Brigade XO wrote:Given the technology available at the SLN level available at the time of, say, Monica, it is entirely possible that the Alignment could acquire former SLN ships (as were transfered to Monica) with "modern" weapons and use them to interdict the non-Torch side of the Torch wormhole.
You don't need Spyder drive ships with the Graser Trop level weaponry. You only need hyper capable (and, wormhole capable since you have to get them 1st into the Alighmnet's wormhole network and mover them around in it) ships with even SLN CH or BC range of standard energy and missiles. That you would probably want to add some level of minefields to it is also reasonable but you would have to then provide the people and ship(s) and people plus LACs or equivalent to tend the mines without being hypercapale.
The problem is not the ships themselves, I’m sure that the MA can quetly disappear a few dozen BC’s and CA’s without the SLN realizing especially after the massacre of so many SLN BC’s and escorts at the hands of the GA. Problem is that the MA may not have conventional ships in their inventory which means they may not have crews aside from what they have manning the shark class ships. So then the question becomes wether you mothball some of the Sharks to provide manpower for obsolete SLN ships to guard the WH, assume that the Sharks are capable of picketing the system and use them or keep letting the MSDF picket the system in secret.
The first option means you strip crews away from the training platform for the next generation of warships and worse you lose those crews in terms of training cadre to expand the MAN, an expansion that would be desperately needed if the MAN is to become a fighting force capable of going toe to toe with the GA.
How long do you think it would take to train crews to a reasonable standard? What’s more how suspicious would be for MSDF officers to disappear for a couple of years along with older MSDF ships? The RF will be under a microscope because the GA will try to determine if they are going to be a force of stability to their neighbours or they would be a threat to stability and the GA. The last thing the RF wants is to add suspicious and draw the interest of the GA even more then they normally would, and the disappearance of potentially hundreds of officers and enlisted along with obsolete ships is one way to draw that unwanted attention.Heck, the Alignment could even broker a deal with Mannerheim to buy several of it's existing if slightly older (which would let them upgrade via Technodyne or similar builder) and put them on the interditction duty. Draw the crews from Darius population and train the up with Mannerheim Naval Officers who are both already knowlable about the role of the Alignment and let this "legacy" force handle the job.
This would be a long term deployment, they would need to rotate their people through the deployment every 12-18 months, you cant deploy a bunch of ships to picket a system for the next 5-10 years without relief.The Alighment can afford to have ten thousand people trained to at least operate and fight the ships from an ambush position. Besides, how many people on board each ship would have to know how to transit a wormhole except that you might need to have some rotation and certainly send supply ships regularly. Emergency communication would by dispatch boat or perhaps DDs.