OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

Do forgive me for necroing this thread, but I still have a few questions that are nagging me, especially since this book and its climactic battle scenes will never really die. I suppose that is a result of the WH and us stragglers who keep hypering in to join the battle. LOL. Besides, my OCD likes to keep it in the family, you see.

But, first, a little bookeeping to add the latest discussions beginning here.

I am certain the following questions have already been discussed, but I didn't get the memos.

Question 1:

Why was Home Fleet so weak? Eighth Fleet was given all of the Apollo pods. Now, to my warped brain, that is not only irresponsible, it is unrealistic. The Home System is your most valuable asset, why does it not get priority, an allocation of your best missiles off the top?

Just two Apollo capable ships would have made a very big difference, even if only to ensure that D'Orville engages the enemy much sooner. Heck, D'Orville couldn't have made a poorer showing of Apollo than McKeon did.

I know that plot drove the decision, but in a way -- as far as the RMN's distribution of Apollo -- the MBS was uncovered because it was poorly defended in the calculus of what is available, especially considering that the MBS was actually inviting attack.

I keep bringing up the fact that the Havenites were operating under the assumption that Apollo was limited, and the fact that Home Fleet didn't have any of those godawful birds corroborates that fact.

Tourville and Chin had to be expecting Home Fleet to have some of those godawful missiles too. They had to be outright shocked when D'Orville didn't launch any; which, again, would have verified that they were indeed in short supply.

So Chin should have suspected that Honor's Alpha launch of a full third of her total pod loadout was no bluff.


Question 2:

Why didn't Home Fleet have a well rehearsed play to run in case Haven did exactly what it did? Isn't that what the wargames and Sims are about? In fact, Home Fleet is always portrayed as just as lackadaisical in its preparation as Elvis Santino.

"Well, I guess we'll just have to go out and meet them."

Let me put my bulletproof vest on before I come outside with this; I thought D'Orville should have been long since retired.

Home Fleet wasn't just weak in the firepower available to the RMN, but it was weak in strategy and tactics.


Question 3:

I seem to recall Kuzak berating herself for allowing her fleet to be mousetrapped. I guess for not seeing it coming. But if she had expected it, what could she have done to avoid it and still fight effectively?

cthia wrote:Why was Home Fleet so weak? Eighth Fleet was given all of the Apollo pods. Now, to my warped brain, that is not only irresponsible, it is unrealistic. The Home System is your most valuable asset, why does it not get an allocation of your best missiles off the top?

Eighth Fleet got Apollo first in order to throw Haven off balance, but note that Third and Eighth fleets were always considered part of Manticore's defense forces due to the wormhole connection. The Home System was due to get the Apollo System Defense variant "very soon". The point is simply that the planners did not realize that they were being irresponsible during the gap between Apollo's introduction and its widespread use.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Why was Home Fleet so weak? Eighth Fleet was given all of the Apollo pods. Now, to my warped brain, that is not only irresponsible, it is unrealistic. The Home System is your most valuable asset, why does it not get an allocation of your best missiles off the top?

Eighth Fleet got Apollo first in order to throw Haven off balance, but note that Third and Eighth fleets were always considered part of Manticore's defense forces due to the wormhole connection. The Home System was due to get the Apollo System Defense variant "very soon". The point is simply that the planners did not realize that they were being irresponsible during the gap between Apollo's introduction and its widespread use.

Thanks for reminding me about the schedule for the system defense variant, it was also brought up upstream and I had intended on commenting about it and including it as a part of question two, but I forgot.

Why didn't D'Orville have a well rehearsed plan, especially since there was going to be a lapse in Apollo coverage and especially since the MBS was inviting attack. Even daring attack.

cthia wrote:Why was Home Fleet so weak? Eighth Fleet was given all of the Apollo pods. Now, to my warped brain, that is not only irresponsible, it is unrealistic. The Home System is your most valuable asset, why does it not get an allocation of your best missiles off the top?

tlb wrote:Eighth Fleet got Apollo first in order to throw Haven off balance, but note that Third and Eighth fleets were always considered part of Manticore's defense forces due to the wormhole connection. The Home System was due to get the Apollo System Defense variant "very soon". The point is simply that the planners did not realize that they were being irresponsible during the gap between Apollo's introduction and its widespread use.

cthia wrote:Thanks for reminding me about the schedule for the system defense variant, it was also brought up upstream and I had intended on commenting about it and including it as a part of question two, but I forgot.

Why didn't D'Orville have a well rehearsed plan, especially since there was going to be a lapse in Apollo coverage and especially since the MBS was inviting attack. Even daring attack.

To be clear, I think D'Orville should have had Apollo pods; since the system defense variant was not available. That he could have fired them before Tourville was in control range for his missiles, instead of rushing to meet the incoming attackers. His force could then move out after Apollo had damaged Haven's ships.

I believe that Beowulf fired regular Apollo pods at the Solarians, since they had not been concentrating on making the system defense variant.

cthia wrote:Why didn't D'Orville have a well rehearsed plan, especially since there was going to be a lapse in Apollo coverage and especially since the MBS was inviting attack. Even daring attack.

He was struck by the Author's Hammer and forgot about it.

Though, to give him some credit, he may be executing just that. His force of 100 SDs (half pod-layers, half older) was sufficient to hold against Tourville's 250 for some time, until Third and Eight Fleets and the Lynx detachment transited from their current locations. If Honor had been closer to the terminus, he'd have been toast much sooner. He had no chance of taking the system with that force.

That Honor would have then been mousetrapped like Kuzak was between two forces was probably never expected. That is to say, a second attack by over 100 SD(P)s was probably never planned for. Lack of imagination? I don't know. Hindsight is 20-20, but attempting to predict isn't.

But I'd also say that Honor getting mousetrapped wouldn't have changed the outcome either. If Third and Eight Fleets had been that close to one another, within supporting range, Honor could take care of Chin's Fifth and drive her away, before moving on to deal with Tourville. With the forces that the Alliance had available to defend the MBS, Haven could only win if the Alliance commanders made several mistakes (which Kuzak did) and/or Honor was away.

That goes back to your question above: why wasn't the MBS defence reinforced before the Alliance offence was? My guess is it's a mix of politics as well as what they perceived of reality. Arming the MBS with Apollo defence would mean all the other partners in the Alliance would demand the same. Unlike in the first war, the discrepancy in industry between the MBS and the two other big partners was not that big. In fact, because of High Ridge, Grayson had a bigger fleet of SD(P)s than Manticore did! So one could argue that the Alliance could lose the MBS and still not lose the war. Also note how Theisman said that they could not hope to hold the system against a counter-attack: their objective was to keep it just long enough to force Queen / Empress Elizabeth to listen.

On the military reality side, the MBS wasn't made weaker by this choice. It was as strong as it was before Apollo existed. That didn't change. And Haven's fleet was growing by hundreds of ships, whether Apollo had existed or not. What changed wasn't the tactical situation of an attack on the system, but the strategic one. Theisman did a very good job of spelling it out for us when he talked to Pritchart about Operation Beatrice: they had a window of opportunity of winning if they risked everything, because soon that would close forever.

And we've discussed several times in this thread and others whether unveiling Apollo before the system defence versions were ready was wise. That's the same calculation here. The planners decided that keeping the RHN off-balance and diverting their hundreds of SD(P)s to defence as more important than doing that themselves. And hindsight.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And we've discussed several times in this thread and others whether unveiling Apollo before the system defence versions were ready was wise. That's the same calculation here. The planners decided that keeping the RHN off-balance and diverting their hundreds of SD(P)s to defence as more important than doing that themselves. And hindsight.

To be fair, the planners thought that the system defense variant would be available. The snags in their production were unforeseen. The difficulty arose after production problems were discovered; at that point, pods of regular Apollo missiles should have been made available to Home Fleet as a stopgap measure.

tlb wrote:To be fair, the planners thought that the system defense variant would be available. The snags in their production were unforeseen. The difficulty arose after production problems were discovered; at that point, pods of regular Apollo missiles should have been made available to Home Fleet as a stopgap measure.

Without Keyhole II in any of those ships, they probably thought it was better to just keep those pods with Honor and have Honor come through the terminus to the rescue. If she had been at the same distance as Third Fleet, she'd probably have transited first anyway.

Experience with Apollo without the Keyhole II control didn't come until Terekhov used them at Spindle over six months later. With the limited supply of ships with Keyhole II and the limited supply of Apollo, dividing the supply would make neither force as strong as it could possibly be. So they took a calculated risk and concentrated it.

And yes, it would have been a disaster for the MBS if Honor had been 1 week into a 4-week operation. Though it would also have been a disaster for Haven, because she'd basically sail unopposed into whatever system she went after. Short of the Capital Fleet, I don't think Haven had any concentration that could stop her, and Capital Fleet could only do that because she didn't have a supply train with plenty of reloads.

With the delays in interstellar communication, what happens if Tourville captures the MBS while Honor captures Haven?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:With the delays in interstellar communication, what happens if Tourville captures the MBS while Honor captures Haven?

The two sides switch places?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:To be fair, the planners thought that the system defense variant would be available. The snags in their production were unforeseen. The difficulty arose after production problems were discovered; at that point, pods of regular Apollo missiles should have been made available to Home Fleet as a stopgap measure.

Without Keyhole II in any of those ships, they probably thought it was better to just keep those pods with Honor and have Honor come through the terminus to the rescue. If she had been at the same distance as Third Fleet, she'd probably have transited first anyway.

Experience with Apollo without the Keyhole II control didn't come until Terekhov used them at Spindle over six months later. With the limited supply of ships with Keyhole II and the limited supply of Apollo, dividing the supply would make neither force as strong as it could possibly be. So they took a calculated risk and concentrated it.

And yes, it would have been a disaster for the MBS if Honor had been 1 week into a 4-week operation. Though it would also have been a disaster for Haven, because she'd basically sail unopposed into whatever system she went after. Short of the Capital Fleet, I don't think Haven had any concentration that could stop her, and Capital Fleet could only do that because she didn't have a supply train with plenty of reloads.

With the delays in interstellar communication, what happens if Tourville captures the MBS while Honor captures Haven?

It was almost disastrous that she was so far away from the junction, which I asked myself why she was risking operating so far away from it. As I recall textev, Honor was the only officer in Manticoran uniform who would've guessed that Haven would roll the dice that way.

I didn't know that Eighth Fleet was considered a part of Home Fleet as stated upstream. Is there textev on that?

At any rate, just a couple of Keyhole II capable ships for Home Fleet would have been good.

Another question. Didn't D'Orville have the range advantage on Tourville? Couldn't D'Orville have chosen an attack profile which kept the range open as long as possible? But I suppose that would have opened up the possibility of exposing the planet.

I also have no clue where the forts are during the engagement. Why couldn't the Forts have fired immediately? Then Tourville wouldn't have been able to roll pods. I guess there were no Forts around the planet that could have moved further out towards the enemy.

cthia wrote:I didn't know that Eighth Fleet was considered a part of Home Fleet as stated upstream. Is there textev on that?

Please note that Eighth Fleet is NOT a part of Home Fleet (I said they were part of the defense forces, not specifically that they were part of Home Fleet); but was always intended to serve as a backup reserve for Home Fleet. That has been stated a number of times, but here is one from chapter 44 of At All Costs:

"Under the circumstances, Admiral Khumalo felt he had no option but to request immediate reinforcement. Since it's possible Terekhov, or Khumalo, or both of them may find themselves in a shooting incident with Solarian units, the Admiralty felt it had no option but to dispatch a significant reinforcement from Home Fleet. Those units are already on their way to Monica.
"Obviously, all of these moves have implications for us. The most immediate one is that Home Fleet is now going to be understrength, and one of the functions of Eighth Fleet, like Third Fleet, is to serve as a ready reserve for Home Fleet. There's also the possibility that the Star Kingdom is about to find itself engaged against Solarian units, and no one is prepared to predict the possible ramifications of that.
"Because the entire strategic situation's suddenly been thrown into such a state of flux, Admiralty House has ordered the temporary stand down of Operation Sanskrit. For now, we're postponing the execution date by three weeks. That should give us time to receive dispatches from Terekhov or Khumalo from Monica. Hopefully, those dispatches will confirm that Terekhov was either wrong or that he and Khumalo have managed to defuse the situation. In either of those cases, Sanskrit will be reactivated, although we'll probably face some delay because of our need to factor in intelligence on any changes which may occur in the meantime."