Commerce raiding

Contained in one of the threads currently trending on this page, I suggested that the Peeps could have deployed their surplus of battleships to wage a new type of war of attrition against the RMN’s components by hassling their far fewer systems. The hotter the node the fewer the spares. Commerce raiding would be included in that strategy.

It won't matter that some ships can run away from them. At the end of the day. They also can't stand and fight. The base will be destroyed. And a crafty CO can surprise smaller ships with cold nodes anyway.

But yeah, why sit on their surplus of BBs.


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tlb wrote:Interesting as that may be, I am more interested in your statement that ALL battleships in Haven's Navy at the start of the war are at least a century old. If so I do not understand how they were sent to find more modern ships in Operation Dagger.

House of Steel.

I will build my house of steel story.

1850: About 6 pages in... RHN hid military budgets and took 10-->15 years till everyone figured out what they were building and everyone found out in 1846 when they attacked and annexed 11 star nations.

So, 1846-10->15 = ~1830 is the YOUNGEST they could possible have said design if brand spanking new.

Were they building the design before this? Probably. Said nothing about them being a NEW design, just building LARGE numbers of battleships being hidden in the budget(we know they have 300 of them by opening of 1st Havenite war). How this usually happens is that the program is legit to begin with but the increase $$$ = MORE of them than everyone else thinks is happening.

BUT: We also know they are ~about 100 years old from Flag in Exile. Grayson V? battle was 1912? 1912-1830 is 80ish years So, add a bit for start up of the serialized production and we are looking at minimum 5-->10 years previous to this so ~90 years old design which is ~close enough to 100 years old and RHN probably bought the tech off the SLN to begin with so... ~100 years old.

In either case, the latest they could have been designed was 1830, designed BEFORE the advent of the laserhead(1870++). So sidewalls will be battleship grade of ~early 1800's, but physical armmor of the early 1800's as well. We can assume they upgraded the PDLC, CM's and probably ECM, but will still be poor missile defense in total numbers.

The Royal Winton class Drednaught 5.8Mton has 20M, 12CM, 28PD, so 4.5M ton BB would be ~10CM?,20PD? Maybe it was 12 as told in Flag in Exile. I forget exact numbers told in the story. Old memory says all the BB's were finished being built BEFORE the advent of the laserhead. Somewhere in there they would upgrade the ships. One would think physical armor that can protect against GRASER ship based fire would be good enough for LASERHEAD fire as well.

So, with enough of them, why could they not take on BC's etc? Quantity still has a quality all its own. And from the authors perspective a nice healthy death count.

~Good enough for ~~100 year old design which I am sure has had an upgrade cycle thrown in there somewhere.

Brigade XO wrote: One question would be how old are the Havenit BBs? If they are 50 to 100 years old, they may be fine for a system defense roll against raiders and certainly to hammer insurgents in systems Haven had captured but what is the value of one or even two BB in commerce raiding? You can only chase one ship at a time with one battleship and a convoy of two fighters with a DD escort can have the two merchants scatter as the DD presents a (minor) threat the BB has to deal with.

Jayne's had an initial estimated service date of 1823 PD for the Triumphant-class (beginning to replace the older Fouchart-class; which we never saw in the books) - so the base design is over 80 years old at the start of the first war. However we don't know how long they remained in production, so the average age of them might be a decade or three younger.

And Jayne's also says "Since its introduction, the Triumphant has gone through four major revision cycles, and current construction is the Flight IV model, with substantially upgraded defensive fire control systems."

And even the base design isn't all that much older than the RMN's 1846 PD Royal Winton-class DN or 1848 PD Samothrace-class SD and those were front line units for the RMN during the 1st war. (And at least, unlikely the older wallers, they were a missile combat oriented design -- and with a very heavy throw weight for their tonnage. Though relatively light armor, and despite relying more on active missile defense simply not being as tough a missile target as their newer larger brethren)

tlb wrote:There were political considerations to any use of the BB's, which is one reason that they were not much used. More important is that Manticore commerce was mainly with the Solarian League or Silesia. It is not clear, at the start of the war, that it would be acceptable to the League to attack in their territory. Particularly since the ships there were mainly carrying League cargos.

That still leaves convoys going to allied systems, forward deployed pickets and once war started recently captured systems. Haven can ignore all commerce with the League and still hurt the SKM's economy and force the RMN to escort their convoys with wallers.

So that leaves Silesia and throughout the war there were only two major thrusts into Silesia. There are three problems. The first is that Silesia is very far away from Haven, on the other side of Manticore with no wormholes that could help them cover the distance.

Taking away the BB's from rear security doesn't really affect the main war effort, deploying SD's or DN's might be problematic but BB's are not exactly considered frontline units.

The next is that Silesia may provide income to Manticore, but is not absolutely necessary to Manticore's economy.

The SKM is at war, it may not be absolutely necessary but in one of the books it was pointed out as one of the larger markets for the SKM's industrial goods so it would most definitely be a worthy target.

The last is that Manticore could easily send patrols into Silesia using its wormholes.

And that is the point. Using BB's to force the RMN to patrol Silesia with dreadnoughts.

As discussed in SLN circles, commerce raiding is mainly a strategy of weakness. If there is a force advantage, then attack the opponents force, A better use for BB's is what Haven tried with Stalking Horse, send them to systems that were not guarded by SD's or DN's.

There were 374 BB's at start of war, assuming that 20% were down for refit that leads ~300 BB's in active service. Slicing off 80 for commerce raiding in Silesia and allied territory still leaves 220 BB's for defence of the more important rear systems and offensive operations against targets without wallers.

Jonathan_S wrote:Some of it may be their BB's sluggish acceleration; they're 10% slower than even a BC; and thus have relatively low overtake against fast freighters.

They won't go in alone, raiding with a task group composed of 2-4 BB's, an equal number of CA's and DD's.

Plus even early war you could counter them with having a few of the freighter haul along pods to drop for the escorts. Even a pair of BBs is going to be hurting if the cruisers escorting a convoy dump a dozen missile pods into their face.

Again, the BB's wont be deployed alone, they will have lighter ships with them. More importantly this would force the RMN to sent merchant ships with missile pods instead of cargo's which costs them money, eats away in their missile pod supply right as they need it most.

And to tlb's point, even if the League didn't object to raiding Manticoran commerce within their borders, outside of fleet train convoys, most of Manticore's commerce went straight through the Junction -- so ships attempting to raid it need to travel many months through hyperspace just to get to the far termini where the freighter traffic pops out to begin it's hyperspace trips.

Taking 40 BB's, 30-40 CA's and 40 DD's out of the war isn't going to collapse Haven's war effort, they wont really feel it but forcing manticore to divert a few squadrons of the wall for escort duties right as they are forced on the offensive seems like a worthy trade off.

I don't know if battleships were optimized for long range patrols like cruisers and BCs were. But even with ships designed for long range patrols pushing them that far from your maintenance, fuel, repair, and supply bases isn't easy. (And given Haven's internal political unrest if you'd pulled BBs to, say, supplement the one commerce raiding mission we know they pulled in Silesia you've got to come up with enough replacement force that potential rioters/insurrectionists remain deterred by the iron boot looming overhead)

Presumably the RHN has some form of a fleet train and more importantly they get to choose the time and place of the war so they can set up advance bases in one of the thousands of unoccupied out of the way systems. BB's that take damage are either sent home or if they cannot make it home are scuttled all without costing the RHN all that much in combat power.

Can you tell me what a BB can do to fight insurrections that a cruiser cannot do? If a system has the shipyard to be able to build warships of its own it likely will have a sizeable fleet presence, if it doesn't have the ability then a destroyer or two along with a dozen old style LAC's will do the trick just fine.

The other problem for Haven is that with the Junction Manticore can potentially exploit it extreme internal lines to cut loose DNs or SDs from home fleet, show up in the commerce raiding area and crush the BBs, then be back before Haven knows those ships were diverted (much less before they could warn the BBs about the wallers).

Diverting wallers to hunt down those BB's would still take time and that would accomplish the mission. The RMN would either have to deploy substantial wallers for the mission to flood the area or take a more gradual approach to the whole mission which would tie down the wallers for longer.

Jonathan_S wrote:Jayne's had an initial estimated service date of 1823 PD for the Triumphant-class

So, actual initial design is going to be around 1815. So, yea ~100 year old hull design anyways.

Jonathan_S wrote:And Jayne's also says "Since its introduction, the Triumphant has gone through four major revision cycles, and current construction is the Flight

One day I will get my hands on Jayne's SITS. I guess could order it, but if I was going to do that it should have been over a decade ago. I just can put $$$ to electronic version for anything--> Flat no. Give me paper.
Already have enough garbage digital only copies and trying to keep it organized....bah

Brigade XO wrote:In the time frame of the RH-Manticore wars the BBs don't seem to fit anybody's overall strategy except to suppress potential revolts. At least nobody has mentioned anybody else having BB or using them to do anything other than what Haven was doing. In the story line, Haven didn't park Dreadnaughts or SD in systems they only wanted to keep subdued so my thinking is that the BBs were impressive enough a deterrent as well as serve as the overall HQ and Power exercise the way the Hercules was used initially in Talbot sector. Really tough for restive locals to get at the ship which provides a reserve force for ground suppression as needed.
One question would be how old are the Havenit BBs? If they are 50 to 100 years old, they may be fine for a system defense roll against raiders and certainly to hammer insurgents in systems Haven had captured but what is the value of one or even two BB in commerce raiding?

Only Haven has battleships, so sending them to attack Allied supply convoys and SKM commerce means that the RMN has to answer with a equal unit which in their case is a DN as they don't have BB's.

I don't think there is that much of a difference between a DD, CL, BB and SD when the opponent has no warships to begin with. With the number of BB's in service the RHN can easily deploy 80 BB''s and screen for attacks on allied convoys and attack on SKM Merchant ships and still have over 220 BB's for sector QRF as well as offensive forces for attacks against Allied pickets without wallers.

You can only chase one ship at a time with one battleship and a convoy of two fighters with a DD escort can have the two merchants scatter as the DD presents a (minor) threat the BB has to deal with.

Sending an offensive force of 2-4 BB's, 2-4 CA's and 4-6 DD's to hit a convoy sends a message and the message is that reinforcing the escort forces with cruisers and destroyers is not enough. A BB may not be quite as fast as a BC or a CA or a CL or a DD but it sure is faster than your average merchant ship.

Relax wrote:The problem with commerce raiding in general is the ships required to do this DEMAND logistical support.

Fuel, yes, even in the Honorverse fuel is a problem. Maintenance parts. And here we are ~told the RHN is deficient. So, it is NOT just RHN has enough BC/CA/CL to raid commerce(they do), but how long are those ships legs? DO they have sufficient logistics support to know WHERE to go hunting? DO they have depot ships for spares? Here we are told RHN did Whole system replacement as their techs were not good enough to fix in place. We are also told they did not have many repair/depot ships for extended ops. This makes extended commerce raiding VERY difficult as your commerce raiders are spending FAR MORE time traveling to their hunting grounds than actually hunting.

For each inhabited system there may be a hundred or a thousand uninhabited systems which would mean that since Haven decides when the war starts that they can have predeployed spares, fuel, ammunition, consumables and build up some rudimentary maintenance facilities in those bases. BB's are expendable, if a ship suffers damage and cannot get home and cannot be repaired in a forward deployed base then it is scuttled and the RHN doesn't lose too much combat power.

tlb wrote:There were political considerations to any use of the BB's, which is one reason that they were not much used. More important is that Manticore commerce was mainly with the Solarian League or Silesia. It is not clear, at the start of the war, that it would be acceptable to the League to attack in their territory. Particularly since the ships there were mainly carrying League cargos.

So that leaves Silesia and throughout the war there were only two major thrusts into Silesia. There are three problems. The first is that Silesia is very far away from Haven, on the other side of Manticore with no wormholes that could help them cover the distance. The next is that Silesia may provide income to Manticore, but is not absolutely necessary to Manticore's economy. The last is that Manticore could easily send patrols into Silesia using its wormholes.

As discussed in SLN circles, commerce raiding is mainly a strategy of weakness. If there is a force advantage, then attack the opponents force, A better use for BB's is what Haven tried with Stalking Horse, send them to systems that were not guarded by SD's or DN's.

Additionally, Haven wanted to keep the Anderman Empire calm. Massive commerce raids using Battleships in Silesia would have added the Andermani to the Alliance very quickly.

Relax wrote:
WWI was NOT the first world war. 7 years war was first Global War and is the model for RMN/RHN conflict. Lots of commerce warfare in 7 years war by the way. Way back in 17th century. Just not sexy to read about as a USA citizen and was so long ago most do not. IN fact, USA calls it the French Indian war of all dumb things instead of what it REALLY was. World War Zero or 7 years war.

Actually, the 7 years war was kicked off by a young British Colonial militia officer in the Ohio valley by the name of George Washington - he attacked a French encampment on British claimed land in a dawn sneak attack. The French later counter attacked, capturing the young officer after his force ran out of ammunition and was surrounded. It seems he attacked a Diplomatic delegation (supposedly flying under a diplomatic flag, though Washington contests this) and killed the diplomats. Washington was given his parole, but forced to sign a parole document (in French) assuming blame for the attack, and blaming Britain for the escalation. Washington (not speaking or reading French), claimed he did not know 1) he has attacked Diplomats, and 2) that he signed a document taking 100% responsibility for the issue and had blamed Britain for the escalation. (This was the background for the story, "Washington cannot tell a lie").

He, of course returned to Virginia with his tail between his legs, gave a copy of the parole to his superiors, and recanted it's contents under questioning. His story believed (and confirmed by his surviving soldiers), He got a promotion, was claimed by the British to be a hero, and was sent as an adjunct to the British regular forces on their return assault, determined to remove the French from the Ohio.

Opps..

So George Washington started the first World War....