My competing free dice priorities for next turn:
-preparing for potential negotiations w/ Yao/Bintang/Bannerjees (orbital)
I'm not sure Orbital really helps us much there.
Kane is affected by the extent of our space colonization, because Kane has an actual plan that involves the threat of extinction on Earth as a means to pressure GDI into compliance with his will in constructing the TCN to his specifications. If humanity is not in danger of immediate extinction, GDI is less likely to cooperate, and he has less leverage, which alters his decision-making.
Yao, Bintang, and the Bannerjees aren't in the same position.
Just to put out regarding Infernium laser refits. Those disco balls are hell on incoming missile waves. Without them, the frigates are operating at less than 100% capability, given that they were designed to mount the things right from the start. And the more cruisers or battleships we get a chance to put through drydock to get refit to take them, the safer our forces off India will be. Convoys safer from missile barrages with frigate escorts, surface forces off India safer from missile attacks with cruisers and battleships.
That puts disco ball refits in a better position than frigates in my mind. As a bonus, with all the production facilities built and going, that helps SADN not need to skip disco balls, or have to create their own production in order to include them.
I believe everything you just said is absolutely true.
I'm assuming that our shipping lanes don't tend to go near India, except for those which absolutely have to. (Madagascar up the eastern side of Africa is the closest.) And generally, I'm assuming that we won't be facing a similar press on our shipping as we did during the Regency War. Because, while some may get brought in, a full-court press like we faced does not seem likely.
I don't expect a maximum-effort Nod press on that same scale either, no... But I
do expect a press. I'll explain that in more detail below.
I think it's more like 18 months for the first tranche of ships from a given yard? They're still nuclear powered, highly automated, blue water ships. Later batches get quicker, but they still need extra time to train crews and work up especially now that we're not on a full wartime footing. We haven't had word of a single delivery from Quonset Point yet and that's been almost two years.
We don't always get word of ships being produced from a yard we build. We often don't get any word on the naval front for a year or more at a time when there isn't a major war going on. The only clear reference I can find to the frigates in active service is that Tokyo will become a base for nine of them "as they become available."
Which certainly doesn't prove my case or undermine yours.
So yeah, absence of evidence, which in this case is just absence of evidence- neither evidence of absence, nor of presences. We don't usually get briefed on naval battles except when Ithillid feels like surpassing himself and writing a two thousand word extravaganza of Bintang being a magnificent sea-witch.
With that said... I could be wrong, but I could have
sworn I heard
@Ithillid cite for the
Shark-class that the first tranche of ships would take fifteen-ish months, not eighteen. They're not easy to build in absolute terms, but GDI has two other major facilities as guidelines for how the project should work, and very impressive industrial capacity. I could be misremembering that 'fifteen months' number, but I never doubted it once told it.
With that said, I want to be clear, I do recognize the logic. It may be infeasible to get the extra frigates by 2063Q4 even with the best will in the world at this point.
If so, then I can only sigh and point to it as another example of "you go with the navy whose yards you built years ago." Though this isn't one I'm blaming on the thread. The root cause of the problem is the natural one we rolled on the New York light carrier yard back in 2061, and the strain of having to rebuild the yard all over again in Newark.
...
And again, to be clear, I am supportive of
either Seattle
or the naval laser refit as naval preparations in the coming twelve months or so. There are arguments for either. In an ideal world we could do both, but this isn't the Navy's ideal world. However, I cannot in good conscience at this time support plans to do
neither in the next few months, as both are important to me.
And 'what the navy needs' is not 'what they navy will get full benefit from in time for a quick Karachi.' They aren't mind readers, they aim for generalities, not our specific plans.
In this case, the generality aligns with the specific plans.
Going into the Regency War, the Navy had two weaknesses. One was a lack of carrier decks; it's at best impractical to secure a convoy or battlegroup without naval aviation. The other was sheer lack of modernized escort combatants
of any kind. No escorts with (for example) laser point defense, or modern counter-cloaking sensors that at least "shout a warning" when cloaked assets are in the vicinity.
We've done what we can about the carrier shortage. The only unfinished business is to manufacture the
Orca Wingman Drones project, without which our light carriers are "unfinished." As some of us no doubt recall, the reason we delayed starting the light carrier design, and the reason the Navy went for a larger design that would take longer to build in the yards and thus take longer to hit the water even after design was finalized and yards were built, was to accommodate the drones. Drones that the Navy does not (now) have, because we haven't built the production lines yet.
But the shortage of small escorting surface combatants remains a problem. The eighty
Sharks we have simply are not an adequate-sized escort fleet for all the world's oceans.
Governors can run escort duty, but it's not their primary design role and we only have so many of them.
And importantly, small escort combatants are precisely the ones most relevant if we're worried about commerce raiding... which is relevant during Karachi for two reasons.
...
REASON ONE:
Kane ordered Nod to stand down in early 2061. By the time of Karachi, if there is still something of a loosely defined cease-fire in effect, said cease-fire will have been in effect for nearly three years. Many of the worst wounds Nod's military strength took in the Regency War will have healed, or at least partially healed. Holes in Nod's distributed command structure will have been partly filled by new figures.
Nod will not be ready for a full-scale global war. But Nod forces in many places
will be ready for at least localized and small-scale conflict.
Furthermore, GDI's push into territory which has historically been Nod's for a minimum of 30-40 years will seem something of a provocation. Nod commanders the world over may feel (not without reason) that this justifies them in resuming low-level military operations against GDI. And naval raiding has historically been pretty successful. Of the types of low-level warfare Nod has been able to attempt in the 10-15 years since the end of the Third Tiberium War, it's gone better than most. We are apt to see an
uptick in naval raiding across the globe.
Thus, escorts may well be needed globally, to fend off a surge- not a desperate full-bore effort, but a surge- of Nod piracy and commerce raiding. Karachi will be seen as a
somewhat provocative action. Nod is not so disparate and disjointed, and
will not be so weak by the end of 2063, that we can confidently expect this provocation to go unanswered from Nod as a whole.
...
REASON TWO:
Within the Indian Ocean and the general theater of operations itself, the main opposition to the Karachi landings, to subsequent heavy construction up through what was once Pakistan towards BZ-18, and to ongoing heavy shipping activity in and out of the port of Karachi Planned City in years to come, will come from some combination of the following Nod factions:
1) The Bannerjees themselves, who will see a massive upsurge of GDI activity in their territory,
2) al-Isfahani, whose territory is largely eaten by Red Zones but who may see GDI encroachments as a threat likewise,
3) Mehretu, who is one of the most hostile and anti-GDI warlords, and who will see the convoys to Karachi running past his coast,
4) possibly Bintang, who will see Karachi as an anchor for greater GDI naval activity in the Indian Ocean as a whole.
Some or all of these factions may stay out of it. Or the warlords may stay aloof themselves while allowing subordinate commanders to attack us with "lesser" forces. Note that those subordinate commanders' forces can be quite substantial. Recall the assault on the (old/new designation) YZ-5a/YZ-11 MARV hub. That was a "left-handed" attack from Stahl, involving only subordinates, and yet it nearly overran the MARV hub.
At a bare minimum we should expect hostility from whichever Nod warlord considers themselves to hold sovereignty over the region that was once Pakistan. They cannot simply allow us to build a major urban center and transit corridor right through the heart of the Indus Valley region without an answer of some kind. We can expect action from either (1) or (2) at a minimum, possibly both, and possibly (3) or
maybe (4).
...
Any or all of these warlords
except al-Isfahani are likely to make their displeasure known via attacks on our shipping. For Mehretu and Bintang, this is the only way they can even engage us meaningfully.
Mehretu is likely to intensify attacks along the east coast of Africa. If he does not already have a fleet of submarines, he is likely to start building one. And this fleet will be directed at the sealanes leading up towards Karachi, where it will put pressure on both our ability to sustain military operations there, and our ability to make good use of the economic/logistical benefits of the Karachi-BZ18 transit corridor we hope to build. The only reason I can see for why this
wouldn't happen is if Mehretu interprets his orders from Kane as "never fight GDI again in any capacity until further notice," which I consider unlikely given the character of the man.
Bintang is in a broadly similar position. In my opinion, she is unlikely to even attempt to use her surface fleet against the Karachi landings or subsequent operations. It would involve a long cruise in open waters during which she would be dangerously exposed. Granted, her revealed character is that she is something of a thrill-seeker and a gambler, one who seeks battle personally even when she could likely avoid it, and she is aging and may wish for one last opportunity. So that possibility cannot be
entirely discounted.
Nonetheless, I do not expect a full surface action from Bintang... But I will be entirely unsurprised if her submarine arm or her "Kelpie" amphibious xenotech fighter craft make appearances during the Karachi campaign, or as harassment against Karachi's sea lanes after the operation is officially complete and the transit corridor built.
The Bannerjees are very probably the single most powerful Nod warlord faction, and to them the Karachi landings present a major escalation. It is not certain, but is
possible that they will act forcefully in an attempt to repel the landings, or at least make the transit corridor costly enough to hold and to use that GDI has to seriously consider abandoning it. They are going to be very close to Karachi, in a position to strike it with land based aviation and long range missiles, and Karachi's sea lanes will be very much in range of any naval forces they may happen to have.
I will be very pleasantly surprised if the Bannerjees don't hit us hard over this.
Overall, I think it would be optimistic to expect Karachi, and the Arabian Sea in general,
not to become the site of intense naval fighting in 2064 as a result of the planned campaigns. I expect that this will include at minimum submarine and air attacks, though I do not anticipate major surface clashes.
...
For the above reasons, I think that the Navy is going to see something of a stress-test of its defensive arrangements in 2063Q4 and 2064 itself. In the Indian Ocean in particular, this may involve intense attacks in which the naval laser refits could save ships and hundreds if not thousands of lives. On the high seas in general... Well, let's just say I would be quite happy for us to have two or three times as many
Sharks as we will, even though I know there is no reasonable way for us to get them in the time available.
