GA-League War lessons learned

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:BTW, do the Andermani have CLACs and LACs?

By now almost assuredly. Once they joined the Manticoran Alliance against Haven part of bringing their fleet up to scratch should have been ensuring they had LAC and CLACs of their own for screening.

But the more interesting question, to me, is whether or not they'd come up with their own new-style LAC design before they joined Manticore.

And I can't remember seeing anything about one way or the other about that[1], but it'd certainly be interesting to know about any new-style LAC design they'd build (or even been working on) before they got access to the RMN/GSN designs.



[1] The only new breakthroughs I remember from them were home grown ERMs, capital ship DDMs, and SD(P)s

I had never heard mention of Andermani LACs either, which is what prompted the question. It seems odd if you consider they had been acquiring lots of tech from Manticore, unofficially. Hmm, the future of modern LACs should be bright, considering the collective heads of the whole of the GA are on it. And now most assuredly the SLN.

But wait, did I fail to get yet another memo? Did the Andermani officially join the GA? I thought they were recommended to sit it out.

At any rate, I agree it is an interesting question of whether or not they had LACs in the pipeline and what they have come up with if they did. But back to my original notion of the need to consider the theatre of war upon shaping one's own doctrine. Do they have a real need for LACs, and all of the logistics they require? I guess it won't hurt for them to be prepared, but I don't see them needing LACs for their current needs. Which means they may not have been looking into the design unless they thought war was imminent with either Haven or Manticore.

cthia wrote:For instance, the SLN can develop a LAC doctrine, but it is useless without the LACs. And probably CLACs. Even the RMN couldn't implement LAC doctrine without developing the LAC first. And then determining whether or not their labors would support their doctrine. Obviously vice versa is also true, which is what you state.

After all, you can't develop a strategic doctrine without strategic weapons. Can we say 'an ICBM that functions, and has the range that can actually reach your enemy.' And, what good is a nuclear doctrine without nuclear weapons.

Do you know what they call this, developing a doctrine for weapons you don't have?

Military science fiction.

In one of Christopher Nuttall's book series (A Learning Experience), Humanity is suddenly found thrust into the galactic scene through an ill-fated attempt at being conquered by a race that didn't understand their equipment very well. Like Out of the Dark, but much more so because the would-be conquerors, the Horde, were really incompetent, kind of like the Pakleds in Star Trek (though see Lower Decks on how even the Pakleds can be dangerous). After stopping the attack and seizing the ships and technology, Nuttall writes that the military turns to sci-fi authors for help figuring out what to do.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:By now almost assuredly. Once they joined the Manticoran Alliance against Haven part of bringing their fleet up to scratch should have been ensuring they had LAC and CLACs of their own for screening.

But the more interesting question, to me, is whether or not they'd come up with their own new-style LAC design before they joined Manticore.

And I can't remember seeing anything about one way or the other about that[1], but it'd certainly be interesting to know about any new-style LAC design they'd build (or even been working on) before they got access to the RMN/GSN designs.



[1] The only new breakthroughs I remember from them were home grown ERMs, capital ship DDMs, and SD(P)s

I had never heard mention of Andermani LACs either, which is what prompted the question. It seems odd if you consider they had been acquiring lots of tech from Manticore, unofficially. Hmm, the future of modern LACs should be bright, considering the collective heads of the whole of the GA are on it. And now most assuredly the SLN.

But wait, did I fail to get yet another memo? Did the Andermani officially join the GA? I thought they were recommended to sit it out.

Their position within the Grand Alliance is ambiguous - they certainly weren't publicly part of it.

However I meant earlier, when they joined with Manticore and Grayson during the renewed Havenite War. We know Manticore had put the IAN SD(P)s through their yards to refit them with Keyhole (and otherwise bring them in line with the capabilities of the newer RMN & GSN designs).
It was during that war, before the formation of the GA, that I assume the IAN would have been able to acquire any LACs and CLACs they might need to flesh out their anti-missile screen. They wouldn't have wanted to be in the position of having to always rely on RMN or GSN attachments to provide that capability.

cthia wrote:At any rate, I agree it is an interesting question of whether or not they had LACs in the pipeline and what they have come up with if they did. But back to my original notion of the need to consider the theatre of war upon shaping one's own doctrine. Do they have a real need for LACs, and all of the logistics they require? I guess it won't hurt for them to be prepared, but I don't see them needing LACs for their current needs. Which means they may not have been looking into the design unless they thought war was imminent with either Haven or Manticore.

Though remember the situation, during the ceasefire, when the IAN acquired its home-built SD(P)s. They may not have viewed war with Manticore as likely, but they definitely wanted to build their naval forces up to the point where even High Ridge's government couldn't simply assume that they could dictate what they liked to the Andermani due to overwhelming military strength.

The Andermani wanted to push into Silesia, and viewed it as almost something they were owed for being neutral in Manticore's favor (and not rocking the boat) while Manticore was locked in the original fight for its life against Haven.

But before doing that they were trying to modernize and build up their navy to at least the point where Manticore should hesitate to resort to military pressure in aid of containing the Andermani. Hench developing their own multi-drive missiles and SD(P)s. They weren't contemplating a war with Manticore, but wanted to reestablish an even military balance of power. As part of that modernization I'd be pretty shocked if they weren't looking at LACs, CLACs, and anti-LAC tactics -- as LACs were a large part of Operation Buttercup; which demonstrated decisively just how obsolete everybody else's navies were.

I just don't know how much success they may have had before the events in War of Honor which led to the partition of Silesia and the Andies joining Manticore and Grayson against Haven.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Sigs wrote:I have been thinking for a while now about the overall series and the lessons learned by individual nations and their militaries. The RMN and RHN had spend about 40 years knowing a war was coming, there was already a well established understanding that Manticore was technologically superior to Haven and that Haven was numerically superior to the RMN. Both sides had 40 years to build up to war and then spend 17 of the previous 22 years at shooting war with each other. Basically Haven had 17 years of progress and adjustment to Manticoran innovation and tactics and despite the size differences the two sides were relatively equal. Haven managed to fight Manticore from 1905 technology to 1922 technology and for the majority of the war they kept within shouting distance of the RMN mostly because of their size. Haven managed to learn the lessons one or two at a time over a 20 year period while starting relatively close technologically.

And don't forget that the PN was actually fighting in those 40 years, something very few navies could claim to be doing. Lopsided fights against much weaker opponents, but they were still fighting. One of the things that greatly helped the Manticore Alliance against the PRH in the first war was that the Committee had done a purge of the Legislaturalist officer corp that had experience and compounded the mistake by shooting flag officers who lost battles.

Similarly, the RMN and the IAN were also fighting, though their targets were pirates in Silesia. Again, lopsided, but it did allow those officer corps to gain a lot of experience prior to the start of the war.

The SLN on the other hand started the war in 1921 with massive technological, intelligence, training, quality and experience deficit when compared to the RMN. The SLN started the war with the belief that they were technologically, numerically superior and had better leadership. The SLN started the war as the greatest, most powerful navy in the history of humanity and with their 10,000 SD's they were more powerful then every other navy in existence but in a short 6 months they managed to go from the belief that they are the greatest that ever was to the reality that they were at best the 6th most powerful navy and 2 of those navies are single system nations.

The SLN Battle Fleet, on the other hand, had had no experience at all for 3 centuries. True, the RMN had no experience in fighting capital ships either, since those SDs were sitting in the MBS and not getting sent to Silesia. But unlike the SLN, the destroyer and cruiser captains in the RMN were promoted into the capital ships; in the SLN, FF and BF officer corps didn't mix. So any and all experience that the FF gained fighting petty warlords, some pirates, and in any other ways it could have gained from its less-than-aboveboard operations with the OFS were not transferred to the BF.

Knowing all of this, how does the SLN proceed from here on out? How do they work to get technological parity and numerical superiority without falling in the trap that they fell into the first time around? What lessons did the RMN/RHN/GSN/IAN/EN/MSDF learn from the war that would are important?

The league still had tremendous industrial, material, population and economic power behind it and if they manage to tap into the tax base that was previously denied to them the SLN could become a major power rather quickly. How does the SLN use the resources they can tap to improve not just technologically but quality of their people and training and leadership so that in 1940, the SLN can be a powerful force with 15 years of experience and training behind it along with its doctrine and institutional confidence in their abilities.

Basically what lessons and what effects does the 1923 SLN incorporate into their training doctrine and institutional identity to make the 1940 SLN a superpower once again?

Good questions and we can debate this for a long time. Let me start with a summary, starting with the most obvious ones:

1) combat the patronage system, promoting instead people who are actually capable instead of the well-connected

2) remove the barriers in sharing of experience (merge FF and BF)

3) keep a robust R&D running basically forever and don't be afraid of obsoleting oneself

4) find allies and cross-pollinate ideas

For example, how does the sudden shift of missile wave density and technology at least from SLN point of view affect their LAC/CLAC doctrine? Considering when they start building their LAC and CLAC forces they will start with absolute garbage in terms of CLACs and LACs. I can see the SLN going overboard in their LAC doctrine and using much bigger numbers than the GA out of fanatical need to for adequate missile defense. The SLN went from being able to fire 42 missiles per SD to facing an enemy that can control 200 missiles per SD(P) and they did it over a few month span.

That's a knee-jerk reaction. You could be right. You're going to have a lot of baffled and inexperienced flag officers as well as politicians demanding action -- any action! And this is probably going to happen in some form, if not what you said. They will do something in the medium and short terms that will not help in the long run. They have to do something.

But long-term, the strategic planning needs to be thought out. They need to think two or three steps ahead, at least. That's like the existence of the Katana-class LAC: a logical consequence of the existence of LACs at all was that LAC-on-LAC fights would exist, so they made a space superiority asset, even before the RHN had deployed their own LACs.

What that is, I don't know. Clearly they need more CMs and more control links for those. That may not mean LACs; if they have a technological breakthrough that obviates the need to deploying forward, they could use dedicated CM barges. Similarly, if one can make up for CM quality with quantity, it may be a better idea to use light cruisers instead of LACs (remember the overhead of the CLAC).

How does the GA reorganize to be able to face the SLN with a hope of survival in the coming decades after the SLN rebuilds?

How does the GA organize to be the most efficient they can be in the coming decades when once again the SLN becomes a superpower? Right now they are multiple separate navies with their own issues since they built up after 17 years of war.

By not having to. They have to follow through on the Harrington Plan.

If the SL remains as big as it is and does go for revanchism, the GA or the Union will be in trouble.

The points I listed above for the SL also apply to the GA / Union. They have to keep R&D ahead of the others, for example. While the SL is catching up, they can continue to pull ahead.

But speaking of Union, there's a good question of what will happen to the separate navies. I think they'll remain separate entities, but the RHN, RMN and GSN will begin operating together very frequently. Smaller formations will get mixed squadrons; larger formations will get squadrons from each navy. And of course, officer exchange programs, that worked really well for the GSN.

The League members are in a very awkward position, they have determined that having their system defenceless with the only deterrent wing the SLN is not enough so they will want a picket in their system. At the same time the SLN has demonstrated that they wouldn’t be able to defend against a determined enemy even if they outnumber that enemy and had technological parity because 2,300 SDs don’t split all that well into 1,700 systems. The league has to know that the SLN is nowhere near as capable as it needs to be to offer protection to the core systems let alone the shell. The league members know that the SLN needs to be significantly strengthened and increased to be able to offer protection to the league but at the same time the SLN demonstrated they are not exactly to be trusted with the only fighting force in the league as it is only too easy for an individual or a small group to manipulate them and use them to oppress the league members.

All that considered the league has several serious problems, the vast majority of their senior officers would be in their position because of nepotism and not capability. The SLN would have to basically fire the majority of their senior officers. Then there is the problem of their Operation Buccaneer, after what happened none of the neutrals will be willing to align with the League most will build fleets of their own and align with the GA if they don’t outright ask for inclusion into the GA. And we can’t forget the verge which will likely carry hatred for the League for a long time to come and will fall into the GA’s sphere of influence and with guidance, financial, industrial and military help they can become a serious asset for the to the GA in a few decades.

The league members face a tough choice, they want to have their system’s fortified and protected but at the same time the “guardian” in this case has shown how easy it is to use them to punish the member systems and keep them in line. So I can see a division of resources and responsibilities where the member systems hold the SD(P)s preventing the SLN from wielding that much power over their member systems.

The strengths for the SLN are the huge tax base, huge population and an equally impressive industry that can be turned towards catching up technologically and numerically. At the same time as I mentioned the SLN and the mandarins managed to alienate the neutrals and any potential allies as well as scare the crap out of their own population to the point that they may be nervous on funding the SLN over their own navies because once the tax money starts flowing it might be it might not be possible to keep the SLN in check.
As for heavy missile defence being an knee jerk reaction? The league can field 100,000 SD(P)s and CLACs if they tapped into their immense wealth. The League can field well over 200,000 lighter combatants and millions of LACs, with their immense wealth they can have truly impressive numbers of LACs without having to make the choice between CLACs and SD(P) that the RMN and RHN has to make. The RMN can field 300 SDs and DNs as well as over 100 forts of more than 16,000,000 tons without overloading their economy so the SLN should theoretically be able to field at least 300 times the fleet without putting their economy at risk. They can field 20,000,000 LACs without breaking a sweat and that means their missile defence could be damn near impenetrable once they get parity and and if you don’t have to choose between sufficient offensive power or sufficient missile defence it becomes easy.

The problem with the Harrington Doctrine is that the terms of surrender indicate that the GA wants the league under new management not disbanded. What’s more they can keep the league from reforming once parity is achieved.

Sigs wrote:The League members are in a very awkward position, they have determined that having their system defenceless with the only deterrent wing the SLN is not enough so they will want a picket in their system. At the same time the SLN has demonstrated that they wouldn’t be able to defend against a determined enemy even if they outnumber that enemy and had technological parity because 2,300 SDs don’t split all that well into 1,700 systems.

Haven can't defend itself on that basis. Probably over 90% of the 200 some planets are all vulnerable to an attack of a dozen SD(P)s. Realistically, some of the pirates seen could put together enough forces to take a 3rd or 4th tier Haven system.

But what happens next? Do the pirates live happily ever after?

No, with both the SL and the RH something very bad is going to happen to a minor force who attacks a system. And it's going to happen soon.

“To try to be safe everywhere is to be strong nowhere.”

Jonathan_S wrote:That's a good point. The League, once it gets its act together, can support and finance far more ship production that Manticore or Haven could. And while the RMN strongly prefers generalist ships, which can do any job, the SLN might well opt to build dedicated AA escorts (shades of the WWII Atlanta class CLs). Instead of swarms of LACs they could go for DDs or CLs heavily optimized to the anti-missile escort role; even if that means that they're basically incapable of operating alone against conventional ships. They'd be larger targets than LACs - but somewhat offsetting that they could carry more and better decoys, a lot more PDLCs, and vastly more CMs in their magazines. If you delete almost all the offensive missile tubes and heavy energy mounts you should be able to fit very heavy point defense on that sized hull; possibly even rivaling many BCs.

And a dedicated anti-missile escort that's never supposed to operate far from the wall might be a place for the League to experiment with really radical levels of automation and crew size reduction.

If nothing else you might force an RMN force to "waste" much of its initial Apollo salvo on those escorts to make follow up salvos more effective.

I don’t see why the SLN can’t have both. The league can field well over 200,000 smaller ships and tens of thousands of BC(P) for operations that don’t require wallers. This means that the SLN can have SD(P)s and BC(P)s as offensive platforms and LACs, destroyers and cruisers specifically in the anti missile role. They don’t have to choose they can have it all and the more layers they have between their wallers and the enemy the better after the experience they received during the war.

cthia wrote:Interesting thread.

I would imagine doctrine has to follow technology. The SLN has to first produce new technologies and then form doctrine around those technologies. You can't put the cart before the horse.

I always screamed at them for spacing their ships too far apart for mutual defensive support. I couldn't believe that wasn't common in all navies. But if the hardware isn't up to it, the doctrine won't matter. SLN CMs should have been even better than the GAs considering SL doctrine.

They know where the technology is leading, SD(P)'s and LAC's. Could be little better than their Scientist Class SD's and 1850's LAC's but it gives them the ability to train and build up their forces. The League can design an SD(P) in a year and have it in space 3 years later, once again, it wont be equal to an alliance SD(P) in any way shape or form but it will be a step forward. It might take them 15 or 20 years to gain parity from a cold start but it doesn't mean that they spend those 15 or 20 years training for the last war without developing new doctrine.

With every new variation of the SD(P)/LAC/CLAC they reevaluate and rework their doctrine

Jonathan_S wrote:Imagine the SLN just placed emergency orders at existing yards for 10,000 LACs without providing any input into how they intended to use them (because they hasn't even started plotting out, testing and revising, their doctrine). They'd almost assuredly get 10,000 old-style LACs because that's what the yards know how to build.

If the SLN is able to tap into the Leagues tax base they would have immense resources to build whatever they want. That is great for them because the SLN is not only developing the technology and doctrine but it has to train the crews and give them experience outside a simulator. They wont go from the LAC's they have access to in 1922 to the Katana in a few months or even a few years so they have to reach level one and build the LACs in question to train the crews in the meantime they are designing level two LAC's as soon as they achieve those objectives they start building level two LAC's while stopping level one and so on. The SLN is going from 0 LAC's and 0 Crews to potentially several million within the next decade or two, that requires doctrine and training but also at least for system defense LAC's also the infrastructure in the system for maintenance and support of the LAC's.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:BTW, do the Andermani have CLACs and LACs?

By now almost assuredly. Once they joined the Manticoran Alliance against Haven part of bringing their fleet up to scratch should have been ensuring they had LAC and CLACs of their own for screening.

But the more interesting question, to me, is whether or not they'd come up with their own new-style LAC design before they joined Manticore.

And I can't remember seeing anything about one way or the other about that[1], but it'd certainly be interesting to know about any new-style LAC design they'd build (or even been working on) before they got access to the RMN/GSN designs.



[1] The only new breakthroughs I remember from them were home grown ERMs, capital ship DDMs, and SD(P)s

According tot he infodump on the fleet from 1920 the IAN had 6 CLAC's in service at the start of the war.