Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:That evokes even more potential problems inherent in the design. I think that it is also obvious to the pirates that hunting season in SL space is for a limited time only. That is the point. Take advantage of the bounty while the Gorilla is chained to his pen. It is a limited window of opportunity. Which also implies the need to grab as much as possible until this bountiful window of opportunity closes. Looting and pilfering should have begun as soon as Honor's decree went out.

[cut]
Well, it should be all about light units, but not necessarily. It could be a state sponsored operation featuring larger units.

It could happen in or out of the light, in which case it would actually be termed commandeering. As an act of war. But pursuing them has to proceed. Quickly. Before the spoils (evidence) are divided and the perpetrators vanish.

While you may have a point about a short period of spike in piracy, state-sponsored attacks are not a good idea. It's not too difficult to find out which state sponsored it and we're still talking about the League coming to ask for their toys back. That's criminally stupid.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Which of course won't stop criminals from doing it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Oh, BTW, where do you think those criminal Verge dictators got their warships from? I'll give you one chance to guess. It's three letters, starts with O and ends in FS.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:So... karma?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:And if you suspect it is an entire system sponsoring the operation, you may need to arrive with a large enough force to force cooperation.

Yes, but "large enough" in the vast majority of the cases is going to be a proper CA division, maybe one or two cases will need a BC.

I don't think any of the legitimate states that did have navies before would engage in this kind of privateering at the expense of the League.

Against their own non-League neighbours, now that the FF isn't around to do its official job, that's possible.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Any SLN ship? Well, does that mean that a TUFT freighter which has been commandeered by the SLN can be made to walk the veritable plank, as it were?

The actual demand was "Any unit of the SLN". A TUFT ship taken up as a fleet train ship probably doesn't fall under that designation -- but one that's been turned into a podlayer would.

But frankly what legitimate reason would the League Navy have to start operating a commandeered League freighter beyond the League's own member system?

If they're trying to use it to do an end run around the prohibition then it probably does deserve to be treated like a violator of said prohibition... (And if they're not trying to do an end run around them I'm at a bit of a loss for why navy officers would now be operating a League freighter taken up into navy service out beyond the borders of the League)

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The actual demand was "Any unit of the SLN". A TUFT ship taken up as a fleet train ship probably doesn't fall under that designation -- but one that's been turned into a podlayer would.

But frankly what legitimate reason would the League Navy have to start operating a commandeered League freighter beyond the League's own member system?

If they're trying to use it to do an end run around the prohibition then it probably does deserve to be treated like a violator of said prohibition... (And if they're not trying to do an end run around them I'm at a bit of a loss for why navy officers would now be operating a League freighter taken up into navy service out beyond the borders of the League)

Well, to protect SLN assets. If the SLN is rebuilding, then there will be a lot of trade with their Merchant Marine. I don't think the SL will trust trade secrets and technology to any old freighter. And simply not to a freighter with a foreign registry.

So, what does the SL do? Who is to say where they get certain important parts and hardware made. Who is also to say if any of these splintered states will want to continue their business relationship with the SL out of economic reasons. It happens right here on Earth. Tensions between the US and Russia (and other foreign countries/enemies) have not stopped certain business arrangements and agreements from going on. Both parties may wish to continue. It is like slapping your face to spite your nose.

So, out of a need for what is now a very limited supply of freighters, period, SL registry freighters may be commandeered by the SLN for their own personal use.

And BTW, remember when Honor asked for permission to cross Andermani Space? Her mission was important and time was of the essence. What happens if a SLN ship or even its freighters has to cross someone else's space because time is of the essence? Should a freighter add weeks to their delivery schedule now? Will they?

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The actual demand was "Any unit of the SLN". A TUFT ship taken up as a fleet train ship probably doesn't fall under that designation -- but one that's been turned into a podlayer would.

But frankly what legitimate reason would the League Navy have to start operating a commandeered League freighter beyond the League's own member system?

If they're trying to use it to do an end run around the prohibition then it probably does deserve to be treated like a violator of said prohibition... (And if they're not trying to do an end run around them I'm at a bit of a loss for why navy officers would now be operating a League freighter taken up into navy service out beyond the borders of the League)

Well, to protect SLN assets. If the SLN is rebuilding, then there will be a lot of trade with their Merchant Marine. I don't think the SL will trust trade secrets and technology to any old freighter. And simply not to a freighter with a foreign registry.

So, what does the SL do? Who is to say where they get certain important parts and hardware made. Who is also to say if any of these splintered states will want to continue their business relationship with the SL out of economic reasons. It happens right here on Earth. Tensions between the US and Russia (and other foreign countries/enemies) have not stopped certain business arrangements and agreements from going on. Both parties may wish to continue. It is like slapping your face to spite your nose.

So, out of a need for what is now a very limited supply of freighters, period, SL registry freighters may be commandeered by the SLN for their own personal use.

And BTW, remember when Honor asked for permission to cross Andermani Space? Her mission was important and time was of the essence. What happens if a SLN ship or even its freighters has to cross someone else's space because time is of the essence? Should a freighter add weeks to their delivery schedule now? Will they?

Jonathan_S wrote:The SLN isn't supposed to have any assets outside of member systems anymore -- so they shouldn't need a TUFT ship to covertly protect extra-territorial assets.

Jonathan_S wrote:They're free to have their ships in member systems -- they're only forbidden from having them in non-member systems. (And territorial space only exists within normal space, not within hyper, so it wouldn't matter if traveling from member A to member B happens to pass near non-member C -- as long as the ships stayed in hyper)

Jonathan_S wrote:So, if they're getting those things made in League member systems then there's no restriction against using TUFT freighters, or even SLN escort ships, to protect the material in transit from one member system to another.

But if they're buying important parts and hardware from non-members then, well, by definition they've already trusted that non-member state with those secrets. So they might as well trust them to also securely transport that parts or hardware into League space -- because, yeah, under the current situation the SLN isn't allowed to send units to non-member systems so they wouldn't be able to provide escort or naval transport of material purchases or make in a non-member's system.

Brigade XO wrote:With the Mandarins in custody and the SL in the process of putting together a new Government Document, any TUFT units should have already been turned back to their owners.

I can think of a few excepting but those should be relatively short term........There may be a lot of equipment (and weapons) of the SLN which are in places where OFS and FF now have to vacate. So, a TUFT probably would fit /work as it is NOT armed and it is under "charger" as a transport to SLN......yeah, the GA might not be happy with SLN getting all that stuff including weapons back inside the League 2.0 but would be more unhappy with a local government or independent contractor looting former SLN warehouses and selling the stuff off.

Merchant shipping inside the old League was quite often on Manticore Flagged merchant shipping. Lot of reasons but there was a lot of it, they got preferential rates on SEM Junction transits and probably got a break on wormhole bridges like Junker-Idaho. That and in general the MMM seems to have a great reputation of meeting schedules, not playing games with cargos and meeting contracts. Part of that may have been from what we see as a healthy portion of the captains and crews being former RMN and having Manticorian standards to work to. This is all the reason that Lacoon I was such a hammer to the economy of the League in general, League Members in particular and would be badly damaging SL flagged ships that depended on a SEM wormhole for some portion of it's route.
The Transtellars are a differnt discussion as most are probably not flagged (although any SL ownership might be buried in paperwork of shell corporations, but my take is most Transtellars continued to use Juntion routing. Loss or the ability of a SL flagged ship to use the Junction coupled with the withdrawal of ALL MMM shipping from the League is what drove the TUFT call up - difficult to have military goods shipped on ships that are no longer available and we are not told of SLN did any commandeering of SL Merchant shipping versus ships that are already under contract to be called up under TUFT .
Grabbing civilian merchants flagged from Outside the League is really iffy-more than iffy- since essentialy confiscating merchant shipping from non-beligernt nations FOR USE BY YOUR SIDE IN AN UNDECLARED WAR is not considered legal activity--also could be considered piracy.

Wiki wrote:HOME » ARTICLES HISTORY AND PROFILE

The Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands is home to the largest collections of World War II underwater plane wrecks in the world.

-snip-

At the end of WWII, around 150 American airplanes, all veterans of the Pacific war, were dumped in the lagoon of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands. A master diver and superb underwater photographer, Brandi Mueller has dived to depths of 120 feet to capture rare images of these forgotten war birds, many looking as if they could still take off and return to the war-torn skies at any moment.

Atolls are ring islands that enclose a saltwater lagoon. They are formed by coral reefs that built up around a former island that has since disappeared over millions of years due to erosion. Flat and skinny islands of sand are left behind, usually with sheer walls on the ocean side and a protected lagoonal area fed by tidal influxes on the inside.

For Kwajalein this means spectacular walls dropping hundreds of metres right offshore with untouched, healthy corals and lots of pelagic life, and a lagoon of around 20 to 40 metres deep with sporadic coral heads and, thanks to World War II, copious wrecks including American and Japanese warships and planes.

World War II
The lagoon of Kwajalein Atoll is the resting place for a huge concentration of Japanese and American WWII wrecks, including more than 25 ships and over 160 planes. The Japanese took over and colonised the Marshalls in 1914 and used Kwajalein as an important military defence base during WWII. In early 1944 American forces invaded Kwajalein, bombarding and destroying all of the Japanese aircraft and sinking many ships.

When the war ended, the Americans were faced with the question of how to get their excess material back, including around 150 planes. It was decided it would be cheaper to get rid of the planes than to bring them back on ships, so they were simply pushed off the back of barges in the lagoon near Roi half a dozen square kilometres. These planes can be found at both deep and shallow diving depths, most around 30 metres, and in one area as many as 13 planes can be seen on a single dive.

The Airplane Graveyard has been called the most extensive collection of American WWII planes in one place. You’ll find Corsairs, Wildcats, a Helldiver, Avengers, Dauntless, PBJ-IH Mitchells, and more. Most of them sit on the sandy bottom looking like they have just landed, while others are nose down, upside down and in all other directions. There is also a Japanese Zero, which likely went down as a result of an accident while it was trying to take off or land before the end of the war.

Jonathan_S wrote:Also Lend Lease material that made it to the end of the war was often destroyed rather than returned or retained (retaining it would require buying it)

Of course some of this destruction was due to the very rapid advancement of technology during WWII -- they were already obsolescent, at best, and they had more than they'd ever need back in the States already.

There were stories that right after the war the US was auctioning off surplus aircraft for so little it was sometimes less than the retail cost of the fuel sitting in their tanks!


So I can see why they'd be unwilling to spend very much getting more home -- it'd be very easy to spend more getting the plane back than you'd recover from surplusing it -- and it was destined for surplus or scrap anyway.



Now the League is in a slightly different position -- they don't have the equivalent of aircraft. And their missiles are as good and anybody outside the GAs. So they wouldn't want to abandon those in place if they have depots outside of League member systems. However, I'm sure they could work something out with Honor to keep those military supplies protected until they can be shipped back to the League.
That might be a special exception to keep some SLN ships there keeping an eye on the depot - it might be that the GA sends a watchdog squadron over to secure it - or it might be Manticore simply sends enough of its idled freighters to haul everything away before the deadline; but it is to neither side's benefit to potentially allow those weapons to disappear into the black market; so as I said I'm sure they'd work something out.

cthia wrote:I don't doubt that, in fact I agree. Responsible adults can work things out. It is the one time that it doesn't work out that can kick-start a war. Like when the RMN was operating in Andermani Space. It is that irresponsible adult that causes a problem.

Stupidity is the best character trait to have when one wants to screw up by the numbers.