Are Tincans and CL's obsolete to "modern" fleets?

Brigade XO wrote:Manticore, in particular, plus Haven and then Grayson have a number of both older DD/CL/CA (more DDs) and were building the more modern but not fully upgraded DD/CAs (At least RMN and GSN. Manticore and the IAN also have a number of legacy ships in Silesia.

At this point, the non-dual drive missile lighter ships have and will continue to have a roll in the commerce protection and anti-piracy patrols for quite some time. They will also continue to be adequate 2nd tier/interior lines patrol and protection ships. If you need something to either scare off pirates or engage your garden variety pirate (converted merchant) then even your older RMN light ships still in service will fill the bill. Going up against something like a SLN CA or BC is another discussion entirely but if Kingsford (or some OFS Admiral gone rogue) puts a mixed squadron of DD/CA/BCs into Silesia you will have to call for help anyway.

I very much doubt that SEM is going to take any of its smaller/older ships out of commission for 5 to 10 years. At this point they are not yet producing ANY replacements and would need to work hard to repair and mantiain the numbers and levels of ships they have now. Grayson will have fewer older ship (relative to Manticore who have some that are 50-100yrs old) but they are in the same boat. what you may see- once build and repair facilities/manufacuring/infrastructure comes back on line- is some of the older ships upgraded to handle more modern weapons and other techincal upgrades. With the ships like DDs and many of the Crusiers, you may be able to modify to take larger missiles, etc since you don't have the armor to deal with. They are recon and gun platforms. They scout or cruse. They are full-up warships and even a DD is a big stick against a system with nothing but old LACs.
When the infrastructure of Manticore and Grayson are rebuilt (and we hope protected against the Oyster Bay type attack), Manticore might want to start selling off old ships to system governments it trusts, but certainly no faster than it can actually place new construction of classes for the same mission parameters with the crews from the old ships. That would be actualy in commission and finished with work-up.

SharkHunter wrote:

saber964 wrote:The reason why I speculatively put a company of marines on a CLAC is how do you board a a Pirate/Privateer with a LAC with a crew of ten. Yes the might have more LAC's but the question remains the same.

That is a great point! which I hadn't really considered. To another part of the point in your posts though, given the larger hulls, why wouldn't there be enough battle armor for every marine? It doesn't mean they'd use it for every marine in every operation (not every situation requires a hammer, sometimes a screwdriver or socket wrench will do). Thoughts?

saber964 wrote:Because Battle Armor is the CE equivalent of a Main Battle Tank and are very, very expensive. IIRC a M1A1 Abrams MBT costs about $20 million versus equipping a company of 160 men with uniforms, weapons, ammo and body armor

SharkHunter wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Been thinking about this for a while, and I can no longer see the point of continuing to build destroyers, and light cruisers, for modern (Manticoran-influenced) Navies.

Usually used in scouting, anti-piracy, and adding additional anti-missile defences to battlecruiser units and above.

In the role of missile defense, LAC's have taken over. Even before Oyster Bay, and Battle of Manticore, LACs were used in that role by both sides of the Havenite war. LACs provide very nearly as much MD as destroyers, in a vastly smaller (and faster) platform, and for far less crew needs.

The only downside, you need a LAC carrier to move them around (although modern navies seem to rely entirely on CLAC's and podnoughts now so this point may be moot)


In the role of anti-piracy, at least on the Manticoran side, they no longer have Marine contingents on anything below Battlecruisers, and even the BC's only get a squad compared to their old company-sized contingents. Additionally, while ship sizes were creeping up, Manticoran BC's by the time of BoMa were faster than light cruisers of before the First Havenite War.

And the last bit of scouting, was only really from picketing Havenite systems, before the outbreak of the war (Hancock Station relied on CL flotilla's to watch Seaford and such)

for a TL:DR

-Manticoran Battlecruisers are faster than most other navy, or pirate light cruisers.
-nothing smaller than a Manty Battlecruiser even has Marines anymore
-LACs provide far better missile defenses, while also being tougher to kill. And even when you lose a LAC, you lose way less crew than a tincan would.

You missed the role of the DDs as scouting/drone deployment platforms and for signalling ships all the way into Mission of Honor. Plus Rozak's light cruisers defending Torch from last gen PN ships and SLN units.

What is true is that in the last several books, the DDs and CLs have not been center stage in "fleet engagements", except the Rolands in squadron formation. That still leaves using DDs as heavily stealthed system scouting platforms. We sorta talked about that role in a recent thread, where we posited that if a Roland was scouting a system, short of the hyper limit it would be almost impossible to force it to withdraw:

http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6610

What the DDs don't have in this case is as much extended cruising time as a CL, but Oyster Bay means that there aren't going to be any more modern RMN ships for at least a couple of T-Years, so any cruiser weight ships will be built in Haven yards, and then "armed up" by the RMN at Trevor's Star and other locations plus Beowulfan missile supplies.

But let's surmise that say five years plus forward in the Honorverse, PD 1927 or so, and the SL is pretty much toast and the MAlign is either moderately successful or dead. One of the GA's concerns is to not get "boltholed" by any SL successor states. Do you build 150 or so heavy cruisers or 400 DD/CL size ships like the Roland to keep an eye out in more systems? The size and tally of the ships built then will likely come down to economics and threat environment at that time.

rafael wrote:On the original topic I think that even 300,000 tons might be too small because of magazine space and spare parts take up space. Not to mention the fact that mk 16 missiles take up more space than earlier ones.

SharkHunter wrote:...But let's surmise that say five years plus forward in the Honorverse, PD 1927 or so, and the SL is pretty much toast and the MAlign is either moderately successful or dead. One of the GA's concerns is to not get "boltholed" by any SL successor states. Do you build 150 or so heavy cruisers or 400 DD/CL size ships like the Roland to keep an eye out in more systems? The size and tally of the ships built then will likely come down to economics and threat environment at that time.

Roguevictory wrote:The thing about watching for boltholes is that while having plans in place for what to do if you get hit by a force from a bolthole makes sense there are just too many possible locations for a bolthole to make sending ships hunting for them practical. And if they find one what are they going to do? Can't destroy it or levy sanctions against whoever is building it without creating a PR nightmare of epic proportions Remember one of the key points of the GA plan is to avoid actions which cause non-GA and non-hostile worlds to be angry enough with or terrified enough of the GA that th unite against it.

wastedfly wrote:

rafael wrote:On the original topic I think that even 300,000 tons might be too small because of magazine space and spare parts take up space. Not to mention the fact that mk 16 missiles take up more space than earlier ones.

78 vrs 94 tons SDM/DDM
12 vrs ~guess24 CM old/new

Eats some space, is not the driving reason at all.

Rather it is the need for vastly improved sidewall generators and physical armor to contemplate withstanding a MK-16G and its equivalent in other navies.

Theemile wrote:

wastedfly wrote:
78 vrs 94 tons SDM/DDM
12 vrs ~guess24 CM old/new

Eats some space, is not the driving reason at all.

Rather it is the need for vastly improved sidewall generators and physical armor to contemplate withstanding a MK-16G and its equivalent in other navies.

The Mk 31/32 CM is smaller than older missiles, not larger.