First Havenite war

At the beginning of the first Manticore-Haven war there was a great opportunity for the Havenite Navy to truly and fully deliver a “short victorious war” but the preparation for that war should have started years before. Haven had all the power, they knew when they will start the war, where they will start the war and how they will start the war so there was no need for the silly attempt get the RMN to unwittingly maneuver to Haven’s war plans. The war started with shocking level of caution and poor planning on Haven’s part even though both sides had to have known the war was coming for decades. Haven had no requirement to leave the fighting to 11 Squadrons of the wall in Grayson and 4 squadrons of the wall in Hancock/Seaford Nine. Haven committed ~30.6% of their SD’s and DN’s to the offensive and none of their BB strength which means that 69.4% of their SD’s and DN’s along with 100% of their BB’s were committed to defence for a war they would launch at a time of their choosing and there was almost no chance of Manticore launching the war preemptively. Basically committing such a great number of their wallers to a defensive war set the pace of operations even without the Harris Assassination.

What would have been a better and more successful operations would have required reorganization of the Havenite Navy and better use of their resources and the advantage of numbers and being the aggressors. Haven has 2 systems that are of utmost importance and they are the Haven system and Trevor’s Star, they would require a solid force of SD’s and DN’s to defend them but the rest of the first tier systems would be defended by battleship squadrons. First tier systems would be defended by battleship squadrons because although important they are not as vital to the war effort and also because there is not expectation that Manticore would launch a surprise attack on Haven and if they did it would be on Trevor’s Star or Haven not systems that have lesser value.

Assuming for the 15% of the fleet being in refit for both sides the numbers are as follows:

RMN
-160 SD’s
-104 DN’s

Haven
-352 SD’s
-40 DN’s
-320 BB’s


Based on the RMN’s deployments in the short victorious war I have the following deployments:
Total Available Squadrons:
20 SD Squadrons
13 DN Squadron

Manticore Home System:
At least 120 SD’s

Hancock:
-2 SD Squadrons
-2 DN Squadron

Talbot:
-1 DN Squadron

This means in those 3 systems are deployed 17 out of 20 SD squadrons and 3 out of 13 DN squadrons.




Grayson:
8 Squadrons of the wall unspecified distribution but assuming that the 3 SD squadrons remaining are deployed here.

-3 SD Squadrons
-5 DN Squadrons


With Grayson this brings the total deployment to 20 out of 20 SD squadrons and 8 out of 13 DN Squadrons. I’m assuming that Grendelsbane has a squadron or 2 of the wall and the rest would be deployed to other alliance systems.

What I would do for Haven on the other hand is out of the 44 SD squadrons, 5 DN squadrons and 40 BB squadrons I would deploy 10 SD squadrons to the Haven system, 10 SD squadrons to Trevor’s star. Another 4 SD squadrons would be deployed to first tier systems along with all 40 BB squadrons based on system importance. The pickets for the first tier systems won’t be all that powerful but they should do their job which would be to force Manticore to deploy substantial numbers of ships of the wall to overwhelm them individually or in large numbers. Numbers they won’t be able to spare once the war starts.

The true defence would be in the 20 SD squadrons and 5 DN squadrons that would be deployed in fleets of 4 SD squadrons and 1 DN squadron for a total of 5 fleets. Those fleets would be deployed to military bases close enough that it would allow them to drill at the fleet and multi fleet level. Second tier systems would be protected by BC’s and third tier systems would be protected by CL’s and DD’s.

Basically whenever the decision is made to launch the war, Haven can launch all 5 fleets at the ideal target and with the RMN’s deployment posture that would be Grayson. Attacking the 3 SD and 5 DN squadrons of the Allied Second Fleet with the overwhelming force of 20 SD squadrons and 5 DN squadrons and destroying them would allow for Haven to capture Grayson and place a massive force within a week of the Manticore home system which is covered by 120 SD’s meaning that unless the Havenite Navy screws up completely and thouraghly they should 20+ Squadrons of the wall in a system that is close to Manticore thereby preventing attacks on Havenite tier 1 systems or the retaking of Grayson. Assuming Haven destroys 8 RMN squadrons but loses 5 squadrons damaged and destroyed they should still be able to field 20 squadrons of the wall. That would be 160 ships of the wall within a weeks travel time from Manticore which would force the RMN to abandon their allies and concentrate their wall in Manticore itself where they won’t be able to afford deploying a squadron fo DN’s for offensive operations let alone anything heavier.

Afterwords the 4 SD squadrons protecting tier 1 systems as well as 5 from each Haven and Trevors Star and half of the BB squadrons could be brought forward to Grayson to bring the total strength up to 34 squadrons of the wall and 20 BB squadrons pinning down 17 SD squadrons and 8 DN squadrons in Manticore. At that point the war might be at a relative standstill but it will be on Haven’s terms and on Manticore’s home turf. It would be a decision wether to launch the entire Combine Havenitve fleet at the Manticore capital or go after the forts.

IF done right on the other hand, Haven can split their fleet to hit Grendelsbane, Talbot and Hancock which would take another 7 squadrons off the map leaving Manticore with 15 SD squadrons and 3 DN squadrons. Talbot and Grendelsbane get a fleet each while Hancock gets 2 fleets to completely crush the picket.

Instead Haven launched an offensive that had very limited goals, tried to force the RMN to remove half of the force in Grayson and attacked with inadequate forces if they meant to keep the system afterwords. Haven was timid, cautious and unsure of their abilities so they launched an offensive that accomplished little of what they needed and even if the Harris Assassination had not happened would have put the offensive operations in the RMN's hands.

Why launch such an offesive that would guarantee anything but a short victorious war? Why keep such a large portion fo the Havenite fleet in defence if Haven gets to decide the when, where and how? Battleships were not required for "peacekeeping" that could have been accomplished by BC's, CL's and DD's. Completely ignoring their biggest advantages to a short victorious war Haven launched ab operation that even if successful would have left them with Hancock Station destroyed, Second Fleet destroyed and some BC and below destroyed but still a substantial RMN force and only why remains of the fleet attacking Grayson because Haven didn't deploy adequate forces to hit Hancock since even with their reinforcements they would still have been 9 squadrons of the wall against 8 squadrons of the wall when they gave notice to the RMN that war was imminent. This entire opening phase made no sense, they committed to a war but also committed to a defensive war.

Haven couldn't move all of those forces because quite a few of the systems in their backyard were still rebellious and would definitely break free from the central government if given half a chance. Those hundreds of BBs couldn't be moved from their internal policing action, plus they had no business in a modern wall as the Fourth Battle of Yieltsin proved.

If they had moved such a large proportion of their fleet, they might end up capturing a few systems on the Manticore Alliance side, maybe even the MBS, at the cost of losing a large proportion of the republic. The systems most likely to revolt would be the ones most recently annexed and thus the most productive ones, so this would be a case of winning a battle but losing the war or maybe a Pyrrhic victory.

The other problem is that they had no infrastructure to move such a large number of ships. The Peep fleet formations (and, quite frankly, everyone else's) did not have a long-range and deep strike capability. I don't know what kind of fleet train capabilities and logistics the PN had at the start of the war, but it looks like it had none (that's actually unlikely, but an insufficient fleet train is effectively the same as no fleet train). They needed to arrive at a forward fleet base to resupply before going off on their actual attack targets. We also don't know how likely their ships were to develop engineering problems just because of transit, but given what we've heard of the state of their technical education and what we later learned about how they conducted maintenance, it's entirely possible those ships needed a great deal of refit at that fleet base too, not just resupply of perishables and bunkerage.

So they couldn't have launched such a massive attack at this point even if they had thought to do so.

Then we get to the problem of failure of imagination: they never thought to do that. That's not how wars were conducted at this point and most importantly, it's not how Haven had been conducting its annexations. Aside from Trevor's Star and probably no more than a handful of others, there was little to no resistance. Haven managed to corrupt government officials into peacefully asking for annexation, causing civil unrest that justified it bringing a battle squadron to resolve the situation, or just plain crushed any kind of military defence those systems had. They had always annexed systems one by one (it seems). So it didn't occur to Parnell and the Harris administration that they'd need more force than they were already preparing to use -- which was already more than any previous war in human history.

They expected Manticore to roll over too. They had been injecting massive amounts of cash into the Manticore opposition trying to cause that change in government that I mentioned above. The assassination of King Roger III stands out too.

Then they had two political problems that hamstrung the military matters even further. First, the galactic public opinion: they had been flooding the Solarian newswaves with stories that they were the modern Republic, the nice guys, against the tyrannical and backwater monarchy in Manticore, which also happened to be a chokepoint and competitor to Solarian shipping. The Solarian public opinion was on their side (the MAlign pulling the strings behind the scenes probably helped too) and they didn't want to lose that by looking too imperialistic.

Second, their domestic public opinion. Harris needed a short victorious war for a reason, and that included the fact that they were bankrupting themselves with the Dole. They didn't have the funds to pay for a high-tempo war with a large deployment of assets and definitely couldn't afford to run out of funds faster by doing that. The latter would cause civil unrest, probably led by dolist managers who had better education and were kept away from power by the Legislaturalists. Like a certain Robert Stanton Pierre.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Haven couldn't move all of those forces because quite a few of the systems in their backyard were still rebellious and would definitely break free from the central government if given half a chance. Those hundreds of BBs couldn't be moved from their internal policing action, plus they had no business in a modern wall as the Fourth Battle of Yieltsin proved.

Honestly, it shouldn't take waller squadrons to hold down rebellious systems. That takes ground forces and a few ships in orbit. Those systems don't have resistance navies to drive off even CruRon's left to cover them.

Okay, it you remove the overwhelming show of force they might be tempted to launch a planetary rebellion. But a CruRon + some extra assault transports are going to be nearly as capable crushing one as a BatRon is.

And, frankly, if they do somehow lose a few systems to rebellion they'd have the time and firepower to recapture them after they'd knocked Manticore out of the war. (Or, more likely, to crush the still ongoing guerilla wars planet-side)


I'd argue that they let fear of (temporarily) losing what they had lead them to fatally under resourcing their next conquest attempt.



Their total war losses would have been a lot lower if they'd launched something like Beatrice Bravo as their opening gambit. The battle would have been the mostly costly in naval history - but it should have been war ending. Basically ignore the dispersed fleet Manticore has at their allies; ignore the attempt to get sucked into an slow attritional advance, and stick to what's worked for you in prior conquests -- overwhelming force against the enemy's home system.

It's not actually all that long a lunge from their forward fleet bases to the Manticore Binary System.

(OTOH the Peeps would have walked right into the surprise of missile pods; which might have broken their nerve even if the number of pods Home Fleet and the old planetary forts might deploy failed to achieve a knockout first punch)

Jonathan_S wrote:Honestly, it shouldn't take waller squadrons to hold down rebellious systems. That takes ground forces and a few ships in orbit. Those systems don't have resistance navies to drive off even CruRon's left to cover them.

I agree. We later saw that the FF could hold an entire sector with basically just cruisers and destroyers. The only reason to have battleships is if someone is coming with battlecruisers to try and liberate that system. Maybe some of those recently-annexed systems had navies in exile that would come do that, but I don't see the need for 300 battleships.

But I didn't make the rules. I'm just saying what RFC told us the reason for those battleships was and why they were tied down.

And, frankly, if they do somehow lose a few systems to rebellion they'd have the time and firepower to recapture them after they'd knocked Manticore out of the war. (Or, more likely, to crush the still ongoing guerilla wars planet-side)

Again, agreed, but the rational reason didn't apply here. The central government would lose face and credibility that the annexations were voluntary and desired by the population.

Plus RFC hints that the number of systems that Haven (thought they) would lose was considerable and might not be sufficient to compensate the gains of conquering the MBS.

I'd argue that they let fear of (temporarily) losing what they had lead them to fatally under resourcing their next conquest attempt.

Right.

Their total war losses would have been a lot lower if they'd launched something like Beatrice Bravo as their opening gambit. The battle would have been the mostly costly in naval history - but it should have been war ending. Basically ignore the dispersed fleet Manticore has at their allies; ignore the attempt to get sucked into an slow attritional advance, and stick to what's worked for you in prior conquests -- overwhelming force against the enemy's home system.

It's not actually all that long a lunge from their forward fleet bases to the Manticore Binary System.

It was several weeks' of travel from Seaford Nine, which they probably thought would be too much. You don't want those ships arriving in the MBS with empty bunkerage and being unable to sustain the operation because they are running out of reaction mass.

And they couldn't have ignored the dispersed fleets. Yes, if they take the MBS out of the war, the war is won, but it's not over. Those units left in their flanks and behind the lines could still attack their front-line systems and those very bases that the fleets would need to get back home. They wouldn't be enough to take on Haven or liberate Trevor's Star, but they'd be more than enough to trash any infrastructure that the PN would need to keep that territory. They wouldn't be able to reopen the Junction if the forts there don't surrender, so they can't get immediate relief via Trevor's Star (it would eventually happen because they'd die on the vine, but not immediately).

That would leave a significant portion of the PN stranded in the MBS, damaged due to the fighting and unable to effect repairs themselves, with an enemy out for revenge.

As with so masny other scenarios, we see how the Honorverse mirrors the OTL situation. This was written many years before the Russian/Ukrainian "Quick Victorious War" yet it is spot on. A large corrupt empire with a military force that appears to be irrestible meets opposition from a well organised and higher tech smaller opponent.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Honestly, it shouldn't take waller squadrons to hold down rebellious systems. That takes ground forces and a few ships in orbit. Those systems don't have resistance navies to drive off even CruRon's left to cover them.

I agree. We later saw that the FF could hold an entire sector with basically just cruisers and destroyers. The only reason to have battleships is if someone is coming with battlecruisers to try and liberate that system. Maybe some of those recently-annexed systems had navies in exile that would come do that, but I don't see the need for 300 battleships.

But I didn't make the rules. I'm just saying what RFC told us the reason for those battleships was and why they were tied down.

And, frankly, if they do somehow lose a few systems to rebellion they'd have the time and firepower to recapture them after they'd knocked Manticore out of the war. (Or, more likely, to crush the still ongoing guerilla wars planet-side)

Again, agreed, but the rational reason didn't apply here. The central government would lose face and credibility that the annexations were voluntary and desired by the population.

Plus RFC hints that the number of systems that Haven (thought they) would lose was considerable and might not be sufficient to compensate the gains of conquering the MBS.

I'd argue that they let fear of (temporarily) losing what they had lead them to fatally under resourcing their next conquest attempt.

Right.

Their total war losses would have been a lot lower if they'd launched something like Beatrice Bravo as their opening gambit. The battle would have been the mostly costly in naval history - but it should have been war ending. Basically ignore the dispersed fleet Manticore has at their allies; ignore the attempt to get sucked into an slow attritional advance, and stick to what's worked for you in prior conquests -- overwhelming force against the enemy's home system.

It's not actually all that long a lunge from their forward fleet bases to the Manticore Binary System.

It was several weeks' of travel from Seaford Nine, which they probably thought would be too much. You don't want those ships arriving in the MBS with empty bunkerage and being unable to sustain the operation because they are running out of reaction mass.

And they couldn't have ignored the dispersed fleets. Yes, if they take the MBS out of the war, the war is won, but it's not over. Those units left in their flanks and behind the lines could still attack their front-line systems and those very bases that the fleets would need to get back home. They wouldn't be enough to take on Haven or liberate Trevor's Star, but they'd be more than enough to trash any infrastructure that the PN would need to keep that territory. They wouldn't be able to reopen the Junction if the forts there don't surrender, so they can't get immediate relief via Trevor's Star (it would eventually happen because they'd die on the vine, but not immediately).

That would leave a significant portion of the PN stranded in the MBS, damaged due to the fighting and unable to effect repairs themselves, with an enemy out for revenge.

Travel to Hancock was 6 weeks or so - Seaford 9 was another 1-2 weeks past and to the East of Hancock. So travel from Seaford to the MBS would have been >7 weeks. Travel with cripples would have been more. that's pushing the limit for a 1905 Peep fleet.


That partially why my recent thought experiment discussed a full fleet base at Masada - it was close enough to strike directly at the MBS, and close enough to get stragglers back to a fleetbase.

The Mantcorian Alliance had done a good job of building up protected systems and fleetbases that kept the Peep forces at a distance from the MBS which precluded heavy raiding - the Peeps were forces to snip at targets of opportunity to wittle the Manty forces down by sheer mass of the assaulting forces.

Every single Haven acquisition had been executed by coup de main, nowhere had they tried an attritional strategy. Their fleet was not appropriate for a long war, it was designed for short hard fights and for oppressing restive populations.

So of course they decided to completely disregard everything they had perfected and practiced and try a new and untested strategy that they were neither trained or equipped to carry out because?

kzt wrote:Every single Haven acquisition had been executed by coup de main, nowhere had they tried an attritional strategy. Their fleet was not appropriate for a long war, it was designed for short hard fights and for oppressing restive populations.

So of course they decided to completely disregard everything they had perfected and practiced and try a new and untested strategy that they were neither trained or equipped to carry out because?

You forgot the PRN motto - "Win on the first Salvo", but yeah, virtually every assault to date was a combination of political subterfuge, action teams, assassination, q-ship actions, and the like - not direct Peer Fleet on Fleet grinding action. However, every Havenite acquisition to date combined did not have the military might of Manticore. Of course they are going to try the same old pages from the playbook, but anybody with 2 brain cells in the PRN should know Manticore was a different animal, and Fleet on Fleet action was to be part of the war. The Peeps had been trying to deal with Manticore their usual way since King Roger - with the majority of their plans failing spectacularly.

If they didn't realize "same ole' " wasn't going to work on Manticore, well, I guess they were over paid and under qualified for their jobs.

Same old would have been they manufacture a feint somewhere and wait for Manticore send off a big chunk of their reserves to placate their allies yelling for help, then they roll into Manticore home system with their entire fleet and head directly for Manticore. At that point I think home fleet was at the Junction. So the entire Haven fleet jumps in and heads directly for Manticore. Assuming home fleet takes 30 minutes to power up and assemble, they will be 30 minutes behind and hence out of range.

So the haven fleet, which about 200% of the entire RMN gets to face 10% of the RMN before taking the orbitals of Manticore, followed by their defeating another 1/3rd of the RMN in the form of home fleet.

“Welcome to the People’s Republic!”

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Their total war losses would have been a lot lower if they'd launched something like Beatrice Bravo as their opening gambit. The battle would have been the mostly costly in naval history - but it should have been war ending. Basically ignore the dispersed fleet Manticore has at their allies; ignore the attempt to get sucked into an slow attritional advance, and stick to what's worked for you in prior conquests -- overwhelming force against the enemy's home system.

It's not actually all that long a lunge from their forward fleet bases to the Manticore Binary System.

It was several weeks' of travel from Seaford Nine, which they probably thought would be too much. You don't want those ships arriving in the MBS with empty bunkerage and being unable to sustain the operation because they are running out of reaction mass.

And they couldn't have ignored the dispersed fleets. Yes, if they take the MBS out of the war, the war is won, but it's not over. Those units left in their flanks and behind the lines could still attack their front-line systems and those very bases that the fleets would need to get back home. They wouldn't be enough to take on Haven or liberate Trevor's Star, but they'd be more than enough to trash any infrastructure that the PN would need to keep that territory. They wouldn't be able to reopen the Junction if the forts there don't surrender, so they can't get immediate relief via Trevor's Star (it would eventually happen because they'd die on the vine, but not immediately).

That would leave a significant portion of the PN stranded in the MBS, damaged due to the fighting and unable to effect repairs themselves, with an enemy out for revenge.

Getting the cripples back is a concern. But for far less investment than the Peeps put in building up a broad arc of forward bases to face off against the front line Alliance systems they could have build themselves a significant fleet train of tankers, freighters of spare pares, some repair ships. That would let them pick an empty system most of the way to Manticore (and there's no shortage of uninhabitably systems out there), or simply a spot in deep space, to use as a staging ground for the attack on the Manticoran home systems. Top up all your bunkers, swap out any failed modules, restock other supplies, and prepare for the final lunge at the MBS.

So they'd need to logistically innovate in order to stick with their strategic strategy of coup de main.

Mind you, they'd need to have been working on the enablers for that strategy during the years leading up to the war (say, no later than the events of OBS). But they have time and can call their shot.


Of course if Manticore gets wind of that improved logistical capabilities they might rethink their fleet deployments; out of fear of having those forward defenses in depth bypassed. But if they weaken their forces there too much trying to reinforce the home system they invite defeats in detail, and if they pull them out entirely they risk Haven seizing a forward base by capturing one of Manticore's abandoned allies... And there's no way Manticore's Parliament is going to authorize a preemptive strike.