Manning the SLN Reserve

stewart wrote:

Dca wrote:I'll quibble, but only so far as having a plan. I'm confident the SLN pays people to maintain staffing plans in case the reserve is needed, and I'm confident those people have produced artifacts labeled as plans. There may even be people paid to be labeled as reservists.

See? All it takes is sufficient cynicism. Practical? Um, no.

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With the record of the SLN, I would be "shocked, shocked I tell you" if any of the "paid reservists" had been near any active (or inactive) SLN ship in 10 years or were even familiar with their designated tasks.

-- Stewart

I wouldn't be. For current state-of-the-art simulators, you might find this interesting: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/ ... nger-zone/ . Now, how much of that actually exists anywhere except on paper is somewhat questionable, but keeping a stable tech level means they don't have to keep spending huge amounts to keep the training establishment up to spec.

Now, putting everything together into a working ship with reasonably competent officers is a different question; that's why there's a 'working up' period with a new ship.

For the sake of fairness, remember that prior to Manticore upsetting the technological applecart with its pressurized R&D, both hardware and tactical doctrine had been static for a long time. That would mean that any updating would have been pretty minor. Looking at those old scientists in the reserve from that perspective, they didn't look all that bad.

Don

Montrose Toast wrote:
90% of the ship's company of the USS Enterprise was on thier 1st deployment for the 82-83 cruise. CVW11 was more experienced having deployed on the USS America while the "E" did its "YardPac 79-82" period.

My first deployment was VF213/CVW11/CVN65 1982-83...

[/quote]

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Montrose --

Greetings Shipmate --
I was also on 82-83 Westpac -- Ship's Company Reactor Dept / RC-22 (Yes, I once glowed in the dark)

-- Stewart

fallsfromtrees wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:It occurs to me that the chief differences between the League and the Silesian Confederacy are (1) size, (2) system wealth and good government, and (3) being able to conceal what a mess it is. And it's lost (3).

I'm not sure I understand (2). There is very little evidence of "good" government in either the SL or Silesia. How is that a difference?

What he's saying is that, in Silesia, not only is the overall government corrupt, but the individual system governments are corrupt as well, but the same isn't true of the Solarian league.

We know that the Silesian government is corrupt, ineffectual, riddled with graft and cronyism, etc. We also know that individual systems have corrupt governors who have deals with pirates/rake off their percentage from various enterprises/etc while the people of their system are impoverished.

On the other hand, while the overall Solarian government is just as corrupt, just as riddled with graft and patronage as the Silesian government (though it seems to be slightly less ineffectual in day-to-day concerns), many of the individual system governments don't seem to be as bad off - e.g. Beowulf is part of a corrupt star nation but Beowulf itself is not corrupt. Now, obviously this is not true for the verge and 'independent' systems that frontier security and the transtellars exploit, but it does seem to be true for many (or possibly even most) of the core league members.

JeffEngel wrote:It occurs to me that the chief differences between the League and the Silesian Confederacy are (1) size, (2) system wealth and good government, and (3) being able to conceal what a mess it is. And it's lost (3).

fallsfromtrees wrote:I'm not sure I understand (2). There is very little evidence of "good" government in either the SL or Silesia. How is that a difference?

MuonNeutrino wrote:
What he's saying is that, in Silesia, not only is the overall government corrupt, but the individual system governments are corrupt as well, but the same isn't true of the Solarian league.

We know that the Silesian government is corrupt, ineffectual, riddled with graft and cronyism, etc. We also know that individual systems have corrupt governors who have deals with pirates/rake off their percentage from various enterprises/etc while the people of their system are impoverished.

On the other hand, while the overall Solarian government is just as corrupt, just as riddled with graft and patronage as the Silesian government (though it seems to be slightly less ineffectual in day-to-day concerns), many of the individual system governments don't seem to be as bad off - e.g. Beowulf is part of a corrupt star nation but Beowulf itself is not corrupt. Now, obviously this is not true for the verge and 'independent' systems that frontier security and the transtellars exploit, but it does seem to be true for many (or possibly even most) of the core league members.

O. I see his point now

Just caught up with this thread (spent 5 days with family and no real access to the Forum...nice presents, though).

To be a bit of a contrarian, I don't really see the problem of manning the Reserve. Yes, you would need about 48,000,000 for the SD's alone, and given the smaller ships and other support, let's say you have to call up 150,000,000 people..which seems to be a lot.

But you have 1,800 member systems (some perhaps with more than one inhabited planet). Divide 150,000,000 by 1,800 and you have....83,334 people per planet needed for the Reserves. Call it an even 100,000, or 180,000,000 potential reservists.

And if you divide 100,000 by an average population of 5,000,000,000.....not to much.

And all you need is one reasonably sized tower (say 60 stories), the bottom 30 being quarters for abut 4,000 and the top half classrooms, simulators and maintenance equipment and maintenance simulators. Add about 500 trainers per planet(about 900,000 SLN personnel, a proverbial drop in the bucket, perhaps on rotational duty for a 2-year tour), a two-week requirement every year for training/refresher, 2 months off-planet training for Officers over the grade of LT every other year, and a Battle Fleet force visiting every 5-7 years for 'hands-on' training for several weeks....

So yeah, I can see the manpower being available, and perhaps reasonably well-trained.

And I can see a planning document with how many ships would be needed to move the reservists to their stations, to include the necessary orders, logistics and the other thousand and one details.

Making such a plan is not that difficult, folks.

Executing it however....that is when all the graft, the lack of real training (those reserves probably see it as a nice bonus and a way to get off work for a couple of weeks; they have probably never considered the possibity that they would be activated), and the lack of real logistics to fulfill the plan ("
oh, you need 27 ships to carry personnel and gear to your duty station? Well, good luck with the MMM gone and every SLN transtellar screaming for bottoms...").

So, I think there are Reservists out there and that plans exist to use them...but their ability to influence this conflict is going to be hamstrung by the lack of logistics to carry out the plans.

Not to mention that most of the Reservists are going to hear about Spindle and 2nd Manticore and maybe think it is time for their vacation..somewhere off the grid, without any easy way to contact them.

Planets with areas much like outback Alaska today may suddenly become real popular...

IMHO as always....YMMV.

Hutch wrote:Just caught up with this thread (spent 5 days with family and no real access to the Forum...nice presents, though).

To be a bit of a contrarian, I don't really see the problem of manning the Reserve. Yes, you would need about 48,000,000 for the SD's alone, and given the smaller ships and other support, let's say you have to call up 150,000,000 people..which seems to be a lot.

But you have 1,800 member systems (some perhaps with more than one inhabited planet). Divide 150,000,000 by 1,800 and you have....83,334 people per planet needed for the Reserves. Call it an even 100,000, or 180,000,000 potential reservists.

And if you divide 100,000 by an average population of 5,000,000,000.....not to much.

And all you need is one reasonably sized tower (say 60 stories), the bottom 30 being quarters for abut 4,000 and the top half classrooms, simulators and maintenance equipment and maintenance simulators. Add about 500 trainers per planet(about 900,000 SLN personnel, a proverbial drop in the bucket, perhaps on rotational duty for a 2-year tour), a two-week requirement every year for training/refresher, 2 months off-planet training for Officers over the grade of LT every other year, and a Battle Fleet force visiting every 5-7 years for 'hands-on' training for several weeks....

So yeah, I can see the manpower being available, and perhaps reasonably well-trained.

And I can see a planning document with how many ships would be needed to move the reservists to their stations, to include the necessary orders, logistics and the other thousand and one details.

Making such a plan is not that difficult, folks.

Executing it however....that is when all the graft, the lack of real training (those reserves probably see it as a nice bonus and a way to get off work for a couple of weeks; they have probably never considered the possibity that they would be activated), and the lack of real logistics to fulfill the plan ("
oh, you need 27 ships to carry personnel and gear to your duty station? Well, good luck with the MMM gone and every SLN transtellar screaming for bottoms...").

So, I think there are Reservists out there and that plans exist to use them...but their ability to influence this conflict is going to be hamstrung by the lack of logistics to carry out the plans.

Not to mention that most of the Reservists are going to hear about Spindle and 2nd Manticore and maybe think it is time for their vacation..somewhere off the grid, without any easy way to contact them.

Planets with areas much like outback Alaska today may suddenly become real popular...

IMHO as always....YMMV.

That sounds expensive. The budget of the SLN is minuscule compared to the GDP of the SL and the portion of that, which could be devoted to the military. And since the SLN is operating under a 100 year (they will have at least 100 years to prepare for a threat) rule according to RFC preparing for an emergency mobilization would have been regarded to be unnecessary.
The purpose of the reserve fleet is not to be manned, but to make John Q Sollie feel safe, deter aggression and give your cousin a chance to incur seniority by commanding a portion of it.

I'll quibble, but only so far as having a plan. I'm confident the SLN pays people to maintain staffing plans in case the reserve is needed, and I'm confident those people have produced artifacts labeled as plans. There may even be people paid to be labeled as reservists.

See? All it takes is sufficient cynicism. Practical? Um, no.


I wouldn't be. For current state-of-the-art simulators, you might find this interesting: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/ ... nger-zone/ . Now, how much of that actually exists anywhere except on paper is somewhat questionable, but keeping a stable tech level means they don't have to keep spending huge amounts to keep the training establishment up to spec.

Now, putting everything together into a working ship with reasonably competent officers is a different question; that's why there's a 'working up' period with a new ship.[/quote]

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After the word starts to circulate about the results of (1) Battle of Spindle, (2) 2nd Battle of Manticore, (3) "Battle" of Saltash, and the various Lancoon I / II demonstration shoots, (and the word WILL get out), I suspect many of the designated "Reservists" will find (or manufacture) multiple plausible deferments to their re-activation.
Or they just take the equivalent of vacationing in Canada (Maya or Phoenix is lovely this time of year)

-- Stewart