cthia wrote:Byng, nor Crandle, were serious responses by the SL. They still had no clue attall what they faced. Both Byng and Crandall were still operating as poor little misguided arrogant Sollies. Operation Raging Justice was the best the Sollies had. Not only that, they sent their best COs. It was the first serious formal response dispatched by the Sollies.
Correct, but all they had at this point was anecdotal information by Adm. O'Cleary brought from Spindle. All sensor readings they'd received were provided courtesy of the RMN, so they had no way to verify their authenticity. And they weren't inclined to believe it either way.
There's simply no way that Filareta could have been adequately prepared. The fact that he had already been in the Verge is the only reason he could attack that quickly, but that also limited any surprises he might have possessed.
The only thing that could influence that was if someone had been observing the Manticoran-Havenite Wars for some time and developing their own assets. Which did happen. Which the GA had to prepare for. So, yes, it's possible Tsang had been given further innovations than Filareta.
There is NO WAY IN HELL the Alliance could have known without a shadow of a doubt there wouldn't be any surprises in the manner of what Shannon's Triple Ripple did to the RMN. There was still some mystique over what formidable capabilities the SLN had. Didn't the RMN itself say the massive beast could deploy game changing tech in record time? There were still too many variables to take a chance on allowing your enemy forces to consolidate.
It was stupid to take that risk. As readers, WE knew Tsang's Fleet was a pussycat. The RMN couldn't have known. They guessed right. But they didn't HAVE to guess. They allowed galactic coordination of forces. Stupid. It worked out for them because in this case they were fortunate they didn't get bitten on, and deep up in the ass. Remember, the Salamander originally had a fatal missile with her name on it.
Agreed it was a risk. There was a non-zero possibility that Tsang had some surprise. So, yes, I agree with you that letting the D.B. through invited an unnecessary risk. It might have been (and was!) a negligible risk, but negligible is not zero.
But was it stupid to incur this risk?
What was the risk? The forts were not at risk, there's nothing that could get past them. If the SLN had developed a wormhole transit technique, the GA would know through Crandall's databases or via the BSDF. There's a danger the MAlign had developed something, but there's no way the SLN had had the time to train on it. Plus, having this technique handed to them would be incredibly difficult to explain away without outside influence. And it's an asset the MAlign would be unlikely to part with, especially since clearly TF 11.6 wasn't serious.
That leaves the three dozen SDs from the BSDF and the five dozen SD(P)s under Adm. Truman in Beowulf. If there's any new technique that Tsang is bringing to the party, they'd be the ones at the pointy end. But again, Tsang's force was clearly not big enough to make difference, so it was unlikely. And besides, Tsang might have unveiled her surprises even if the D.B. had been delayed. Worse, she may have been angered if it had been detained and decide that the Klingon proverb "
Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam" applied so long as she got to fire here missiles at those traitorous Beowulfans.
So conclusion: the risk to Manticore was negligible; the risk to the forces in Beowulf was not reduced by allowing the D.B. through. What was the gain?
A Rising Thunder, Ch. 21 wrote:“Are we sure this is a good idea, Ma’am?” [...] “Well, it just seems to me that it would have been simpler all around to sit on them,” Captain Dombroski said. “I mean, they wouldn't be going anywhere without our permission. We could’ve just kept them cooling their heels right here until it was all over one way or the other ....”
[...]
“It’d be a hard call for m, wither way,” she said finally. “I”m sure it was for everyone else involved, too. In fact, even though no one’s told me in so many words, I think it was ultimately the Beowulfers who made the decision, not anyone at our end. And I think the deciding factor was probably that they’re really and truly royally pissed at this Mesan Alignment. There’s no way in this universe they’re going to sit on the sidelines when we go after them, and they’re about as disgusted as anyone could possibly get with the way Kolokoltsov and the Mandarins have botched the entire situation. For that matter, they’re disgusted as hell with all the rest of the League for letting itself get turned into such a botched-up mess instead of a star nation in the first place. So this is their way of punctuating all the reasons they’re doing what they’re doing—jumping ship to sign with us, I mean. And I think they want to draw Admiral Tsang in, get her to openly commit to her part of ‘Operation Raging Justice,’ so they’ll have that additional evidence of just how fast and loose with the League Constitution Kolokoltsov’s apparatchiks are really willing to play.”
cthia wrote:But if the SLN did deploy game changing tech and Tsang's Fleet was the real hammer, then the RMN would have been screwed, considering Honor would've already had her hands full.
As I argued above, Tsang's fleet needed not just one game-changer innovation. It needed two: one to smash SD(P)s with ease in not one but at least two battles and a second to survive a wormhole transit. What's the chance of that?
There's no way in HELL the same decision would have been made facing a foe like the RHN, all else being equal.
Yes and no. There's no way the RHN would get past the Junction forts more than the SLN would. But there would be incredibly more danger to Truman and especially to especially to Holmon-Sanders. If there had been 100 hostile RHN SD(P)s sitting on the other side of a wormhole transit, it behoved the defenders to practice defeat in detail: defeat the force coming to the home system first, then transit and defeat the other before they knew the first front had been defeated.