Solomani Confederation (Military)

[Condottiere]

Solomani Military: Vertical Integration

Solomani Strategic Technologies (SST) - This is one of the several names under which the Solomani Confederation military do business. SST’s operations in the Solomani Rim specialize in the production of military software and electronics, combat grav vehicles and high-energy weapons. They are a joint corporate subsidiary of the Solomani Confederation Army and Navy the Solomani Rim headquarters is on Twylo/Capella.

So presumably the Solomani Navy could run the shipyards that build their capital ships. And probably their fighters and strikecraft.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Arrgh!

Piracy is more common in the Confederation-controlled subsectors. The Confederation Navy’s patrol forces in the Solomani Rim are overstretched. Military budgets and the focus of planning has gone to fleet squadrons intended to face the Imperial Navy and the creation of heavy planetary defences such as battleship-sized monitors, deep meson gun sites and planetary armies. Keeping the peace between the somewhat fractious planetary governments in Kukulcan subsector has further diverted Confederation attention. The combination of increasing interstellar trade and a Navy busy with strategic commitments has created gaps in coverage. In Jardin subsector in particular naval patrols are generally limited to the main xboat lines, creating opportunities for lawlessness.

I'm going to say that is probably inaccurate, since the Solomani Navy should have swarms of light combatants to make up for lack of light cruisers and destroyers, plus all that extra Scouting.

If you're going to start squeezing the numbers of light combatants, you'd have to come up with a new reason than sleeper cells and only building capital ships.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Composition and Doctrine

Again we're confronted with the question if the Solomani have cruisers of any significant numbers, so that they can set up Strike squadrons, or at least, build a task group around a cruiser.

Sane logistics would demand scrapping of any orphan designs, yet necessity might force Naval Staff to try and keep as many going as possible to keep up the numbers and capabilities.

Fleet squadrons are meant to confront the major combatants and concentrations of the Imperium Navy and knock them out as fast as possible with minimal losses on the Solomani side.

Strike squadrons are meant to sweep through occupied Solomani space and into Imperium space to destroy local forces and disrupt commercial shipping. Kinda hard to do that if you don't have cruisers, or even destroyers.

The Solomani are well aware of the effectiveness of commerce raiders, since they tolerate them under certain conditions to settle internal disputes; they plan to unleash them within days of going to war with the Imperium.

After neutralizing the major combatants of the Imperium Navy, Solomani Fleet squadrons could be released to temporarily sweep through Imperium systems, but unlike Strike squadrons, they;d have to return shortly after and reform to larger formations to confront arriving Imperium reinforcements.

That leaves the cruisers to do reconnaissance in force and sowing confusion behind enemy lines. Presuming the Solomani have any (left).

Or left over, if we go a step further and conclude an absolute ban on cruiser and destroyer construction, which makes it attractive to refurbish existing hulls to fulfill this need, especially since they wouldn't be used in the battle line confronting far more modern Imperium vessels, and just muck around the Imperium's backyard.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Military: Open Mission Systems

The goal of Open Mission Systems (OMS) is to develop industry consensus for a non-proprietary mission system architectural standard that enables affordable technical refresh and insertion, simplified mission systems integration, service reuse and interoperability, and competition across the lifecycle.
Industry and the Government have been working on solutions cooperatively to achieve these goals for over two years with extensive testing and demonstrations. The Industry partners developed and agree upon a set of Open Key interfaces and architectural guidelines to achieve the goals of Open Mission Systems.

 

[Condottiere]

I'd assume the alphabet soup of the Adventure Class was a successor system.

In the Solomani context, exact numbers and classes of destroyers and cruisers is up in the air, a century after the War of Imperial Aggression. If there are any currently in commission.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: The Evolution of the Line of Battle Ship

The Victory class battlecruiser represents state of the art tech level twelve technology, built around the largest viable jump drive than available.

In keeping with the Navy’s offensive doctrine, the Battlecruiser packs a tremendous offensive punch with a Meson Gun spinal Mount backed up by 50 particle accelerator bays. But the class has suffered losses in the Solomani Rim War in similar proportion to the Zeus class.

It became soon obvious that the Victory couldn't compete with tech level thirteen battleships that the Imperium could deploy, but possible resource constraints made Solomani designers cut corners with the Zeus class battlecruisers, as soon as the Confederation had achieved an across the board technical improvement to tech level thirteen. The Zeus class was designed primarily as an offensive weapons platform with little thought to defensive measures, meaning that Solomani naval doctrine was fixated on it and run attacks and tactics, and overly relying on the quality of their crews to decide encounters.

A highly agile but poorly armored capital ship, the Zeus is a typical Solomani design designed for fast strikes and maximum firepower. The ship cannot hold the line against an Imperial battleship for long due to its poor armor, relying on winning initiative and getting the first devastating strikes in before withdrawing ... Time will tell whether the Confederation Navy will change its approach to capital ship design and give these enormous vessels a fighting chance against the Imperial Navy by boosting their defensive systems.

Apparently, the Solomani naval establishment couldn't shake this attitude as they achieved technological parity, however short that window was, with the introduction of the Prometheus class fast dreadnought:

The largest and most powerful ship in the Solomani Navy, the Prometheus class Dreadnought caught the Imperial Navy by surprise when it was first deployed in the Solomani Rim War. Its high Jump capability gave the Dreadnought and its Jump-4 escorts strategic parity with Imperial BatRons. Highly agile for its size, the Prometheus class was specifically conceived to give the Solomani the firepower needed to take on the Imperial Navy in devastating fast strikes against strategic targets like Imperial Depots and major supply bases. Although capable of holding its own in the line of battle, the Dreadnought’s light armor means the ship will try to use its high agility to maneuver into superior firing solutions. The Solomani will only rarely slug it out with Imperial BatRons – they will inevitably come off second-best. The Solomani Navy practices concentric warfare, even instilling this doctrine into frontline fleet units. A Solomani FleetRon would rather destroy a BatRon’s logistical tail and starve it of supplies than defeat it in a head to head battle – assuming the FleetRon can get to the logistical tail.

The Prometheus class has not lived up to expectations, and the ships’ massive size means they are slow to come out of Solomani shipyards. Ambitious Solomani plans to re-equip half the FleetRons in the Navy with the Prometheus are viewed with derision by Imperial Naval Analysts. The Confederation simply does not have the economic capacity to undertake such a building program.

You'd suppose having a twenty five percent edge on weight against the typical Imperium dreadnought, even once they upgraded to tech level fifteen, should be sufficient to hold their own, but apparently not, which indicates either a flaw in the basic design, or with doctrine.

It seems obvious that the Solomani have a new improved fast dreadnought design, probably built around three hundred thousand tonnes, that with a fifty percent weight advantage against run of the mill Imperium battleships would be able to not only take them on, but take them out, with a buddy system doctrine to minimize damage to either ship, and prevent any extensive time spent in the dockyards after the opening stages of any general conflict.

The new three hundred thousand tonne dreadnoughts would represent a balance between offence and defence, with sizeable contingents of Marines and fighter screens.

Let's call this new dreadnought type the Vanguard class, that at three hundred kay tonnes represents the perfect balance between offence and defence, considered by many the most beautiful battleship ever constructed, carefully designed to be able to accommodate any future upgrades.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Victory class battlecruisers

While the hundred thousand tonne battlecruisers would be upgraded with tech level thirteen systems, they are superseded by the Zeus class, and it seems doubtful any further numbers would be built.

However, with the majority of the Solomani vessels constructed at tech level thirteen, jump three remains the standard that the Solomani battlefleet would move at.

That means that production of the Victory class jump drive would continue, and apparently be installed in the hundred thousand tonne Zhukov class troop carrier, the first examples of which started being deployed sixty seven years after the introduction of the Victory, and since the Zhukov is a tech level thirteen design, probably the same time the first Zeus class battlecruiser was launched.

Another variant could be a large fleet tanker, whose presence could further muddy the waters for the Imperium intelligence services, since at long range it might not be possible to distinguish them from the same sized warships.

Hundred thousand tonnes may remain the standard size for most Solomani assault carriers, allowing them to use improved variants of the original Victory jump drives, though pretty much ensuring that the Solomani Navy remains a two speed fleet.

Having access to spare parts may keep the Victory class commissioned and employed in less strenuous duties, while the Solomani Navy slowly upgrades it's Fleetrons with the Vanguard class.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Zeus class battlecruisers

A highly agile but poorly armored capital ship, the Zeus is a typical Solomani design designed for fast strikes and maximum firepower. The ship cannot hold the line against an Imperial battleship for long due to its poor armor, relying on winning initiative and getting the first devastating strikes in before withdrawing.

I'm fairly sure that the Solomani Naval Staff recognized that they had a turkey, and pushed for a new capital ship concept, the fast dreadnought as soon as they had the requisite technical base.

What follows breaks with the book: production of the Zeus class stopped as soon as the first Prometheus class ships were launched about twenty years before the start of the War of Imperium Aggression. Their six thousand tonne jump three drives were then used in the construction of the Midway class fleet carriers, which would then be one hundred fifty kay tonnes, instead of two hundred, Solomani Naval Staff now favouring a greater concentration of small strikecraft to be based on large specialized carriers, as compared to a more general purpose assault carrier.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

It would work just as well for most european powers in the 1850s-1914 setting. "White man's burden" and "Worthy Alien Gentleman" all while playing the "Great Game" against the evil 3I.

Imperial Germany would work very nicely as a template including the fleet strategy and the state deputies (Reichsrat) as a stand in for at least part of the "Solomanie Party"

How about the Confederate States of America as a template? The Third Reich was too much of a centralized dictatorship, and that template is that of an Empire, which makes it closer to what the Third Imperium is.

Here is an interesting thought experiment. Suppose an astronaut is woken up from a low berth, he's been in that low berth since 2040 AD, when the World was not so much different from what it is today. Lets say this astronaut is an American, and his is woken up by Solomani Agents, wanting to recruit his help to "free Earth from the Third Imperium." Now the astronaut is not familiar with the Third Imperium, but he did see the whole Star Wars series. the Solomani Agent says, "Yeah, that's right, the Third Imperium is the "Evil Galactic Empire", and we are the Rebels fighting to restore freedom in the Galaxy. At what point do you suppose the astronaut might become suspicious of the Solomani Agents?

 

[AndrewW]

Suppose an astronaut is woken up from a low berth, he's been in that low berth since 2040 AD, when the World was not so much different from what it is today. Lets say this astronaut is an American, and his is woken up by Solomani Agents, wanting to recruit his help to "free Earth from the Third Imperium."

Is his name Buck?

 

[Condottiere]

His handler might be codenamed Flash.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Strike Squadrons

Another way to look at this, since you can't really find recent mentions of separate cruiser squadrons in the Solomani order of battle, would be that they are strictly administrative formations, and the units are parcelled out singly to FleetRons, or more likely the Task Group that the FleetRons form the core, independent cruises, and flagships for PatRons.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Cruisers, Heavy, Strike and Deep Strike

A Sector Fleet will be commanded by a Sector Admiral and generally consist of 4-16 Fleet Squadrons, 1-4 Carrier Squadrons, 1-2 Assault Squadrons, 2-4 Deep Strike Squadrons 2-4 Heavy Strike Rons and 8 to 16 Patrol Squadrons depending upon circumstances.

At least, a century ago.

A pair of capital ships tend to be escorted by a heavy cruiser or equivalent, the modern variant seems to be two escorts per, without specifying type, so going by current interpretation, ships below two kay tonnes. Each fleet and troop carrier had a heavy cruiser escort or equivalent, heavy strike squadrons had a pair of heavy cruisers, and deep strike squadrons were based on one deep strike cruiser.

The standard Heavy Cruiser in service with the Solomani Navy, the Minsk class is a highly agile design produced in large numbers for the Confederation fleet. Production has been continuing for quarter of a century and shows no sign of slowing. Over 100 have been built and many have been engaged in battle against the Imperial Navy since 990.

There's obviously a capital ship gap, between the Confederation and the Imperium, and you get the impression that the Confederation tried to cover it with more cruisers, which didn't quite work out, and may be part of the explanation of their over emphasis on capital ships now.

Cruiser types and production is rather murky for the Confederation in the years leading up to the War of Imperium Aggression, but if the Minsk is the standard, production was started in 965, and the tech level was thirteen, you'd have to assume that outside of the Normandy and Beijing classes, all other other heavy and strike cruisers would be built at tech level thirteen, or tech level twelve upgrades.

It would appear from the described organizational table, that heavy cruiser equivalents would match the number of capital ships, whereas it seems more likely they would be double or triple that number, and now seem mostly to have disappeared.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Cruisers

Intermediate sized vessels in the 10,000-80,000 ton range, cruisers are versatile vessels capable of inflicting significant damage on larger ships, while at the same time able to meet a wide variety of demands – independent patrolling, deep strike, missile, escort and interdiction. The Solomani Navy employs Heavy Cruisers for escorting capital units and Strike Cruisers for fast devastating strikes behind enemy lines or in surprise attacks.
High-jump capability Deep Strike Cruisers are designed for long-range penetration of enemy territory attacking commerce, enemy bases and depots, and other targets of opportunity. Deep Strike Cruisers will invariably be escorted by Deep Strike Destroyers with similar jump performance. Light Cruisers are designed for multi-purpose roles including escorting larger cruisers, carriers and support vessels as well as independent commerce raiding and light strike missions. The Solomani Navy does not spin off specialist roles to specialist cruisers like the Imperial Navy – mainly due to cost. Planetary bombardment is undertaken by smaller missile-equipped escorts and Troop Carriers with massive numbers of missile bays. System Interdiction is often performed by a mixture of vessels, notably Pocket Carriers and Light Cruisers.

Solomani ships, or maybe just cruisers, tended towards general purpose, though I tend to think that a three hundred kay fast dreadnought would qualify as well, and may have to, if the Solomani Navy not only has a cruiser gap, but doesn't construct any more.

The only type that might make sense constructing, under these conditions, would be for Deep Strike, and large enough to take up some of the slack a limited number of capital ships and the lack of capability of escort ships would create, while the these jump five cruisers were twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the order to wreck havoc behind enemy lines. Plus with SolSec infiltration ships achieving possibly operational and strategic surprise.

If they stuck with tweaking their four thousand tonne jump drives, you'd have a sixty six thousand tonne vessel, which sounds a little reminiscent of the Azhanti High Lightning.

Light cruisers seem to run between eight and fifteen thousand tonnes, a rather looser definition than the Imperium one, in terms of armament, but possibly more based on capability to fulfil their assigned roles.

Light cruisers also fall into this category. Fleet and commerce escorts vary markedly in size and capability but all fulfill similar roles – protection of fleet elements and shipping from enemy escorts, commerce raiders and fighters.

Light cruisers seem to fill the role of flotilla leader when assigned capital ship or cruiser cored task groups, permitting the larger ship to perform it's role without unnecessary command and control distractions.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Light Cruisers

It may may not mean anything in that the range seems to be eight to fifteen thousand tonnes.

One of the first Light Cruisers deployed by the Confederation after its creation in 871, the venerable
Texas class has been in service for over 120 years and is showing its age. No longer used in the frontline by the Confederation Navy, a few still saw service in the Diaspora Sector at the start of the Solomani Rim war. Now relegated to reserve status examples of the ship have been pressed into service with planetary navies, sold to Solomani client states or used as Naval commerce raiders into Imperial territory ... However in its current role of commerce raiding reports indicate the class has been successful in diverting precious Imperial Naval units away from the frontlines, and these venerable light cruisers look set to continue in Navy service for a few more years yet. The ship retains 10 small fighter bays for the old TL-11 Cato Class 10 ton light fighter, a useful addition for a commerce
raider to have. The Catos are normally employed by Solomani planetary navies.

The Texas class sounds like something that would be really useful to retain, or at least, an updated version. And you could use the same hull and machinery for pocket carriers. Or most other type of auxiliaries in that size. The Texas is a little slow to be a flotilla leader, but if you add some tonnage, you can install a faster manoeuvre drive. The Texas seems to represent the general purpose concept that the Solomani have to embrace, in order not to waste tonnage in over specialized starships.

The standard Light Cruiser in service with the Solomani Navy, the Yarmouth class has provided sterling service to the Confederation for over 50 years. Built in a wedge configuration like most other Solomani naval ships, the class has high acceleration, although it is not very agile. It does have a highly unusual feature – an airframe hull enabling it to reach astounding speeds in atmospheres. The wings provide extraordinary stability as well as speed in virtually any atmosphere, giving the Yarmouth class a distinctive look different to most other large naval ships of any race. It is one of the most graceful naval ships in service anywhere. The ship mounts a meson gun spinal weapon capable of delivering powerful, if not fatal blows against enemy ships of its own size or even larger.

Might be the primary presence ship of the Solomani. You have that basic characteristic of what we assume distinguishes light cruisers, a small spinal mount. The Solomani may have decided that they don't need anything larger for the roles assigned.

Designed to operate in association with, and escort the Normandy class Heavy Cruiser, the Madrid class Light cruiser is a design first tested in the opening moves of the Solomani Rim War. Capable of Jump-4 to enable it to keep up with the Normandy and Prometheus classes, the ship is too small to mount a spinal mount so two Meson Gun bays were fitted instead ... Initial reports from the frontline indicate the class has acquitted itself well in battle.

I don't think so, at acceleration four; low priority probably means that production would be discontinued, since they'd emphasize getting Prometheuses out, having packed the eggs in that basket. At ten thousand tonnes, it might have been too compromised.

Currently, there are none, or few warships between two to hundred kay tonnes, and going by a general purpose doctrine, light cruisers as defined by the Imperium are probably too small to be useful.

When the new High Guard comes out, we'll have to see if there some way to optimize light cruisers, though it may really be more in a grey area between that category and frigates, so basically largish destroyers.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Carrier Aerospace Groups

With a three hundred kay tonne fast dreadnought, the naval architects are bound to find around five or six thousand tonnes of space of it's own organic fighter support.

That would mean a FleetRon of four Vanguards would have four hundred fighters, or fighter bombers, which is about the lower end of what the current Solomani doctrine calls for it's CarrierRon smallcraft component, and in theory, they only assign one CarrierRon per six FleetRons and one AssaultRon.

As we all know, carriers can't be everywhere, and I think the doctrine was meant to allow flexibility in committing the Carrier Aerospace Groups to either reinforcing the FleetRon or an AssaultRon.

If a carrier task group gets caught without the nearby protection of a FleetRon, it's probably dead, since, you know, no heavy cruiser escorting it.

The Vanguards can probably stuff in upto a hundred and fifty smallcraft, which would allow them to dispense with a fleet carrier, and since planetary assault generally takes place against, if not quite stationary target, but one whose course is fixed, aerospace support could come from smaller platforms.

That means, the Solomani don't really need fleet carriers, and could convert those two CarrierRons to FleetRons.

 

[Sigtrygg]

You are aware that the Imperium was solidly TL14 during the Solomani Rim War with the move to TL15 just around the corner.
The Solomani themselves are at TL13/14.

 

[Condottiere]

Oh certainly, that's why their primary capital ships have to be fifty percent bigger and move around in pairs.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Distribution of Initial Ship Tech Level Constructions

Trillion Credit Squadron mandates that a quarter of the value of the initial fleet has to be a tech level lower.

These might seem like legacies, since the Solomani probably just keep using (up) their inventory rather than placing them in reserve (or ordinary), but they could just as well be new construction for auxiliaries and ships tapped for second line duties, though they could be hybrids with modern sensor suites and weapon systems, without incurring the refit costs.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Navy: Capital Ships and Major Combatants and Jump Drives

Having established that Solomani ships are designed and equipped to be general purpose, it makes sense that they carry around organic fighter screens, rather than rely on having a carrier around.

Then you add in their preference for standard sized jump drives.

So you have at the top end the fifteen thousand tonne Vanguard drive, which would propel both their current fast dreadnoughts and battle rider tenders. Probably also commercial mega-freighters, more popularly known as semis, due to their capability to transport half a million tonnes over two parsecs.

The six thousand tonne Zeus drives were abandoned, and existing copies are held in reserve for the remaining Zeus class battlecruisers and Midway class carriers.

The four thousand tonne Victory jump drives are the most widespread of the larger drives, and still in production; they're principally used for the hundred thousand tonne assault carriers and the sixty six thousand tonne Constitution class cruisers.

There probably was some kind of tech level eleven fifty thousand tonne cruiser, so the next drive (or previous, in this case) would be fifteen hundred tonnes, and with engineering tweaks and the correct software, you'd transition three parsecs at thirty seven and a half thousand tonnes, four parsecs at thirty thousand and five parsecs at twenty five thousand tonnes.