Jonathan_S wrote:runsforcelery wrote:The point of all of the above is that Honor was a superior, pragmatic tactician who insisted (correctly) that tactical doctrine must be based upon the actual capabilities of the tonnages and weapons one has rather than on the tonnages and weapons one wishes one had. She didn't think the jeune ecole was doing that. For that matter, Hemphill probably didn't think most of the jeune ecole was doing that. Those members of it who didn't know about Gram or the work already ongoing on Ghostrider were basing their hopes on those incremental systems superiorities which were public knowledge (at least within the RMN), and that incremental superiority was insufficient to make the jeune ecole's rejection of "conventional" tactical wisdom effective. Even Hamish Alexander, who was in a better position than most to know what was happening behind the scenes, had no concept of everything that was being worked out in Gryphon orbit. Both he and Honor (and Hemphill, really) would have agreed that in the absence of Gram, victory had to be found in some development or adaptation of existing tactical thinking that took into account the increased lethality of the laserhead.
I'd nitpick that in the absence of Gram the development or adaptation might have been (at least partly) strategic; not just tactical.
I'm wondering if going to a heavy deep raiding approach might have paid off for Manticore in a hypothetical first Havenite ware that lacked pods.
Basically try to make that lack of decisive battles an asset rather than a limitation. Seek battles in places where there is unlikely to be a heavy enough force to defend the infrastructure (which can't run), and where you can turtle up and run if you do get surprised by a heavier force.
Add that to the fact that Haven has a
lot more vulnerable rear areas that the Manticoran Alliance. It'll take a
lot more forces to even begin to provide an equivalent level of defnese.
Of course to free up the ships to do this would essentially require Manticore to give up on advancing on Trevor's Star. At least unless or until Haven drew significant forces back to cover their rear areas.
This
would be a huge change in strategy, and one that hadn't been employed before. And it does tie up a lot of valuable units in transit; totally out of contact with higher. (Not to mention the logistical demands; especially without having the use of Trevor's Star and it's wormhole). But without pods, and with only single drive missiles, its a lot harder to crush a raiding force even if you do mousetrap them with superior numbers; so the raiders should be more likely to escape a trap than Honor's ships were in Cutworm/Sanskrit.
Also, without pods Haven doesn't have a cheap (or quick building) option to defend systems against any raid that can drive off or crush a BB or below picket. They either have to deploy wallers of their own or accept the loss of one orbital infrastructure after another. And even in the height of Robspierre's dictatorship there has to be a limit to how long Haven can politically (if not economically) survive the systematic destruction of the orbital infrastructures of third tier systems.
I could certainly be wrong on that specific strategy working, but in the absence of decisive new weapons innovative strategy, not just tactics, should play a major role.
