cthia wrote: It is imperative that the Queen's government run smoothly without a snag or interruption, such as that suffered at the hands of High Ridge and his cronies. Janasick, for one.
JeffEngel wrote:Granted. And does that require keeping the Queen on a capital ship? It does not. It requires keeping her away from hostile missiles - or, if that's somehow impossible and worth the effort for the likely utility - inside a lot of defenses.
My entire initial point.
Just to snip a good bit as this is getting really lengthy -
The issue is cost versus likely utility. I don't think you're appreciating how much a supredreadnought costs. It's the toughest mobile artifact in human history. Most Honorverse industrialized planets cannot justify the cost of
one of them for their entire planetary, even system, defense. (Apart from the fact that, if you want to defend your system/planet and you've only that much to spend, more smaller units would be better.) Manticore needed a solid wall, and despite its fabulous wealth for a single system, was building DN's to cover much of their wall needs because of the expense.
The cost of the Queen's Own, all those stingships, and the old royal yacht, would vanish like a drop in the ocean compared to that cost. All of that is quite expensive, and does a very good job. For hundreds of years, it's kept monarchs alive despite no small amount of effort to make them die.
One attempt - again, out of the blue, outside all reasonable preparations based on knowledge had before the fact - would have been frustrated by the stupendous cost of a capital ship yacht. (You've not mentioned it, but on your side of the argument, we may as well add that a yacht that size would have had the PM's in it too, so that they'd've been safe as well.)
I shudder to think how many times and how many places the war effort may have fallen had Manticore had one SD's worth of shipping less, because it was sitting in Manticore orbit in case the Queen should make one of those once a decade or so trips out of the system.
JeffEngel wrote:In Grayson, they were in an area cleared of any realistic threat, surrounded by plenty personal security, and only threatened by the combination of a totally unknown stealth missile and a homing beacon that had gotten through intense scrutiny.
You don't set up security measures and contingency plans for excrement that you can think of. You do it for the feces hitting the fan that you can't.
No, you don't. You can't. You set it up to handle what you can expect, even with a low probability. Completely unexpected things you can't prepare for, other than having alert personnel with flexible responses available that can be adapted as necessary. Certainly a capital ship represents a whole lot of resource on hand in case something comes up, but it's almost never going to come up, and vastly less expensive alternatives will handle virtually all problems it'd be useful for.
Grayson was cleared of a realistic threat but the security measures themselves weren't realistic. Monthly security for Elizabeth isn't cheap. Anytime she boards an atmosphere breather for local travel there is a horde of sting ships, plans, itineries, contingencies, marines, etc. and etc. The need to protect Elizabeth hasn't fell on death ears. If it is prudent to think as you, then why all of the daily hassle? And what can be said of an Empire who places the value of an SD above that of their Monarch?
That it's got priorities straight and is likely to continue to exist.
It's the scale thing you're not getting, I think, along with the odds. The added cost of a specific royal yacht SD is stupendous; the likely use is remote.
JeffEngel wrote:Sometimes, any reasonable security will fail. It's not call to keep jacking security up no matter the cost, particularly when the costs are very, very high and the likely uses for what you get paying those costs are very, very rare. That's what happened that day in Yeltsin.
Reasonable is the word. The cost of a single fully tricked out SD for the Monarch of the most powerful Star Kingdom in history - that can also assist Home Fleet - is more than reasonable.
It's not assisting Home Fleet if it's parked in orbit in case the Queen wants a jaunt, or off on that jaunt.
Something that could work would be, instead of the plush royal yacht, putting available ships to work getting the Queen about when it happens. The FDR and Churchill WWII trips would be an example. In that case, it's not putting that stupendous cost to a job that's rarely necessary - it's tapping an existing resource for a specific, limited-time purpose. Not even a SD would be so luxurious, but it'd do, I'm sure - as would many of the RMN's CA's, BC's, DN's, CLAC's. (The stupid
formal ballroom can be dispensed with, I'm sure.) Drawing that away from its station for security that's almost certainly unnecessary isn't a small opportunity cost, but it's still vastly easier to justify.
Rarity is not an excuse to be slack in security. There aren't many suicidal maniacs that would take a shot at the President in broad daylight. But one surely will. There aren't many civilians that will strap incendiary devices to little kids, but one surely will. Placing so many powerful people aboard an eggshell isn't reasonable security.
Quite a lot - everything professional paranoiacs considered necessary or useful - was done to keep those eggshells away from any hard bumps. As it happened, those preparations - once - were not adequate. And now they know to check against the possibility of homing beacons and stealth missiles, so they can take preparations short of capital ship yachts.
And you keep harping on this thing called cost. Manticore isn't a planet out in the Verge. They are the richest planet in the Honorverse and beyond, by far per capita. Queen Elizabeth could build the thing out of her coffee kitty. Heck, Hauptman Enterprises would gladly build her a flying fortress. No matter that it would rarely be used, it would be there if it did. And in the interim in can serve as part of Home Fleet. HMS Royal Palace.
But if you're going to consider cost, consider the cost to the war effort if Elizabeth is successfully assassinated and a band of High Ridged imbeciles replace her government. What was the cost to her government in terms of lives, ships, time and dollars at the hands of the High Ridge government and Janasick?
Incalculable. But that was the result of killing Cromarty, not her. Is that going to mean a yacht for the PM too? Hopefully they could share... Even then though, cheaper alternatives are possible, including something simply drawn from Home Fleet if need be for the occasion.
And yes, I will keep harping on cost. Manticore does not sweat out SD(P)'s. They're stupendously expensive.
Consider Firebrand's operations destabilizing Verge planets. The Verge resistance movements get lots of modern equipment, far beyond their wildest dreams of what they can afford on their own - more than enough to fully equip the Queen's Own. (At least the ground gear - we're not counting stingships etc. there.) All of that is chump change, trivial, compared to the cost of the space support they'd need in case of Frontier Fleet intervention. What would that space support be? Perhaps two destroyers. So - equip the Queen's Own for the tiniest fraction of the cost of two destroyers. And two destroyers would be the tiniest fraction of the cost of a superdreadnought.
So Manticore, with all its wealth, with all its protectiveness of the monarch, has historically decided, and done well with, spending the tiniest fraction
of the tiniest fraction of the cost you'd expect them to now as a matter of course - to frustrate a kind of assassination that's been tried once and half-successful based on tricks they didn't know about before and do know about now and can address with vastly less expense.
cthia wrote:The death of the Queen has the potential to kill the war effort at any time. Especially at the politically-critical right/wrong time. Heck, the changing of the Prime Minister accomplished the same task.
JeffEngel wrote:Yes. Is that an argument for government by committees of people who are kept scattered in secured underground locations all the time? If not, there will still be risks run, and it's relevant to consider the likelihood of measures to be relevant and their costs versus the likely reward for employing them. If so, well, we're off on a deeper tangent.
Yet our very own government does keep the President underground, when need be. And an adequate compliment of officials to ensure that the current government is not decapitated and continues to run smoothly. When the President ventures out there's a horde of Secret Service upon Secret-Secret Service and a parade of vehicles NOT carrying the President acting as a decoy to the parade of vehicles carrying the real President with F-16s on high alert and more of the SS guys already set up at the location where the President is headed with snipers all along the route.
It's worth noting that some of those preparations are in case security fails. They'd not be relevant if we thought it worthwhile to provide so much security that failure was inconceivable. And a lot of those resources are tapped just for the occasion, then back to routine, unrelated work. The U.S. president does not have a nuclear carrier for overseas travel, and
that's the analog for an SD yacht.
AFO is NOT a cheap vehicle or cheap to operate. All of the constant security measures implemented to protect our President including AFO comes at a horrendous cost to our taxpayers. Not a single American would propose to begin cutting costs there.
I don't know about that, particularly if the President is of the other party.... But aside from that, one nice plane isn't comparable to the SD yacht. We're differing over the scale of expense. You either don't seem to get how pricey SD's are, or don't think that any expense whatever should be spared if it could conceivably - or even inconceivably! - be relevant to the monarch's protection.
If a personal force field was developed for individuals but the overall cost was considered astronomical, do you seriously doubt that the President would be outfitted at the expense of the taxpayers?
Yes. Absolutely.
Obviously. "So - college education for everyone, free to them - or a bubble for the Prez?" It'd be
sick to opt for that force field. Treasonous. Utterly, hatefully, shamefully contemptible.
cthia wrote:And surely Protector Benjamin and Grayson doesn't share your thoughts of resources being squandered or the Protector's Own would be a part of the Navy.
JeffEngel wrote:They'd be accepting your argument only if the Protector's Own were perpetually on duty as Benjamin's bodyguards - in which case Thunderbolt would have destroyed Sidemore Station and Admiral Harrington.
That's exactly what they were comfortable with. When Benjamin sent Protector's Own away to assist Honor he did it on his own authority, IIRC. He stated himself that if the truth of that got out it'd cause a ruckus. That was discussed with Honor.
He did it because he considered an attack by Haven as a serious threat, and the Protector's Own out there would make a difference in that case - or in keeping Allied interests served in case of things heating up with the Andermani in Silesia. It wasn't for the mere protection of a single woman. That would be obscene.
I truly do not know why we are arguing this Jeff. The richest system in the known galaxy can afford that type of private yacht to protect the Queen. Hauptman or his daughter will foot the cost and build the damn thing if the Queen or her government can't afford it. lol
But no need. Manticore agrees with me and finally sees the error of their ways...
HMS Duke of Cromarty was a modified Agamemnon-class battle cruiser of the Royal Manticoran Navy that served as a royal yacht for Queen Elizabeth III.
The regular battlecruiser hull that would become the Duke of Cromarty had already been laid down by the time the previous yacht, HMS Queen Adrienne, was destroyed by Masadan terrorists in 1915 PD. Determined not to allow a similar incident to happen again, the new High Ridge government ordered a warship to be converted into the next Royal yacht.
On the suggestion of First Lord of the Admirality Edward Janacek, the armored forward bulkhead of its pod core was moved further aft, cutting the ship's missile supply in half, in order to create space for state passenger cabins, conference rooms, and even a formal ballroom. Otherwise, the Duke of Cromarty was a fully capable warship with state-of-the-art weapons, defences, and electronic warfare capability. (HH9, Infodump)
When HMS Hexapuma and HMS Warlock returned to the Manticore System after the successful yet costly Battle of Monica, they were greeted by the Home Fleet in Coronation Day formation, in the presence of the queen aboard Duke of Cromarty. (SI1) --wiki
You do realize you're praising a High Ridge Government decision, right? One that no Cromarty Government had considered. I don't think the Janacek Admiralty made a mistake with every single decision, but even that is a view I've got to defend around these parts. And that move was made to demonstrate the High Ridge Government's loyalty and devotion to the Queen - something we readers know more than better enough to believe was the least bit sincere.
