GA-League War lessons learned

Galactic Sapper wrote:so they'll likely be folded into each other and just be the SLN.

Umm, have you ever met a bureaucrat? How many flag positions are you planning to get rid of?

Do you have a well paid, numerous and loyal personal security team?

Too long without internet- traveling

FF will be flooded into the SLN (not retained as it's former seperate and looked down upon component by BF) most likely has the best bet for add people who are likely to get the job done in handling part of the problems of piracy and other internal/external problems.

SLN lost a massive number of it's people to POW status with Manticore and then GL. SOME of those people will be able to provide coherent information of RMN/GA's tactical (if not directly supported by tactical information they won't be allowed to bring along except in their heads).
Part of that impacts the SLN with those who continue to serve after being repatriated. The ones now with combat experience (as in massive defeat) against 1st RMN and then the GA at BOM II

Then you have to deal with a massive remainder of SLN post the object lesson Honor gave it at Sol and losing EVERY ship SLN had at SOL (including probably 99% of the Reserve Fleet) and all fleet support stations. SLN didn't loose people there but now they have a massive number of members-mostly senior officers etc) who are probably- at best- needed to be at least retired and get them off the books as unless in war fighting/logistics/planning due to the patronage systems and general incompetence in the modern space navy environment

While SLN R&D has to be jumpstarted, there is not a lot they probably need to build right now except to deal with the internal needs of the SL (post New Constitution) in keeping order and dealing with the problems (we) anticipate they are going to have with bad actors, pirates and awarlordism within the new borders of SL.2
Remember, at this point SLN is under a "shoot on sight" edict by Honor and the GA for any of their ships that stray out our what is the SL in any form.

LACs.....taking clouds of LACs out with an SLN force to do anything is going to require transport....once you build them and train the crews to whatever doctrine the SLN decides to use. That means 1) building CLACS, 2) transporting them in freighters (can you say crew overcrowding) or 3) carry them as parasites on warships (like Honor coming home from Hades). That is- other than the CLAC option- means that it will be interesting setting up an attack and then recovering and or resupplying the LACs after an initial engagement. It's not that the SLN can't design up something that may work as a CLAC, it is just that if you push scratch development you might not want to build a lot of carriers to the specs of the SLN "improved" LACs as both the LACS and so the CLACs will be quickly obsolete. Even so, they may find some ongoing LAC design and evolution by fire (dealing with problems within SL.2) in "defensive" deployments to stiffen what protection they will provide Member Systems even if they are used to augment SLN DD-CA ships for protection.

Just thoughts.

kzt wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:so they'll likely be folded into each other and just be the SLN.

Umm, have you ever met a bureaucrat? How many flag positions are you planning to get rid of?

Do you have a well paid, numerous and loyal personal security team?

I have good news and bad news, numerous SLN Admirals are now leading expeditions into the after life, they will not object to their positions being eliminated. Bad news many (most?) also got all of the ships under their command destroyed, and thus there is no need for an admiral to command that formation.

It is going to be impossible for use (the readers) to figure out how many of the SLN officers who are either functionally incompetent in real world military jobs---after Harrington showing up at Sol and making a public showing of SLN's inability to do it's job and forcing the changes on the SL--- will get retired or worse.
Actually, the same applies to a majority of the League's and the various Member Worlds major politicians.

Though a lot of people will be seething with a desire to extract vengeance on Manticore and the members of the GA, there will also be a lot of people in places of power and influence that will take the view that they need to rebuild with a stronger but much less corrupt government and it's branches

We will see how that works out

Other than the major Fleet actions, most of the losses have been in battle cruisers and below, which are mostly in FF. About 400 BC were lost in a Beowulf, 100 at Hypatia, dozens at Ajay. Plus other actions occurring off-stage. When DD/LAC can blow away BC, and CA do in SD, force design will have to be reconsidered.

Fox2! wrote:Other than the major Fleet actions, most of the losses have been in battle cruisers and below, which are mostly in FF. About 400 BC were lost in a Beowulf, 100 at Hypatia, dozens at Ajay. Plus other actions occurring off-stage. When DD/LAC can blow away BC, and CA do in SD, force design will have to be reconsidered.

Hypatia was 88 BCs and Beowulf was ~370.

The problem is that BCs are much smaller than SDs. The crew complement of a Nevada is 3000, while a Vega or a Scientist carry over 6000, so more personnel were lost in the only two actions involving SDs (Battle of Spindle and the second Battle of Manticore, adding up to 23+290 = 313 ships lost) than in all the actions involving BCs.

Note I am using the wiki's number for "casualties." This must include any type of mission kill all the way to loss with all hands. I am assuming the ratio of total losses versus partial losses is the same for both BCs and SDs, so the ratio personnel lost should also be the same and therefore proportional to the total number of casualties. SDs should have been more survivable, but I don't think that worked really well in practice.

And this is not including the number of POWs resulting from both battles, which add up to nearly 2 million people.