Remaining holes in SLN intel

Fireflair wrote:To date the SLN hasn't gotten a chance to see an RMN waller up close and personal other than after being defeated. Everyone who's been sent back to Sol has gone back with his tail between his legs and treated as a pariah when he got home. That meant that any sensor records, reports or messages he delivered were generally ignored as being outlandish, CYOA type stuff. More Sollie arrogance, being allowed to drive things.

So no, the SLN doesn't seem to be aware of SD(P)'s, despite all these years that RHN and RMN have been throwing thousands of missiles back and forth at each other. To the SLN the RMN has bigger ships in order to promote bigger weapons, without considering that they're using that hull space for more PDLCs, CM launchers and armor to survive the new environment. There's been a number of comments about 'Mantie big assed ___' take your pick of ship class.

There is also no indication that the SLN is at all aware of the reduction in crew sizes and vast increases in automation which have gone on through out the RMN. You might suspect that if the SLN had some half way decent intel services they'd pick up on any of these things. I really think that the MWW stretches Sollie stupidity a bit far in this case. It's become a plot device more than anything.

Part of this arrogance has a background. Honor was musing in OBS, that usually when a 2nd rate navy built a "big-assed ___" they were trying to build a ___ out of older tech that could take a 1st class navy ____ 1:1. The navy in question usually could not build many of them, and they were usually made to beat on their neighbor's ____s, not take on a 1st navy ____. So the RMN and SLN had experienced this phenomnon before, and a big ___ with big tubes didn't scare them

So when they saw a BC with huge tubes, all they could think is that in order to build a SLN peer competitor, with peer missiles, Manticore had to build a ship 3x the size of the SLN's with oversized missiles, and accept the accel hit. It just never occurred to them to think anything else, because of the old known pattern.

oops....

Fireflair wrote:To date the SLN hasn't gotten a chance to see an RMN waller up close and personal other than after being defeated. Everyone who's been sent back to Sol has gone back with his tail between his legs and treated as a pariah when he got home. That meant that any sensor records, reports or messages he delivered were generally ignored as being outlandish, CYOA type stuff. More Sollie arrogance, being allowed to drive things.

So no, the SLN doesn't seem to be aware of SD(P)'s, despite all these years that RHN and RMN have been throwing thousands of missiles back and forth at each other. To the SLN the RMN has bigger ships in order to promote bigger weapons, without considering that they're using that hull space for more PDLCs, CM launchers and armor to survive the new environment. There's been a number of comments about 'Mantie big assed ___' take your pick of ship class.

There is also no indication that the SLN is at all aware of the reduction in crew sizes and vast increases in automation which have gone on through out the RMN. You might suspect that if the SLN had some half way decent intel services they'd pick up on any of these things. I really think that the MWW stretches Sollie stupidity a bit far in this case. It's become a plot device more than anything.

Thanks for putting my thoughts on paper.

Considering Harold's correction of my ignorance a few klicks upstream, how is it that Tamaguchi (and he isn't the first) opined, "If we have the advantage in missile tubes," then...

How can he be sure he has the advantage in missile tubes considering the extra real estate big assed Manty ships have to play with? And w/o benefit of any captured examples? I realize that the class of ships going at each other are different, but still.

The SLN hasn't had the benefit of any definite intel, but there should be nothing wrong with their thinking caps. Well...

What were they studying in their naval school? RMN snotties are smarter. Heck, even Scrags are smarter!

Late Edit: Ah! Theemile has explained! Thanks for anticipating my questions!

cthia wrote:Considering Harold's correction of my ignorance a few klicks upstream, how is it that Tamaguchi (and he isn't the first) opined, "If we have the advantage in missile tubes," then...

How can he be sure he has the advantage in missile tubes considering the extra real estate big assed Manty ships have to play with? And w/o benefit of any captured examples? I realize that the class of ships going at each other are different, but still.

In addition...

Tamaguchi wasn't facing GA SD(P)s, he was facing BCs(?) and AFAIR, was correct that he had an advantage in tubes. Where he didn't have an advantage was in fire-control, cycle times, and reloads (or FSV launched pods.)

Weird Harold wrote:
In addition...

Tamaguchi wasn't facing GA SD(P)s, he was facing BCs(?) and AFAIR, was correct that he had an advantage in tubes. Where he didn't have an advantage was in fire-control, cycle times, and reloads (or FSV launched pods.)

The biggest unit in Tremains squadron was his flagship, and she was a Saganami-C. Accompanied by (iIrc) 5 Roland-DDs, 5 Culverin-CLs and the Charles Ward.

Eagleeye wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
In addition...

Tamaguchi wasn't facing GA SD(P)s, he was facing BCs(?) and AFAIR, was correct that he had an advantage in tubes. Where he didn't have an advantage was in fire-control, cycle times, and reloads (or FSV launched pods.)

The biggest unit in Tremains squadron was his flagship, and she was a Saganami-C. Accompanied by (iIrc) 5 Roland-DDs, 5 Culverin-CLs and the Charles Ward.

I suppose the numbers should formally be run through a spreadsheet per unit time, but he had an accumulative -- or rather numerical -- advantage in tubes, which was all negated with Manty cycle times, no? (Bracketing all else except fire-control of course.)

The biggest unit in Tremains squadron was his flagship, and she was a Saganami-C. Accompanied by (iIrc) 5 Roland-DDs, 5 Culverin-CLs and the Charles Ward.

I suppose the numbers should formally be run through a spreadsheet per unit time, but he had an accumulative -- or rather numerical -- advantage in tubes, which was all negated with Manty cycle times, no? (Bracketing all else except fire-control of course.)[/quote]

Cycle time, engagement range, missle accleration, warhead performance and lethality, FTL communications betweek Tremain's ships AND his missle control, RMN RD capability including stealth, a lot of years of actual combat experience including having worked with their now current weapos systems. Exisitng RMN ecm both as penitration aids for their own weapons and engagement profiles on the older and most current (HALO) defensive ecm of the SLN. Speed/accleration advantage (including vastly better compensators) which also translates into more manuverabilty and able to maintain stand-of engagement range.
RMN also has better (and perportionaly more) CM and PPC capasity.

All things otherwise equal (no effective ambush) RMN can keep smashing SLN ships and capturing tens of thousands more spacers. A question is how long this state will continue to exist.

Fireflair wrote:To date the SLN hasn't gotten a chance to see an RMN waller up close and personal other than after being defeated. Everyone who's been sent back to Sol has gone back with his tail between his legs and treated as a pariah when he got home. That meant that any sensor records, reports or messages he delivered were generally ignored as being outlandish, CYOA type stuff. More Sollie arrogance, being allowed to drive things.

So no, the SLN doesn't seem to be aware of SD(P)'s, despite all these years that RHN and RMN have been throwing thousands of missiles back and forth at each other. To the SLN the RMN has bigger ships in order to promote bigger weapons, without considering that they're using that hull space for more PDLCs, CM launchers and armor to survive the new environment. There's been a number of comments about 'Mantie big assed ___' take your pick of ship class.

There is also no indication that the SLN is at all aware of the reduction in crew sizes and vast increases in automation which have gone on through out the RMN. You might suspect that if the SLN had some half way decent intel services they'd pick up on any of these things. I really think that the MWW stretches Sollie stupidity a bit far in this case. It's become a plot device more than anything.

SDFs have more detailed reports than the SLN has been able to gather. Its not clear how detailed, but I think its safe to assume they noticed the First Battle of Manticore. Those reports HAVE percolated up reasonably far through the SLN, Bygn knew about them, but they were dismissed as crazy because they didn't fit with SLN experience or cursory R&D.

Which isn't actually too unreasonable; I'm sure Manticore would dismiss a report that says "Sol's SDF is immune to lasers. Their entire SDF is now Fearless knock-offs." However, that doesn't excuse the SLN refusal to take a step back and try to figure out what went wrong after defeats.

On automation I doubt that the SLN has exacting details. While I bet those observing SDFs have figured it out, I suspect that getting close counts of troop numbers would be the thing Manticore would frown at. While that obviously wouldn't stop collection of said info, it does mean you don't want to go around telling people about it. Especially anyone as incompetent as the SLN!

quite possibly a cat wrote:
On automation I doubt that the SLN has exacting details. While I bet those observing SDFs have figured it out, I suspect that getting close counts of troop numbers would be the thing Manticore would frown at. While that obviously wouldn't stop collection of said info, it does mean you don't want to go around telling people about it. Especially anyone as incompetent as the SLN!

Besides, there are still plenty of "legacy" fleet units swanning around muddying the mix. The ~150 Remaining Sphinx and Gryphons have around 5000 spacers in each of them. An old Star Knight or Reliant will have 1000 or 2000 crew members respectively. When looking at those numbers, someone seeing a report that a Sag-C CA masses 60% more than a Star Knight, has 2.5x the number of tubes a Star Knight officially has, and has a crew the size of a CL, is going to avoid believing every thing he sees. Especially knowing the disinformation campaign with the Star Knight (12 tubes vs 8 reported) it would be easy to write off the wilder numbers as more disinformation from a navy known for it.

quite possibly a cat wrote:SDFs have more detailed reports than the SLN has been able to gather. Its not clear how detailed, but I think its safe to assume they noticed the First Battle of Manticore. Those reports HAVE percolated up reasonably far through the SLN, Bygn knew about them, but they were dismissed as crazy because they didn't fit with SLN experience or cursory R&D.

Which isn't actually too unreasonable; I'm sure Manticore would dismiss a report that says "Sol's SDF is immune to lasers. Their entire SDF is now Fearless knock-offs." However, that doesn't excuse the SLN refusal to take a step back and try to figure out what went wrong after defeats.

On automation I doubt that the SLN has exacting details. While I bet those observing SDFs have figured it out, I suspect that getting close counts of troop numbers would be the thing Manticore would frown at. While that obviously wouldn't stop collection of said info, it does mean you don't want to go around telling people about it. Especially anyone as incompetent as the SLN!

Working in the Pentagon in the mid-90s, I came across an aphorism that seems apropos here: "In any military endeavor, there are only two possible outcomes: operational success or intelligence failure." The phenomenon is also aptly demonstrated in one chapter of the book Military Intelligence Blunders -- discussing OPERATION BARBAROSA, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the chapter is entitled, "Comrade Stalin knows best." Soviet intelligence analysts reporting that Hitler's intentions and preparations to invade literally took their lives in their hands if they tried to pass that message up to their leadership, because Stalin already "knew" it wasn't going to happen.

Certainly SLN ONI has more than its fair share of issues, even aside from active MAlign interference. Even so, no matter how good intelligence collection and analysis is, it's ultimately no match for military and/or political leadership determined to ignore/reject its conclusions. While it is true that SLN's ONI lacks, for example, captured Manty hardware to exploit, there is plenty of other evidence available, to include liaison reports from SDF observers. Moreover, we've seen multiple examples of individual analysts who have actually dedicated multiple neurons to figuring out what Manty/Havenite ship & weapons designers have been up to for the past two decades. In the end, though, the results of their efforts have run into the brick wall of operational arrogance. In an ironic turn, it was Adm. Tamaguchi who mused, "as his mother had always told him, ignorance could be fixed; stupid was forever."

"In any military endeavor, there are only two possible outcomes: operational success or intelligence failure."

At some point, winning or losing battles comes into play. The attitude 'our intelligence is perfect, so we will win' is a bit alarming. However, it would be highly appropriate for the SLN.