It kinda is.
Regular incursions means you get an early look at any new tricks by the Rachni before they can get it into broad deployment.
And sometimes you strike gold.
We literally saved the Citadel system from invasion when we sent Admiral Mordin Sentra on a deep raid into the Horsehead Nebula after the Rachni defeated the Citadel fleets there. We helped save the Remnant by our Caleston Rift raid several years earlier, because it set up the Terminus to retake Ninmah cluster.
We had no intention or ability to invade, but the intel, and its impact on Rachni deployment patterns was still strategically vital.
We've gathered critical information on Rachni ships and deployment patterns, which is why we are the best prepared for the Rachni to introduce barriertech to their ships.
So they should go out. Its when they go out that they gather the intel.
So we're only ignoring risk and seeking entirely to strike gold twice rather than sending ships as part of a larger plan. Even in the best case scenario we'd be getting this intel when
no one is particularly in a position to act on it. Yes, the Rachni might flinch, or they might be aware enough to realize all their other foes are punch drunk when we aren't. And even if we do force a Rachni redeployment, it's not going to be something that can be exploited beside increasing Rachni maintenance demands.
It's not the end of the world to raid now, I find it wasteful, but I find the notion that it has 0 downsides to be dangerous and destructive in the longer term. The situation is stable enough now that raiding isn't remotely worth it if it prevents us from strengthening ties with and the capabilities of the TA. If we can eke in both, that's fine- but now is not the time for last second heroics and desperate offensives- it is the time to plan, stockpile and prepare for the next phase of the war now that we can draw on vastly superior resources, technology, and allies than we could when we were desperately trying to make contact.
I don't think attritional raiding should ever be the end goal in and of itself, and I don't think the circumstances for an intelligence windfall we can exploit are meaningfully there.
I disagree with the rest of your argument as well.
They arent meaningless.
Even when they fail to blow shit up, raids force the Rachni to redeploy task forces to honor the threat, and when successful force them to rebuild infrastructure, costing them time and resources and shipping capacity.
To paraphrase the late David Drake, 1 in 20 task forces guarding valuable stuff will never run into a raiding fleet, but those 19 task forces are just as out of the offensive war as if they were blown up.
These regular raids were things we did all through the timeskip, even when we had no ability to invade or punch out major fleets. And it erodes Rachni basing capacity, reducing what they can support closer to the front.
Its the equivalent of a boxer's jab; it does a little damage at a time, over a lot of time.
This isnt even about Sentra and whether or not we get additional use out of him.
We stepped back from raiding for around three years because we had other ship commitments.
Its time we go back to it.
Everytime we launch a raid we're spending resources as surely as the Rachni spend resources to stop a raid. We're spending far less as a general rule, but the Rachni don't have a lot of pressing expenses at the moment either given the minimal attrition they're experiencing.
It's all well and good to talk about the ships they have to send as task forces to guard things,
but they're not meaningfully needing those ships elsewhere. My point is neither the Terminus or the Council are in a position to punish them for those deployments and we certainly aren't. Especially once the Rachni realize this. They know we're in contact with the rest of the galaxy. If we force those redeployments and the Rachni aren't punished for them, it's easy to infer that the rest of the galaxy can't punish them at the moment.
Yes, a jab wears away at an opponent, but try knocking out a professional boxer by just throwing jabs alone. Working with the TA massively expands our toolkit and potential impact, and increases our ability to threaten a knock out blow even if the TA isn't positioned to launch one in the immediate term.
Wait, for the Rachni to develop there own barriers. Wait, for the Rachni's superior production to give them the numbers needed to renew the war on their terms. Wait, until the Rachni strike elsewhere and deal significant damage to our fleets that precludes a major offensive.
Waiting is what the council chose to do, oh so long ago, and what their still doing now to a degree. Wait for the right opportunity to strike a decisive blow. You know when those opportunities came? When Virmire took the initiative and engaged the Rachni on their own terms, ahead of integrating technology just stolen from the quarians, before our numerous research sites granted us tech advances we are now building into our ships. If we had waited rather than perform the deep raid,the council wouldn't be in the war still.
We have an existing tech advantage to our ships survivability even before applying our new technology. Even before we had integrated this technology and could thus conduct raids with fewer losses than ever, we none the less carried out various military operations to the overall wars benefit despite not being in a position to know whether the larger galaxy was ready to capitalize or not.
The terminus alliance was able to claim Caleston not because it waited, but because it struck first, and because before even that battle we had struck many times with our raiding fleet to make the Rachni's hold on that system and those connecting to it untenable.
The rest Uju has stated accurately enough I don't feel the need to add on to it besides pointing out that the last half a dozen clusters reclaimed in the war can be attributed to the after effects of extensive raiding by virmire making holding a system untenable. Maroon sea in particular is a strong example of this, being entirely abandoned by the Rachni because of the extensive damage and state of vulnerability our raids caused.
I see we're resorting to strawmen, where the Rachni are outscaling and out teching us based on purely the power of wishful thinking. Where you can insist this is a war that will take centuries and we should discard any notion of decisive battles whatsoever while arguing our position is only getting more and more untenable because the Rachni- massively rocked back as they are by their defeats and a loss of maybe a third of their conquests will outscale us.
Ah yes, waiting to work with the TA and to implement technologies before we commit major forces is entirely like the Council. We all know how closely aligned the TA and the Council are after all! It's why we should clearly avoid supplying our allies the TA with the expertise and experience we've gotten! This war is urgent! We could lose in the next few centuries if we don't double down on degrading Rachni frontier infrastructure in a cluster
right now. To do anything but act right now is to be just as cowardly and incompetence as the Council that got us into this mess! I suppose this counts as ad hominem? 'This is Council like behavior' seems more like a condemnation of character than a serious judgement of 'let's focus on working more with our allies, we're in this for the long haul'
Our position prior to reconnecting with the broader galaxy was untenable. Our position now is the exact opposite of that. We are no longer in survival mode scrapping for every advantage we can get. We have allies, we have massive technological windfalls far more revolutionary than the Quarian reverse engineering we did, we have time to expand and develop. This is insisting we cannot halt for a moment lest the Rachni balloon out of control after we've won back: Maroon Sea, Kepler Verge, Pheonix Massing, Hades Nexus, Nubian Expanse, Caleston Rift, Ninmah Cluster, and effectively the Brishak Expanse. 8 Clusters they cannot draw resources from in the long run, that we and the TA can. We are not on a time crunch, we are not on the deadline the galaxy previously was. That doesn't mean we need to rest on our laurels, but it does mean we need to start sacrificing short term efforts for longer term advantages.
TLDR: Raiding now isn't remotely worth a slower ramp up of Attican Commonwealth and TA cooperation. It doesn't matter if it will take years to show results in a war predicted to last centuries. Our situation isn't remotely as urgent as it was in the past, and calling upon those examples without acknowledging that is going to poison our decision making.
