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Upcoming surplus of junior officers

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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Bluesqueak   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:26 pm

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Vince wrote:
Bluesqueak wrote:Why do you think all the middies are planning full careers in the Navy? Admittedly most of our viewpoint characters are career Navy, but that's normal for military SF.

There's a war on; patriotic young Manties are signing up for Saganami Island. Doesn't mean they don't plan to become lawyers, foreign office wonks, diplomats, merchant spacers after the war is over.

Apart from Terenkhov, who was enjoying a career in the Foreign Office before his Reserve rank got reactivated, there's also Chief Wanderman, who was definitely aware that his naval training would allow him to slot into a civilian engineering job after the war, plus at least one Marine Lieutenant who was studying law in his spare time.

I dunno what the service obligation is after Saganami, but I'd suggest that while the Island is aimed at producing career officers in peacetime, they may well be currently accepting middies who are primarily in the navy 'for the duration'.

Remember that Saganami Island is the Honorverse equivalent of the US Navy Academy at Annapolis (4 years of college with a heavy emphasis on military science, before serving in the Navy or Marines). I would expect the path that Wanderman or Ginger Lewis took would be much more common--first enlisted, and then promoted to higher rank, either as enlisted or to warrant or commissioned officer.


I realise that Saganami is a US style military academy, rather than the Sandhurst type. But even at Annapolis, only about 60% of graduates stay in the USN/Marines for a full career.

I also get the strong impression to date that Saganami is the primary means of training direct-entry officers. All the OTC people we hear of were promoted from the ranks.

Wanderman seems to explain why this is so: the technical training he gets in the navy is just as good as he would have got in college. So, rather than running OTC's in colleges, the Navy simply gives college-level training to its enlisted - and can select potential officers from their ranks.

Plus, bluntly, you simply don't need as many commanders and captains as you do junior officers. And a highly technical navy does need a lot of junior officers.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:37 pm

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PeterZ wrote:Under those conditions the RMN, RHN, IAN and GSN will not have the luxury of standing down much of their navies. I suspect those navies will build up the lighter combatants and maintain and upgrade their walls of battle if not expand them. I suspect 20 years down the line the RF will be the largest SL rump state with 3-4 smaller states either on good terms with the RF, Beowulf or both. All of these states will have respectable navies and credible R&D efforts. The RF and perhaps all the others will have had their own 20 years of war to forge experience into those navies.



The RMN won't need to stand down anything. Right now it is still very much one system nation supporting a massive fleet but 20-40 years down the road they would be a 30 system nation with those systems expanding industry and economy to help offset the cost without even counting the manpower they would provide. The RMN having 200-400 SD(P)s in peacetime as a single system navy would be hard but having 500 SD(P)s with 30 systems to protect is nothing to sneeze at.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:38 pm

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Henry Brown wrote:
ldwechsler wrote:There will not be a crunch with a war on. A lot of ships get destroyed, people die, get wounded too badly to serve. As noted, the LACs are very expensive in terms of personnel. There are several officers on each LAC and one carrier has a hundred of the little vessels.

When the war ends is when there will be a real crunch. If things end on a real peace note, there will be far fewer jobs. Note the US after World War I and World War II.

On the other hand, if things are a bit dicey there may be more slots open but there will be slower promotion.


Normally you would be correct about combat casualties opening up slots for officers. But so far all engagements against the SLN have been one sided wipeouts where the RMN and GSN ships suffer little to no casualties.


Which may change in the near future.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:46 pm

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PeterZ wrote:

Yet, if League space degenerates into a quagmire of dueling warlords, won't the protectorates and Indy Verge worlds look to signing on with the GA? Even if they only get export weapons systems of Havenite surplus LACs and missiles, the GA protection would be sufficient to keep the wear lords elsewhere for fear of the GA SDPs will visit their home world.

That incentive suggests the GA will expand their fleets even if the League Succession Wars never threaten the founding Grand Alliance members.



I would argue that the GA should devote special attention to the verge and protectorates when forming alliances. They are the systems that have suffered most at the hands of FF and the League and would have the most motivation to not align with any of the successor states that pop up from the leagues collapse. What's more, with investment in time, money and technical assistance those verge and protectorates might turn into mini Grayson's. They would be loyal the the GA for removing FF from them at the same time would be greatly motivated to grow economically if for no other reason than to maintain a strong fleet to keep any other nation from trying to exploit them. And the fact that they won't be able to stand up on their own against any successor state would mean they would be very loyal members of the GA.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:50 pm

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Henry Brown wrote:
PeterZ wrote:Yet, if League space degenerates into a quagmire of dueling warlords, won't the protectorates and Indy Verge worlds look to signing on with the GA? Even if they only get export weapons systems of Havenite surplus LACs and missiles, the GA protection would be sufficient to keep the wear lords elsewhere for fear of the GA SDPs will visit their home world.

That incentive suggests the GA will expand their fleets even if the League Succession Wars never threaten the founding Grand Alliance members.


Oh certainly, the RMN will need to expand their fleet postwar. Not only due to the breakup of the SL, but because of all the new territory in Silestia and the Talbot cluster. But they can't build the ships right now. My point is that by the time they do start building new construction, there will be Ensigns and Lt (JG)s stacked to the bulkheads.


The RMN and the GSN have a lot of other responsibilities that surplus officers could help with. They can set up training schools in Silesia and Talbott to help integrate officers and enlisted from those parts of the SEM in to the RMN. They will also need people to train people from newly liberated Verge and Protectorate systems. As it is, they would be beneficial to have people waiting for ships rather than having ships waiting for people or worse having to rush training in order to meet demands.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:54 pm

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n7axw wrote:As I understood the deal at the end of ART, the Republic was going to be building warships for Manticore. That was one of the things that sending the r&d staff to bolthole was all about. If that is the case the RMN will continue to expand and will continue to experience shortages of commissioned officers, particularly after the hole that the first BOM annd Oyster Bay tore into both her enlisted and commissioned ranks.

What was specifically mentioned was building wallers in Haven yards and sending them to Manticore to install keyhole built in Beowulf. I hope we also see new hulls in the lighter classes.

Don

-


Yeah but many of the Keyhole wallers will be going to the RHN. I doubt that they would try to keep the Keyhole platforms concentrated in the RMN and the GSN.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:59 pm

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Silverwall wrote:What surplus of junior officers?

By real world standards whereby hightech forces generally have approximately a 5-1 enlisted/officer ratio. (Check the current US armed forces numbers on wikipedia if you don't believe me.)

We know for a fact that the RMN must have a total personell in the multiple millions Even if each of the current ~400 Super dreadnoughts currently only need 1000 personell instead of the old standard 5000 that still represents 400,000 personell minimum + all the other ships + shore instalations and repair depots and all the other crap it takes to run a modern efficient navy

I can't remember the exact numbers (if they exist) from House of Steel and Honor Amongst Enemies but lets assume that the RMN is super efficient and has 5mil personell total and manages a 10-1 enlisted/officer ratio (twice as lean as the current US army or navy manages) accross the force.

This still requires 500000 officers at any one time and 11,000 a year represents only about a 2% replacement rate. This would be low for a peace time navy let alone one in active combat/conflict.


That would be from their main institution. But at least in Canada we have OCdt's coming out of the Royal Military college and literary dozens of other institutions and that is for a relatively small force. Maybe the Sagami Grads are those who look at the navy as a career while the others are cranked out for the duration of the war.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by pappilon   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 5:30 pm

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I think the junior officer question, specifically the next 3 classes of Graduates from Saganami Island have no NEW ships to be assigned to. One flight left the slips just prior to OB/Yawata Strike. All the ones just laid dowm and all the ones docked for repairs wee destroyed. While that leaves need for replacement officers and enlisted, we have the issue of hulls not being in the pipeline for these shiny new kids to serve on.

Yes they will be needed, yes probably more than they can scrape together will be needed. Which does not solve the problem of what to do with tomorrow's officers today. Which are the next 3 classes from SI.

IIRC about Haven ships + keyhole: Since for the near future all ships will be coming from Haven and all keyhole platforms are being fabricated on Beowulf, all ships coming out of the yards at Bolthole will be sent to Beowulf for Keyhole and other equipment installations. which would be a good place to put those young graduates
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 6:18 pm

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pappilon wrote:I think the junior officer question, specifically the next 3 classes of Graduates from Saganami Island have no NEW ships to be assigned to. One flight left the slips just prior to OB/Yawata Strike. All the ones just laid dowm and all the ones docked for repairs wee destroyed. While that leaves need for replacement officers and enlisted, we have the issue of hulls not being in the pipeline for these shiny new kids to serve on.

Yes they will be needed, yes probably more than they can scrape together will be needed. Which does not solve the problem of what to do with tomorrow's officers today. Which are the next 3 classes from SI.

IIRC about Haven ships + keyhole: Since for the near future all ships will be coming from Haven and all keyhole platforms are being fabricated on Beowulf, all ships coming out of the yards at Bolthole will be sent to Beowulf for Keyhole and other equipment installations. which would be a good place to put those young graduates


They should do the exact thing they have always done, send their middies off to the fleet and promote as they would. Choose the best and brightest officers and enlisted to pull from the ships to establish training system in in Talbott and Silesia to integrate the new territories and populations into the RMN. People get promoted, competent LT's to Capt's SG get tapped for training command and a few years down the road the RMN has much larger pool of people to man their ships.

They would have to do it eventually, why not start the training programs before all those members are needed?
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Silverwall   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 6:58 pm

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This also is assuming that the fleet is not currently badly in deficit for junior officers.

Given the losses in the Battle of Manticore and Oyster Bay coupled with the relentless expansion of the LAC force I would not be at all suprised if there isn't a major deficit of officers currently in the RMN, especially in the LT/Senior LT range which will have sucked up the recent ensigns from previous graduating cohorts.

In fact we have seen evidence of this when Terhekov sailed short and ATO and a deputy EW officer. Also the original plan was to take the crews wiped out at the battle of manticore and have them crew the python lump of construction as they retire all the old pre pod wallers. So having to scrape officers for them from the rest of the fleet will almost certainly have left a massive junior officer deficit.

If these problems are particularly widespread (and I suspect they are) then they may need all the current graduating Middies just to catch up with normal base staffing requirements.
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