The Short Victorious War Read online

  Note that all of the above comments apply only to engagements under impeller drive. All normal space combats are, of course, fought out under impeller drive, as are those in hyper-space but outside the boundaries of a grav wave. Within a grav wave, however, where movement is possible only under Warshawski sail, missiles cannot be used. Only energy weapons are effective there, and combat under those conditions tends to be very close and extremely brutal.

  The energy weapons of choice are the laser and graser, of which the graser has both a longer range and greater effect. But grasers are considerably more massive than lasers, so most ships have mixed batteries, accepting the lower effectiveness of the laser in order to mount greater numbers of weapons (which let them engage greater numbers of targets) while retaining the "smashing" ability of the graser. Ships smaller than light cruisers are normally so cramped for weapons space that they have pure laser energy armaments.

  Another energy weapon, though seldom used at this period, was the energy torpedo, which fired what were for all intents and purposes packets of plasma confined in electromagnetic bottles. Energy torpedoes moved at near-light speeds, which made them very difficult for point defense to engage, but the energy torpedo had no homing capability. This made it a purely ballistic weapon, so the initial (and only) fire control solution was far more critical than for missiles, and the endurance of its "bottle" was barely more than one second, limiting absolute energy torpedo range to 300,000 kilometers or so. In addition, the fact that they were totally ineffective against an intact sidewall restricted them to down the throat or up the kilt shots, which made them of strictly limited utility. Despite this, some navies' capital ships (the RMN'S among them) incorporated light torpedo batteries for use if the enemy's "T" could be crossed or if his sidewall failed due to other battle damage.

  A new development, the grav lance, offered the ability to burn out a sidewall by hitting it with a disrupting burst of focused gravitic energy, but this weapon had a maximum effective range of little more than 100,000 kilometers. It was also extremely slow firing, mass intensive, and temperamental, and very few captains were willing to sacrifice displacement which could be used for tried and proven weapons to squeeze in something that might work . . . if they could survive to get into its range of the enemy.

  THE BALANCE OF NAVAL POWER

  The pre-war naval balance between Manticore and Haven was the result of an arms race which had lasted for almost fifty years. Despite the Star Kingdom of Manticore's wealth and the People's Republic of Haven's ramshackle financial structure, the PRH was so much bigger that the smaller percentage of total income it could devote to its military budget was larger in absolute terms. Moreover, the Star Kingdom, the core of the Manticoran Alliance, possessed only three inhabited planets; the PRH contained over a hundred, which provided a far larger pool from which to draw starship crews and support personnel, and it had begun its initial buildup well before Manticore.

  The actual strengths of the two sides in 282 A.L. (1904 PD.) broke down as below:

  Comparative Strengths by Class

  The People's Navy thus had a tonnage advantage of almost exactly two to one, yet its overall advantage in hulls was only 1.2 to 1, despite the fact that the RMN's ships were almost uniformly more massive on a per-class basis. This apparent discrepancy resulted from the composition of the two forces. The People's Navy was designed not only for wars of conquest but to police the enormous sphere the PRH had already conquered. The large number of battleships in its order of battle were intended not for the wall of battle, where their smaller size would place them at a grievous disadvantage against "proper" ships of the wall, but to cover occupied systems against anything smaller than a wall of battle ship. (This was of particular importance against Manticore, which had always favored the battlecruiser. The BC's combination of acceleration and firepower made it ideal for raids on the orbital industrial infrastructure of enemy star systems, and the RMN had refined these tactics to a fine art over the centuries.)

  The same internal policing requirements explain the greater numbers of destroyers in the PN fleet mix. In addition, both navies had large numbers of LACs (light attack craft) which do not appear in the figures above, since their individual combat power was slight and they were not hyper capable, being intended purely for local defense.

  It should also be noted that, once again despite the greater mass of most classes in the RMN, Haven's total wall of battle (superdreadnoughts and dreadnoughts) contained forty-nine percent more units than Manticore's but held a tonnage advantage of over fifty-two percent. This reflected the RMN's need to build a higher percentage of smaller and less capable dreadnoughts. Not only did each dreadnought use up less of its smaller budget and require a shorter building time, but Manticore needed numbers, as well as sheer tonnage, for tactical flexibility. Despite this, however, the Manticoran Admiralty steadfastly rejected all suggestions that it should build still smaller and cheaper battleships as Haven had done. The RMN's view was that while some concessions had to be made to bring numbers up, battleships were simply too small and weak to lie in the wall of battle, and Manticore, unlike Haven, could not afford to tie up millions of tons in "capital ships" unable to bear the brunt of fleet combat.

  The table below shows the relative average displacements of the latest generation ships of the two navies, but it should be borne in mind that these are only averages.

  Average Tonnage by Class

  The disparity in average hull sizes is evident, but what it actually meant in fighting power can be best illustrated by comparing two ships of nominally equivalent classes: HMS Nike and PNS Sultan. Both were battlecruisers of the latest generation, but Nike massed 879,000 tons with a crew of 2,105 (including Marines) as opposed to Sultan's 858,000 tons and crew of 1,695. Although she was less than three percent more massive overall, Nike's side-walls were ten percent tougher than Sultan's, and her energy weapons were fifteen percent more massive (and much more powerful) on a mount-for-mount basis.

  Offensively, Sultan mounted a broadside of nine lasers, six grasers, and twenty missile tubes to Nike's eight lasers, ten grasers, two energy torpedoes, and twenty-five missile tubes. In terms of chase armament, Sultan mounted two lasers and five missile tubes ahead and the same astern, while Nike mounted four missile tubes, two grasers, and a laser in the same positions.

  Part of the Manticoran ship's superior armament was bought at the expense of magazine space, but though Sultan actually carried twenty-five percent more missiles, despite her lower number of tubes, this was offset by the RMN's superior electronics and penetration aides, which made Nike's missiles almost thirty percent more accurate (and harder to stop), and a higher rate of fire per launcher.

  The two ships also reflected differences in doctrine and design philosophy. The RMN built battlecruisers as screening elements for its battle squadrons, but it also regarded them as raiders and designed them for independent operations, as well. PN doctrine, on the other hand, tied its BCs much more tightly to the wall of battle, regarding them as scaled down, faster elements of the main battle fleet with a sustained combat role in fleet engagements. The RMN believed that any BC's life expectancy against ships of the wall would be brief and that battlecruiser-versus-battlecruiser actions would be short and sharp. As a result, BuShips believed it was better to be able to throw more missiles—especially better missiles—faster and incorporate an energy armament heavy enough to make close-range action decisive than to try to outlast an opponent. It is also worth noting that the smaller Manticoran fleet contained well over twice as many BCs as the PN.

  Clearly, in any engagement with her opposite number the Manticoran ship's heavier armament, superior electronic warfare capabilities, and generally more efficient point defense gave her a powerful advantage. Indeed, a single Nike could engage two Sultans with a fair chance of victory.

  The personnel of the two fleets showed an almost equally striking disparity. Both officer corps were comprised of long-term volunteer professionals,
but Manticore, by and large, hewed to the doctrine established by Commodore Edward Saganami. Its officers were expected to use their own judgment and trained accordingly, whereas Havenite officers were kept on much tighter leashes by their superiors. RMN admirals tended to allow their subordinates considerable freedom of action within broad strategic and tactical parameters; their PN counterparts tied their units into tight, centralized planning and expected them to do as they were told. There were exceptions—some outstanding—to the pattern in each navy, but overall a Manticoran commander was much more comfortable "thinking for himself" than a Havenite CO. Perhaps even more significantly, the People's Republic was not a forgiving master—and it was far more heavily politicized. A Havenite officer dared not deviate (openly, at least) from the "party line," and if he failed to carry out his orders, whether those orders made sense or not, his career was likely to be short. In addition, favoritism and careerism were actually more rampant in the People's Navy than in the RMN, despite Manticoran reformers' understandable concern with their own service's tradition of patronage and family influence.

  There was, in addition, a tremendous difference between the enlisted and noncommissioned ranks in the two fleets, for over seventy percent of the People's Navy's lower deck personnel were conscripts. Manticore, on the other hand, had been able to crew her ships entirely with volunteers, many with previous experience in the Star Kingdom's huge merchant fleet, as awareness of "the Havenite threat" grew. Moreover, the RMN's petty officers, the backbone of any navy, averaged almost twice the length of service of their Havenite counterparts because of the higher turnover in a conscript-crewed fleet and the lesser personal incentives the PN offered.

  The education levels of the two sides also differed markedly. The progressive "democratization" of the PRH's educational system had emasculated it, while Manticore boasted one of the toughest merit-based systems, especially for university and post-graduate programs, in human space (two facts which largely explain the RMN's pronounced technological superiority). It was sad but true that the best educated enlisted personnel of the PN were conscripts from conquered planets who had largely completed their schooling before the PRH's centralized education policies blighted their teaching establishments.

  There was, however, one major offsetting imponderable which neither navy was able to quantify prior to the actual outbreak of war. While the People's Navy might rely on ill-educated (comparatively speaking) conscripts for the bulk of its personnel, it had also been almost continuously at war for over half a Terran century. Admittedly, none of its opponents had been large enough to offer a long or protracted resistance, but the operational experience amassed by the PN was without equal. Inevitably, its crews must have acquired a certain degree of "on the job training" to offset their initial inferiority, and its officers, on the whole, believed in their tradition of victory. It remained to be seen whether these factors overmatched the intensive training and motivation of the RMN's personnel, and only the test of battle could reveal the truth.

  THE END

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