now by crippling the Manticoran infrastructure.

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 can even agree with you and that doesn't change the facts because Operation Beatrice wasn't actually launched until after Apollo was revealed. Without Apollo, Pritchart might have chosen Operation Aurelie, Camille, Danielle, Emilie, or Francine. Some of which could have used the pre-deployed forces that Beatrice called for.

Most of the ships had to be deployed ahead of time, otherwise the BoM wouldn’t have happened two months after Lovat.

200 out of 336 is "most" (nearly 60%).

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.

The ships that would be the ones to travel the furthest are the ones that would have left before Lovat. Those that were near Haven and could be reached and ordered quickly didn't need to leave just yet. Incidentally, the most important systems to Haven are those closest to it, like Jouett.

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?

Yes, though not in those words. Congress doesn't dictate military tactics, Theisman and the Octagon do. If they say that those systems are adequately protected, they are, whatever their definition of that is. Unlike a sovereign ally, there's little those systems can do. They can secede and declare themselves neutral, which removes the need to protect them in the first place. They can try to impeach Pritchart, but there's no guarantee they'll succeed.

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.

No, he doesn't. If there's one thing Cutworm had already proven at this point is that distance doesn't matter. There's no reason for the MA to attack unimportant systems and there's no reason for him to deploy significant forces there.

A star system is a big place outside the hyperlimit. The RHN can keep fleets hidden indefinitely, especially if they are on the move. If the MA is lucky, they'll pick up a resupply and know that fleet is right there, right now. They can't know one day later if that fleet hasn't gone to another system, so the information isn't useful when it gets to the planners. And that's if the resupply happens in-system, not in hyperspace or in deep space, outside of Ghost Rider range. Add a couple of empty fleet trains doing round-trips to confuse the scouts and you really can't tell where those fleets are.

And none of this tells you what the strengths of those fleets is.

Didn’t we just have a discussion about something similar in the PRH-Solarian War Thread? You were of the opinion that it was next to impossible to hide17% of the PNs wall from the RMN but now yyou are arguing that the RHN can hide 50% of their wall for an unspecified period of time?

The ship deploying the Ghost Rider is also a dead giveaway that someone inserted into the system. Ghost Riders have finite endurance, finite acceleration, finite sensing range, and can't translate to hyperspace.

Yes, it is a dead giveaway that the RHN cant do much about unless they decide to deploy pickets all over the perimeter of the system, and even if they know what can they do? The Endurance of the Ghost rider is at least 27 days, the system is a large are and the SD(P)’s can hide all over, but at the same time the ships doing the scouting can come in at virtually any place in the system, at any range etc… the RHN cant shut down operations just to hide their ships from the scouts.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:I'm not sure where the 420 SD(P)s comes from.

There are two "420." One was my erroneous estimation of how many ships the RHN had, starting from 315 at the beginning of 1920 and committing 336 to Operation Beatrice.

The second is the estimation of how many ships the MA has.

At the start of 1920 the RMN had 75, minus the ~21 that got blown up, plus new construction. Most SD(P) are in Home Fleet and 3rd Fleet.

At the start of 1920 Grayson had 115. A large portion of that was anchored to Grayson

At the start of 1920 the Andies had 42, plus new construction.
RMN and IAN construction was delivering new ships right before Beatrice, but they were new ships that needed to be worked up/shaken down. And their yards were not delivering hundreds like Bolthole was.

But this is actually the Havenite estimate.

At all costs, Chapter 7, the RMN estimate was close to it as well, because of the IAN SD(P)'s being slowed down the estimate might be off by a couple of dozen ships.

kzt wrote:Taking counsel of your fears is not typically a path to military success. There are risks with any course of action in war, including the course of action of not acting because you are in decision paralysis.

There are risks, and there are reckless risks.

In a risk, launching an attack like Beatrice might cost you some of your numerical advantage.

In a reckless risk, launching an attack like Beatrice if your total SD(P)'s are at 620 is reckless because if something happens to the entire force, no matter how unlikely its game over for you.

The RoH has to balance everything, winning is fine, but losing doesn't just hurt on the military front, it hurts politically. Congress and the Senate might not be too happy if things go wrong and the RoH ends up on the loosing side of the war. All the effort to restore the constitution and the old republic is undone because of an unnecessary risk.

So the question is do you take a risk to end the war a few months to maybe a year earlier then you would otherwise but if you lose the battle you also lose the war, maybe not immediately but with time and also put the restored republic in a constitutional crisis that it might not survive. Afterall we saw how the RoH politicians behave/think, how many of them would have been extremely happy with a defeat just so they get rid of Pritchart, Theisman and the constitution?

Haven was GOING TO LOSE if they failed to defeat Manticore in the next few months.

They were out of time for half-measures and demonstrations. If thos failed they were doomed. If it wasn’t launched they were doomed. The RMN was going to be able to crush them like a bug in a few months.

Sigs wrote:IT's one thing to have contingency plan A through Z, to actively plan to use the contingency if/when circumstances are right. Their plan was to go with Camille, and if that didn't accomplish their goals then go with Beatrice.

No, it wasn't. Their plan was to wait for Eighth Fleet's next attack and then decide which of the operations to launch. There was never a requirement that they be done in sequence and that one operation depended on the previous one's result.

To me this indicates that (1) they have sufficient forces to deploy a significant fleet of at least 240 SD(P)'s in a hidden location without it immediately becoming apparent that they have stripped 50% of their SD(P)'s right off the bat.

Partially correct. Given that the only real mobile forces the MA had were Eighth Fleet and that fleet was actually launching Sanskrit, it wouldn't be obvious that 50% of your ships had departed. As I conjectured above, you only need to move the ships that would have taken the longest once the order was given and that's probably those that were furthest from the front and not in Sanskrit's scoutings.

Moreover, concentrating the forces near Haven allows them to be QRFs to an attack by Eighth Fleet as well as reducing the control loop to launch them. And as I said before, I don't think you need "at least 240" pre-deployed. 200 might be sufficient, if they are complemented by ships coming from close to Haven.

Finally, they don't need to be pre-deployed close to the front. They can be pre-deployed close to Haven, because the order is going to come from Haven anyway.

(2) They fully intended to use it if Camille didn't work, they didn't just deploy 240+ SD(P)'s forward for an attack they had no intention of ever launching, their contingency was if "A" doesn't work we will go with "B", in this case "B" was Beatrice and my argument is that they had 900 SD(P)'s as Pritchart would never authorize the forward deployment of 50+% of the RHN's SD(P)'s especially on a contingency they never actually planned on using while awaiting the result of an operation that may take up to 6 months.

This one is just wrong. There was no dependency on Camille, no need to launch Camille and they did not "fully intend to use it".

The thinking was that they'd wait for the reaction to Solon to decide which operation to launch. If that reaction was too strong for Camille, they'd go with something stronger. One of those options was Beatrice, but we don't know if the A, D, E, F operations could've been chosen. Theisman was clear that Beatrice was "one end of the spectrum."

[quote[(3) They forward deployed hundreds of SD(P)'s at a time when they have to be secure in their core systems, it means nothing if 8th Fleet crushes 1 or 2 core systems and Tourville crushes Alizon. They wont be negotiating from a position of strength, it will be a position of weakness, here you went into two important industrial systems, crushed their obsolete pickets and we retaliated by attacking the weakest member of your alliance and destroying the 10-15 SD(P)'s you have deployed there, what exactly does that show the Alliance?[/quote]

As said above, forward-deploy does not mean out of position to defend their core systems. In fact, as said above, forward-deploying them closer to Haven increases the protection of those systems. At worst, what the RHN had to do was to concentrate those forces so they could begin working up, which meant fewer non-core systems would be defended. Since the war had been escalating, the MA going backwards and attacking a tertiary system was unlikely.

If Eighth Fleet crushes one or two core systems, it won't be Camille that will be launched. But it doesn't mean Beatrice either.

The whole point of Camille was to defeat an incursion into the republic(hence the ambush fleets and core system pickets), and then follow it up with an offensive of their own into Alliance space where they defeat an alliance taskforce and try to negotiate with the alliance after beating back their offensives and taking out a minor power.

If they wanted to launch Cammille according to their criteria they needed the Alliance to attack them and be driven back, now how exactly do you do that if 50% of your fleet is forward deployed on a contingency that wouldn't have been launched without Apollo which they didn’t know existed? I mean the RHN has limited ships and dozens or hundreds of systems to protect in a sphere of ~400 LY across. They have Haven, Bolthole, at least half a dozen important industrialized core systems, picket around Trevor's Star, picket the Front, then they deploy a fleet of 240 SD(P)'s for an operation they never intent on carrying out, they have deployed between 3-6 50 SD(P) fleets to cover "likely" targets, they have ~100 SD(P)'s working up and all they have is 620 SD(P)'s?

They'd do that because the MA attack was weak and could be parried. 50% of the RHN is more than sufficient to protect the core systems. If we're right and the RHN is 620 ships, then 50% of it is nearly what they started the war with. They've grown more from the start of the war to the moment of this conversation than the Manticoran Alliance has, even if all IAN ships had been ready.

I'm not saying that an MA attack had to be weak. That's what they were going to determine: if it was weak, then launch Camille. If it was strong, launch Amélie. If it was devastating, launch Beatrice.

-Haven= No less than 100 SD(P)'s
-Bolthole= At least 50 SD(P)'s
-half a dozen core systems=180 SD(P)'s
-defences around Trevor's Star-100-150(call it 125) SD(P)'s
-main front=150-200(call it 175) SD(P)'s
-assume 4 "ambush" fleets= 200 SD(P)'s
-Tourville's 48 SD(P)'s

In addition to what I've already disagreed with above, I don't think there's a need to defend against Trevor's Star. Third Fleet cannot sortie, because it has to defend Trevor's Star. But Haven has nothing critical around it. And Honor had already shown with Cutworm she was going to bypass the closer, tertiary systems and go for the secondary ones closer to Haven.

Even with the new construction making it necessary for SD’s to be decommissioned for their crews, the alliance would have ~150 SD’s in their service, SD’s that are not frontline units but if the main front and the secondary(Trevor’s Star) front is stripped of defences they could be deployed on offensive operations the second they figure it out, wherever the republic attacks, those SD’s wont be adding much in the way of firepower against modern SD(P)’s they don’t add much firepower anywhere other than Talbott and apparently for offensive operations against 95% of the Republic. Send 50 SD’s to Talbott, take the other 120 SD’s backed up by 90 BC(P)’s and 60 CLAC’s with nothing but Katana’s and you have 3 offensive fleets against the RHN’s 300 SD’s that are picketing the 95% of the republic that is considered expendable.

The Alliance can't afford to send 50 SDs to Talbott because they, however outmatched they may be, are all they have to protect the Manticore Binary System. You may remember that around this time, Tenth Fleet had nothing but battlecruisers. Even HMS Hercules, an old SD, isn't attached to Tenth Fleet. The first SDs didn't start showing up until after Pritchart shows up in Manticore. Those were actually Invictus-class SD(P)s and probably came from the Python Lump.

Home Fleet did have 50 SDs. Of the 225 SDs that are listed in the Pearls, I imagine the balance are in Third Fleet and in the Alliance members that needed to be protected.

If they don't have 50 to spare, then don't have 120 to use in an attack. [url="https://honorverse.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_Squadron_61"]Battle Squadron 61[/url] was all the wall that they could spare and it was attached to Eighth Fleet. And where did you get 90 BC(P)s? According to the Pearls, there were 57 of them in 1920, where would the rest come from?

Sigs wrote:Didn’t we just have a discussion about something similar in the PRH-Solarian War Thread? You were of the opinion that it was next to impossible to hide17% of the PNs wall from the RMN but now yyou are arguing that the RHN can hide 50% of their wall for an unspecified period of time?

No, I am of the opinion that you can't hide its existence, not its location. ONI in that case would know, over a sufficient period of time, that some ships they knew were constructed had yet to make an appearance. I'm also of the opinion that you can detect those ships every now and then, by following resupply missions, and by pure chance. But this intel is not useful, because those ships will have moved by the time the intel gets to the decision-makers and an operation is launched.

In this scenario, no one in the MA was under the mistaken impression that the RHN was less than 500 SD(P)s strong. They knew those squadrons existed. The fact that Giscard arrived so quickly at Solon meant that he was already in-system. The other 3 or 4 probable targets of Operation Cutworm III probably had other fleets of their own protecting them. But obviously Honor didn't know for sure they were there, much less their strengths and disposition.

Yes, it is a dead giveaway that the RHN cant do much about unless they decide to deploy pickets all over the perimeter of the system, and even if they know what can they do? The Endurance of the Ghost rider is at least 27 days, the system is a large are and the SD(P)’s can hide all over, but at the same time the ships doing the scouting can come in at virtually any place in the system, at any range etc… the RHN cant shut down operations just to hide their ships from the scouts.

I had 3 days in my mind for endurance, but I'm thinking of active operation. At New Tuscany, the RDs were powered down so they could last longer. I suppose an operation launches a lot of RDs and then staggers their activations so they'll overlap and last longer.

But that means a huge ship in order to have that many RDs.

You can also confuse the RDs. Since you can translate in and out of the system outside its sensing range, you could have a single fleet show up in multiple places. Without accurate (close) identification, you can't be sure it's the same or multiple. So one force can appear to be much bigger than it really is. See [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Raate_Road"]Battle of Raate Road[/url] during the Winter War between Russia and Finland.

In any case, interplanetary space is big. There's no way to cover all of it and that's even assuming those ships are in n-space, not waiting in alpha.

Sigs wrote:I am discussing pre-apollo. Until 14 May 1921 the RoH and the RHN were winning the war and had a sizable numerical advantage over the allies. On 16 May 1921 they were losing the war and their numerical advantage was evaporating fast. Planning a hail mary while you are winning and under no pressure from a massie technolocigal upheaval seems a little ridiculous. That is why I would assume that the RHN has 620 SD(P)'s remaining and not 620 SD(P)'s total.

Well it wasn't going to be Theisman's preferred plan. But he did have worries about the 100 of so IAN SD(P)s that were suspiciously missing. If they'd suddenly showed up in 8th Fleet's order of battle Honor would suddenly be able to raid a much larger selection of systems - radically multiplying Haven's defensive headaches. So they didn't need to fear a radical technological shift to want to have a go to hell contingency plan ready for rapid activation. Prepping for the plan doesn't mean expecting to actually execute the plan.

If Honor suddenly launched a 100+ SD(P) raid against a major secondary system (instead of the more peripheral systems Honor had been raiding) the political will withing Haven't Congress might plummet. In that scenario launching half your fleet in a risky attack suddenly seems more reasonable that continuing to try to sit on the defensive attempting to trap ever larger raids. But even then Beatrice was just one of a portfolio of options, which probably involved largely the same units; and Theisman may have recommended others under most scenarios.

And remember that Giscard was supposed to command Beatrice so presumably his fleet, that acted as part of the mousetrap at Lovat, was also assigned to the order of battle if/when Beatrice was activated. The other forces pre-deployed for Beatrice may well have been providing similar cover to other possible 8th fleet targets. So it doesn't seem like being "forward deployed" and assigned possibly execute Beatrice sidelined those forces. So it seems you can afford to have them ready to execute an attack, even one you think unlikely to be activated. (And then Giscard's losses may have reduced the forces for Beatrice below the original plans)

Once the decision to send a massive attack on Manticore they have very little time to re-plan or add and integrate additional units. IIRC simply covering the distance of Trevor's Star to Manticore through hyper takes a warship a solid month. So hitting Manticore 2 months after Lovat basically meant they had zero time to adjust Beatrice; they just pulled out and executed their ultimate contingency plan exactly as is.