What did Captain Zavala do next? and the SL's reaction.

Hi, I will make my comments in the post; and I'm going to snip out my older comment.

Rob

lyonheart wrote:Hi Rob,

You are so polite!

I think you're probably right about there being another layer of bureaucracy specifically for the non-protectorates like Saltash, ie justified by its different separate status, which is was I meant.

I don't doubt he and the OFS has standing orders to report any threats to the league's security, but that's really the responsibility and duty of the SLN, or Captain Myau, and any attempt to interfere with her doing her duty could be the pretext needed to relieve him

Go back and look at Adm.Pyun's comments about his boss--in the protectorates, OFS is the top dog; the FF units do what they are told. period.

While the TQ may be close to the distances mentioned, ie the 300-400 LY diameter of the SL, I suspect the TQ's actual volume is considerably less.

Given how rare SLN/FF BC's were in the Madras sector before Monica, Dubroskaya's squadron is a mystery, but her detachments aren't.

Zavala left before news of OB reached Montana, so probably early March and arriving in Saltash in the second half, so his assumed db [or Myau's DD] should have reached Sol by the end of May or before Filareta leaves Tasmania, so until they know what happened to Filareta, which was July, the OFS bureaucrats in Old Chicago have around 2 month's to kick Duenas's future back and forth if Myau and the Lt. Governor etc didn't already take care of him and send a message not to bother.

L

Huh?? your timeline is skewed. News of oyster bay arrived in Spindle in February/March, with Michelle having a beer with Medusa, Oversteegen and Khumalo on the terrace of the Presidential Palace. She got the news on that a couple weeks after Battle of Spindle. It was April or so by the time she re-deployed to Montana; May by the she got word on what happened at Saltash; June by the time the word gets to Manticore, or Ambassador Crawford could rub Kolokoltsov's nose in it. Mike was still in Montana for the news of BoMa2, and she then moved to Tillerman (June).

The only person involved in Damien's OFS future is McCartney; he probably was too busy to spend more than two minutes thinking about it before calling in an aide, and getting a short list of replacements.

If he gets recalled at all, no one is going to think about him until he gets back to Chicago; at which point, he is scapegoated, or lost in the confusion of the sollie meltdown.

Rob

Here is, what I do not understand about the situation in Cinnamon. Why did the RMN even board the space station? They held the high orbitals, which means they can issue demands to the planet below and bombard that planet unless their demands are meet.
In that situation I would have dropped a kinetic strike on whoever is in charge on the planet, until the newest person in charge on the plant is willing to hand over the Manticorian sailors.

Torlek wrote:Here is, what I do not understand about the situation in Cinnamon. Why did the RMN even board the space station? They held the high orbitals, which means they can issue demands to the planet below and bombard that planet unless their demands are meet.
In that situation I would have dropped a kinetic strike on whoever is in charge on the planet, until the newest person in charge on the plant is willing to hand over the Manticorian sailors.

True enough, Torlek (and welcome to the Forum, the first Old Tillman is on the house), but that would have resulted in the death of a number of Saltashian(?)civilians, who the SEM had no quarrel with and were trying to keep out of the line of fire (see Zavala's conversation with the Saltashian Space Station commander).

Killing them (and given that Duendas was probably in the fanciest building in the center of the largest city in Slatash, it would have been unavoidable) would have seriously pissed off people that had no reason to love the Sollies and every reason to "aid and abet" the Manties.

Of course, if Duenas would have been nice enough to take an aircar out to the countryside 60km from the nearest settlement, I am sure Zavala would have been overjoyed to 'see some harm come to him..."

Hutch wrote:

Torlek wrote:Here is, what I do not understand about the situation in Cinnamon. Why did the RMN even board the space station? They held the high orbitals, which means they can issue demands to the planet below and bombard that planet unless their demands are meet.
In that situation I would have dropped a kinetic strike on whoever is in charge on the planet, until the newest person in charge on the plant is willing to hand over the Manticorian sailors.

True enough, Torlek (and welcome to the Forum, the first Old Tillman is on the house), but that would have resulted in the death of a number of Saltashian(?)civilians, who the SEM had no quarrel with and were trying to keep out of the line of fire (see Zavala's conversation with the Saltashian Space Station commander).

Killing them (and given that Duendas was probably in the fanciest building in the center of the largest city in Slatash, it would have been unavoidable) would have seriously pissed off people that had no reason to love the Sollies and every reason to "aid and abet" the Manties.

Of course, if Duenas would have been nice enough to take an aircar out to the countryside 60km from the nearest settlement, I am sure Zavala would have been overjoyed to 'see some harm come to him..."

I am not advocating for a city killer here but:
1. There is a duty to protect your own crew, if necessary at the expense of others. Especially, when you do not have any marines, which makes boarding operations extra risky.
2. Locating the main Government building is not that hard. (Fanciest building around).
2b. Main Government buildings are not in my experience in an residential areas. Especially, when the government has some security concerns.
2c. The people who work in the main Government building are either Solies or collaborators. Both groups are probably not that popular with the locals.
3. A kinetic strike on the highest SL officer around was later executed in the same book.
4. A civilian population MIGHT be willing to accept, some collateral damage to get rid of a sufficiently unpopular government.
5. Anybody who hangs around obvious targets, when there is high risk of bombardment deserves a Darwin Award. That is of course assuming, that the civilian population was aware of the situation.
6. The risk of collateral damage during orbital bombardment, has to be balanced against the risk of collateral damage during the boarding of the station. In the worst case the station, might blow up for some reason.

Torlek wrote:I am not advocating for a city killer here but:
1. There is a duty to protect your own crew, if necessary at the expense of others. Especially, when you do not have any marines, which makes boarding operations extra risky.
2. Locating the main Government building is not that hard. (Fanciest building around).
2b. Main Government buildings are not in my experience in an residential areas. Especially, when the government has some security concerns.
2c. The people who work in the main Government building are either Solies or collaborators. Both groups are probably not that popular with the locals.
3. A kinetic strike on the highest SL officer around was later executed in the same book.
4. A civilian population MIGHT be willing to accept, some collateral damage to get rid of a sufficiently unpopular government.
5. Anybody who hangs around obvious targets, when there is high risk of bombardment deserves a Darwin Award. That is of course assuming, that the civilian population was aware of the situation.
6. The risk of collateral damage during orbital bombardment, has to be balanced against the risk of collateral damage during the boarding of the station. In the worst case the station, might blow up for some reason.

This is a completely different situation from the one where they bombarded the planet. In the case where they engaged kinetic weapons, they were explicitly attempting to overthrow the government and prevent the slaughter of civilians on the planet. They had been called in to assist locals. Note that the smallest weapons they used took out city blocks. These are not the kind of weapon you aim at individual persons.

The situation at Cinnamon was different. They were not there to overthrow the government. They were not called in by locals. They were not claiming to have seized the orbitals. They were there for a specific military objective--to recover Manticoran citizens illegally detained on the space station. Their mission parameters did not include any option to attack the civilian government. It was a very specifically limited objective; they did not wish to complicate the situation by directly attacking the system government. Thus they limited their use of force to the station. They were fortunately able to limit the use of force to avoid the civilians aboard that station, as well.

Torlek wrote:In that situation I would have dropped a kinetic strike on whoever is in charge on the planet, until the newest person in charge on the plant is willing to hand over the Manticorian sailors.

Once you dispose of Duenas and his vice governor, "the next person in charge" is the Gendarmerie commander holding the captives aboard the space station...

The best outcome from your strategy would be a "Mexican Standoff" where Zavala threatens more destruction on the planet and the Gendarmerie Commander threatens to execute the hostages.

The best answer here is what has already been stated. Zuvalla's orders did not include attacking the civilian government. He had authorization to use the minimum force necessary to achieve his objectives of retrieving the crews detained and the vessels impounded.

At this point in time, the queen's government was still hoping for a diplomatic solution to the crisis or at least a stand down. No one really believed that would happen, but no one wanted to be pouring gas on the fire either.

Zuvalla sucessfully completed his mission and returned to 10th fleet prior to news of Filereta's defeat reaching Admiral Henke, after which she immediately moved on Meyers.

Terekov's mission, by way of contrast, was to stop the massacre of civilians by a combination of Solarian Gendarmie and the local regime fighting a revolution at Mobius. So the mission perameters there were completely different than what Zuvalla faced at Saltash. Terekov had not yet returned from completing his mission when 10th Fleet moved in on Meyers.

Don

Weird Harold wrote:

Torlek wrote:In that situation I would have dropped a kinetic strike on whoever is in charge on the planet, until the newest person in charge on the plant is willing to hand over the Manticorian sailors.

Once you dispose of Duenas and his vice governor, "the next person in charge" is the Gendarmerie commander holding the captives aboard the space station...

The best outcome from your strategy would be a "Mexican Standoff" where Zavala threatens more destruction on the planet and the Gendarmerie Commander threatens to execute the hostages.

The next one in line would have been the lieutenant Governor a much more reasonable person, who might of course have been among the collateral damage.
The Gendarmerie commander had not staked his reputation on the kidnapping of the merchant sailors. He could have throw the Governor under the bus and claimed to only follow misguided orders at any time. He was in fact trying to find a moment to hand over the merchant sailors during the boarding operation, which made him look good.
Also an initial orbital bombardment does not preclude a later boarding operation.
Also Captain Zavala had no knowledge about the line of succession for the Governor. He only knew that the current Governor was extremely unreasonable, which makes it unlikely that the next in line is even more unreasonable.
Also how is a boarding operation not a potential Mexican standoff. It was essentially a hostage rescue operation, executed by sailors, who are not hostage rescue experts. Today's SWAT team or special forces, who have hostage rescue experts, often lose hostages, during hostage rescue operation against people with civilian arms. Zavala send his sailors against people with military arms, who were entrenched in depth. They had every opportunity to start killing hostages. Zavala could not have expected the opportunity to sneak somebody into the bridge and even that only limited the time frame to harm the hostages.

He had authorization to use the minimum force necessary to achieve his objectives of retrieving the crews detained and the vessels impounded.

I can make an argument that the "minimum force necessary" is a KEW on the Governors Mansion.

Torlek wrote:I can make an argument that the "minimum force necessary" is a KEW on the Governors Mansion.

You could make that argument, but it would be a foolish argument. There's no way that you can argue that a weapon that takes out an entire city block and kills the planetary leader and numerous other civilians is necessary force, let alone minimum force, when you can use a surgical strike that kills only military officers engaged in active resistance.

Let me say once again--Zavala did not have authority to attack the system government. He did not have the authorization to claim the orbitals, which effectively means seizing the system. It was not one of the options in his mission parameters.

SWM wrote:You could make that argument, but it would be a foolish argument. There's no way that you can argue that a weapon that takes out an entire city block and kills the planetary leader and numerous other civilians is necessary force, let alone minimum force, when you can use a surgical strike that kills only military officers engaged in active resistance.

Let me say once again--Zavala did not have authority to attack the system government. He did not have the authorization to claim the orbitals, which effectively means seizing the system. It was not one of the options in his mission parameters.

I have been making the argument that the boarding operation was extremely risky (and admittedly disregarding it worked out in the book as a counter argument to that position). If we accept for the sake of argument that the boarding operation would have been too risky, a limited orbital strike becomes the "minimum force required". Am I overlooking another option?