Operation Sanskrit - a minor doubt

Star Knight wrote:

I disagree about the idea of Caparelli/Givens being sidelined.
Book wise, however, we don't get to be the fly on the wall in the pit with Givens and Caparelli like we did in AoV (Ashes of Victory) coming up with the strategies that they are giving to White Haven, etc. to keep the SEM from losing the war.

We don’t need to be a fly on their wall to see they were not involved. The hole Torch business happened and the Queen was demanding action during a cabinet meeting. Hamish brought up Sanskrit, discussed it with the Queen and his brother and got the order to get things going.
That’s it and that’s highly irregular. He should have gone straight to Caparelli and Grievens when the Queen was demanding action, not selling here 6 tmonths old battle plans.
This is on him.

Or, you know, as part of his job as First Space Lord he had routine disucssion with Givens and Caparelli with covered the current plans should the RMN be ordered to resume operations.

Just because White Haven was able to discuss plans without going back and consulting doesn't mean that the plan had literally be sitting on a shelf, discussed, for 6 months; nor that he ordered it put in operation without listening to anybody. (I'm sure at least it was routinely updated based on forces available and any intel coming out of Haven space)

White Haven and the Admiralty might suffered from a bit of lock-in and sticking with the plan they had rather that going back and doing a clean-sheet approach. But lack of mention of Caparelli does not mean that the plan White Haven presented the Queen didn't represent their collective current best approach as of their last (weekly?) update and planning meeting. (Flawed as it might have turned out to be)

Garth 2 wrote:The available Grayson SDs were assigned to protect the MWJ which was a priority one objective, whilst the rest where protecting Grayson.

Where did they do this?

The MWJ was protected by a fleet of forts with MDMs and supported with many thousands of LACs. It's an extremely tough target. Possibly 2nd fleet could have taken it, but would have gotten mostly slagged in the process.

kzt wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:The available Grayson SDs were assigned to protect the MWJ which was a priority one objective, whilst the rest where protecting Grayson.

Where did they do this?

The MWJ was protected by a fleet of forts with MDMs and supported with many thousands of LACs. It's an extremely tough target. Possibly 2nd fleet could have taken it, but would have gotten mostly slagged in the process.

At All Costs Chapter 62
A year ago, the MWJ permanent fortifications had been virtually non-existent in fact, they'd been so sparse he'd been forced to hang Home Fleet all the way out a the junction to cover the critical central nexus of the Star Kingdom's economy against attack.

Shadow of Saganami Chapter 8
Almost half of Ragnhild's tactical plot belonged to the Star Kingdom's Grayson and Andermani allies, and relived though Helen was to see them, the fact that the Star Kingdom needed them made her feel... uncomfortable.

The new forts come online, during A Raising Thunder (i.e. after At All Costs when Cutworm and Sanskrit operations occur) which is why Home Fleet is in a defensive position around Sphinx and Honor is working up the fleet when Haven 2nd fleet comes a calling.

@Jonathan_S

White Haven and the Admiralty might suffered from a bit of lock-in and sticking with the plan they had rather that going back and doing a clean-sheet approach. But lack of mention of Caparelli does not mean that the plan White Haven presented the Queen didn't represent their collective current best approach as of their last (weekly?) update and planning meeting. (Flawed as it might have turned out to be)

Oh sure they updated it regularly. Honor got additional IAN wallers after all.
But updating a 6tmonths old battle plan does not mean they are doing their jobs right.
It just shows they didn’t bother to come up with something else. Its not like there are much better alternatives to trashing Lovat with Apollo.
There has to be a reason for this failure and since I don’t buy Caparelli suddenly becoming stupid the next two people to look to are the Alexander Harringtons. They are Fleet Commanders and not necessarily suited to sit back, wait and think at this point in time.

@Garth2

At All Costs Chapter 62
A year ago, the MWJ permanent fortifications had been virtually non-existent in fact, they'd been so sparse he'd been forced to hang Home Fleet all the way out a the junction to cover the critical central nexus of the Star Kingdom's economy against attack.

Shadow of Saganami Chapter 8
Almost half of Ragnhild's tactical plot belonged to the Star Kingdom's Grayson and Andermani allies, and relived though Helen was to see them, the fact that the Star Kingdom needed them made her feel... uncomfortable.

This just refers to Home Fleet as we see it during First Manticore:
26 IAN SD(P)
12 GSN SD(P)
4 RMN SD(P) (HMS Invictus + 1 Invictus Class & 2 Medusa Class)
46 RMN SD(P)

Most likely there were additional Allied Forces stationed there when Ragnhild left the system, those wallers were deployed with Eighth Fleet (IAN) or sent to cover other alliance systems.
There were no additional wallers besides Third and Eighth Fleet at the Junction during BoMa.

Star Knight wrote:The Options would have been the same. Throw everything at Manticore or surrender. Another Lovat wouldnt change the situation.

FWIW, the Jouett attack would have revealed that
1) The Manticoran Alliance has at least 40 Apollo-capable wallers (quite a lot more than they had at Lovat)
2) The Andermani SD(P)s were missing because they were being upgraded to handle Apollo (there wasn't a significant Andermani component to 8th fleet prior to the post-Lovat reinforcements, and one of Theisman's biggest concerns was where the Andermani were)

I don't think Beatrice would have been launched in that environment. Theisman would have to figure that with 8th Fleet able to reinforce Manticoran Home Fleet, Beatrice could not succeed with the 336-waller force, and any time spent reinforcing the attack fleet beyond that and updating plans also gave the Manticoran alliance more time to fully roll out Apollo.

drothgery wrote:I don't think Beatrice would have been launched in that environment.

Why not? They had 18 SD(P)s at Lovat, showing up with 40 to trash Jouett doesnt look like an overall deployment.
Just that they still dont have enough to attack Haven directly.
Especially when your throw six Batrons at Alizion with Camilie and run into no Apollo capable ships...

drothgery wrote:Theisman would have to figure that with 8th Fleet able to reinforce Manticoran Home Fleet, Beatrice could not succeed with the 336-waller force, and any time spent reinforcing the attack fleet beyond that and updating plans also gave the Manticoran alliance more time to fully roll out Apollo.

You think he wouldnt have continued to redeploy ships if he hadnt launched the attack when he did? The guy isnt stupid.
Anyway, the obvious solution has always been to attack when Eighth Fleet is away to raid somewhere.

Star Knight wrote:

drothgery wrote:I don't think Beatrice would have been launched in that environment.

Why not? They had 18 SD(P)s at Lovat, showing up with 40 to trash Jouett doesnt look like an overall deployment.
Just that they still dont have enough to attack Haven directly.
Especially when your throw six Batrons at Alizion with Camilie and run into no Apollo capable ships...

drothgery wrote:Theisman would have to figure that with 8th Fleet able to reinforce Manticoran Home Fleet, Beatrice could not succeed with the 336-waller force, and any time spent reinforcing the attack fleet beyond that and updating plans also gave the Manticoran alliance more time to fully roll out Apollo.

You think he wouldnt have continued to redeploy ships if he hadnt launched the attack when he did? The guy isnt stupid.
Anyway, the obvious solution has always been to attack when Eighth Fleet is away to raid somewhere.

The only problem with that idea is that because Trevor's Star is a closed system, there's no way for anyone pertinent to know when Eighth Fleet is "elsewhere" in time to tell Tourville, etc. "launch now", because if Jouett gets trashed, the RHN still has to get word to Haven to get word to Tourville... and by that time Eighth Fleet is likely back to Trevor's Star sharing Old Tillmans while the next round of missiles are loaded.

SharkHunter wrote:The only problem with that idea is that because Trevor's Star is a closed system, there's no way for anyone pertinent to know when Eighth Fleet is "elsewhere" in time to tell Tourville, etc. "launch now", because if Jouett gets trashed, the RHN still has to get word to Haven to get word to Tourville... and by that time Eighth Fleet is likely back to Trevor's Star sharing Old Tillmans while the next round of missiles are loaded.

There are numerous ways to check if Eighth Fleets deployed through intelligence assets on Manticore. Just have Tourville waiting in hyper for some merchant ship to meet up with him.

If your intelligence sucks you can just take an educated guess. Its not like its hard to figure out that Eighth Fleet is hitting stuff every second month or something.

Star Knight wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:The only problem with that idea is that because Trevor's Star is a closed system, there's no way for anyone pertinent to know when Eighth Fleet is "elsewhere" in time to tell Tourville, etc. "launch now", because if Jouett gets trashed, the RHN still has to get word to Haven to get word to Tourville... and by that time Eighth Fleet is likely back to Trevor's Star sharing Old Tillmans while the next round of missiles are loaded.

There are numerous ways to check if Eighth Fleets deployed through intelligence assets on Manticore. Just have Tourville waiting in hyper for some merchant ship to meet up with him.

If your intelligence sucks you can just take an educated guess. Its not like its hard to figure out that Eighth Fleet is hitting stuff every second month or something.

Two problems with that logic. The only info you could possibly get if you were very very lucky is "HH has gone back to Trevor's Star in her ship". if you miss your educated guess by so much as a day (plus reload time perhaps), the outcome of Beatrice is the same or worse. Plus Beatrice actually wanted Eighth Fleet at Trevor's star, hoping that they'd catch Harrington in the box with a significant enough force differential once Chin hyper'd in to destroy Eighth Fleet as a fighting formation. Read RFC's infodump on Theisman's logic here:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/111/1

SharkHunter wrote:Two problems with that logic. The only info you could possibly get if you were very very lucky is "HH has gone back to Trevor's Star in her ship". if you miss your educated guess by so much as a day (plus reload time perhaps), the outcome of Beatrice is the same or worse. Plus Beatrice actually wanted Eighth Fleet at Trevor's star, hoping that they'd catch Harrington in the box with a significant enough force differential once Chin hyper'd in to destroy Eighth Fleet as a fighting formation. Read RFC's infodump on Theisman's logic here:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/111/1

First, i dont see why you can just get info about Harrington. How much information you can get depends entirely on your intelligence assets.
Or as said, just guess. You have a confortable margin of error, Eighth Fleet will be deployed for a minimum of three weeks. As soon as they hypered out its too late to recall them.

Of course it is possible for things to go wrong and all, but what other option is there?
If you miscalculate and Eighth Fleet shows up, you will probably be able to surrender anyway.

Second, the idea to trap Eighth Fleet as well was wrong in the first place. You dont have to destroy every fleet of the alliance to win the war. You win it by destroying the yards and taking the high orbits of Manticore.
It is then irrelevant if there are hundreds of wallers left elsewhere.
Assuming of course the GSN will continue to sit on its ass and not attack Haven.

RFC was speaking about how Beatrice actually happened. I'm sure things would look differently in a delayed Beatrice after a raid on Jouett.