View Single Post
Old October 4th, 2005, 02:42 PM   #1
WarMachine
Warrior
 
WarMachine's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Flight Deck
Posts: 484

Default Colonial Fleet Strength And Composition, Pre-cimtar

COLONIAL FLEET STRENGTH AND COMPOSITION, PRE-CIMTAR

Why did the Colonial Fleet's defenses fail so badly? Why were they so unprepared for the Cylon attack?

The sabotage by Baltar's agents cannot explain the destruction of a fleet that has been in more or less continuous action for at least 100 yahren.

In 'Saga', we only see five battlestars at Cimtar; the implication is that this was either the entire Colonial Fleet or at least the bulk of it.

I find this inadequate and unlikely, along with the 'fanon'("fan-canon") belief that there were only a total of twelve battlestars.

A battlestar is just a ship...albeit a very large one. Because we have to use Earth-analogues, a battlestar is a combined aircraft carrier-heavy cruiser; this has been pointed out frequently. One of the arguments against CBSG is the lack of auxiliary main-force combatants.

The typical assumption is that battlestars must have 'outrider' combat vessels to support them. This is not necessarily the case. A perfectly valid argument would be that the battlestars are the only vessels capable of standing in the "line of battle"(hence the old nautical term "ship of the Line").

The problem with this is that a ship smaller than a battlestar might not be able to survive long enough against a Cylon main-force unit(like a basestar) to make the expenditure of materials and manpower worthwhile.

So, what was the Colonial fleets' status at the time of the ambush?

Here, I am going to speculate...Feel free to disregard this if you like.

A battlestar is roughly 4 times the size of an early-21st century USNavy 'Nimitz'-class carrier. Given that we can safely assume a Colonial population in the range of 12-24 billion(at least 1-2 billion per Colony), and that if they maintained only 1-2 percent of their population under arms for extended periods(the rate for the USA in the 1980s was about 2-3%, counting active duty, reserves and National Guard), the Colonies would have had roughly 40 million people under arms.

The vast majority of those troops would have been infantry and support sevices for the Fleet. There would have been a dedicated ship design to transport large numbers of troops, a minimum of 2-3000 troops per ship, with some type of assault shuttle craft to ferry them into battle; any smaller numbers would be of little use.

Given a fairly constant "optempo"(operations tempo), there would need to be between 50 and 100 battlestar-sized ships "in ordinary"(meaning, 'in service'); this would include a roughly even, one-to-one basis of battlestar-to-assault ship.

However.

We know that Cain was defeated - and the bulk of the 5th Fleet was lost - at the Battle of Molokay; there are apochryphal indications of a spate of heavy fighting around that time period.

As a result, there is likely to have been a receptive undercurrent in Colonial society when Baltar steps up with his peace proposal. For the Colonial Fleet, it would have been one of their low periods: with Fleet strength low, they would likely have had most of their surviving Fleet units in spacedock for repairs, or would have had new keels building.

Given the apparent mood at the time of Cimtar(based on Serina's interrupted newscast), it's likely that the Council of the Twelve may have slowed funding for replacemments as a "sign of good faith" to the Cylons.....Politicians are not noticably sharp in the best of times.

This means that the vast majority of Colonial military forces would have been planetside during the main Cylon attack, and the vast majority of the Fleet would have been in spacedocks or in parking orbits with little more than caretaker crews.

Given the rather lackadaisical response times of the other battlestars at Cimtar(drugged Ambrosia notwithstanding), it's likely that the battlestars in the Colonial Home System would have been equally slow in reacting to a sudden attack.

Additionally, considering the importance of the meeting at Cimtar(where the President and the full Council were present), the five battlestars that we see there are likely a good chunk of Colonial Fleet strength -- say, 30%+/-3%...That would leave only ten battlestars to directly defend the Colonies, and, returning to the slow reaction times at Cimtar, it's probable that very few of them survived; those that did would have only survived by escaping the main Colonial system as quickly as possible, and playing a running game of cat and mouse with the Cylons.

.....

Comments are invited.....
__________________
The WarMachine
Fnord
WarMachine is offline   Reply With Quote