Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's not how I read it. Any civilian casualty that wasn't an acceptable collateral effect of a military action is too many.

So if you fired a dart gun through the reactor of a strictly civilian habitat and you knew that was going to cause the reactor to go critical and blow, and it does, and a single person dies, it's an EE violation. The point in this case there is that you intentionally set out to kill civilians, targetting an objective that had no military value.

Similarly, if you blow up a military drone with overkill right next to a civilian habitat and civilians die, it's a violation because you did not take sensible precautions against civilian casualties. There may be a mitigating circumstance here that you may claim the enemy was using the civilian habitat as a human shield.

Please recall two incidents that the author has strongly stated were NOT Eridani Edict violations: first the Green Pines explosion was a nuclear bomb set off in a residential area that killed thousands and second was the Yawata Strike where debris from the destruction of an orbital wiped out a city. You gave two examples for what you considered an EEV and here is a counter example for each; the first because the death toll was not high enough (among other reasons) and the second because it was a secondary result of the attack and thus not directly intended.

cthia wrote:The conversation has certainly taken an interesting turn.

I was under the impression that attacking any installation causing death to civilian populations is a violation. When I said that a Navy needs to "practice" beforehand, also includes its need to "assess" the tactical situation, instead of the willy nilly chucking of missiles in a drive-by shooting which might impact the planet. And, of course, any premeditated attacks on the planet is a violation.

But, as I understood it, as represented by our discussion of Yildun, attacks on orbital infrastructure with a single civilian, is also a no no. Even if military combatants hide amongst; and I suppose, lest they are shooting at you.

Or, unless you are prepared to evacuate them, or, I suppose, give them sufficient time to evacuate themselves.

Or, unless your missiles have surgical precision which allows you to shoot the gnat off a ratsass.

Translated, unless you can shoot the military combatant off a civilian's ass.

But look at Giscard's raid on Basilisk's orbital infrastructure in EoH. He delayed until the last possible second -- because he wanted to reduce (not eliminate, but reduce) civilian casualties. And it specifically says that in waiting that long he did more than the Edict or the Deneb Accords required.

As far as we know there wasn't a single military station at Basilisk. No yards, no forts, no defense commands. Nothing but
orbital warehouses, weather, communication, and power satellites, and the like.

And yet his missiles wrecked everything in Medusa orbit; and killed civilians in the process, and nobody claimed it was a violation of the Accords; much less an Edict.

Also the orbital infrastructures of Alizon and Zanzibar got destroyed a couple times during the wars -- again with no claims of Deneb or Edict violations.

(And for attacks on civilian economic infrastructure I think the Deneb Accords, the treaty that defines most of the 'rules of war' for the Honorverse, would kick in at far lower thresholds than the Eridani Edict. However the Accords lack the automatic SLN response called for by the constitution amendment that created the Edict)

So it may (and likely is) a violation of the rules of war to destroy a civilian orbital without broadcasting your intent -- so they know to evacuate; you do NOT appear to be required to give sufficient time for the evacuation to complete. And either way unless, maybe, it's an orbital city it doesn't seem to be an Edict violation

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:The conversation has certainly taken an interesting turn.

I was under the impression that attacking any installation causing death to civilian populations is a violation. When I said that a Navy needs to "practice" beforehand, also includes its need to "assess" the tactical situation, instead of the willy nilly chucking of missiles in a drive-by shooting which might impact the planet. And, of course, any premeditated attacks on the planet is a violation.

But, as I understood it, as represented by our discussion of Yildun, attacks on orbital infrastructure with a single civilian, is also a no no. Even if military combatants hide amongst; and I suppose, lest they are shooting at you.

Or, unless you are prepared to evacuate them, or, I suppose, give them sufficient time to evacuate themselves.

Or, unless your missiles have surgical precision which allows you to shoot the gnat off a ratsass.

Translated, unless you can shoot the military combatant off a civilian's ass.

But look at Giscard's raid on Basilisk's orbital infrastructure in EoH. He delayed until the last possible second -- because he wanted to reduce (not eliminate, but reduce) civilian casualties. And it specifically says that in waiting that long he did more than the Edict or the Deneb Accords required.

As far as we know there wasn't a single military station at Basilisk. No yards, no forts, no defense commands. Nothing but
orbital warehouses, weather, communication, and power satellites, and the like.

And yet his missiles wrecked everything in Medusa orbit; and killed civilians in the process, and nobody claimed it was a violation of the Accords; much less an Edict.

Also the orbital infrastructures of Alizon and Zanzibar got destroyed a couple times during the wars -- again with no claims of Deneb or Edict violations.

(And for attacks on civilian economic infrastructure I think the Deneb Accords, the treaty that defines most of the 'rules of war' for the Honorverse, would kick in at far lower thresholds than the Eridani Edict. However the Accords lack the automatic SLN response called for by the constitution amendment that created the Edict)

So it may (and likely is) a violation of the rules of war to destroy a civilian orbital without broadcasting your intent -- so they know to evacuate; you do NOT appear to be required to give sufficient time for the evacuation to complete. And either way unless, maybe, it's an orbital city it doesn't seem to be an Edict violation

It seems, or I would tend to think, that the operative measure is to broadcast intent before attacking and giving enough time to evacuate the most important civilians. Like women and children. I would think.

It would kinda suck to attack without warning killing family members, in such cases, who are visiting from groundside.

cthia wrote:It seems, or I would tend to think, that the operative measure is to broadcast intent before attacking and giving enough time to evacuate the most important civilians. Like women and children. I would think.

It would kinda suck to attack without warning killing family members, in such cases, who are visiting from groundside.

The counter is the obvious reason: if a civilian refused to evacuate, that would make attacking impossible. Therefore, that is unacceptable: they only have to give the civilians reasonable time to evacuate, and then the commerce infrastructure will turn to fine space debris.

Which brings in the next question: are they able to clean up after this major Kessel Syndrome?

I still draw the line on commerce and industrial infrastructure and food production ones.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:It seems, or I would tend to think, that the operative measure is to broadcast intent before attacking and giving enough time to evacuate the most important civilians. Like women and children. I would think.

It would kinda suck to attack without warning killing family members, in such cases, who are visiting from groundside.

The counter is the obvious reason: if a civilian refused to evacuate, that would make attacking impossible. Therefore, that is unacceptable: they only have to give the civilians reasonable time to evacuate, and then the commerce infrastructure will turn to fine space debris.

Which brings in the next question: are they able to clean up after this major Kessel Syndrome?

I still draw the line on commerce and industrial infrastructure and food production ones.

And it seems clear to me that failure to give any warning against your run of the mill civilian orbital infrastructure would be a violation of just the Deneb Accords; not the Eridani Edict.

As for clearing up the Kessel Syndrome -- yeah, I'd think wedges would make short work of that. Unlike trying to knock down the exiting debris by more normal means they're not going to be creating collisions that generate fresh (if smaller) debris faster than you can clear them.
When you can trivially erect impenetrable walls tens of thousands of square km in area across the orbits and simply let them sweep away all the debris, no matter how large or small? Yeah, your runaway collisions are going to ramp down really quickly

For that matter, their tractor beams may have enough on an area effect to clear the orbitals up -- by grabbing volumes of passing debris of multiple sizes and velocities; letting you either tow them up out of orbit for collection and processor, or cancel out their orbital velocity and let them fall down into the atmosphere

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Which brings in the next question: are they able to clean up after this major Kessel Syndrome?

Wedges can sweep. You'll have to gather up anything you don't want destroyed, though.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for clearing up the Kessel Syndrome -- yeah, I'd think wedges would make short work of that. Unlike trying to knock down the exiting debris by more normal means they're not going to be creating collisions that generate fresh (if smaller) debris faster than you can clear them.
When you can trivially erect impenetrable walls tens of thousands of square km in area across the orbits and simply let them sweep away all the debris, no matter how large or small? Yeah, your runaway collisions are going to ramp down really quickly

It wouldn't make short work of it--there's a lot of space to clear. It certainly can be done, though.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:It seems, or I would tend to think, that the operative measure is to broadcast intent before attacking and giving enough time to evacuate the most important civilians. Like women and children. I would think.

It would kinda suck to attack without warning killing family members, in such cases, who are visiting from groundside.

The counter is the obvious reason: if a civilian refused to evacuate, that would make attacking impossible. Therefore, that is unacceptable: they only have to give the civilians reasonable time to evacuate, and then the commerce infrastructure will turn to fine space debris.

Which brings in the next question: are they able to clean up after this major Kessel Syndrome?

I still draw the line on commerce and industrial infrastructure and food production ones.

Yeah, I can see where stalling could be used as a tactic. In fact, IINM, stalling was used in the Battle of Hypatia to allow the RMN to get into position?

At any rate, I was shocked that the SL never considered what the MA did to Grayson to be an EE violation.

cthia wrote:Yeah, I can see where stalling could be used as a tactic. In fact, IINM, stalling was used in the Battle of Hypatia to allow the RMN to get into position?

They weren't stalling. The evacuations were proceeding as fast as possible and already faster than was advisable, because the SL had set impossible deadlines. The deadline for evacuation has to be reasonable; you can't order a million people to evacuate in 24 hours if all you have are two shuttles that can carry 50 people and a round-trip takes an hour (around the clock, that would only be 100 people per hour -- and no, these aren't the Hypatia numbers).

The Hypatia government also knew nothing of what the RMN was going to do. They couldn't and wouldn't have coordinated. The RMN could probably have attacked at any time after the missiles had been deployed and the stealth RDs were in position to destroy the freighters. Kotouč was waiting for HMS Vukodlak to arrive because the CLAC would give him far more options to deal with the SLN and survive. But by waiting, he got firmer evidence that the SLN was willing to commit a violation of the Edict.

At any rate, I was shocked that the SL never considered what the MA did to Grayson to be an EE violation.

The orbital infrastructure to food production was probably not touched. Those are probably in Grayson orbit, while the Blackbird Yards were in Uriel orbit, a gas giant in the system. So those didn't climb to the level of an EE violation; probably not even to a violation of the Deneb Accords.

Of course, even if they were, the SL was at this point a puppet of the MAlign and corrupt.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Yeah, I can see where stalling could be used as a tactic. In fact, IINM, stalling was used in the Battle of Hypatia to allow the RMN to get into position?

They weren't stalling. The evacuations were proceeding as fast as possible and already faster than was advisable, because the SL had set impossible deadlines. The deadline for evacuation has to be reasonable; you can't order a million people to evacuate in 24 hours if all you have are two shuttles that can carry 50 people and a round-trip takes an hour (around the clock, that would only be 100 people per hour -- and no, these aren't the Hypatia numbers).

The Hypatia government also knew nothing of what the RMN was going to do. They couldn't and wouldn't have coordinated. The RMN could probably have attacked at any time after the missiles had been deployed and the stealth RDs were in position to destroy the freighters. Kotouč was waiting for HMS Vukodlak to arrive because the CLAC would give him far more options to deal with the SLN and survive. But by waiting, he got firmer evidence that the SLN was willing to commit a violation of the Edict.

At any rate, I was shocked that the SL never considered what the MA did to Grayson to be an EE violation.

The orbital infrastructure to food production was probably not touched. Those are probably in Grayson orbit, while the Blackbird Yards were in Uriel orbit, a gas giant in the system. So those didn't climb to the level of an EE violation; probably not even to a violation of the Deneb Accords.

Of course, even if they were, the SL was at this point a puppet of the MAlign and corrupt.

Ah, yes, you are correct. Thanks for setting me straight. I need to reread UH, want to reread UH. Been meaning to do so, but life always has other plans.

It must have been the SLN that thought they were stalling, being the SLN, they didn't want to hang around in the system long, lest they run into those damn rabid NEOBARBS.

Now that you mention it, I do recall it being explained to Honor that the orbital farms were not touched. Which may have been a tactical error made by the MA, as crucial as the Japanese ignoring the oil fields at Pearl.

No doubt it would have been a human act of kindess, but the MA does not remind me of o a human, or kind, entity. In restropect, I seem to slightly recall some sort of snafu in their tactical ability to hit Grayson at the time?