OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

Jonathan_S wrote:It seems that those estimates were, optimistic, especially the ones expecting 50 Apollo SD(P)s by around September 1921 PD since that's a significant fraction of the python lump. Yet we know the python lump ships were still working up at Trevor's Star (as in, not really ready for active deployment) 6 or 7 months later (February or March 1922 PD), after Oyster Bay.

Absurdly optimistic is how I'd put it. If they made 50 Apollo SD(P)s it would be because most of them were Andermani, which although were Apollo equipped were not as capable as Invictus ships. Certainly they carried fewer pods.

They didn't quite make it to 40 Apollo ships by the BoM and only 15 of them were Manticoran.

Also, I guess I'll have to reread AAC again but my recollection is that they weren't planning to show off Apollo specifically when they stepped up to the stronger raids. Honor got cornered and used Apollo to shoot her forces free. The alternative would be to let an SD(P) lead raiding force get wiped out to preserve the secret. That's a level of commitment that Cromarty never adopted during the first war.

The Apollo use was planned; demonstrating that capability was the primary purpose of the attack. I'm sure they'd have crushed Lovat anyway if it turned out the Havenite ambush force wasn't there, but ambushing that fleet was the intended target of the operation.

At 2nd Hancock HMS Manticore was forced to reveal both the advanced LACs and MDM to Haven months before Operation Buttercup. And pod laying Haven knew about from the AMCs in Silsia a year or so early, plus integration into SD(P) could easily have been exposed when they were used to save the Basilisk terminus forts, and finally pod layers were forward deployed prior to Buttercup and ended up in action against Peep attacks. Those uses came with the clear risk that Haven might learn of the threat of that technology and launch a Beatrice style all or nothing attack before it was in widespread use.

The difference, to me, seems to be much more in how Haven reacted the second time rather than in any inherent difference in the risks Manticore ran. Both first and second war Manticre put their potentially war winning technologies where they might have to be exposed prior to achieving a decisive concentration of them; and each time those technologies were exposed. It is just the 2nd time Haven reacted far more quickly and decisively, attempting to head off the disaster (rather than complacently saying what its navy had seen was impossible and therefor nothing to worry about)

Except at Hancock every effort was taken to disguise or minimize MDM and deployable pod use, and LAC use was entirely lacking. Basilisk was theoretically covered as faulty intelligence, that the forts had been supplied after all. Grendelsbane was disguised as to how many ships were firing the pods and no second wave of pods was used.

In contrast, the use of Apollo was deliberate and very much NOT disguised in any way.

The first war saw Haven reacting by frantically trying to confirm the new equipment use, rumors about what they were actually up against, admirals making plans to counter what they thought they were facing without guidance from above (in the People's Republic, no less!), and overall not having a coherent response.

The second war had none of that. The new missiles were basically waved under their noses.

Galactic Sapper wrote:I'd post a reply to that disaster but it's clear you don't understand the concept of civilian control of the military. Yes, those decisions are properly in the realm of the civilian government. This is not WWII Imperial Japan.

No, they are LBJ in Vietnam or Obama in Afghanistan level of micromanagement. And you'll notice we lost both those wars.

Johnson bragged, “I won’t let those Air Force Generals bomb the smallest outhouse without checking with me.” On another occasion he said, “I spent ten hours a day worrying about all this, picking the targets one by one, making sure we didn’t go over the limits.”

You provide what effect you want and let your high command them draw up a series of options to achieve this. You don't take the first keyword you can remember and say "do this".

@Jonathan_S

It seems that those estimates were, optimistic, especially the ones expecting 50 Apollo SD(P)s by around September 1921 PD since that's a significant fraction of the python lump.

Uhm no. The 50 Apollo wallers at Jouett don’t include anything from the phyton lump.
From AAC, meeting a month before the attack on Jouett, just before the Battle of Manticore:
"Assuming [Herzog von Rabenstrange] meets his minimum estimate of thirty-five, we'll have a total of fifty-three pod-superdreadnoughts, fifty of them Apollo-capable.”
So that’s 35 IAN SD(P) and 18 RMN/GSN SD(P), including Battle Squadrons 23, 61 and 15 (GSN).

So about Manti construction. I again refer to SftS and the conversation between Admiral Cortez and Gold Peak:

“You may not be aware that the first wave of our emergency superdreadnought construction programs will be commissioning over the next several months," he said, and Michelle's eyes narrowed. He saw it, and snorted. "I see you weren't. Good. They've worked some not so minor miracles in the shipyards—and, to be frank, cut some corners in ways we would never have accepted in peacetime—to telescope construction times, and we're substantially ahead of schedule on most of the ships.”

This may refer to the first units of the python lump. It may also refer to the 35 SD(P)s that were in construction at Manticore at the start of the war.
Those ships didn’t show up anywhere either before the Battle of Manticore but it’s clear from what was said about them in AAC that they are at least ready to get commissioned in the summer of 1921.

Also, I guess I'll have to reread AAC again but my recollection is that they weren't planning to show off Apollo specifically when they stepped up to the stronger raids. Honor got cornered and used Apollo to shoot her forces free. The alternative would be to let an SD(P) lead raiding force get wiped out to preserve the secret. That's a level of commitment that Cromarty never adopted during the first war.

This would be also inaccurate, as in it never happened. Apollo was deliberately used as Lovat. Harrington set up an ambush for the Havenite ambushing squadrons and killed them off with Apollo as planned. Lovat was a one-sided massacre, Eighth Fleet didn’t suffer one casualty as was never in any danger.
You probably confuse Lovat with Solon when Honor got ambushed the first time and run into Moriarty. But she didn’t have Apollo at that time.

At 2nd Hancock HMS Manticore was forced to reveal both the advanced LACs and MDM to Haven months before Operation Buttercup. And pod laying Haven knew about from the AMCs in Silsia a year or so early, plus integration into SD(P) could easily have been exposed when they were used to save the Basilisk terminus forts, and finally pod layers were forward deployed prior to Buttercup and ended up in action against Peep attacks. Those uses came with the clear risk that Haven might learn of the threat of that technology and launch a Beatrice style all or nothing attack before it was in widespread use.

HMS Minotaur
What happened at Second Hancock is not directly comparable to Eighth Fleet blowing through three heavy Task Groups without breaking a sweat. It was also much less of a risk since the Peoples Republic’s Navy was utterly dysfunctional and a swift reaction highly improbable. Not in any way comparable to Theismans Navy.
Anyway, you should really read Ashes of Victory again to see how they carefully concealed Ghost Rider goodies for maximum effect. White Haven didn’t waste two braincells on doing something similar with Apollo.


@ Theemile

Can we just agree that even the 50 Keyhole 2 Wallers would have been enough to take the Haven system?

I’m not sure where we disagree. I’m not saying significantly more IAN wallers would have shown up until the Fall of 1921.
I’m also not saying the RMN refitted more Keyhole 1 ships to Keyhole 2 standard. I’m just saying the could have if they wanted to when adapting a different approach after the talks failed. It takes up to ten weeks according to AAC.

We also cant forget those 35 RMN wallers that were in construction at Manticore when the war broke out. Those units should be commissioned at the time of the Battle of Manticore and would have been available in an hypothetical offensive during the Fall of 1921.

I don’t know how if we still take the numbers given in House of Steel at face value, but according to ‘Jaynes’ Manticore had at least 53 Invictus Class SDP at least nearing completion during the spring of 1921.

And Grayson is sitting on no less than 100 Harringtons and 60 Harrington IIs. You tell me how these numbers make any sense in the context of AAC but there really is no shortage of wallers.

Star Knight wrote:Can we just agree that even the 50 Keyhole 2 Wallers would have been enough to take the Haven system?

I disagree.

"Yes, Madam President, I did." Theisman's expression was peculiar, Thiessen thought. "Approximately"—the Secretary of War glanced to one side—"thirty-one minutes ago, a force of unidentified starships made their alpha translations ten light-minutes outside the system hyper limit. That puts them roughly twenty-two light-minutes from the planet. The gravitic arrays detected them when they reentered normal-space, and our original estimate, based on their hyper footprints, was that we were looking at forty-eight ships-of-the-wall and/or CLACs, escorted by a dozen or so battlecruisers, a half dozen CLACs, and fifteen or twenty destroyers. They appear to have brought along at least a dozen large freighters, as well—most likely ammunition ships."

Star Knight wrote:Can we at least acknowledge that this sort of nepotism tends to have unfortunate consequences sooner or later?

I dispute that it is nepotism in the first place. It may look like nepotism and in most companies and functioning governments, you try to avoid even the appearance of nepotism or collusion or similar problems. But what happens when the skilled and qualified people are your relatives? Should you not avail yourself of their services?

I might agree with your assessment of White Haven's skills. You may be right that his character as an aggressive fleet commander and a member of the old school did not prepare him sufficiently for the new situation and his role as First Space Lord. I even agree that the discussion you quoted upthread shouldn't have happened in the Cabinet, but in the Admiralty. The Admiralty should have decided when to attack, minimising the risk, not in a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister of Foreign Relations.

But once your Commander in Chief and Sovereign orders you to do it now, the RMN was duty bound to obey. Unless they had serious misgivings and convinced the Queen otherwise, but it seems that everyone ended up agreeing.

But there is an easy solution. They just could have picked a secondary or tertiary target from the list, one Haven likely didn’t reinforce all that well. Their numbers are still finite and they have a hell of a lot of targets to defend. There’s also no risk in revealing mistletoe as it’s not a paradigm-shifting weapon system. This would take care of Moriarty.

A secondary or tertiary target wouldn't have put the same pressure on the RHN as picking primary targets did. The RHN couldn't possibly defend all 300 systems: that's about 2 SDs per system and against that, the RMN would easily roll over. The population of those planets would be irate and may want to later secede, possibly even triggering a domino effect, but the RoH could absorb those blows. Besides, those secondary and tertiary targets weren't much of a target in the first place, didn't contribute to the war effort, and did not exert the same level of political influence over the Havenite government.

Why was it not acceptable for Manticore yielding the strategic initiative back to Haven after the talks collapsed?
Haven demonstrated with Gobi that they weren’t ready for a decisive attack. You seem to gloss over this crucial point. Theisman mounted two operations prior to Beatrice in the entire war. Thunderbolt and Gobi. The initial grand attack and a minor battle at Zanzibar.

I'm not a military strategist, but it seems to me that if you don't control the initiative, you are controlled: you let the enemy choose when and when to fight. Since you don't know when and where he'll choose, you are already at a disadvantage. And that's no way to fight a war. Or to compete in business. Or marketing campaigns. Or spinning news, for that matter.

Allowing Haven to retain the initiative would be dangerously risky. Remember that they were still thinking of Theisman and Pritchart as Peeps, especially after the attempted assassination of Queen Berry and Princess Ruth. The RoH wanted only to go back to the negotiating table and end the war, but the PRH would have continued the war until Manticore was defeated.

When I was reading the book, I was screaming at the characters for not seeing the obvious. There were too many inconsistencies in the actions and motivations they attributed to Haven. The problem was that they had convinced themselves of a set of assumptions that underlined the entire analysis and turned out to be entirely wrong. (Ditto for the other direction, though in a lesser degree)

Prior to Gobi there was great anguish in the Alliance about what Haven would do next. And justifiably so. The Cutworm Raids were doing its thing, but let’s be honest about it, Theisman could have been much more aggressive and hit the Alliance much harder.

Therein lies the problem: Theisman could have been more aggressive. In a war, you cannot hope your enemy will be nice to you.

But when he eventually got around to do something at all, he settled for a tertiary target at best.
He won an overwhelming victory there but he also showed his hand. There was no way – apart from a go for broke, worst-case contingency option – that his next target would have been about ending the war outright. So even if the Alliance didn’t know about his planned attack on Alizon as you said, it’s really not that hard to figure out what he will and won’t do at that point in time. His options are very limited to begin with.
As I wrote before at the very he would have attacked Yeltsin, Trevor or Basilisk next. Yeltsin is extremely well defended, the GSN home fleet is bigger than Manticores (yes, really) so it’s probably off the table anyway. You always reinforce the other targets through the junction of course. But even if you’d lose any of those systems, it’s hardly a crippling blow with Apollo getting rolled out.

Again, disagree. After Cutworm started, the RHN was prevented from going on the initiative because they had to protect primary targets. And the options that he presented Pritchart in AAC Ch. 54 were Beatrice and Camille, with Camille specifically designed to "punish them, but without radically raising the stakes."

And Camille was an attack on Alizon with 48 SD(P)s. Not Trevor's Star or Yeltsin's Star.

And that’s the key difference. At the start of the second war, Manticore had no other option but to buy time, hoping against hope something would break in their favor. The Cutworm raids were the correct tool to do just that and they achieved their objective. They bought enough time for Apollo to get combat-ready and deployed, changing the strategic situation.
With Apollo, it was no longer necessary to keep Haven off-balance to buy time. It was only necessary to run down the clock and not reveal Apollo to soon.
This could have been done very easily by just doing nothing at all after the summit meeting collapsed. Theisman would have taken months to figure out that Manticore really wouldn’t come back to the table. By then it would have been too late.

I don't agree with your analysis and my argument is on previous posts. But to address it again: unlike the PRH/PRN, which couldn't change its strategic direction, the war with the RHN was constantly evolving. Haven changed the strategic situation and proved so at the Battle of Solon. Non-Apollo raids were simply not possible: Eighth Fleet wasn't strong enough to absorb another trap, let alone two or three that would be required before sufficient Keyhole II-equipped wallers were ready, especially since all new construction would be going to a hidden fleet somewhere (probably Third). If Eighth Fleet became combat-ineffective, then the Alliance would be entirely on the defensive.

The RHN would also notice that none of the new construction was showing up to attack. They'd correctly deduce it was being held in reserve for a big punch. And the RMN had to assume they would too, and would escalate.

The root word of initiative is, initiate. In a nutshell, seizing the initiative is the difference between offense and defense. It is all about keeping the ball in your court, where you score, and not your opponent. It is about keeping your opponent off balance and scrambling, avoiding him getting his ducks, and his game plan, in a row.

I got the vibe the RMN was feeling the heat, and Cutworm's job was to keep that anxiety and weakness hidden from Haven.

BTW, if war is the continuation of politics by other means, then Eighth Fleet is the extension of that politics, being the lynchpin of the Navy.

Star Knight wrote:

It seems that those estimates were, optimistic, especially the ones expecting 50 Apollo SD(P)s by around September 1921 PD since that's a significant fraction of the python lump.

Uhm no. The 50 Apollo wallers at Jouett don’t include anything from the phyton lump.
From AAC, meeting a month before the attack on Jouett, just before the Battle of Manticore:
"Assuming [Herzog von Rabenstrange] meets his minimum estimate of thirty-five, we'll have a total of fifty-three pod-superdreadnoughts, fifty of them Apollo-capable.”
So that’s 35 IAN SD(P) and 18 RMN/GSN SD(P), including Battle Squadrons 23, 61 and 15 (GSN).

So about Manti construction. I again refer to SftS and the conversation between Admiral Cortez and Gold Peak:

“You may not be aware that the first wave of our emergency superdreadnought construction programs will be commissioning over the next several months," he said, and Michelle's eyes narrowed. He saw it, and snorted. "I see you weren't. Good. They've worked some not so minor miracles in the shipyards—and, to be frank, cut some corners in ways we would never have accepted in peacetime—to telescope construction times, and we're substantially ahead of schedule on most of the ships.”

This may refer to the first units of the python lump. It may also refer to the 35 SD(P)s that were in construction at Manticore at the start of the war.
Those ships didn’t show up anywhere either before the Battle of Manticore but it’s clear from what was said about them in AAC that they are at least ready to get commissioned in the summer of 1921.

Those ships were not Apollo-capable. The hulls laid during the first war but not completed did not have Keyhole II. Any of them that far too advanced in construction had instead to be refit, which meant probably complete the ship before refitting. And Manticore had to clear the shipyards before it could bring in the ships for the refit in the first place, unlike the GSN and IAN which had spare capacity.

They wouldn't have helped Eighth Fleet against Haven. They were probably sent to Ninth Fleet in Silesia and Tenth Fleet in Talbott. That's probably why Caparelli was talking to Gold Peak about them.

Some of the 50 that were Apollo-capable were given to Eighth Fleet. 48 of them (or so) showed up in Haven in early 1922. But we don't know when they actually got ready. Honor saying that she was hoping to get 50 for Jouet did not mean it would have happened in time. And besides, she would have needed to work them up, so attacking Jouet was some two months away (late August 1921 at least). And that's against Jouet: to go through Capital Fleet in Haven, I would expect even more trining and more construction.

If Manticore had waited that long, it would be 10 months between the Battle of Lovat and the attack on the Haven System. And as I argued, Lovat proved the pre-Apollo strategy wasn't working.

@kzt
Why do you disagree, because they brought ammunition ships along? This too would have been possible in a hypothetical offensive in the Fall of 1921.

@ThinksMarkedly

dispute that it is nepotism in the first place. It may look like nepotism and in most companies and functioning governments, you try to avoid even the appearance of nepotism or collusion or similar problems. But what happens when the skilled and qualified people are your relatives? Should you not avail yourself of their services?

Well first this extreme situation is highly unlikely to come up in the first place in functioning governments and when it does, it’s very much frowned upon and with good reason. It’s usually a bit more subtle, to say the least.
The issue is also aggravated to some extent by the fact that the Honorverse is a book series and RFC simply didn’t want to introduce more and more naval officers this far along in the story.
In the real world, this simply wouldn’t happen, because there would be scores of other qualified people (and frankly, much more qualified people in the case of White Haven’s cabinet position) to do the job and someone else would get picked.
In-universe, the logical solution would have been to give him Eighth Fleet again, while Honor get’s Third Fleet and Kuzak gets a position in the Admiralty House. She’s due for a shore post anyway.

But once your Commander in Chief and Sovereign orders you to do it now, the RMN was duty-bound to obey. Unless they had serious misgivings and convinced the Queen otherwise, but it seems that everyone ended up agreeing.

Everyone as in the Queen and Hamish at a Cabinet meeting while the people with actual jurisdiction over the matter in question where not present.
Obviously you obey the Commander in Chief. But you also make sure that the Commander in Chief in thoroughly briefed and presented with a wide variety of options.
During the fateful Cabinet meeting, the Queen just rambles on and on to the Cabinet about her thoughts on military matters. The First Lord barely puts in anything and when he does it’s mostly crap. The Queen pushes for action and it turns out there’s nothing on the table but a month old, outdated attack plan.
But I’ve already been over this in great detail in my post to Galactic Sapper.
The point is, the Queen didn’t get anything she needed from the Admiralty that day. And it’s because White Haven was the wrong guy for the job and incapable of telling the Queen that all this should be a matter she needs to discuss with her Space Lords if she really feels the need to, not him or the freaking Cabinet.

A secondary or tertiary target wouldn't have put the same pressure on the RHN as picking primary targets did. The RHN couldn't possibly defend all 300 systems: that's about 2 SDs per system and against that, the RMN would easily rollover. The population of those planets would be irate and may want to later secede, possibly even triggering a domino effect, but the RoH could absorb those blows. Besides, those secondary and tertiary targets weren't much of a target in the first place, didn't contribute to the war effort, and did not exert the same level of political influence over the Havenite government

Sure, not the same pressure. But would have put it enough pressure on the RHN? I believe instead of raiding one big target and attack on four, five, six systems would have had much of the same effect.

I'm not a military strategist, but it seems to me that if you don't control the initiative, you are controlled: you let the enemy choose when and when to fight. Since you don't know when and where he'll choose, you are already at a disadvantage. And that's no way to fight a war. Or to compete in business. Or marketing campaigns. Or spinning news, for that matter.
Allowing Haven to retain the initiative would be dangerously risky. Remember that they were still thinking of Theisman and Pritchart as Peeps, especially after the attempted assassination of Queen Berry and Princess Ruth. The RoH wanted only to go back to the negotiating table and end the war, but the PRH would have continued the war until Manticore was defeated.

To quote Bonaparte – Never interrupt your enemy when he is making an mistake.
Theisman demonstrated with Gobi that Haven was not going for a decisive blow just yet and Manticore had the time it needed to get Apollo deployed.
Yes, there would have been another overall inconclusive attack at some point after the summit talks collapsed. So what. The purpose of warfare is victory, not to deny your enemy every move he might make. Defend everything at any cost is a dangerous idea, unfortunately for some weird reason also deeply enshrined in Manticoran strategic thinking during the Second Havenite and especially during the Solarian War. It was very much not the case during the first war though, and Caparelli frequently invited enemy attacks to gain a strategic advantage.
Anyway, just let Theisman think his initiative of the moment will amount to anything in the long run. He’s running down the clock to his own destruction and doesn’t even know it.
And as said, if you really, really don’t like this very defensive approach, just do another Cutworm style raid on some secondary targets. There’s nothing wrong with that, just don’t, under any circumstance show Theisman that he’ll lose in six months by revealing Apollo.

Therein lies the problem: Theisman could have been more aggressive. In a war, you cannot hope your enemy will be nice to you.

But he DEMONSTRATED he isn’t more aggressive. There is no reason to think he’ll be much more aggressive and go for a decapitating blow just after the talks collapsed.
Again to reiterate, the only way Theisman could win the war after the talks collapsed was an attack all-out attack on the Manticore system itself. AAC makes it very clear that no one, especially no one in the RMN thought an attack like this was in the cards in the short term. Everyone expected Theisman to just continue what he started with Gobi.
This means the war is won for Manticore if you don’t give Theisman any reason to change his approach. Which is exactly what they did with attacking Lovat with Apollo.

I don't agree with your analysis and my argument is on previous posts. But to address it again: unlike the PRH/PRN, which couldn't change its strategic direction, the war with the RHN was constantly evolving. Haven changed the strategic situation and proved so at the Battle of Solon. Non-Apollo raids were simply not possible: Eighth Fleet wasn't strong enough to absorb another trap, let alone two or three that would be required before sufficient Keyhole II-equipped wallers were ready, especially since all new construction would be going to a hidden fleet somewhere (probably Third). If Eighth Fleet became combat-ineffective, then the Alliance would be entirely on the defensive.

A change in naval disposition like at Solon is not a strange in strategy but a tactical adaption. The strategic stage of the RHN didn’t change between Cutworm II and III. It also didn’t change between Cutworm III and would be Sanskrit if it hadn’t been for the talks.
Also again, there were a lot of systems the RHN couldn’t defend like Solon or Lovat. Attacks in those tertiary systems would have been still possible. Maybe not to the same effect, but as written multiple times at his point, more wouldn’t have been necessary anyway.
Manticore would have won the war outright by simply doing nothing at all after the talks collapsed.

Those ships were not Apollo-capable. The hulls laid during the first war but not completed did not have Keyhole II. Any of them that far too advanced in construction had instead to be refit, which meant probably complete the ship before refitting. And Manticore had to clear the shipyards before it could bring in the ships for the refit in the first place, unlike the GSN and IAN which had spare capacity.

They wouldn't have helped Eighth Fleet against Haven. They were probably sent to Ninth Fleet in Silesia and Tenth Fleet in Talbott. That's probably why Caparelli was talking to Gold Peak about them.
Some of the 50 that were Apollo-capable were given to Eighth Fleet. 48 of them (or so) showed up in Haven in early 1922. But we don't know when they actually got ready. Honor saying that she was hoping to get 50 for Jouet did not mean it would have happened in time. And besides, she would have needed to work them up, so attacking Jouet was some two months away (late August 1921 at least). And that's against Jouet: to go through Capital Fleet in Haven, I would expect even more training and more construction.

Of course, those 35 Invictus at Manticore were finished with Keyhole 2 capability. We know they were Invictus Class ships because House of Steel puts the number build at ‘53+’.
Invictus class ships don’t require a refit to handle Keyhole 2. Only Medusas and Harringtons require a refit since those were designed without any Keyhole capability and even Keyhole 1 was refitted on them later.
For Invictus class ships you basically just swap out the Keyhole models itself. No modification to the ship required.

Textev from AAC:

[White Haven] “However, at this time, Eighth Fleet is the only formation we've got which is fully trained with the new weapons. It's also the only formation that's equipped with the new weapons, because only the Invictus and the Graysons' late-flight Harringtons—" he smiled wryly at the class name, despite his somber mood "—can operate them without refitting. "
"Why is that?" Grantville asked. "I thought the pods were the same dimensions?"
"They are, but only the ships built with Keyhole capability from the outset can handle the Mark Two platforms, and they're essential to making the new missiles work. We can refit with Keyhole II—in fact, the decision to build that in is part of what's delayed the Andermani refits—but it requires placing the ship in yard hands for at least eight to ten weeks. And, frankly, we can't stand down our existing ships that long when we're this tightly strapped. All our new construction is being altered on the ways to be Keyhole II-capable, and when it starts coming into commission, we can probably start pulling the older ships back for refit.”

So sorry but your entire argument is flawed. Those ships were just about not combat-ready during BoMa but would have been available for a later Fall offensive.

Also, not 'some of the 50 were given to Eighth fleet' Eighth Fleet got 50 Apollo wallers. The IAN Admiral informed Honor he was coming with at least 35 IAN Keyhole 2 wallers. Possible more.

And seriously, do you really think they sent Invictus SDPs to Silesia when they had old style SDs and non Keyhole 1 SDPs in Home Fleet?

Star Knight wrote:The issue is also aggravated to some extent by the fact that the Honorverse is a book series and RFC simply didn’t want to introduce more and more naval officers this far along in the story.
In the real world, this simply wouldn’t happen, because there would be scores of other qualified people (and frankly, much more qualified people in the case of White Haven’s cabinet position) to do the job and someone else would get picked.

RFC was not shy about adding characters even later, like Mega Petersen, Jan Kotouč, Augustus Khumalo, Jacob Zavala.

So maybe the problem wasn't nepotism, it was that the hero of Operation Buttercup wasn't suited for the civilian job. Nothing to do with nepotism, he just happened to be the husband of the attack fleet's CO.

The point is, the Queen didn’t get anything she needed from the Admiralty that day. And it’s because White Haven was the wrong guy for the job and incapable of telling the Queen that all this should be a matter she needs to discuss with her Space Lords if she really feels the need to, not him or the freaking Cabinet.

Sorry, but the First Lord's job is to be the Queen's voice and intermediary to the Space Lords and the rest of the military. Caparelli should have given White Haven the menu of options for him to brief the Queen on, so the fact that there was nothing was his and Givens' failing. Though I will (continue to) agree that Tom and Pat should have been in the meeting discussing those options with the Queen, not the Cabinet.

Sure, not the same pressure. But would have put it enough pressure on the RHN? I believe instead of raiding one big target and attack on four, five, six systems would have had much of the same effect.

I do not believe it would have put enough pressure. As much as Haven could absorb those blows, they wouldn't want to. So Theisman would have mounted punitive expeditions in Alliance systems, of which there were fewer. He would have activated Camille instead of Beatrice, sending 48 SD(P)s to take Alizon. The Alliance would have had to respond to that.

Theisman demonstrated with Gobi that Haven was not going for a decisive blow just yet and Manticore had.

The problem with what Theisman demonstrated is that the Alliance did not get the message. If they had, they would have gone back to the negotiating table, which was Pritchart's desired outcome. And as he explained to Pritchart, they had much more depth to absorb than the Alliance did: he would continue upping the tempo and escalating until Manticore negotiated or surrendered. He would not, under any circumstance, allow the war to drag on until the python lump and Andermani refits became operational.

And as said, if you really, really don’t like this very defensive approach, just do another Cutworm style raid on some secondary targets. There’s nothing wrong with that, just don’t, under any circumstance show Theisman that he’ll lose in six months by revealing Apollo.

My arguments against both (another Cutworm and showing Theisman anything) are above.

Therein lies the problem: Theisman could have been more aggressive. In a war, you cannot hope your enemy will be nice to you.

But he DEMONSTRATED he isn’t more aggressive. There is no reason to think he’ll be much more aggressive and go for a decapitating blow just after the talks collapsed.
Again to reiterate, the only way Theisman could win the war after the talks collapsed was an attack all-out attack on the Manticore system itself. AAC makes it very clear that no one, especially no one in the RMN thought an attack like this was in the cards in the short term. Everyone expected Theisman to just continue what he started with Gobi.

Which is of course absurd. You don't fight a war holding yourself back. So the Alliance should have asked itself why Theisman was holding himself back. If he had 600 SD(P)s, why wasn't he using that? He could have dropped in the MBS with about 150 SD(P)s in early 1921 and forced the negotiation.

Since they were not entirely incompetent, we must conclude they assumed that Theisman couldn't have attacked then. He was still building his forces out of Bolthole and upgrading the other shipyards (which was true). That being the case, they would have to allow for Theisman upping the tempo and escalating as new construction became available and worked up.

A change in naval disposition like at Solon is not a strange in strategy but a tactical adaption. The strategic stage of the RHN didn’t change between Cutworm II and III. It also didn’t change between Cutworm III and would be Sanskrit if it hadn’t been for the talks.
Also again, there were a lot of systems the RHN couldn’t defend like Solon or Lovat. Attacks in those tertiary systems would have been still possible. Maybe not to the same effect, but as written multiple times at his point, more wouldn’t have been necessary anyway.
Manticore would have won the war outright by simply doing nothing at all after the talks collapsed.

One more problem that's just occurred to me: if the assumption is that the Havenites sabotaged the talks, then they had to know they were going to do so. That means Theisman could have prepared to attack while the Alliance was distracted. The Alliance couldn't afford to repeat the same strategy which had failed at Solon.

[quoteOf course, those 35 Invictus at Manticore were finished with Keyhole 2 capability. We know they were Invictus Class ships because House of Steel puts the number build at ‘53+’.
Invictus class ships don’t require a refit to handle Keyhole 2. Only Medusas and Harringtons require a refit since those were designed without any Keyhole capability and even Keyhole 1 was refitted on them later.
For Invictus class ships you basically just swap out the Keyhole models itself. No modification to the ship required.

Textev from AAC:

[White Haven] “However, at this time, Eighth Fleet is the only formation we've got which is fully trained with the new weapons. It's also the only formation that's equipped with the new weapons, because only the Invictus and the Graysons' late-flight Harringtons—" he smiled wryly at the class name, despite his somber mood "—can operate them without refitting. "
"Why is that?" Grantville asked. "I thought the pods were the same dimensions?"
"They are, but only the ships built with Keyhole capability from the outset can handle the Mark Two platforms, and they're essential to making the new missiles work. We can refit with Keyhole II—in fact, the decision to build that in is part of what's delayed the Andermani refits—but it requires placing the ship in yard hands for at least eight to ten weeks. And, frankly, we can't stand down our existing ships that long when we're this tightly strapped. All our new construction is being altered on the ways to be Keyhole II-capable, and when it starts coming into commission, we can probably start pulling the older ships back for refit.”

So sorry but your entire argument is flawed. Those ships were just about not combat-ready during BoMa but would have been available for a later Fall offensive.[/quote]

In your textev above, we see "all our new construction is being altered on the ways to be Keyhole II-capable." If the Invictus as-designed was Keyhole II-capable, why would it need to be altered? I don't think this referred to Medusa hulls that were in construction at the end of the First War and halted. Those would have been much further along in construction and would have finished sooner after the emergency restart.

Another problem is that we know they weren't ready for a Fall offensive (note: seasons are probably not a good reference in space; it's already not a good reference on Earth). Oyster Bay was hoping to catch them still in the shipyards. MAlign intel was faulty and they weren't in the yards, but it wasn't by much, a couple of months at most. So the ships actually became available around the end of 1921.

A year after Solon.

And seriously, do you really think they sent Invictus SDPs to Silesia when they had old style SDs and non Keyhole 1 SDPs in Home Fleet?

No, that was probably not the case. They would indeed have swapped with Home Fleet and reinforced Home. Tenth Fleet is another story. We still don't know if the squadrons of SD(P)s that Gold Peak has are Apollo-capable, since they haven't done anything useful yet (the liberation of the Madras sector was entirely done with ships below the wall).

kzt wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:I'd post a reply to that disaster but it's clear you don't understand the concept of civilian control of the military. Yes, those decisions are properly in the realm of the civilian government. This is not WWII Imperial Japan.

No, they are LBJ in Vietnam or Obama in Afghanistan level of micromanagement. And you'll notice we lost both those wars.

Johnson bragged, “I won’t let those Air Force Generals bomb the smallest outhouse without checking with me.” On another occasion he said, “I spent ten hours a day worrying about all this, picking the targets one by one, making sure we didn’t go over the limits.”

You provide what effect you want and let your high command them draw up a series of options to achieve this. You don't take the first keyword you can remember and say "do this".

I think you're fundamentally misrepresenting the degree of control being exerted. It's clear that Sanskrit was planned by 8th Fleet in consultation with the Admiralty - NOT the First Lord - and as such the Queen and PM had been briefed on the operation and its intended goals. Unless for some reason you think that sort of operation should just be conducted without even bothering to tell the civilian government.

And more importantly, to Star Knight's dismay, Sanskrit was planned by the Admiralty specifically to uncork Apollo on the Havenites. Caparelli and the Strategy Board had already approved it. It was not White Haven driving the decision at all.