Building the BSDF into the Beowulf Space Navy

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Howdy All!

Going from a system defense force with a large cruiser force to protect its shipping and search for slave smugglers, is going to be a challenge. What should they build first?

The BSDF was the largest system defence force in existence outside of the Haven Sector. I think that short of Manticore and Grayson, it was the largest single-system defence force anywhere. And Manticore isn't single-system any more.

The Wiki says "In 1922 PD, the First Fleet consisted of thirty-six superdreadnoughts" and gives ART and UH as references. I've just checked ART and it quite clearly shows Adm. Holmon-Sanders bringing up the impellers on her thirty-six superdreadnoughts in front of Adm. Tsang before that worthy attempted transiting the junction to "help" Filareta.

What should Hypatia follow and in turn copy?

Early textev often mentioned that Beowulf had one of the largest merchant marines in the SL (3rd or 4th), initially even bigger than the MMM, although gradually in the textev the MMM eclipsed and surpassed it to easy domination, the process taking RFC several years. but given ship lives lasting centuries I doubt all the freighters etc present 20 years ago in the textev 30 years in real life) suddenly disappeared, so I suspect Beowulf still has a very large MM by SL standards at least, but what should they build first?

"Serve on a destroyer to see what the navy's about."
Presumably Beowulf built most of it's lesser warships insystem, while the SD's may have ordered from elsewhere.

UH told us clearly that the BSDF was already getting GA-quality superdreadnoughts. They hadn't arrived, but they were coming.

We also know the only reason they hadn't had them before was so the SLN wouldn't find out about the Haven Sector designs ahead of time. Otherwise, they'd have got SD(P)s ten years earlier.

More than that, we also know that from way back in Travis' time, Beowulf had yards capable of building at least battlecruisers. We are told that they were only 200,000 tonnes back then (I'm expecting HMS Nike BC-01 to be a revolution in design), but there were Beowulfan designs and manufacture.

So, no, Beowulf home industry is quite capable of building anything up to and including superdreadnoughts. The same passage in UH that talks about the BSDF getting SD(P)s is talking about how they are built bare-bones in Bolthole then shipped to Beowulf for final fitting. Beowulf was also producing Mk16 and Mk23 missiles.

First, Beowulf doesn't have the potential crew shortage problem with a population 2-3 time's that of the SKM's when the Roland was designed (9-12 billion people?)so keeping the crew to 67-72 isn't necessary.

Why put any more people aboard a ship than you have to? If you have the automation, use it.

The problem the Rolands had was lack of Marine support for boarding actions. Then sure, add more Marines and BSC agents where necessary. But you don't need more Navy.

I don't know when RFC first drafted the Saltash chapters that Abigail features as CO of the station assault force of sailors so Abby could command it because there's no room aboard the Roland class for marines, but when he first described the Roland years ago, apparently to deliberately set up Abby's command opportunity. .

I find it unlikely that a 225,000-tonne ship would lack volume for a couple dozen more people. The way I see it, it was lack of personnel, not lack of space. Which would tell me that the RMN had lots of Rolands and Wolfhounds, meaning they also had no need to buy into service any FF obsolescent War Harvests or Ramparts captured from Crandall.

Beowulf could include an entire marine company aboard its Flight II Roland's. Honor's light cruiser HMS Fearless (C-56) massed about 84,000 tons in OBS, less than the new 85,000 ton Chanson class DD's, with a crew around 455 for an average of ~185 tons per crewman. Assuming that crew quarters and amenities hasn't improved in over a century (very unlikely IMO), 140 men would require almost 26,000 tons; but marines probably require lest privacy and space, so it could be less but I'll use it as a general estimate.

There's some discussion that the Rolands are a war-time production compromise. They're large destroyers designed around firing Mk16 and to be produced in large quantities for force multiplication. They're not good peace-time ships; the Wolfhounds that Sarnow got for Silesia might be better at that, or maybe some new design. There's also some discussion of Minimum Viable Combatant and that we'll see a size creep, so light cruisers may be the tool of choice in the future.

We'll need to wait.

While ultimately the BSDF will get Alliance built Invictus type SDP's from Bolthole, it's going to take at least a couple of years just build them in Bolthole before the many months long fitting of RMN tech in Beowulf. Until then it might get some of the older SDP's from its allies, if they 're willing to share , but one solution might be building their own BCP's, albeit again with improvements.

All indications is that it's less time than you think. Especially since after the end of the war with the SL, the GA demobilised some of its own, extant fleet. Not only does that free up Bolthole production, it just makes sense to transfer some of those ships to the Republic of Beowulf, who already had 36 x 6000 spacers trained on superdreadnoughts. The BSDF can easily man and operate 48 modern SD(P)s and cover both Beowulf and Hypatia.

I don't think any "older SD" makes sense at all. I suspect that the prior BSDF SDs, the ones that Adm. Holmon-Sanders commanded, were equivalent to pre-war RMN designs, meaning they were already above anyone else's SDs of the time. The flagship was described as being forty years old and, though the text makes it seem that's a long time (especially compared to Havenite, Manticore and Grason ships which were all less than 10), we're talking about a ship built in 1880. That's contemporary to an RMN King William or Anduril. Newer ships would be contemporary to Victory and Sphinx.

And I don't think there may be many of those left. What didn't get sold by the High Ridge government to allies or scrapped, was probably destroyed when Home Fleet was on the Battle of Manticore.

lyonheart wrote:Actually we have textev (SFtS?) that Mannerheim's was the largest among 4-5 others numbered in the 2-6 hundreds (most in the RF), and RFC posted that the largest SDF had around 800 hyper capable warships (after I suggested that a couple might be in the 1600 ship range), or what Grayson and the Andermanni had in the 1920 fleet chart combined.

I wouldn't be surprised if the BSDF numbered around 200, i.e. lots of cruisers, apparently being 5th or 6th for the SL largest BSDF's, IIRC.

Getting back to the time element, RFC once posted that the Chanson DD at 85,000 tons in the pre-HoS era took 15 weeks to build while the 8,500,000 ton Gryphons took just 100 weeks.
In the first war Haven's construction times were 50% longer, that is 3 years for an SD, etc. This was pre-Bolthole of course.

Bolthole built 800 SDP's in around 400 Building Slips, probably with the last of the prewar order completed approximately in February 1922 as well as an unknown number of CLAC's, and I've wondered whether CLAC's followed the SDP's on the same building slips, while Haven and 2-3 daughter colonies built another 400, according to AAC, so the RHN should have just over 900 left after the Lovat and Manticore battles.

I wouldn't be surprised if the RMN finished another 80-100 SDP's by OB, while Grayson nearly matched it, now subsidized by the SEM after High Ridge's fall, so between the two of them, they totaled ~400 by OB, with total crews around 500 -530,000 compared to well over 3 times that for the RMN's wall at the beginning of the first Haven war.

While Hemphill is impressed with how good Bolthole has become in TEIF, she didn't get there until July 1922, and rationalizing the different designs could easily take 6-12 months by itself.

I wouldn't be too surprised Beowulf hadn't started construction of flight two Rolands soon after joining the GA, nor improved Agamemnon BCP's, Nike's, and CLAC's soon after.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And as you're saying, no two-tiered navy system. The navy of the Star Empire of Manticore is the Royal Manticore Navy. They will operate RMN hardware.

cthia wrote:And! Beowulf can certainly afford to pay for this on their own now that the SL isn't milking them anymore. But, before the SK starts sending ships their way, what about Gryphon and Sphinx? I would raise unholy hell if I were Gryphon or Sphinx if Beowulf was upgraded from a SDF before they were. Heck, strategically, Beowulf can be covered by the RMN faster than Gryphon or Sphinx. No?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:As I said, I think the BSDF is the largest. Maybe it was retconned, maybe I'm just mis-remembering. Hopefully someone with better research skills can clear this up.

Jonathan_S wrote:There's an RFC post from 2014, talking about the Felix Junction that says "and because it is right next door to someone [Mannerheim] who already has a component of one of the most powerful SDFs of the SL camped out in the system "for maneuvers."

However I can't find anything in my cheat sheet of RFC posts stating the size of the MSFT, nor comparing the sizes of the BSDF to them; nor did I find anything definitive in a quick word search of the books (up to, but not including, TEIF) for "Mannerheim".

Jonathan_S wrote:Not as the RMN Home Fleet is currently deployed -- hanging around Manticore. From there the fastest way to Beowulf would require accelerating across the hyper limit, making the 7 LY hyper trip to the Junction (being very, very, sure to land outside the RZ), then waiting for their hyper generators to recharge so they can pop through to Beowulf, and then having to wait for their hyper generators to recharge again to make the hyper jump closer to Beowulf's hyper limit (again being very careful to avoid the RZ).

In contrast it's never more than about 35 LM between Manticore and Sphinx; (whereas it's 9 LM on a minimum time course between Manticore and the hyper limits; so less than 4x as far as the hyper limit) and there's no waiting for hyper generators to recharge (which could be up to half an hour each time for an SD).

And Gryphon you'd need to reinforce its normal Home Fleet detachment through hyper, but it's only a single hyper trip (rather than the 3 to Beowulf) and you shouldn't have to worry about an RZ at all)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:However I can't find anything in my cheat sheet of RFC posts stating the size of the MSFT, nor comparing the sizes of the BSDF to them; nor did I find anything definitive in a quick word search of the books (up to, but not including, TEIF) for "Mannerheim".

Anything on Beowulf's?

runsforcelery: 2011 wrote:The problem with building ships of the wall isn't that there is magical tech involved that no one else could possibly supply; it is that certain crucial technologies have to be assembled in the same production nodes and that the only reason to assemble those technologies is specifically to build ships of the wall (well, maybe BC(L)s, too, given their size and the heaviness of their armor). The SLN has a very limited number of such nodal sites which are specifically equipped to build wallers; virtually no one else in the SL does. Beowulf is an exception to that "virtually" because of its defensive requirements where its terminus of the Junction is concerned, and so are a small number of other systems with specialized defensive requirements. Most other SL SDFs, however, are going to have gone the Erewhon route and purchased any wallers in their orders of battle from the same people who built the SLN's wallers, just like navies the world over bought battleships in the period 1880-1914 from Vickers, which built the RMN's battleships.

runsforcelery: 2014 wrote:In response to the question about the Beowulf Self-Defense Force, no, it was not secretly outfitted with Manticoran war-fighting technology prior to the current crisis. It has very good technology — rather better than the SLN's, for example — but it had no need to build Manticoran-level hardware and both Beowulf and Manticore had a vested interest in not poking the sleeping giant and getting the League fired up to acquire really modern weaponry. There's no way that Beowulf, as firmly integrated into the League as it was, could have realistically expected to upgrade its hardware across the board without someone in the SLN noticing, even if they did install "inhibitors." I'm not saying that it might not have been possible to get away with it; I'm saying that Beowulf wouldn't have made the attempt. If it was worth concealing in the first place, the probability that they could get away with hiding it would have been poor, and an effort to conceal it might only have succeeded in drawing unwanted attention to it. But, to be frank, they didn't need it. The only people who had it were close friends of theirs, and to some extent Beowulf shared the SLN's motives for not spreading that hardware across the galaxy and destabilizing the tactical model which had supported the League's military supremacy for so long. That's changed now, of course, and Beowulf's industrial base is good enough that it can begin putting Manticoran designs into production very quickly, although production levels would still be lower than those Manticore had attained before Oyster Bay. At the present time, however, Beowulf does not have, for example, the internal capacity to fire MDMs or Manticoran inertial compensators or Manticoran FTL com capacity. Some of that can be retrofitted as "strap-ons" and all of it can be put into production locally, but for right now refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just about as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships.

runsforcelery: 2018 wrote:Beowulf is a special case because of its terminus to the Junction. It has a longstanding mutual defense obligation with Manticore that requires a certain amount of firepower on its part, and that treaty was never abrogated.

It was also conveniently ignored by both sides in the confrontation leading up to Raging Justice . . . at least until Truman announced her presence. The SLN sure as hell didn't want to remind Beowulf that Beowulf had an interstellar obligation to defend the terminus against all comers (including the SLN) when it could make this a matter of the Federal authority overriding system sovereignty, especially for a terminus outside the member system's territorial limit. Beowulf didn't want to make it a matter of "if you try to go through we will shoot you because we are allied to your enemies" unless it had to, which was why their System Defense Force tried so hard to get the SLN to stand down without ever mentioning that Truman was present.

Obviously, it didn't work out that way.

There are only a very, very small number of SDFs out there which have any wallers, and even most that do don't have very many of them at all because, frankly, unless you're in Beowulf's position, there is no need for them as long as the Invincible Solarian Navy is responsible for your defense. You'll find a lot more cruisers (and even some battlecruisers) for systems with major commercial interests that extend into places like Slesia, where the SLN ventures not and you take your own security with you, but they are excruciatingly few and far between. The vast bulk of SDFs are actually local police forces, with relatively small units to help manage shipping and handle SAR. You'll see a lot of LACs, but even more very small hyper-capable units because of the possibility that they will have to respond to something outside the hyper limit in a hurry. What you will not see, by and large, is anything even remotely like a battle fleet. Indeed, those you see that have any real combat power at all will tend to be located in the Shell (and probably its outer reaches, at that) where response time by even Frontier Fleet is likely to be a factor in the thinking of the local system authorities.

That's essentially the case with Mannerheim, with the added factor that Mannerheim was not a member of the SL and thus could not rely on the ISLN to defend it. Very few SL member systems would have that factor driving their naval spending.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Not as the RMN Home Fleet is currently deployed -- hanging around Manticore. From there the fastest way to Beowulf would require accelerating across the hyper limit, making the 7 LY hyper trip to the Junction (being very, very, sure to land outside the RZ), then waiting for their hyper generators to recharge so they can pop through to Beowulf, and then having to wait for their hyper generators to recharge again to make the hyper jump closer to Beowulf's hyper limit (again being very careful to avoid the RZ).

If for Kirk hours can be days, for you years can be hours

In contrast it's never more than about 35 LM between Manticore and Sphinx; (whereas it's 9 LM on a minimum time course between Manticore and the hyper limits; so less than 4x as far as the hyper limit) and there's no waiting for hyper generators to recharge (which could be up to half an hour each time for an SD).

And Gryphon you'd need to reinforce its normal Home Fleet detachment through hyper, but it's only a single hyper trip (rather than the 3 to Beowulf) and you shouldn't have to worry about an RZ at all)

Another important point is that there's an unlimited amount of hardware that can go from either component of the MBS to the other and to the Junction, but not through the Junction. That one is limited to one SD every 3 minutes or a total of 20 SD(P)s in one mass transit.