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

Jonathan_S wrote:

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Beowulf Alpha gleamed like an enormous gem. Not surprisingly, since it was larger and much more massive than even HMSS Hephaestus had ever been [snip[
Hephaestus’s longest dimensions had almost matched those of Beowulf Alpha[snip]
Hephaestus had been a fairytale sculpture, a thing of components, sub units, long connecting booms, and massive industrial modules, more necklace and lacework than solid. The space station had been a dispersed tracery of open space and structural elements, growing in every direction—and in leaps and bounds—to meet perceived needs, with new sections added wherever seemed most convenient, completely irrespective of any master plan to coordinate that growth, and assembled in the wild Escher-like geometry of microgravity.
Beowulf Alpha hadn’t. Beowulf Alpha had expanded over the centuries in carefully planned additions, each incorporated into the existing structure only after carefully considering its impact upon the entire station[snip]
In Beowulf Alpha’s case, that meant its light industrial modules were located on the long engineering and support booms stretching out from the main platform like the legs of some glittering spider

Hephaestus was 110 km on its longest axis, but lets assume the Beowulf Alpha is maybe 125 but assume that 50 km is those long engineering and support booms - that leaves a core volume, said to be densely packed, of an estimated diameter around 75 km.

Wait.

We were going with "smaller than Hephaestus" because one bomb took it out. So how did one bomb take out a station at least 110 km long? Hephaestus was struct with 18 graser beams and many fusion cores lost containment in the process. No such thing happened to Beowulf Alpha.

And why wasn't it designed with the ability to survive explosions and terrorist attacks? Did the Beowulf engineers attend the same Imperial College of Space Megaengineering that taught the engineers of the Death Star to leave an exhaust vent linking directly to the reactor?

I can understand not foreseeing all the horrible possible attacks (and the MAlign had centuries to figure out what the worst they could do was, with plans available). But even then I would expect that the blast take out the cut-out modules closest to it, but those furthest out wouldn't. Besides, we're told that all those aboard died, with negligible rate of exception. That has to be such a catastrophic event that bulkhead doors didn't have time to close and create air pockets.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
But if that's the case, then those 117 ships had always been part of Operation Beatrice's plan.

For a successful Beatrice on their schedule the RHN would have to pull off both fleets from other duties, concentrate them and drill them from the department level on each ship all they way up to the Fleet and operation level. Then you find a nice unoccupied system and run the operation a few times get all the kinks out and you continue drilling and field exercises until the operation is launched.

In your accounting, that would mean 620 ships not part of Beatrice would also not have to take up this force-pinning requirement.

Like I said, I would have taken every ship I could with me even if it was only to absorb fire. Having 200 SD's trailing 2nd Fleet to cover them from 3rd/8th Fleet and absorb as much of their fire as they can. I know its cold and an atrocity to send your people to die just so some more useful ships can survive but it happens. And unless they gave up building CLAC's, they should have had close to 100 of them so for the life of me I don't know why they didn't bring at least 90 of them, to me this indicates it was a rushed operation because they brought half that number.

If 2nd Fleet had a fleet of 100 SD's and 20 CLAC's behind them covering them from 3rd fleet and 8th Fleet, and they had another 40 CLAC's with the main force things would have been much different. I bet it would have been a hell of a difference if 2nd Fleet had an extra 4800 LAC's to thicken their missile defence. Instead of attacking with 3,200 LAC's he has 8,000 LAC's.

When 3rd Fleet shows up, the trailing fleet eats up as much of the fire as they can and whatever gets through should be relatively easy for 2nd Fleet to take out.

Wether they had 580 SD(P)'s or 920 SD(P)'s sending only 335 of them on a last ditch effort to gain victory was irresponsible unless there were other concerns that made it impossible, or the writer just wanted Manticore to win and couldn't let the RHN send 400 more SD(P)'s because its game over for the MA.

Can you revise what you think what the 520 not working up are doing at the time Beatrice was supposed to launch (pre-Lovat planning)?

Not really, like I said, I don't care if my total is 580 SD(P)'s or 920 SD(P)'s, I would have waited an extra month to launch Beatrice for an extra 245 SD(P)'s and their accompanying CLAC's. My only explanation would be the remaining ships are concentrated around Haven just in case 8th Fleet is visiting. They may be outmatched but having 245-585 SD(P)'s around Haven would have been a problem for the 18 SD(P)'s with Apollo of 8th Fleet, but I personally would have deployed everything.

If that's your answer, then Theisman's plan was that the training had not yet started by Lovat, mid-May 1921. In fact, it wouldn't start until Giscard arrived. If the training site is, as you claimed, far from Haven and close to Manticore (forward deployment), it would take Giscard 3 weeks to arrive. If it's close, it's maybe 1 week or 10 days.

They made a plan I disagree with, and they started to forward deploy their ships before Lovat. The fact that the Alliance didn't give them enough time to actually complete their preparations doesn't change the fact that they were starting to do it. If Lovat had happened 2-3 months later Giscard and his 240 SD(P)'s would have been concentrated and training. The fact that the MA interrupted the RHN 2-3 weeks into the re-deployment and killed the Operation's CO doesn't factor in.

"Because plot" works only when we have no other explanation for why someone would behave what they did. Here we have a different explanation and this whole discussion stems from a simple disagreement in interpreting what Theisman said when he said the RHN had 620 ships.

Ok then, explain to me where the 245 SD(P)'s, 300 SD's and 40 CLAC's are. If he had 920 or 580 he did not bring anywhere near his total fleet. And "working up" is not an excuse because what the hell are they working up for? War is practically over. And yes "because plot" is a legitimate answer when bringing even the extra 40 CLAC's and 245 SD(P)'s would have ended in RHN Victory and likely would have ended up with alot more RMN SD(P)'s destroyed during OB with the stations because the RHN would not allow construction during the negotiations.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Wait.

We were going with "smaller than Hephaestus" because one bomb took it out. So how did one bomb take out a station at least 110 km long? Hephaestus was struct with 18 graser beams and many fusion cores lost containment in the process. No such thing happened to Beowulf Alpha.

And why wasn't it designed with the ability to survive explosions and terrorist attacks? Did the Beowulf engineers attend the same Imperial College of Space Megaengineering that taught the engineers of the Death Star to leave an exhaust vent linking directly to the reactor?

I can understand not foreseeing all the horrible possible attacks (and the MAlign had centuries to figure out what the worst they could do was, with plans available). But even then I would expect that the blast take out the cut-out modules closest to it, but those furthest out wouldn't. Besides, we're told that all those aboard died, with negligible rate of exception. That has to be such a catastrophic event that bulkhead doors didn't have time to close and create air pockets.

Gigaton scale airburst weapons in the open creates an 14-22 km wide fireball. Everyone within 26 km will be killed by airblast. Every building within 70 km will be wrecked. Everyone within 198 km will receive 3rd degree burns.

Now you set this off inside the station. So the xrays instantly convert a 14 to 22 km section of the station to something ranging from the core of the sun to just few thousand degrees. This expands, very, very fast.

The shockwave implodes decks to overhead, turns blast doors into projectiles moving at mach and basically breaks every structural joint in the entire station as supersonic incandescent columns of air are driven down all the main corridors, arriving after the 6km/sec shock wave was transmitted by the main structural elements as they move several meters in probably milliseconds.

It's going to be a bad day.

Sigs wrote:Ok then, explain to me where the 245 SD(P)'s, 300 SD's and 40 CLAC's are. If he had 920 or 580 he did not bring anywhere near his total fleet.

You are the guy claiming he had 900+ SD(p). Since literally everyone else in this discussion says "No, that's wrong" we don't have to explain that.

tlb wrote:But you stated this in answer to a question about using smuggled bombs to attack Manticore's orbital stations, and in that context it is irrelevant. Hephaestus was not a good target for a smuggled bomb (or several), precisely because of its enormous size: there was no way to get close to destroying either the shipyards or the missile production lines. Yes, it would create a major disturbance, but it would not alter the dynamics of the war.

Sigs wrote:Its harder to smuggle a bomb in a station of 3 million people most of who are directly or indirectly employed for the war effort than it is to smuggle in a civilian station of 15 million people. but more importantly, the SKM most likely has their cargo transfer points in stations of their own far away from the planet and their manufacturing stations. If something is going to one of the stations it will be inspected. This adds more chances of discovery if a container has to go from the ship, to the transfer station, and from the transfer station to another SKM ship to one of the stations or the planet.

tlb wrote:There is NO evidence for "cargo transfer points in stations of their own". Hephaestus was a mixture of everything, civilian and military. It was where the civilian ships docked bringing passengers and cargo. The paragraphs in Mission of Honor detail the movement of some of those people as the attack occurred. So there is NO justification for saying "most of who are directly or indirectly employed for the war effort". RFC has made it clear that most of the civilian manufacturing was there, not just military construction.

Sigs wrote: I thought most of the infrastructure for cargo transfer was at the Junction or near the Junction.

Although there are civilian manufacturing and cargo handling facilities on the space staion; it turns out you are right and I made another egregious error. From Storm from the Shadows, chapter 12:

Michelle could remember when Hephaestus had been little more than twenty kilometers in length, but those days were long gone. The ungainly, lumpy conglomeration of cargo platforms, personnel sections, heavy fabrication modules, and associated shipyards, all clustered around the station's central spine, now stretched for over a hundred and ten kilometers along its main axis. Something better than three quarters of a million people—not including ship crews and other transients—lived and worked aboard the station these days, and the hectic pace of its activity had to be experienced to be believed. Vulcan, in orbit around Sphinx, was almost as large, and just as busy. Weyland, the smallest of the Star Kingdom's space stations, orbited Gryphon, and was actually the busiest of the three, given the amount of highly classified research and development which was carried out there.
Those three space stations represented the heart and soul of the Manticore Binary System's industrial muscle. The resource extraction ships which plied the system's asteroid belts, and the deep-space smelters and refiners which processed those resources, were scattered about the system's vast volume, but the space stations housed the production lines, the fabrication centers, and the highly trained labor force who made them all work.
*** snip ***
It made far more sense for cargoes bound in or out of the Manticore System to take advantage of the stupendous warehousing and service platforms associated with the Junction itself. It was much more time and cost effective, even for ships which weren't using the Junction—and there were some of those, headed for more local destinations—to use its facilities, which were undoubtedly the biggest, most efficient, and most capable in the entire galaxy. The ships and cargo shuttles which plied back and forth between the Junction and the star system's planets were far smaller than the leviathans which traveled between stars, and they were a far more efficient way for most shipments to complete the final transition to their destinations.

kzt wrote:Gigaton scale airburst weapons in the open creates an 14-22 km wide fireball. Everyone within 26 km will be killed by airblast. Every building within 70 km will be wrecked. Everyone within 198 km will receive 3rd degree burns.

Now you set this off inside the station. So the xrays instantly convert a 14 to 22 km section of the station to something ranging from the core of the sun to just few thousand degrees. This expands, very, very fast.

The shockwave implodes decks to overhead, turns blast doors into projectiles moving at mach and basically breaks every structural joint in the entire station as supersonic incandescent columns of air are driven down all the main corridors, arriving after the 6km/sec shock wave was transmitted by the main structural elements as they move several meters in probably milliseconds.

It's going to be a bad day.

In your earlier note,you estimated that a cargo container could hold up to 500 tons and that is why you said the bomb could be in a gigaton range. UH clearly says that the bomb was of the size and weight of a laser pumped fusion reactor for a shuttle and that is how it was disguised. In Ashes of Victory, chapter 13 they are talking about fitting a fusion reactor into a LAC and this is stated by Tourville:

Even the biggest pinnace or assault shuttle comes in at well under a thousand tons, though, and a worthwhile LAC has to be in the thirty- to fifty-thousand-ton range just to pack in its impellers and any armament at all.

So you believe that at least half the weight of a shuttle is in its reactor?

kzt wrote:
You are the guy claiming he had 900+ SD(p). Since literally everyone else in this discussion says "No, that's wrong" we don't have to explain that.

Why? The rest of you are claiming there are a total of 580 SD(P)'s in the RHN where are the rest? Where are the rest of the CLAC's? Where are the SD's? There are still 253 SD(P)'s unaccounted for even at the lowest estimate, if this was a do or die mission where are they? I can tell you why they are not at BoM, they are not in Manticore because it doesn't suit the plot to have the RHN win the BoM. Just like why the RMN didn't wait a little longer until they had 50 or 100 of their SD(P)'s with Apollo, it wouldn't suit the plot. Or why the mighty and very elite RMN didn't foresee that Lovat will give the RHN only 2 options, one of them being an all out attack, so why weren't they prepared? Why wasn't 8th Fleet in Manticore to begin with if the RHN had only 1 viable option for victory? Why didn't the bring reinforcements from the IAN Home Fleet after Lovat? I mean anyone with half a brain can guess where an all out attack would be targeted and I can guarantee it wont be 400+ LY from Haven on a secondary ally, it would be in Manticore.

Why the hell did the RMN reveal their superweapon before they could effectively use it to end the war? The same people were leading the RMN in 1914 when they made the decision to hide the CLAC's, LAC's and SD(P)'s until they had enough for victory, why make a different choice 7 years later?


I believe there are 920 SD(P)'s in the RHN, but launching an attack on Manticore with 900 SD(P)'s would overwhelm Home Fleet, destroy 3rd Fleet and 8th Fleet as well regardless of Apollo, true the RHN will lose a lot of SD(P)'s but they will come out on top. Hell even if they brought the extra 250 SD(P)'s and 50 CLAC's the battle would have been different.

Sigs wrote:For a successful Beatrice on their schedule the RHN would have to pull off both fleets from other duties, concentrate them and drill them from the department level on each ship all they way up to the Fleet and operation level. Then you find a nice unoccupied system and run the operation a few times get all the kinks out and you continue drilling and field exercises until the operation is launched.

Completely agreed. But we know he didn't have the time.

Like I said, I would have taken every ship I could with me even if it was only to absorb fire. Having 200 SD's trailing 2nd Fleet to cover them from 3rd/8th Fleet and absorb as much of their fire as they can. I know its cold and an atrocity to send your people to die just so some more useful ships can survive but it happens. And unless they gave up building CLAC's, they should have had close to 100 of them so for the life of me I don't know why they didn't bring at least 90 of them, to me this indicates it was a rushed operation because they brought half that number.

If 2nd Fleet had a fleet of 100 SD's and 20 CLAC's behind them covering them from 3rd fleet and 8th Fleet, and they had another 40 CLAC's with the main force things would have been much different. I bet it would have been a hell of a difference if 2nd Fleet had an extra 4800 LAC's to thicken their missile defence. Instead of attacking with 3,200 LAC's he has 8,000 LAC's.

When 3rd Fleet shows up, the trailing fleet eats up as much of the fire as they can and whatever gets through should be relatively easy for 2nd Fleet to take out.

I don't think they could be a trailing fleet. If they are significantly separated, D'Orville, Kuzak and Honor would simply shoot around them. Missiles do not have to follow a straight line, after all. And even with trailing, it might find itself out of position for even straight-line flights.

So, no, those elements would be much closer. I don't think even touching formations in a figure eight: I think a single formation. There's an advantage in being in that, as missiles fired from 60 million km away may not hit the exact ships they were meant to. Plus those ships can contribute defensive fire, however paltry that might be. And if Kuzak takes the scenic route to Manticore (like Adm. Karina Alexander, Countess White Haven, did in Travis's time), why would Tourville take unnecessary losses fighting Home Fleet and leave the obsolete SDs intact?

But yes, for Beatrice, I would have brought them along, unless Theisman and Tourville felt that they would actually be net negative contributions. Older software and hardware, un-drilled crews, they could do more harm than good.

As for the balance of the CLACs, I suppose an explanation is that they were in places that they couldn't be taken from. I argued upthread that the GSN could have sent all its carriers to Trevor's Star for Thunderbolt and the same logic could apply here. But there's one main difference: any scout scouting Haven would notice the CLACs are no longer present and can race from there to Trevor's Star before those same CLACs can reach Manticore all the way via hyperspace.

Wether they had 580 SD(P)'s or 920 SD(P)'s sending only 335 of them on a last ditch effort to gain victory was irresponsible unless there were other concerns that made it impossible, or the writer just wanted Manticore to win and couldn't let the RHN send 400 more SD(P)'s because its game over for the MA.

Right. There had to be a reason the balance of the ships couldn't be sent. The only three reasons I can think of that hold any water are:

1) the recall order and ship movement would take too long and time was not on their side any more;

2) the ships' presence would be a net negative contribution; even more battle-drilled SD(P)s could be in this category, if the C&C networks become saturated (think "Mythical Man Month");

3) the ships absence from where they were could be noticed.

A decoy force would hinder in Manticore. It might lure Home Fleet out of position, but it brings Third and Eighth Fleets into position quicker. A decoy force in Trevor's Star might help, by moving those elements away from the Junction, but as discussed up-thread, this can't be a necessary factor for the main thrust to win. As a diversion, it might work.

But as a third separate force, appearing simultaneously or nearly so with Fifth Fleet, that has several advantages. If Eighth Fleet is on the way, she's forced to go for it, since leaving an undamaged force free rain of the system is unthinkable. If she's not on the way, this force can fire on Home Fleet or Third Fleet.

So I'm forced to conclude that Reason #2 must have been really limited.

Not really, like I said, I don't care if my total is 580 SD(P)'s or 920 SD(P)'s, I would have waited an extra month to launch Beatrice for an extra 245 SD(P)'s and their accompanying CLAC's. My only explanation would be the remaining ships are concentrated around Haven just in case 8th Fleet is visiting. They may be outmatched but having 245-585 SD(P)'s around Haven would have been a problem for the 18 SD(P)'s with Apollo of 8th Fleet, but I personally would have deployed everything.

The problem with waiting a month is that you might find Manticore completely defended by Apollo system defence missiles. Which would have happened based on the conversations in AAC (see the "What's wrong with AAC" thread). Then bringing all 920 SD(P)s, 100 CLACs and 200 SDs wouldn't have helped.

Theisman was already gambling that the missiles were so brand new that they weren't in widespread distribution yet. For every week he waited, the defences grew stronger. So there's a point of diminishing returns

They made a plan I disagree with, and they started to forward deploy their ships before Lovat. The fact that the Alliance didn't give them enough time to actually complete their preparations doesn't change the fact that they were starting to do it. If Lovat had happened 2-3 months later Giscard and his 240 SD(P)'s would have been concentrated and training. The fact that the MA interrupted the RHN 2-3 weeks into the re-deployment and killed the Operation's CO doesn't factor in.

You could be correct that they had to rush things a lot, not least of which is that the CO had been killed. Plausible scenario: the ships are already in motion from all over the Republic and it'll take Giscard 5 weeks to get there. He'd then take another 3 drilling them down, then depart for Manticore (3 weeks) Total time: 11 weeks. We know the attack happened only 10 weeks after Lovat.

Here's another explanation: the Octagon decided that Giscard was really good in defence, having just blunted the attack in Solon, so they swap roles compared to what Theisman told Pritchart. Giscard stays for the defence and Tourville is sent to take command of Second Fleet.

Ok then, explain to me where the 245 SD(P)'s, 300 SD's and 40 CLAC's are. If he had 920 or 580 he did not bring anywhere near his total fleet. And "working up" is not an excuse because what the hell are they working up for? War is practically over. And yes "because plot" is a legitimate answer when bringing even the extra 40 CLAC's and 245 SD(P)'s would have ended in RHN Victory and likely would have ended up with alot more RMN SD(P)'s destroyed during OB with the stations because the RHN would not allow construction during the negotiations.

100 SD(P)s and 20 CLACs in Haven, 100 SD(P)s in Bolthole, the balance of the SD((P)s and CLACs are in spread throughout the core systems and the SDs are spread further away in penny packets. The ships from Bolthole and some of the SD(P)s are Reason #1: too far away to be recalled and arrive in Manticore before the Apollo defences go up.

The ships in Haven and the other core systems are Reason #3: Manticoran scouting would detect their absence.

I suppose I have to explain how this scouting could happen. A DD or CL can drop from hyperspace a light-minute or ten away from the hyper limit. Such a light ship can re-enter hyperspace within 10 minutes from arrival. Haven does have sensitive hyper emergency detection arrays to at least a light-month out and at this time they already have FTL comms. But even the ready forces, waiting in hyper, would need to be very close by in order to intercept in time. And we know that hyperspace navigation is poorer at short distances, so they might still emerge over a million km away from the scout. At that distance, a missile in sprint mode takes 47 seconds to reach the target.

This is by no means an easy mission. There could be a high loss rate. But it might be worth losing one or two light combatants per month if that keeps Capital Fleet home.

Another source of intel are the DBs coming from the embassy in Nouveau Paris, plus neutral shipping making use of the Junction. Those would carry the news that Capital Fleet suddenly left. Locking down the system and preventing any ships from leaving means this steady stream of ships also stops, which itself is a signal that something is up in Nouveau Paris. You mentioned in an earlier post that it could be another coup, but the MA might react to this by strengthening its defences until confirmation comes. A simple solution is to have Eighth Fleet close to the Junction at all times.

[And it would send more scouts, but that's too late. Confirmation would come 12 weeks after Capital Fleet departed.]

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:Ok then, explain to me where the 245 SD(P)'s, 300 SD's and 40 CLAC's are. If he had 920 or 580 he did not bring anywhere near his total fleet.

You are the guy claiming he had 900+ SD(p). Since literally everyone else in this discussion says "No, that's wrong" we don't have to explain that.

Well, I asked the same question of him, so it's only fair that I answer too. If there are more ships in existence, why didn't Theisman use them? Assuming he's not stupid, surrounded by stupid admirals in the Octagon, there had to be a reason. And if such reason exists, could it not explain a much larger number of ships?

I think an answer exists (see post just above) and it does not scale to a lot more ships.

kzt wrote:Gigaton scale airburst weapons in the open creates an 14-22 km wide fireball. Everyone within 26 km will be killed by airblast. Every building within 70 km will be wrecked. Everyone within 198 km will receive 3rd degree burns.

Now you set this off inside the station. So the xrays instantly convert a 14 to 22 km section of the station to something ranging from the core of the sun to just few thousand degrees. This expands, very, very fast.

The shockwave implodes decks to overhead, turns blast doors into projectiles moving at mach and basically breaks every structural joint in the entire station as supersonic incandescent columns of air are driven down all the main corridors, arriving after the 6km/sec shock wave was transmitted by the main structural elements as they move several meters in probably milliseconds.

It's going to be a bad day.

Definitely so, but to near total annihilation, with negligible survival rate? That's a whole different story.

Take the 6 km/s shockwave: that means 20 secondd from end to end, 10 from the centre to the end. That's more than enough time for emergency computer-controlled counter-measures to kick in. If a 22-km section of the station is suddenly gone in the centre, then the other 50 km to each side are free-moving. Unlike in a planet, the shockwave can shove the station away. And once the station is open to space, air can go out. In fact, I'd design the station so that it opens huge emergency vents so that shockwaves dissipate into the vacuum, instead of continuing on.

If the station is like a starship, with decks and transversal bulkheads, the shockwave loses energy going through each.

If the station is a hollow cylinder, then that hollow is a lot of empty space through which to expand. That might be what the station was. Unlike on a planet, where a shockwave dissipates hemispherically (quadratically), inside a cylinder it would dissipate linearly only.

I just have a hard time picturing a 120-km long O'Neill cylinder. I usually picture them as places of commerce and diplomacy, five miles long, a shining beacon in space, all alone in the night...