cthia wrote:That is not what I am proposing. I am proposing moving the forts because the RMN unveiled the effectiveness of Apollo to the RHN, thus, inviting attack. Daring attack.
The notion that the RMN did not realize how effective Apollo was may be true. As a matter of fact, it
was true according to textev. But it didn't apply as much to the jeune ecole.

If it worked as intended, I bet Sonja and Honor were not surprised one damn bit at how effective it turned out to be.
How effective they are and how the Havenites react to that are two very different things. I'd think that Honor and White Haven should have come to the correct conclusion that this was a game-changer event, akin to the unveiling of the MDMs during Buttercup (White Haven because he was there at the pointy end of Buttercup, so he should've realised the similarities). But only Honor might consider what the Havenites do after this, not Sonja and not White Haven.
Even then, we can temper with the fact that it
shouldn't have been that much of a game changer. Apollo made the MDMs more effective at longer range and deadlier at shorter, but the Havenites could still fire back massive salvos. As previously discussed, any MDM can have effectively unlimited range if one accepts a ballistic phase. And the RHN had a bigger construction and bigger fleet, so those could negate the advantages of Apollo. Given time, Shannon would have thought of something. In fact, you've given one idea: FTL jamming.
That's very unlike the MDMs: against the PN and later against the SLN, the Alliance SDs outranged 6:1, outgunned at least 15:1, and would have zero trouble staying out of counter-fire range. As Tom Caparelli put to Queen Elizabeth, "the Peeps have just lost the war" and "we'll be dictating terms in orbit above Nouveau Paris in six months."
We have no evidence that even Honor thought this was possible. It doesn't look like she did, because she had Eighth Fleet away from the terminus when this arrived. And as I said above, if they had an inkling this was, the first thing they'd have done would be to move Third and Eighth Fleets to better supporting positions in the MBS, not leave them on the other side of the Junction and needing to transit one SD every 3 minutes. That alone means the ~90 SDs would need a minimum of 4.5 hours to arrive!
So if no one in the Alliance strategy thought it was possible, why would they move the forts?
Regardless! The Havenites that were on the receiving end of its unveiling damn sure appreciated it! And the RMN should have appreciated what it did after it was unveiled. Did they really think someone as bright as Theisman would give them the time to properly fit that suit... of armor?
Why does a redeployment of assets by the Admiralty in the MBS itself rub people the wrong way. The Admiralty made a living out of juggling his forces all over the galaxy. Why not within the MBS?
We can argue whether the Alliance should have thought of this. The fact is that it doesn't look like they did. That means the fault wasn't in the proper disposition of assets to counter the threat they expected; it was in the improper evaluation of the threat scenario in the first place. So I don't see the point in discussing castling or any other such manoeuvre.
Again, after letting Apollo out of the bag, the MBS was inviting and daring attack. And Home Fleet was weak in firepower and tactics.
Redeploy because Apollo literally created a Case Zulu!
And hindsight was not needed to see that.
I don't think you can make this statement, because they clearly didn't see it. As I've just written above, there are mitigating circumstances that probably did cloud their assessment of how the Havenites would respond.
Not to mention they may have been expecting a response like Operation Hassan and the Cromarty Assassination, which was fresh on their minds because of the attempted assassination of Queen Berry.