GA Strategy, Tactics and Targets

As an alternative to the massive destruction some people are advocating, I would suggest a more gradual approach. Target only capitol ships (BCs and above). Leave the cruisers and destroyers alone to continue their policing duties. Shoot at them only if they shoot at GA forces first. Let them keep at least a partial lid on the chaos until other arrangements can be made.

Even though OFS and FF do not have that good of a track record, if GA commanders make it clear when entering a system that they will not destroy smaller ships unless they shoot first and that they are leaving them intact to continue those police duties, eventually the smarter SLN commanders will get the idea.

I get a feeling that some of us here are thinking of war as being like chess. It's not. The object of war is to destroy the enemy's ability to resist. To do that his ships, fleets, orbital infrastructures, factories, etc. are fair game up to the point of surrender;in short, everything short of violating the Eridani Edict. Those were the rules of the war against Haven. There is no reason to believe that the war against the League would be different.

Don

n7axw wrote:Those were the rules of the war against Haven. There is no reason to believe that the war against the League would be different.

Fighting the Solarian League is NOT the same as fighting Haven. Honor made that perfectly clear when she proposed her plan to break up the League instead of conquering it.

Storm From The Shadows
Chapter Forty-four
wrote:"So if we get into an all-out war with the League, our strategy is going to have to have a very definite political element. We'll have to make it clear that the war wasn't our idea. We'll have to drive home the notion that we're not after any sort of punitive peace, that we're not trying to annex any additional territory, that we have no desire to conduct reprisals against people who don't want to fight us. We need to tell them, every step of the way, that what we really want is a negotiated settlement . . . and at the same time, we have to hit the League as a whole so hard that the fracture lines already there under the surface open right up. We have to split the League into separate sectors, into successor states, none of which have the sheer size and concentrated industrial power and manpower of the present league. Successor states that are our own size, or smaller. And we have to negotiate bilateral peace treaties with each of those successor states as they declare their willingness to opt out of the general conflict to get us to stop beating on their heads. And once we have those peace treaties, we have to not only honor them, but step beyond them. We need to use trade incentives, mutual defense pacts, educational assistance, every single thing we can think of to show them that we are—and to really be, not just pretend to be—the sort of neighbor and ally they'll want around. In other words, once we break the League militarily, once we splinter it into multiple, mutually independent star nations, we have to see to it that none of those star nations have any motive to fuse themselves back together and gang up on us all over again."

PS: there is a lot more to Honor's description of how and why the League has to be destroyed instead of defeated in chapter 44.

Hi KNick,

It's an intriguing idea, but BC's and CA's can also police can't they?

We expect most of the BC's will be gone soon, but are there that many CA's to be worth going out of the GA's way to kill only them?

While I understand your humanitarian concerns to keep a lid on the expected chaos, it is largely the CL's and DD's that are carrying out most of the KEW strikes etc, so who is more guilty of mass murder?

Given the SLN's oft avowed behavior of ignoring slavers how much policing are they actually doing?

Yes, they're occasionally catch pirates, but don't they let most of them go?

Yes, they sometimes rescue people from space disasters, but given the MMM has left SL space, how many such can we expect now?

These and other questions, in my opinion, reduce the need to accommodate the FF, despite chaos concerns.

L

KNick wrote:As an alternative to the massive destruction some people are advocating, I would suggest a more gradual approach. Target only capitol ships (BCs and above). Leave the cruisers and destroyers alone to continue their policing duties. Shoot at them only if they shoot at GA forces first. Let them keep at least a partial lid on the chaos until other arrangements can be made.

Even though OFS and FF do not have that good of a track record, if GA commanders make it clear when entering a system that they will not destroy smaller ships unless they shoot first and that they are leaving them intact to continue those police duties, eventually the smarter SLN commanders will get the idea.

n7axw wrote:I get a feeling that some of us here are thinking of war as being like chess. It's not. The object of war is to destroy the enemy's ability to resist. To do that his ships, fleets, orbital infrastructures, factories, etc. are fair game up to the point of surrender;in short, everything short of violating the Eridani Edict. Those were the rules of the war against Haven. There is no reason to believe that the war against the League would be different.

They're certainly 'fair game', but.... Manticore can win a hundred battles against the League, but to win the war, it must avoid 'arousing a sleeping giant' -- a large group of advanced systems which are unified by their determination to destroy Manticore.

The Alliance has to fracture the League into dozens of star nations which are more pissed off at the erstwhile League government than they are at the Alliance. And more fearful of their neighbors than they are of the Alliance. So it makes a lot of sense for the Alliance forces to go a bit out of their way to minimize casualties -- and point out that they're doing so! And to take out the League's capital ships and shipyards, while leaving lots of systems with a core of self-defense forces that can be expanded into locally-controlled fleets.

Hi Imaginos1892,

The BF reserve has been the club the mandarins have used to threaten all the restive systems especially in the shell and protectorates, who know they can't begin to fight those huge numbers.

Since the GA is looking for allies, lots of allies, taking the reserve out makes more than a little sense, its one thing to destroy or capture 71 and or 427 SD's out in the supposed boonies which can be variously lied about, though Manticore is actually closer to Sol that ~99% of the rest of the SL, its quite another to demonstrate that denied capability several times in front of billions and billions of SL citizens almost simultaneously.

Publicly humbling the SL on such a huge scale, destroying the juggernaut simply and easily, with the SLN unable to stop or delay the day, hour and minute of judgement ought to cause a lot of SL citizens to check their beliefs for possible errors regarding the omnipotence of the SL and the GA given the rather drastically changed future they will find themselves in.

Even if it took a couple missiles each, especially RHN missiles, it'd be more than worth it though there have been several proposals of less expensive means, small drones delivering nukes inside, Mistletoe's, LAC's etc, they will all work, though RFC probably has a few twists for us.

Destroying the naval building slips when they're almost finished, what the MAlign MASN intended, depends on when the GA attacks; which is less important than their total destruction as soon as possible.

There are only around 7 BF reserve anchorages for something like 1200 each, plus some BC's etc, such easy targets deserve being taken down quickly.

Rather than so many SDP's and CLAC's, if necessary a pair of each should be more than adequate, though given the total number of GA ClAC's may be between 300-450 for a 1-2 or 3 ratio [~1-4 later this year], so 8 CLAC's with 16-24 SDP's etc guarantees far more than mere overkill.

Which after 15% refits means 3-4 dozen same sized TF's for all sorts of missions, just 16-24 on offense could gut the SLN in a couple month's.

L

Imaginos1892 wrote:WHY O WHY would Admiral Harrington - or anybody else - waste time and resources destroying the Sollies' mothballed ships? At this point even the ISLN knows they are nothing but hopelessly obsolete deathtraps; having them is an impediment, not an advantage.

There is also no need to go around shooting up planetary infrastructure, or even military assets. The ISLN, as it currently exists, is not a significant threat. Why waste time, resources and the moral high ground shooting up people who can't shoot back?

The only thing the Alliance needs to do is prevent the ISLN from obtaining ships that can be a threat. The most efficient way to do that is to spy on every system where those ships can be built, wait until they are almost complete, and then send in a modest fleet - say, 80 SD(P) and 60 CLAC, plus escorts - to blow them all to tiny bits.
-------------------
No boom?
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

Hi Bill Woods,

Given the high amount of detailed information involved in Lacoon 1 & 2, I suspect that the GA's ONI has excellent information on each system's relative support for the GA or SL, and the state of their defenses, hyper warships or not etc.

HA-H and the GA aren't going to tick off anyone they don't have to, so lets concentrate on things less obvious, like how quickly they might start rolling up the shell and protectorates with a pair of SDP's and CLAC's etc.

The main ground force could easily be the RHN marines, given how few RMN there are for reasons that after almost 3 years of war that should have called up the huge reserves from the first war.

Personally, I expect a lot of the one third of SL members that have hyper warships to agree with the GA and help control things, so using the smaller SLN won't be that critical, though some may actually volunteer, especially when there isn't much left of the SL.

L

Bill Woods wrote:

n7axw wrote:I get a feeling that some of us here are thinking of war as being like chess. It's not. The object of war is to destroy the enemy's ability to resist. To do that his ships, fleets, orbital infrastructures, factories, etc. are fair game up to the point of surrender;in short, everything short of violating the Eridani Edict. Those were the rules of the war against Haven. There is no reason to believe that the war against the League would be different.

They're certainly 'fair game', but.... Manticore can win a hundred battles against the League, but to win the war, it must avoid 'arousing a sleeping giant' -- a large group of advanced systems which are unified by their determination to destroy Manticore.

The Alliance has to fracture the League into dozens of star nations which are more pissed off at the erstwhile League government than they are at the Alliance. And more fearful of their neighbors than they are of the Alliance. So it makes a lot of sense for the Alliance forces to go a bit out of their way to minimize casualties -- and point out that they're doing so! And to take out the League's capital ships and shipyards, while leaving lots of systems with a core of self-defense forces that can be expanded into locally-controlled fleets.

n7axw wrote:I get a feeling that some of us here are thinking of war as being like chess. It's not. The object of war is to destroy the enemy's ability to resist. To do that his ships, fleets, orbital infrastructures, factories, etc. are fair game up to the point of surrender;in short, everything short of violating the Eridani Edict. Those were the rules of the war against Haven. There is no reason to believe that the war against the League would be different.

Don

More often wars are lost because the enemies willingness to resist was destroyed; not their physical ability. (Or remind me what Viet Cong attacked destroyed the US's ability to produce arms, ammo, aircraft, etc, etc. For that mater reminder me what attack the American colonists mounted that destroyed Britain's Army, Navy, or arms manufacturing)

Sometimes the will to fight is broken by breaking the ability. But guerrilla wars clearly show that no mater how much ability to fight you destroy, if the will to fight still exists the fighting won't end; it'll just change.


Aggressively attacking the ability of the League to resist is likely to generate anger and defiance in the League worlds, upping their willingness to resist. And the GA isn't big enough to suppress and occupy the League long term; if the majority of the component world still want revenge its only a matter of time before their combined R&D and industry generate a resurgent military that swamps the GA.

You need (IMO; which mirrors what Honor said at one point in the books) to encourage the League member worlds to be dissatisfies with the League government and view the war as a unjustified attack by the SL bureaucracy again Manticore; one that proves they are both corrupt and inept. So the League member worlds will break away and form separate peaces with the GA

Roll up the shell with groups composed of a few destroyers, a merchantman loaded with supplies...there are lots of extra merchantmen... a largish contingent of surplus spaceship crewpeople to fly back to Manticore all captured freighters,...

Because this gives the junior people introduced in later novels the chance to have their own books.

lyonheart wrote:Hi Bill Woods,

Given the high amount of detailed information involved in Lacoon 1 & 2, I suspect that the GA's ONI has excellent information on each system's relative support for the GA or SL, and the state of their defenses, hyper warships or not etc.

HA-H and the GA aren't going to tick off anyone they don't have to, so lets concentrate on things less obvious, like how quickly they might start rolling up the shell and protectorates with a pair of SDP's and CLAC's etc.

The main ground force could easily be the RHN marines, given how few RMN there are for reasons that after almost 3 years of war that should have called up the huge reserves from the first war.

Personally, I expect a lot of the one third of SL members that have hyper warships to agree with the GA and help control things, so using the smaller SLN won't be that critical, though some may actually volunteer, especially when there isn't much left of the SL.

L

Bill Woods wrote:

n7axw wrote:I get a feeling that some of us here are thinking of war as being like chess. It's not. The object of war is to destroy the enemy's ability to resist. To do that his ships, fleets, orbital infrastructures, factories, etc. are fair game up to the point of surrender;in short, everything short of violating the Eridani Edict. Those were the rules of the war against Haven. There is no reason to believe that the war against the League would be different.

They're certainly 'fair game', but.... Manticore can win a hundred battles against the League, but to win the war, it must avoid 'arousing a sleeping giant' -- a large group of advanced systems which are unified by their determination to destroy Manticore.

The Alliance has to fracture the League into dozens of star nations which are more pissed off at the erstwhile League government than they are at the Alliance. And more fearful of their neighbors than they are of the Alliance. So it makes a lot of sense for the Alliance forces to go a bit out of their way to minimize casualties -- and point out that they're doing so! And to take out the League's capital ships and shipyards, while leaving lots of systems with a core of self-defense forces that can be expanded into locally-controlled fleets.

lyonheart wrote:Hi KNick,

<<SNIP>>
Given the SLN's oft avowed behavior of ignoring slavers how much policing are they actually doing?

Yes, they're occasionally catch pirates, but don't they let most of them go?

Yes, they sometimes rescue people from space disasters, but given the MMM has left SL space, how many such can we expect now?

These and other questions, in my opinion, reduce the need to accommodate the FF, despite chaos concerns.

L

While the SLN does not equate slavers and pirates, unlike the GA members, they do consider pirates as criminals. Their thinking seems to run along the lines of "Slavery is "business as usual"", while piracy is bad for business. It is not necessarily the SLN that has determined their course of action, but the Transstellars. Slavery does not impact them like piracy does. While the SLN might let a slaver go, the same is not true of a pirate. So, for good or ill, FF has kept piracy to a minimum. Once FF has been removed there is no other force to keep it in check and, as lucrative as piracy can be, it is possible that there will be a rise in the number of pirates.

Also, it is the threat of those DDs, CLs and CAs that are currently keeping active fighting to a minimum in the Verge. Once the GA arrives on scene that will change, but until then there still needs to be some kind of peace keeping force for some of the planets. And once Capt. Terekhov's response to Yucel start circulating, I expect the number of KEW incidents to decrease, sharply.