NEED TO KNOW

Jonathan_S wrote:[1] I believe you're alluding to this bit from IEH "Honor's cutter drifted through the enormous hatch of HMS Wayfarer's Number One Hold. The small craft was a tiny minnow against the vast, star-speckled maw of cargo doors which could easily have admitted a destroyer, and the hold they served was built to the same gargantuan scale." It doesn't clearly say that the hold was large enough to fit an entire destroyer; just that the doors were large enough and the hold was very large. But also, that hold was being modified with Warfarer's pod rails, so to carry enough pods the yard may well have modified the freighter to lengthen that hold, in addition to adding the rear cargo/pod doors and extending the hold (and pod rails) all the way to the aft end of the ship. In it's pre-conversion service the number one (rearmost?) hold might have been smaller than what's described here.

But at a minimum if you have to specify it was the number 1 hold that logically implies that she's subdivided into multiple holds; so at a minimum we know all it's cargo space isn't available to try to slip one warship into.[/size]

You’ll have to go argue with the Bu9 guys who spend an hour talking about this a few years ago, with slides and graphics. The ships are unbelievably huge.

Although not addressed in the book, it is possible that assigning Fearless to Basilisk was partially driven by complaints from Astro Control and others that the present commander on the station was not doing almost anything as far as enforcing customs and other regulations, either out at the terminus or in the system
Basilisk wasn't quite the insignificant backwater sometimes hinted at. It is the 2nd access transfer point from the Junction to Silesia and lets ships get directly to the other end of Silesia (as viewed from Gregor). So there is traffic and ships are both just using the terminus to come via the Junction there and heading directly to some point in Silesia w/o stopping at the planet or coming in to the system on the way to the terminus from other points

There seems to have been a total lack of attention to anything regarding enforcement of anything on Young's part and Astro Control wasn't given much of anything to do the job they were being presented with. Yes, Basilisk was a political problem and while the one party (the non-expansionist bunch etc) couldn't get the system cast off the responsibility and ownership as they wanted, they blocked most of what would have been sent there to provide an adequate customs force. I agree Young was probably fobbed off there by those in the Admiralty who found him a classic example of rising beyond capability though patronage and it would get him out of the way of people who were both actualy doing their jobs and needing to rise though the service. It's a complicated set of choices between multiple less-than-ideal ways to deal with both Young himself and taking a few sort of subtle cuts at the North Haven crowd and then anti-expansionest group by parking his unless but highly polished ass there and almost daring the North Haven / Edward Janacek groups to do something about it. Young being given command of the station including a terminus..... go ahead, say he doesn't deserve it or...it is beneath his entitled self.
So they stick Fearless - which at this point isn't something your going to send out hunting pirates- with a talented commander who works hard at finding ways to do her job- and possibly figure that Young is going to dump all sorts of (to him) busy work on the Fearless's commander like customs, while Young gets to play top cat and order people around.
Clearly, in the book, when various people in the Admiralty see what Harrington is doing on her own -and getting the reports from both Astro Control and the Barroness- they get very creative on forcing Young to stay away from the station he effectively abandoned by returning home with the Warlock instead of just sending the ship under his XO back to Manticore for the "nessesary refit" It would appear that Harrington made more positive impact on the Basilisk system in a couple of weeks of running the Station on her own than Young made in whatever time he spent there

Sending Fearless would not have changed anything if Pavel Young had stayed on station; so it is highly unlikely that Honor was sent because ACS had complained about lack of action on customs enforcement. Besides, the only complaint that they had about Pavel Young was his interference in ACS activities, by trying to tell them how to do their job. The customs enforcement that Honor began was the first anyone had done it in decades.

Brigade XO wrote:So they stick Fearless - which at this point isn't something your going to send out hunting pirates- with a talented commander who works hard at finding ways to do her job- and possibly figure that Young is going to dump all sorts of (to him) busy work on the Fearless's commander like customs, while Young gets to play top cat and order people around.
Clearly, in the book, when various people in the Admiralty see what Harrington is doing on her own -and getting the reports from both Astro Control and the Barroness- they get very creative on forcing Young to stay away from the station he effectively abandoned by returning home with the Warlock instead of just sending the ship under his XO back to Manticore for the "nessesary refit" It would appear that Harrington made more positive impact on the Basilisk system in a couple of weeks of running the Station on her own than Young made in whatever time he spent there

The reaction of those various people shows that none of them expected Young to withdraw his ship and dump the entire station command upon Honor and Fearless. He might have ordered Fearless to carry out some mundane tasks, but it was more likely IMO that Young would have had them both sit in Medusa orbit doing very little. His ego wouldn't allow Honor to go around effectively pointing out and patching his derelictions of duty - indeed, once he realised what she was doing, he tried to get back on station which then brought about the Admiralty's creativity in keeping him away.

And based on the deep background here: https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/e ... gton/37/1/

Webster had no real expectations. He was just keeping Honor on active duty until some other suitable posting came up instead of immediately scrapping Fearless with the consequence of parking her on the beach until that posting came up.

Hmm, according to HoS, the Valiant-class was coming online a year or so after the Battle of Basilisk took place and was going to replace the Courageous on a hull-for-hull basis - and the Valiants would inherit their precedessors' names.

So that was possibly his intention for Honor's career path if the Peeps hadn't tried to screw with Basilisk. Straight into the next HMS Fearless, which wouldn't have been a Star Knight but probably the second Valiant-class to be commissioned.

munroburton wrote:Hmm, according to HoS, the Valiant-class was coming online a year or so after the Battle of Basilisk took place and was going to replace the Courageous on a hull-for-hull basis - and the Valiants would inherit their precedessors' names.

So that was possibly his intention for Honor's career path if the Peeps hadn't tried to screw with Basilisk. Straight into the next HMS Fearless, which wouldn't have been a Star Knight but probably the second Valiant-class to be commissioned.

Interesting thought. That's very possible. Though it might have necessitated one more promotion before that, to Captain (j.g.). When Henke was CO of Agni, a much older Apollo-class light-cruiser, she was already one. But Truman was Commander when she skippered HMS Apollo, so there's a precedent. And we know Henke frequently sabotaged her own career, so her being slow there shouldn't be taken as a norm.

Anyway, Honor had been a Commander for a while and had been CO of a hyper-capable warship even before Fearless, so she'd already have two command stars on her uniform.

Of course, Honor derailed that by doing an outstanding job at Basilisk and skipping the junior captain grade altogether.

I imagine that R&D is still going on in some form or fashion in the MBS? The MBS still houses the best universities where breakthroughs are a common occurrence.

Will each member of the GA share all of their new breakthroughs? Would it not be prudent to hold on to an ace-in-the-hole should tensions start anew?

Ships are still being produced at Bolthole. If the leopard's spots return, it will be a big mess.

cthia wrote:I imagine that R&D is still going on in some form or fashion in the MBS? The MBS still houses the best universities where breakthroughs are a common occurrence.

University research is not necessarily something that can be applied in the military, even those that are done with grants from the government. I'm sure the universities and private companies will have their secrets amongst themselves and will have rivalry.

Will each member of the GA share all of their new breakthroughs? Would it not be prudent to hold on to an ace-in-the-hole should tensions start anew?

Ships are still being produced at Bolthole. If the leopard's spots return, it will be a big mess.

At this point, they're so intertwined that separating is impossible. My guess is that most of the development that used to happen in Manticore-B and Trevor's Star has shifted to Bolthole, opening those first back two to civilian traffic.

That opens the question of how much building is continuing to go on at Trevor's Star post Oyster Bay as construction and production is accelerating in the MBS (and Grayson). At least I presume the rebuilding and local production of all sorts of "stuff" is accelerating at MBS.

Being on the other end of the wormhole makes it important for Trevor's Star to have current capacity to do a lot of things for the Navy.

This whole discussion missed a key element: the concept of 'lawful command' isn't limited to the massacre of unarmed civilians or looting of world-renowned museums. It embraces the entire body of law and regulation governing not just an armed service but the nation it belongs to. Thus ordering your driver to speed because you're late for the Mess Dinner is unlawful - and the fact that you issued that order won't shield her from the consequences of being pulled over for doing 90 in a 40 zone. But may very well get you charged with 'conduct to the prejudice' for giving that order in the first place. With career-ending consequences.

So in the rather far-fetched examples being discussed, the security of classified information is governed by some sort of security instructions [in Canada, issued under the authority of the Chief of the Defence Staff in accordance with QR&O] that form the framework within which orders can be issued. IOW, that lowly Ensign would have the [indirect] backing of the CDS when he said 'no', because an order to reveal classified info to somebody without a demonstrable need to know isn't a lawful command. And when an operational situation goes sideways, need-to-know becomes obvious pretty darned quickly.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Because shit happens and in the Navy it stinks something awful.

If an Ensign aboard HMS Fearless (CM-56) had been privy to Apollo, and he ran into Pavel Young in the Basilisk System, Young damn sure wouldn't have had a need to know.

I asked "chain of command." The captain of another ship is not in the chain of command of one ensign.

But ok, I understand your point now. How would an lower-ranked officer handle being asked to talk about his or her work by a much senior officer whom he or she didn't know had the clearance to know about it? Confirm with their own chain of command. In a professional service, one can't be faulted for being careful with state secrets. Junior officers and enlisted should be taught to and empowered to refuse sharing until they're certain that they're doing the right thing. At worst, this could cause a minor annoyance and delay in information-sharing, but it's clearly better than the alternative of revealing a secret to someone whom shouldn't know it.

I get it that in a pre-war RMN, a Pavel Young like in your supposition could take revenge on the poor ensign and stall his/her career, or get him/her even dismissed from service. That would be a loss... but wouldn't it be preferable to letting Pavel Young know whatever secret that was?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
At this point, they're so intertwined that separating is impossible. My guess is that most of the development that used to happen in Manticore-B and Trevor's Star has shifted to Bolthole, opening those first back two to civilian traffic.

Manticore B, was used for working up things the First Space Lord didn't want any curious eyes and blabbering lips to see. This role later transferred to Trevor's Star, once it was liberated from the Peeps, and became part of the Star Kingdom. The dark R&D stayed in Gryphon orbit, or the associated asteroid belt(s).