Posted: 2006-01-13 03:59am
Indira House
Sophia
Narsia
Narsen Domain
Executor Adam Montrose waited as the fleet strategists and battlemasters of the Narsen military filed in the address the government. The Consult and the leaders of the Narsen Senate were present, as were the senior ministers of the Executor's cabinet. "I don't think we need any sugar coating," Montrose said without preamble. "Tell us what we are up against."
Strategist Wilimina Dixon stood up. She was a tall, gold skinned woman with night black hair. "We are under attack by a genocidal theocracy that outnumbers us nearly ten to one. They possess a large fleet, several powerful classes of ship that we do not, and army far larger than ours and will attempt to destroy us through attrition. This strategy is quite workable and will succeed if we allow them to enact it."
"They are not without weaknesses. They have heavy hull armour in part to compensate for inferior shields and reactors. Any engagement involving near parity of ship classes will result in an overwhelming Narsen victory. Their ground forces are radically inferior in every respect.
"It is likely that they will attempt to reverse engineer our technology and equip their ground troops with weapons specifically to counter our advantages. Heavy antitank weaponry and personal weapons and ammunition intended to defeat our body armour are likely paths of development. Although it is likely to take several years time to reverse engineer our technologies and then at least of year of production before any of it appears in signifigant numbers. To be blunt, should the war last for five or more years, the enemy's technology will be much more capable than it is now."
"You paint a grim picture Fleet Strategist," said Senator Zeiss. "Is there any good news?"
"Actually there is. Consul Tristan of your own party was quite helpful in this regard." Ygraine Tristan nodded her head in acknowledgement. The grand old lady of the Socialist Party was well over one hundred and was known for a sharp mind and tongue. "The Select have a number of exploitable weaknesses."
She called up a holo display. "Survey ships and prisoner interrogations have given us the locations of most of their systems, nineteen in all. They are all heavily populated, but amost entirely concentrated on the main planet. There is minimal use of other system resources and most of their industrial capacity is already dedicated to the military in some form or the other. They have little excess civilian capacity, unlike us, and very little in the way of automation."
"Their numerical advantage is also not as great as it would appear. A large chunk of their population are children and their woman are confined to child care and household maitenance chores for the most part. They also support a large, unproductive class of religious leaders that control the majority of the society's wealth. And then we come to agriculture."
"A population this large needs to eat a lot and this is primarily done by lightly mechanised agriculture. This is in part because of a cultural belief in the purity of working with the soil and party to give the large population of unmarried young men hard labour to do that will minimize their ability to cause trouble. They can mechanize and reduce their manpower requirement, but that will require considerable industrial resources, which would be diverted from the war effort.
"The Select also maintain a huge internal security force, which is also mans the system defences, the Heaven's Sheppards. We can expect coordination between the Heaven's Sheppards and their regular military, the Sword of God, to be poor based on interrogations. Furthermore, they have quality problems with their personel."
"Science is not encouraged in their society. Actually, any kind of thought at all is not encouraged. Most of heir technical personel are rote trained to do their jobs and little understanding of the machinery and electronics they work with. Senior personel have superior training and understanding, as are long service low rankers, but they are few and hard between."
"In contrast, we have a large potential pool of replacements for all branches of service. Since our people remain fit for duty well up to the age on one hundred we can, in the short term, replace casualties with highly skilled men and women. They, on the other hand, will suffer quality degredation almost immediately."
"Interesting," said Consul Klein, "but where does this lead us?"
"In a tight spot," admitted Dixon. "A long term war of attrition will be fatal. We do not have the strength to decisively defeat them in the short term. An alternate strategy is necessary.
"Our combat assesements have shown that several craft in our inventory have performed less than optimally in fleet engagements. Further production of these craft will be discontinued in favor of higher performing replacements. We will need several new designs to successfully persecute this war. Most critically, our battle computers have not performed as well as we would have liked in these large scale fleet engagements and we need vessels capable of hosting these systems and surviving concentrated enemy fire. We also need the capacity to smash extremely heavy orbital and ground defences, which the Select seem to possess, and launch successful invasions of our own. Our victories over the Select have revealed certain flaws in our entirely theoretical approach. We are endeavouring to correct these."
"So what course of action do you recommend, Strategist Dixon?" asked the Executor.
"Sir, we need to hurt the Select to buy time. Raider squadrons should be formed using underperforming ships such as Vigilance, Survey, Retaliator, and Sentinel class vessels. The Select appear to have a very limited civilian shipping industry and huge transport needs to resupply their fleets and construct their fleet base. We should make them bleed to buy time."
"Secondly, we should concentrate our remaining combat ships in a First, Second, and Third Fleet. First fleet should stay at Fairhaven until the system is more heavily fortified. Second and Third Fleets need to drop the hammer at Loren's World, before the enemy fleet is too heavily reinforced. Loren's World should be resupplied and then the Fleet's withdrawn.
"Second and Third Fleet should be kept as a mobile reserve. Our FTL speed is superior to that of the enemy, even before we account for them being tied to their extremely slow capital ships. Our detection equipment is also superior. We can accept some damage of infrastructure to obliterate an enemy fleet."
Montrose's voice was level. "This is the heart of the plan. Bait them into an attack on a major system, let them think they can pull it off, and then crush them."
"Yes sir. We need to inflict heavy damage on their fleet so we can hit their home systems hard without risking a collapse at home."
"I see. Should our strategy fail we will have no recourse but to attempt to bring the United Protectorates into the war. As a state with a state religion and an obvious dislike for genetic modification, we must hope they have a sufficient hatred of the Select or of religiously motivated genocide for them to interviene on our side. Historical analysis reveals that human frequently ignore occurances of genocide in distant places, especially if it is of a group they dislike. I have more faith in our soliders."
Sophia
Narsia
Narsen Domain
Executor Adam Montrose waited as the fleet strategists and battlemasters of the Narsen military filed in the address the government. The Consult and the leaders of the Narsen Senate were present, as were the senior ministers of the Executor's cabinet. "I don't think we need any sugar coating," Montrose said without preamble. "Tell us what we are up against."
Strategist Wilimina Dixon stood up. She was a tall, gold skinned woman with night black hair. "We are under attack by a genocidal theocracy that outnumbers us nearly ten to one. They possess a large fleet, several powerful classes of ship that we do not, and army far larger than ours and will attempt to destroy us through attrition. This strategy is quite workable and will succeed if we allow them to enact it."
"They are not without weaknesses. They have heavy hull armour in part to compensate for inferior shields and reactors. Any engagement involving near parity of ship classes will result in an overwhelming Narsen victory. Their ground forces are radically inferior in every respect.
"It is likely that they will attempt to reverse engineer our technology and equip their ground troops with weapons specifically to counter our advantages. Heavy antitank weaponry and personal weapons and ammunition intended to defeat our body armour are likely paths of development. Although it is likely to take several years time to reverse engineer our technologies and then at least of year of production before any of it appears in signifigant numbers. To be blunt, should the war last for five or more years, the enemy's technology will be much more capable than it is now."
"You paint a grim picture Fleet Strategist," said Senator Zeiss. "Is there any good news?"
"Actually there is. Consul Tristan of your own party was quite helpful in this regard." Ygraine Tristan nodded her head in acknowledgement. The grand old lady of the Socialist Party was well over one hundred and was known for a sharp mind and tongue. "The Select have a number of exploitable weaknesses."
She called up a holo display. "Survey ships and prisoner interrogations have given us the locations of most of their systems, nineteen in all. They are all heavily populated, but amost entirely concentrated on the main planet. There is minimal use of other system resources and most of their industrial capacity is already dedicated to the military in some form or the other. They have little excess civilian capacity, unlike us, and very little in the way of automation."
"Their numerical advantage is also not as great as it would appear. A large chunk of their population are children and their woman are confined to child care and household maitenance chores for the most part. They also support a large, unproductive class of religious leaders that control the majority of the society's wealth. And then we come to agriculture."
"A population this large needs to eat a lot and this is primarily done by lightly mechanised agriculture. This is in part because of a cultural belief in the purity of working with the soil and party to give the large population of unmarried young men hard labour to do that will minimize their ability to cause trouble. They can mechanize and reduce their manpower requirement, but that will require considerable industrial resources, which would be diverted from the war effort.
"The Select also maintain a huge internal security force, which is also mans the system defences, the Heaven's Sheppards. We can expect coordination between the Heaven's Sheppards and their regular military, the Sword of God, to be poor based on interrogations. Furthermore, they have quality problems with their personel."
"Science is not encouraged in their society. Actually, any kind of thought at all is not encouraged. Most of heir technical personel are rote trained to do their jobs and little understanding of the machinery and electronics they work with. Senior personel have superior training and understanding, as are long service low rankers, but they are few and hard between."
"In contrast, we have a large potential pool of replacements for all branches of service. Since our people remain fit for duty well up to the age on one hundred we can, in the short term, replace casualties with highly skilled men and women. They, on the other hand, will suffer quality degredation almost immediately."
"Interesting," said Consul Klein, "but where does this lead us?"
"In a tight spot," admitted Dixon. "A long term war of attrition will be fatal. We do not have the strength to decisively defeat them in the short term. An alternate strategy is necessary.
"Our combat assesements have shown that several craft in our inventory have performed less than optimally in fleet engagements. Further production of these craft will be discontinued in favor of higher performing replacements. We will need several new designs to successfully persecute this war. Most critically, our battle computers have not performed as well as we would have liked in these large scale fleet engagements and we need vessels capable of hosting these systems and surviving concentrated enemy fire. We also need the capacity to smash extremely heavy orbital and ground defences, which the Select seem to possess, and launch successful invasions of our own. Our victories over the Select have revealed certain flaws in our entirely theoretical approach. We are endeavouring to correct these."
"So what course of action do you recommend, Strategist Dixon?" asked the Executor.
"Sir, we need to hurt the Select to buy time. Raider squadrons should be formed using underperforming ships such as Vigilance, Survey, Retaliator, and Sentinel class vessels. The Select appear to have a very limited civilian shipping industry and huge transport needs to resupply their fleets and construct their fleet base. We should make them bleed to buy time."
"Secondly, we should concentrate our remaining combat ships in a First, Second, and Third Fleet. First fleet should stay at Fairhaven until the system is more heavily fortified. Second and Third Fleets need to drop the hammer at Loren's World, before the enemy fleet is too heavily reinforced. Loren's World should be resupplied and then the Fleet's withdrawn.
"Second and Third Fleet should be kept as a mobile reserve. Our FTL speed is superior to that of the enemy, even before we account for them being tied to their extremely slow capital ships. Our detection equipment is also superior. We can accept some damage of infrastructure to obliterate an enemy fleet."
Montrose's voice was level. "This is the heart of the plan. Bait them into an attack on a major system, let them think they can pull it off, and then crush them."
"Yes sir. We need to inflict heavy damage on their fleet so we can hit their home systems hard without risking a collapse at home."
"I see. Should our strategy fail we will have no recourse but to attempt to bring the United Protectorates into the war. As a state with a state religion and an obvious dislike for genetic modification, we must hope they have a sufficient hatred of the Select or of religiously motivated genocide for them to interviene on our side. Historical analysis reveals that human frequently ignore occurances of genocide in distant places, especially if it is of a group they dislike. I have more faith in our soliders."