Honorverse Top Ten Tacticians, Strategists

ChronicRder wrote:Honor Harrington
Thomas Carapelli
Thomas Theismas
Hamish Alexander
Esther McQueen
Lester Tourville
Aivars Terekhov
Mark Sarnow
Javier Giscard
Amos Parnell

Honorable Mentions to: Michelle Henke, Wesley Matthews, Alfredo Yu, and Alistair McKeon.

My only thing about all this series, and by extension their strategists, is his emphasis on R&D. Its a common thing in Weber's series. He likes to take a lot of experimental designs and techs and throw them from the drawing board into massive operations. Worse, he glosses over their acceptance trials and development difficulties to the point where his first real test is a massive operation. And of course, they have a 90-95% solution. My point is: it briefs great, but, as a serving soldier, I'm hesitant to put my life and the lives of my subordinates in the hands of some new experimental tech as the linchpin of my entire plan. That's just daring Murphy to screw you anally--without lube.

I completely agree about the . . . undesirability of issuing invitations to Murphy.

I think, however, that you are overlooking a few things. Like the fact that the "new weapons" deployed by Hamish Alexander and 8th Fleet were the product of a fifty-year R&D program and that they were all tested out using actual hardware in places like Silesia (HAE) and Manticore B (EoH). In other words, very little of the hardware the Manties are deploying against the Peeps is untested and unknown. In many cases, the degree to which it turned out to surpass their opponents' hardware was actually greater than they had assumed in any of their sims or field tests because they deliberately used pessimistic assumptions (even when their field tests suggested the opposite) until they'd actually seen them in action and evaluated them against "live" opposition. There's also the fact that Caparelli held them back until he was prepared to use them decisively rather than rushing them into service in a white heat. With Apollo he found himself in a rather different situation, because Manticore's back was against the wall and he had to get every weapon he had into service as quickly as he could. Even then, however, the system had been thoroughly tested before the first live rounds were issued to Honor's ships. Moreover, Apollo and Keyhole are both the result of very lengthy, ongoing R&D programs, and each stage of the hardware was thoroughly tested in simulations and training exercises before it was committed to action. I don't spend a lot of time writing about acceptance trails and field testing because I get enough complaints about info dumps away from the action as it is, but I have given actual examples of the process in the test and I promise it's going on in the background even when you don't see it.

Honest!

While I have to agree that Manticore's military tech development wizards and defense industry consistently seem to da a much better job than - say my own country's in RL - and I sometimes felt that picture to be painted a bit too optimistically I want to point out in the author's defense that the very first Honorverse book features a brand-new weapon system employed on the front line which turns out to be - suboptimal.

Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

kzt wrote:Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

Yes, it did. And they went on testing it instead of rushing it into combat, right? And when they did . . . .

Although, in fairness to Hemphill, it was less a new weapon than a new and radical application of an existing one.

runsforcelery wrote:

kzt wrote:Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

Yes, it did. And they went on testing it instead of rushing it into combat, right? And when they did . . . .

Although, in fairness to Hemphill, it was less a new weapon than a new and radical application of an existing one.

More importantly, Fearless was a preproduction testbed that was intended to allow operational commanders to evaluate it in simulations or limited combat before employing the system in major combat. When Fearless was exiled to Basilisk, it was expected that Honor would never be doing anything beyond customs inspections. Engaging a pirate so close to the wormhole was a remote possibility and a death ride against an over gunned Q-ship was unimaginable.

Actually, as an weapon, it works fine. the problem that it had was requiring the replacement of more versatile weapons, and the tactics for its use being fringe case scenarios.

kzt wrote:Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

Spacekiwi wrote:Actually, as an weapon, it works fine. the problem that it had was requiring the replacement of more versatile weapons, and the tactics for its use being fringe case scenarios.

kzt wrote:Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

Don't worry. When tested, it will cause streak drives to blow up.

No Cachat, no Firebrand, no Detweiler?

As for weapons I still think a crippler should be installed in every commerce raiding ship. Let alone some kind of warshaski sail version.

kzt wrote:It's a blatantly BS argument to say that 8th would have been destroyed if it was in the position of 3rd. 8th would have taken damage, but they would have obliterated both RHN fleets. It is what the characters think internally, but it is simply objectively wrong.

First, 8th would have started firing at 2nd from effective Apollo range. Which is a LOT farther then 3rd's effective range. So 2nd can't really effectively return fire and is still outside of effective range of Sphinx.

Second, the damage per missile of 8th is vastly higher. Remember when just 3 Apollo SDs were killing a 5th fleet SD every salvo? An entire fleet of Apollo SDs would have crushed 5th. Literally, 6 salvos, would have destroyed or mission killed pretty much every single ship in 5th. It would take a bit longer to kill 2nd, but by the time 5th drops in all the missiles needed would have already been fired, so all of 8th fires on 5th.

I think calling the argument "blatant BS" is pretty strong. Admittedly, the main crux of the argument that 8th Fleet wouldn't have been as screwed as 3rd comes from a character's internal thoughts but that is the only source we have. And Honor's no slouch as a tactician herself so I would consider her a pretty fair judge of probable outcomes in that scenario.

Don't forget, that trap was specifically designed for 8th Fleet knowing they had the long-range targeting advantage. Kuzak happened to get caught because she was the first one through the Junction. No doubt, 8th Fleet would have done a lot of damage and it's not written in stone that Honor couldn't have taken out both Havenite fleets in that position. To me, there's enough wiggle room for either outcome to have resulted hence my defense of Kuzak.

Question: how many Apollo-capable SD(P)s did Honor have in 8th Fleet?

Amaroq wrote:Question: how many Apollo-capable SD(P)s did Honor have in 8th Fleet?

32. Which was enough to comfortable control a single salvo of 62,208 missiles, when 288 missiles appears to be able to kill a RHN SD(P).

Assuming that 8th fires at effective Apollo range 8th can start firing as soon as it emerges from hyper (which appears to be about 300,000 km OUTSIDE the RZ) instead of waiting. It takes about 8 minutes to reach the RZ, during which 8th can easily fire enough missiles to completely kill every ship in 2nd. So how do they even trap 8th anyhow? Does 5th hyper in while 8th is still outside the RZ, or does it wait until 2nd has been reduced to debris clouds?

Anyhow, back to firepower.

Assuming that, for some crazy reason, Harrington also decided to not stack pods and went to just double salvos 8th fleet kills 10+ RHN SD(P)s per 24 seconds. So in the time it took both 2nd and 5th to kill 9 of 3rds ships 8th would have killed 42 or so RHN SD(P)s. How long before 5th hypers out?

Worse, given a 24 second cycle time and a time of flight of over 6 minutes for the RHN that means 15 salvos are already launched before the first missile hits. And a single surviving KH-2 can control each salvo of that size. That's about 160 ships killed. At the rate of loss of 2 ships in 8th per salvo you run of RHN ships before you run out 8th fleet.