Terralthra wrote:For what it's worth, in At All Costs (I think), Hemphill and Harrington are in the same room, and Hemphill apologizes, in as many words, for HMS Fearless's grav lance/energy torpedo armament. She says she never intended Fearless as anything more than a testbed, and certainly never intended it to get deployed into combat with that weapons load. On Basilisk Station supports this: Hemphill doesn't exile Fearless; Janacek (the incredibly incompetent First Lord of the Admiralty at the time) did so. It's assumed by at the time Commander Harrington that it was a punishment for embarrassing Hemphill, but there's no mention that Hemphill was at all involved in the decision.
Hm, yeah. Mid-career Honor is
exactly the sort of person who'd make an unwarranted assumption about how other people feel, and since she's the viewpoint character...
Also, Janacek himself probably didn't intend
Fearless to fight any particularly powerful enemy warships. I doubt any ship on Basilisk Station had ever had to fire weapons in anger since the posting was created thirty years ago, and if they did, it was most certainly
not against a modern, peer-competitor target, let alone one as big and nasty as
Sirius.
Janacek wasn't particularly good at his job, but he wasn't a complete nitwit and IMO had some sense of responsibility for not actively putting people in harm's way. He may have had a lot of bad ideas and prejudices that reinforced those bad ideas, but that's not the same thing as being a complete idiot.
And now for the ships of Roger's early buildup, say, up to around the mid-1870s PD, or at least those I haven't already covered. I'm deliberately leaving out a dedicated recon CL built on the
Apollo hull, and a Marine operations cruiser based on the
Prince Consort hull.
I've already included some of the ships that would have been massively produced in the early years of the buildup (the
Royal Wintons, the 1850s-vintage
Prince Consort and
Crusader-class heavy cruiser designs, and the
Homer-class battlecruiser), because I feel like those designs reflect the pre-buildup era in terms of how and when they were designed. After all, a military buildup often involves a lot of effort in building what you know how to make and can build
right away, not just what you would dream of eventually having one of these days.
Chanson-class Destroyer
Mass: 78000 tons
Dimensions: 367 x 43 x 25 meters
Acceleration: 520.7 G
80% Accel: 416.6 G
Broadside: 3 missile tubes, 3 lasers, 4 countermissile launchers, 4 point defense
Chase: 2 missile tubes, 1 laser, 2 countermissile launchers, 2 point defense
Number Built: 204
Service Life: 1867-present
With King Roger's naval expansion program in full swing, the RMN began a serious analysis of combat records from Silesia, and realized that ship defense needed significant improvement. The resulting destroyer, light cruiser, and heavy cruiser designs of the Enhanced Survivability Program all emphasized greater defensive armament and improved passive defenses. The destroyer design was the
Chanson-class.
By far the most numerous class of destroyer in the RMN, the
Chanson is well suited to a variety of duties, from scouting and picket duty to the destroyer screen of a wall of battle, to independent operations "showing the flag" in smaller star poltiies. The class has long strategic endurance for a destroyer, making it popular with RMN planners, and its modern electronics suite and enhanced area defense capabilities make it better suited for convoy defense than the
Havoc. Despite the reduction in launchers over the
Havoc and
Noblesse classes, the
Chanson class remains strongest in a missile duel. Its heavy defenses and superior fire control allow it to hold its own against most destroyers and even some light cruisers as long as it can remain out of energy range. Still, it lacks the offensive punch of the
Havoc-class and its successor the
Javelin-class, a fact that was heavily criticized by opponents of the Enhanced Survivability Program.
When the
Culverin-class was delayed in the early 1900s, another flight of
Chansons was ordered as a stopgap. Other than incremental updates in electronics and fittings, these hulls are virtually identical to the older model
Chansons, despite the ten year gap in construction.
Comments:
There are a lot of
Chansons. "Chanson" is a word for a type of song, so IMO it's safe to assume that any musical-themed destroyer name refers to a
Chanson. This includes, for example,
Madrigal and
Troubador, both of which appear in
Honor of the Queen.
I'm picturing the Manticoran attitude toward light ship combat going like this: Before 1860 PD or so, they go "yeah, our DDs and CLs and CAs are winning a steady string of hard-fought victories against Silesian privateers." Right around 1860 they stop and go "Wait, these are
Silesians we're fighting. They're doing a lot of damage to our ships as it is, and their weapons suck! What would really
good light combatants do to our ships?"
So they upgrade the ships' defenses, because Manticoran light combatants are seriously designed to go sailing off into random places hundreds of light years away where Lord knows what might be shooting at them.
Note that the
Chanson mounts roughly the same weapons fit as the
Falcon-class, which is roughly eight thousand tons lighter; from the sound of it, all that extra tonnage went into toughening its defenses. This comes in handy when you are, for example, being shot at by a Masadan battlecruiser.
Also note the difference between "point" and "area" defense. Point defense weapons can only protect the place they're standing on, and are not effective at protecting other targets. Area defense means weapons that are long ranged enough, and good enough at hitting crossing targets, that they can be used to defend
something else that isn't parked right next door.
By analogy, a Stinger missile launcher is pretty much point defense; it is unlikely to shoot down anything that isn't (more or less) flying right over the shooter's head. The missiles of an AEGIS cruiser are (by design) area defense weapons designed to make anything within a few dozen miles of the ship a very dangerous place to be, no matter which way you're flying.
For something as tightly compact as a wall of battle in the Honorverse, laser weapons would have some effect as area defense, but it's problematic using beam weapons against an impeller-drive missile flying
past your ship, because the missile has its own wedge. Countermissiles are more reliable for that role, and for protecting a more strung-out and dispersed formation like that of a merchant convoy.
Illustrious-class Light Cruiser
Mass: 135750 tons
Dimensions: 449 x 47 x 36 meters
Acceleration: 517.3 G
80% Accel: 413.9 G
Broadside: 5 missile tubes, 4 lasers, 6 countermissile launchers, 6 point defense
Chase: 2 missile tubes, 1 laser, 4 countermissile launchers, 4 point defense
Number Built: 26
Service Life: 1876-present
The
Illustrious-class was a product of the Enhanced Survivability Program undertaken by BuShips in the early 1860s. Unlike some of the other designs spawned by the program, the
Illustrious-class carried the concept far enough to compromise the offensive capabilities of the design, and most authorities consider the ship severely under-gunned. The Admiralty agreed with that assessment and shifted resources to the continued production of the older
Apollo-class rather than the newer
Illustrious-class CLs.
The
Illustrious design has been disparagingly referred to as the most expensive destroyer ever built. This is perhaps unfair, as the class has found several useful niches, but the RMN had hoped to use it as a more generalized light cruiser and hence overall it is regarded to be a failure. Lacking the firepower to be a credible threat to any modern warship in its tonnage range, standard employment options for the class usually emphasize missions where its defensive armament is an advantage. Initially these deployments focused on situations where it was more likely to find a mismatch in its favor, either hunting pirates in Silesia or in an antiscouting role with the fleet. As the tempo of wartime operations increased, command groups with
Illustrious-class cruisers attached have taken to detaching them to cover convoy units while heavier elements have been tasked elsewhere. A related idea that saw
Illustrious-class ships attached in division strength to deep raiding battlecruiser squadrons as supplementary defensive firepower met with some limited successes early in the war. Their conversion into light, fast-attack transports assigned to the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps is also under consideration.
Comments:
Oops.
On paper, the
Illustrious shouldn't be that bad; aside from lighter energy armament, it's basically comparable to the (ten thousand tons lighter)
Apollo, with roughly 50% more antimissile defenses. Which is just another way of saying that you'd probably get more bang for your buck from the
Apollo, especially if you factor in the fact that a long-running and well-established ship class that's been in production for ten or twenty years will probably have lower per unit costs than continued production of an entirely new class.
Although I can see why they would use
Illustrious CLs to provide antimissile support to battlecruiser units; a pair of the things has damn near as much ability to kill missiles as a pre-1890 RMN battlecruiser does, with less than one third the tonnage.
Gladiator-class Dreadnought
Mass: 6846000 tons
Dimensions: 1284 x 186 x 173 meters
Acceleration: 421.5 G
80% Accel: 337.2 G
Broadside: 22 missile tubes, 18 lasers, 24 grasers, 1 grav lance, 8 energy torpedo tubes, 18 countermissile launchers, 26 point defense
Chase: 6 missile tubes, 4 lasers, 6 grasers, 6 countermissile launchers, 10 point defense
Number Built: 34
Service Life: 1868-1920
With King Roger's shipbuilding and infrastructure initiatives and the experience in building the
Royal Winton and
Samothrace classes, the shipyards had worked out most of the initial problems involved in building wallers by the time work began on the
Gladiators, and both Navy and civilian yards were ready to embark on true series production.
The
Gladiator class was built as a brawler, designed with an intentionally light missile broadside. Instead, it was equipped with the heaviest beam armament that could be fitted into a hull of this size, including an extensive suite of energy torpedo launchers and later refitted with the newly developed grav lance... in an early attempt to make a decisive wall engagement possible. The range limitation required a wall equipped with it to get close enough to actually use it, however, which (of course) meant that the primary effect of its introduction was simply to make fleet commanders across the galaxy even more cautious about close engagements.
The decision to greatly increase the
Gladiator's defenses, particularly the countermissile launchers, proved prescient. The original rationale for the greatly increased area defense- even at the expense of the far more effective point defense clusters- was to allow the
Gladiator to screen both itself and other units in the formation as they closed toward beam range. With the standoff attack range of the laser head (first deployed by the IAN in 1872 PD), the utility of the short-ranged point defense clusters was critically reduced almost overnight, and the
Gladiator was one of the few older classes to weather the transition.
Overall, despite the lost missile broadside, the
Gladiator was a solid design, and remained in service a couple of years past the more modern
Majestic-class due to its better survivability and passive defenses. Plans were drawn up to substantially refit the surviving units with sufficient defenses to remain in the wall of battle even in the era of pod-based combat. The cease-fire and transition to the Janacek Admiralty scuttled these plans, however, and only a few of the
Gladiators remained in service when the war resumed.
Comments
So... the IAN tests its first laser head only two years after Manticore- probably because they bought it from the Solarians, who at this point were just about level with Manticore in laser head development.
On the
Gladiator in particular, note the heavy energy battery; this is what designers of the 1860s PD seriously expected their ships to need, to cope with the kind of combat they were likely to experience. On top of that, the
Gladiators are closer to the
Samothrace 'superdreadnought' in tonnage than they are to the
Ad Astra and
Royal Winton 'dreadnoughts.' Basically, the difference in tonnage is no more than about 5-10% between 'dreadnoughts' and 'superdreadnoughts' designed in the 1865-1890 timeframe; it would have been more accurate to call them 'dreadnoughts' and 'slightly larger dreadnoughts' or something. The gap spreads a bit with the rise of the
Sphinx and
Gryphon-classes in the 1890s PD.
Also, the phrase "far more effective point defense" suggests that against pre-laser head missiles, point defense beam weapons really WERE more effective, even in the case of "sidewall burners" with standoff ranges of up to ten thousand kilometers. One wonders just how much missile-killing potential ships lose when standoff range goes from 10000 to 25000 km.
King William-class Superdreadnought
Mass: 7170750 tons
Dimensions: 1304 x 189 x 176 m
Acceleration: 417.7 G
80% Accel: 334.2 G
Broadside: 32 missile tubes, 19 lasers, 21 grasers, 26 countermissile launchers, 28 point defense mounts
Chase: 8 missile tubes, 6 lasers, 4 grasers, 10 countermissile launchers, 10 point defense mounts.
Number Built: 25
Service Life: 1877-1919
The
King William-class superdreadnought was the first ship of its type to reach series production, after nearly a decade of design work and lessons learned from work on the
Royal Winton and
Samothrace classes. It was also the first ship build from the keel out to carry the new Mk19 Capital Ship Missile, then in development as the RMN's first laser head weapon, though not actually placed in service until several years after the first unit was commissioned.
Massing over seven million tons, the
King William was designed to be a balanced combatant, giving equal weight to missile combat, beam combat, and defenses. The
King William's technological advances over the
Manticore-class resulted in a near fifty percent improvement in missile broadside strength, and the class established what was to become the standard Manticoran capital ship ammunition allocation of one round per minute per broadside launcher for a sustained period of two hours, known as the "1-for-2" rule.
While the
King Williams proved a very successful design, they experienced their own share of growing pains during the course of construction. After the first eight of the class were completed BuShips realized countermissile batteries were going to have an even greater prominence in missile engagements than originally realized, as laser heads increased the standoff distance of incoming missiles and reduced the effectiveness of point defense. A half-dozen point defense clusters were accordingly removed from the defensive weapon decks and replaced with countermissile launchers.
Later refits brought the entire class up to a more consistent standard, leaving most of the remaining difference merely cosmetic. While the
King William was eventually supplanted by the
Anduril and
Victory-classes as the frontline Manticoran superdreadnought, a number of
King Williams distinguished themselves over the course of the war.
Most of the surviving
King Williams were sold to Alliance navies during the Janacek build-down, including a full squadron transferred to the Erewhon Navy shortly before the resumption of hostilies and their subsequent exit from the Alliance.
Comments:
The wording here makes it ambiguous whether Manticore had an operational laser head missile until some time in the 1880s PD. And whether the IAN actually fielded this capability
first by going to Solarian weapons designers, looking at the description of the
Gladiators. I don't know what to make of it.
Also, Manticoran capital ship magazines apparently store about 120 missiles per broadside launcher, enough for about two hours of sustained fire, assuming you don't launch more than one missile salvo per minute. By the time of the series, they
do totally fire faster than that, so yeah.
So about eight of them were sold to Erewhon just before the end of the ceasefire... oops.
One thing I noticed looking at this period is that surprisingly few new *classes* come out of the buildup, at least in the short term. One destroyer and CL each, one dreadnought and SD each, and that's about it. I can think of a number of reasons for that.
1) As noted, it is usually easier to focus on
either expanding production
or introducing new technology at a given time, but not both, especially for a nation which is unaccustomed to doing either.
2) In the 1860s PD, Roger was probably trying to focus on two goals. One was developing new weapons, but these weapons were very obviously not ready yet, so there would be no point in designing new ships to carry the weapons. The other goal was increasing production- preserving the production lines for light ships (which Manticore already knew how to produce in great numbers), but also to begin serious, continuous, timely production of capital ships. Before Roger III, it pretty much always took decades for Manticore to get any given capital ship
finished. That would obviously not be acceptable in the context of a buildup and rapid technological arms race to confront the People's Navy.
3) The RMN already had viable designs of vintages in the 1840s and 1850s PD for basically every conceivable type of ship it might want to build below the wall. The big challenge, as noted above, was moving into faster, more efficient production of ships of the wall. Which required them to become familiar with the process of designing such ships and putting them into production quickly. Roger might have focused the great bulk of the RMN's resources of design and planning into that: "Get this SD design done, get it right, get it ready for mass production, then start working on the next iteration of the design SOON!"
The only really noticeable advance in design below the wall that I see in the 1860-1875 period. is the Survivability Enhancement Program. It looks like that produced new DD and CL designs, but the corresponding CA design was never built as far as I can tell. The existing designs (
Prince Consort/Crusader) may have been deemed satisfactory.
Plus, CAs are inherently pretty rugged for the sort of mission the RMN actually uses them for. They basically get the same missions the CLs do, but have about twice the tonnage and correspondingly higher survivability. So it's hard to find a reason for them to make the heavy cruiser proportionately more tough for their tonnage than they already are. The only one I can think of would be if you expect them to routinely run into something
bigger than an enemy heavy cruiser. And the RMN does not normally expect that to happen. If they expect something heavier than an enemy CA to show up, they will send one (or more) of their many,
many battlecruisers.
