What if…. HH02 never happened?

What if…. HH02 never happened?

What would have happened if the events of HH02 never happened – specifically the Masadan attacks on Grayson in the Book?

Suppose Haven talks the powers in control of Masada out of the assaults on Grayson see in HH02 (or backs a more moderate group and overthrows the old, conservative guard to get the same understanding).

Honor's convoy delivers the goods and diplomatic party, leaves to their next stops, returns, grabs the diplomats, and returns home unmolested (except the RMN female sailors' dignities). The Diplomats get a so-so treaty out of a Grayson with no reason to change their culture and no interest in other people's problems. The Maccabees forment turmoil in the background political debates, emphasizing seemingly prudent concerns against firm allying with Manticore, yet take no action to overthrow the government... yet

Grayson eyes Manticore with wary eyes, Manticore has been in the same neighborhood as Grayson for centuries, but has ignored it's backwards neighbor and refused to give technical aide or trade due to it's "regressive" cultural views and backward economy until recently. The Maccabees continually stress this in political debates, keeping the majority of Grayson trepidatious about accepting Manticore's gifts... and what their consequences would be.

At this time, Haven also sends a diplomatic mission and gifts industrial hardware - and light warships - to Grayson, further pushing Grayson away from a tight alliance with Manticore. Haven asks nothing, but whispers about neutrality.

Meanwhile, Haven reinforces the Masadan navy with a handful of CAs, DDs and LACS to completely replace their fleet with modern PRN hardware, while upgrading the planet's orbital space infrastructure to a fleet base before 1905. In return, Haven promises Masada the Yeltsin system as a prize for their assistance in the opening strikes against Manticore in 1905, and secretly moves their main assault fleet to Masada on the eve of the war.

The rest of the war prep happens identically as the beginning of HH03, with the exception of and Masada Fleetbase and the main Havenite fleet basing out of there - and Grayson not being a full partner in the alliance and not allowing their system to be used as a staging ground due to internal politics and mistrust of Manticore's intentions.

Given this change, how would (or could) the 1st Havenite war have gone?

Everything that happened at 2nd Yeltsin or is that 3rd Yeltsin battle? happened off screen in SVW and the ONLY difference if Grayson went to Haven would be that the off screen component would happen at say Alizon or Zanzibar instead.

Nothing changes.

Relax wrote:Everything that happened at 2nd Yeltsin or is that 3rd Yeltsin battle? happened off screen in SVW and the ONLY difference if Grayson went to Haven would be that the off screen component would happen at say Alizon or Zanzibar instead.

Nothing changes.

You don't think Haven would have tried a stab directly at Manticore instead of trying to snip at the smaller fleet at Grayson?

Theemile wrote:You don't think Haven would have tried a stab directly at Manticore instead of trying to snip at the smaller fleet at Grayson?

Probably not.

Grayson/Masada just aren't enough at that point in time to tilt the balance much. Haven is still facing the first serious naval threat to their expansion. They're still wedded to a concept of keeping a significant portion of their fleet back protecting major systems. And I suspect that having a closer fleet base still wouldn't give them the appetite to start the war with an all out attack on the Manticore Binary System.

OTOH without the fights against Madrigal and Fearless Haven wouldn't have had quite so many indications that Manticore had a significant edge in missile combat, on a ton for ton basis. Withouth those cautionary notes they might have been feeling a bit more agressive.

Still, keep in mind that (from what we were later told) I'm reasonably sure Third Yeltsin was already the largest naval battle had ever fought in the history of the Honorverse (by far). At least if counting number and power of DNs/SDs (with an estimated total of around 24 battle squadrons).

That was already a leap into the unknown.
But even as much of a risk as that was it was still, ultimately, something that Haven could recover from if it went badly; even if it went catastrophically. Say, if Manticore had some nasty surprise/trick that let them decisively win (oh, I don't know, like towed missile pods )

Those type of surprises are usually most effective the first time they're revealed; before you have a chance to develop tactics or technology to counter them. But if you threw most of your fleet at the MBS and lose thanks to running into a surprise for the first time then you've likely lost the war unless you were lucky enough to at least force the victory to be Pyric for Manticore. And even if you win the losses are going to be vast.

Even setting aside the unknowns, and being willing to accept the risk of uncovering your vital areas in order to mass a sufficiently large fleet for a (hopefully) decisive surprise attack, it's hard to steel yourself to go from peacetime to that kind of cataclysmic battle and the losses it'll entail.

Something about how they are concentrated in time makes it harder to accept than those losses spread over years of war -- even if the single massive battle would (in all likelihood) have fewer casualties than several years worth of smaller battles.


So, no, on balance I don't see Haven getting their forward base at Masada, and maneuvering Grayson into neutrality, radically changing their war strategy.

At the time, who other than Manticore were major impediments to Haven's continued expansion? The Solarian League was not knocking on either of their doors, Haven had a large number of system within it's direct control and Manticore really didn't have any others. Basilisk, with the then current political situation on Manticore, was little more than a not-so-useful planet that happened to be at a terminus

The SL wouldn't have known anything about a war between Haven and Manticore till the information came though to Beowulf and, as we saw what what did happen, the SL didn't get involved beyond bending to Manticore's diplomatic push to embargo weapons etc to Haven. SLN (or rather OFS) didn't come offering or (that we have been told) "Help" to Manticore.

IF Haven had used Masada as a base, they wouldn't have had to actually put the entire attack force within the system with Masada, they could have chosen a point in space well outside the system as a marshaling point for PRN and kept good security on it.
Possibly the largest concern could have been anyone with enough penetration or just observation capability within the Haven "Republic" to notice 1st that a significant portion of PRH had gone missing for other than bolstering it's forces at the systems it had taken over. They would have had to run exercises and drills but, again, in the Honorverse a lot of that is done electronically and or in an otherwise unoccupied system where nobody is likely to go. Must be a few of those near Messed.

Hitting the Manticore Binary System with a massive attack force (in two pieces for Manticore A and B) and dropping a separate smaller attack to capture and secure the Junction at the same time- would have cut off Manticore from immediate successful response and return by most of RMN out at the various terminii so reinforcement would be limited to coming from widely spread areas with very little in the way of coordination- and all of that through hyperspace.

We have been told repeatedly that a major fear of PRH is uprisings in the systems they have subjugated and so they keep a lot of Navy deployed to suppress and/or intimidate people or groups that would be looking to throw them out. How many PRN ships are actually deployed on that kind of mission and how exposed do the Peeps feel if they take even half those ships and assign them to an invasion of Manticore? You have to ask yourself how well- if at all- have various potential revolutionary groups on those subjugated systems are talking to others in other systems and how long it would take any number of them from 1st noticing that the Naval component of their oppressors has shrunk, particularly if the Peeps ground forces/police are still at strength. It seems not to take more and a destroyer or cruiser to hammer a planet with KEWs once fighting comes out in the open. And a Peep battleship and a destroyer or two should be able to deal with that. Besides, we don't ever hear of any pirates or actual revolutionary or mercenary starships inside of Haven's territory, so it's not like they have to fend off warmed warships.

So if Haven counts RMN warships plus forts and sends it's fleets from "near" Masada to hit the two systems and the Junction at essentially the same time, they PROBABLY don't have to worry about somebody else attacking them in the same time frame but do have to strike hardest at Manticore itself. If they are successful, OFS/SL isn't likely to interfere with this Neo-Barb fight.

Yeah, there would be a lot of planning and trying to organize passive sensors to track Home Fleet etc so possibly using non-Haven flagged merchant shipping to gather that and then burst transmit to the Attack fleets when the arrive to pinpoint the mobile defenses like portions of Home Fleet- but it could work. And they would have to commit a significant portion of the Haven fleet to do it because attacking and not capturing Manticore and the Queen quickly could get really ugly really quickly.

Theemile wrote:

Relax wrote:

Nothing changes.

You don't think Haven would have tried a stab directly at Manticore instead of trying to snip at the smaller fleet at Grayson?

<<< Cough Wheeeze... COUGH ... P-L-O-T Cough >>>

Maybe I am missing something here but Grayson/Masada are not the only allies super close to Manticore at which to have small fleet to bounce by an early strike by Haven. Hrmm, last I checked there were several other allies nice and close and all had Manticoran detachments at them where the Peeps were swatted, smashed, and captured due to intelligence coup by Sarnow and a certain nameless protagonist.

In fact, the battle was completely off screen and was only relevant for what happened in later books.

EDIT: As for smashing Manticore direct: They did not believe they could do it. At the time, Manticore had a LOT Of forts in orbit + mobile forces and before the advent of missile pods, each of those forts are worth multiple squadrons of SD's. ??? Total personnel in those forts was? 250,000? I forget which book says how many personnel were freed up... so old memory...

SD at the time had ~6500. Forts: No hyper generator, no hydroponics, no compensator, no marines, and maybe no on mount local control personnel as well, but would require higher numbers of constant on duty personnel I would think, so instead of say 3 rotations and a 4th cobbled together a fort would require 4 full time duty rotations of personnel. To top it off, a fort should be built with far higher margins for reliability due to on station time and gargantuan redundancy reducing maintenance personnel or said maintenance personnel would be better off being shuttled from the orbital infrastructure. I can't see there being more than 3000-->4000 personnel per fort and frankly I think that is high due to the above reasoning. All that to say:

~250,000/(3000-->4000) = ~70 forts
Each fort worth at least 8 SD. New forts were said to equal roughly 2 squadrons of Pod Layers? Right? So my 1 squadron is a VERY conservative estimate for equivalence.

RMN Forts >> 500SD-->1000 Peep SD minimum.

Haven to ONLY take on the forts would require greater SD strength than their entire navy had at the time. Even if they threw in every BB as well.

IF Haven had believed, capital smash and grab option #1 was viable, they would have done so directly without pussy footing around with minor utterly inconsequential "neutral" neobarbs on a toxic planet. One could make an argument that more than half those forts are at the Junction...

Haven specialized in well planned surprise coup de mains executed with overwhelming force. Often using q-ships or other tricks to get forces where they were unexpected.

Until Manticore. Which is a plot device. David has a weak in-universe explanation, but I find it unconvincing. I understand why, because either Haven wins and it’s battlestar glactica for the next books or Haven loses and the rest of the next 4 books are the shattered remants of the RMN trying to rebuild before they come back.

But if you look at this, the issue is that Haven has to win fast or the strong possibility exists that a SL fleet will show up to wrap the SKM in the warm blanket of whatever the hell terms Beowulf negotiated.

Whatever terms those are, they won’t include executing all the nobles and their families. Which is the kind of thing the Peeps do. So if the alternative is becoming a client of the SL or getting your navy destroyed and you and your family executed, I think I know what the SKM leadership will go for.

And, due to the fact that the SL allows members to negotiate with foreign governments and have their own foreign policy, the terms might not be too bad. Like the SKM joins Beowulf and Beowulf invites Battle Fleet detachment, that was ‘coincidentally’ playing a courtesy call on Beowulf, to go visit their new planets and help them out with their neo-barb problem by scaring off the neo-barbs. For which the Admiral will be generously rewarded.

It really doesn’t matter if it’s a single batron or a 200 ship fleet, does Haven want to start a war with the SL?

You'r right that the situation as it played out is Plot Device.

On the other hand, I can't recall any of the local area (in hyperdrive terms) systems had all that much as far as warships larger than BC or perhaps a DN but enough DD though CA to keep raiders from thinking about, well, raiding. Remember that Manticore was very much into commerce protection and it wasn't the mess in Silesia that got all the attention.

We were given a couple of looks - later in the series- of how Haven attacked San Martin. San Martin was not a pushover but (and there were reasons given, mostly political I think) the RMN could not get involved. The best Manticore could do was deny Haven the use of the wormhole and station RMN ships at the San Martin end of the wormhole to keep have off it at the time.

We also don't know how tied together, at the time, with treaty and alliance agreements Manticore and Beowulf were other than the primarily commercial ones with the Sigma Draconis end of that wormhole. Nothing about any mutual defense of planetary systems for example. Of course, Beowulf is a founding member of the SL and the SLN is a big stick to add depth to potential defense of the wormhole terminus as long as the potential attacker doesn't decide that if there is no actual SLN warship presence at the terminus they might get away with it...unlike as that kind of thinking would be. The League has a habit of showing up -if sometimes slowly- with massive overkill and then "enforcing" the terms it wants on people who have not already made lucrative arrangements before hand.

A problem for Haven is that continuing to pick off systems to engulf Manticore keeps forcing the growth of the Navy in directions of putting more and more resources into local "security" forces to suppress their aquistions's populations ideas about doing more than secretly grumble about the occupying force. Things like building Battleships to be massive signs of intimidation along with the lighter warships and secret police and occupation troops. Lots of occupation troops and police.

Theemile wrote:The Diplomats get a so-so treaty out of a Grayson with no reason to change their culture and no interest in other people's problems. The Maccabees forment turmoil in the background political debates, emphasizing seemingly prudent concerns against firm allying with Manticore, yet take no action to overthrow the government... yet

Grayson eyes Manticore with wary eyes, Manticore has been in the same neighborhood as Grayson for centuries, but has ignored it's backwards neighbor and refused to give technical aide or trade due to it's "regressive" cultural views and backward economy until recently. The Maccabees continually stress this in political debates, keeping the majority of Grayson trepidatious about accepting Manticore's gifts... and what their consequences would be.

But is this likely, given:

Meanwhile, Haven reinforces the Masadan navy with a handful of CAs, DDs and LACS to completely replace their fleet with modern PRN hardware, while upgrading the planet's orbital space infrastructure to a fleet base before 1905. In return, Haven promises Masada the Yeltsin system as a prize for their assistance in the opening strikes against Manticore in 1905, and secretly moves their main assault fleet to Masada on the eve of the war.

Even if the Grayson intelligence can't divine what Haven promised the Elders on Masada (and I think they would, because those Elders would stupidly blab), they would pick up on the expansion of the navy and the availability of hardware. They would put two and two together. And even if Haven had told Masada not to use those ships against Grayson, do you think a) Grayson could take that chance abd b) Masada really wouldn't?

So in this scenario, the Graysons would realise that they'd been painted into a corner. Yes, the Maccabeans would be pushing their policy as a Fifth Column as you stated, but the rest of the Steadholders would realise that their situation was in peril. They may have a distaste for Manticore, but Manticore at that point would be the lesser of three evils, given that neutrality was not an option.

The smart steadholders would have extracted more from Manticore when they had a stronger negotiating hand, when they weren't in peril and Manticore was the supplicant one. If they instead have to go back and ask for a treaty of alliance and protection, they'd be the supplicant ones.