You’re making a lot of sense, Nikki, but the ‘build for victory’ plan also requires manpower, and IIRC NC’s total population is less than two million. Even at the Wolvies’ (disturbing!) degree of societal militancy, you’re just not going to have the warm bodies to crew and support more than... what, one gunboat Squadron? Maybe two, at a stretch? I don’t have first-hand knowledge of these kinds of nuts-and-bolts, but AFAICT, if the gunboat force gets beyond the half-division mark, there just won’t be enough personnel — especially competent ones — to staff them all and keep the supporting industry and infrastructure running properly.
what she's looking at, is that their manpower is concentrated far too much on only a couple of hulls they can't adequately support as it is. (manning a Mckenna is a lot of bodies, add in the other warships from the Bremerton cache..?) Basically she's saying pretty much exactly what you're saying-they're trying to base on ships they can't actually afford to crew or run, so 'building down' to a half squadron of gunboats is actually more reasonable than, say, trying to operate the Zug plus an adequate escort force.
Basically, what Nicole is seeing, is a fine example of the Dreadnought races of south america-a Naval situation where they've got a prestige level fleet, but really have about a riverine/littoral level of manpower, and little to no real chance of handling serious damage or incident, but with the added problem that that fleet of "Dreadnought" (singular) can't adequately handle basic patrol duties or core training exercises in peacetime, much less live combat duty against any of the probable opponents.
By pushing for dismantling most of the old SLDF warships in storage, and pushing for new construction of smaller ships, there's the gains to be had in terms of strategic posture (fleet recon, scouting, patrol and picket duties can actually be conducted), reduced vulnerability on a strategic scale (one broken drive controller doesn't leave you without a fleet, one ship hitting a mine is less costly, and so on), and it gets more officers command and deployment experience simultaneously with more nav officers getting live navigation experience, leading to better fleet operations and cohesion.
Remember, the Sampan II's they used against the Word of Blake had a total crew complement including marines of around 50 people, and those were also the back bone of the Quarantine until the IIIs came on line post-war. For the material cost of a single McKenna class or Cameron, you can produce 4-12 Sampan II's, or 2-6 Sampan III's. While they're not as outright impressive as a Mckenna or Cameron, they're cheaper to build, can be built with smaller/less developed facilities, and are more 'manpower efficient' in terms of territorial coverage. The only place they aren't more efficient, is in pre-1st succession wars era battle lines-which nobody's in shape to do right now anyway-even the Cylons' capital ships aren't that impressive in terms of raw firepower, and if they keep the pair of Battlestars updated, (which are also more manpower efficient, smaller ships)...
Nicole's pushing for developing the "frigate navy" the Wolverines can
afford as opposed to the "Capital Navy" that they can't.
which will break down to about half a squadron to start, but with Iron Wombs and Sibkos, along with a vigorous rotation schedule, can actually handle growing until it's possible to actually afford to consider deploying Capital warships-but by then, they'll also have the infrastructure to build and maintain them using lessons-learned, which they don't right now. Right now, what they have is a big collection of valuable materials they aren't in a position to actually employ, which is the core of her point. The system needs enough navy to fight off attackers (or make attacking it costly) and that, as much as anything else, is a battle of positioning that you can't win with a single warship (or even three of them).
the nice part is, most of the materials needed are already in a refined form, but it means sacrificing idle warship hulls to build what amounts to a large number of small corvettes. (by 'large' I simply mean more than one here.)
This allows them to develop training in fleet operations and strategies in real-time, as opposed to reading books about it, while also developing the industrial base and logistics network necessary to keep a fleet 'at sea' for extended durations, which is kinda necessary for any star system that doesn't have a star-spanning nation doing it for them.
The cases she's working from include both warship engagements during the Steiner/Davion family feud, and Comstar's failure in Case White-both situations reflected different problems (what she considers problems). The Fedcom civil war's problems were a matter of overinvestment in hulls that were then used incorrectly and lost due to ignorance on the operator's part. The Case White scenario was a situation of one side adapting their doctrines to lessons from the past, and the other (losing in the Case White scenario) clinging to doctrines that proved false during the 1st succession war.
in particular,
SLDF doctrines that proved false. in HER mind, there's no 'do over' possible, nobody is going to come pick up the slack, and most of the old SLN ships were built without systems that proved critical assets (or deficiencies) during the Jihad and the few modern naval engagements prior-tht is, assets like point defenses (which the Galactica and Pegasus have in spades) and the ability to rapidly configure and adjust formations (something the KCG did extraordinarily well due to not overinvesting in a small number of hulls.)
further, by pushing what she's pushing, it forces efficiencies into being in terms of logistics; instead of servicing a dozen different hulls from different manufacturers (none of whom are operating anymore), they have a 'standard type' from which to develop incremental improvements as capability (logstical slack) and experience dictate. as the population grows, so too does the navy, after a certain point, it becomes
reasonable to start building Destroyers and Frigates again-but that's after the population breaks about 100 million.
by that point, said frigates and destroyers will likely be lightyears ahead of navies that didn't have the kind of advance warning they did on what technologies might be of use.
(and by that time, the SLDF in exile will be able to once again
afford Admirals with more than one star, by her lights.)
wait until she starts arguing with them about "Patrol Radius" and "Deployment depth/duration" and arguing that "security through obscurity stops being useful the minute someone keys the mic on a two-way radio."
one of Nicole's mantras is straight out of Liz Ngo's 'book' on building oversized, illegal militias. "If you can't build it, you can't afford to lose it, if you can't afford to lose it, you can't deploy it."
thus why the Kowloon GFM/MTM formations were built out of equipment built on Kowloon exclusively-which also made it easier to provide supplies and spares for, manage improvements to, simplify training on... which in turn made fighter crews faster on turnaround, tank crews more confident in their gear functioning, and so on.
Nicole is pushing a very spartan, stripped down model for how the navy is to function, and a big part of that, is that every capital ship they currently have is an irreplaceable resource, which makes the naval arm less deployable.
(and also limits the navy's ability to replace personnel losses even more than the population problem already does. Experience in ship command is far different from ground forces, the needs, pressures and limitations are far different from commanding a unit of 'mechs, tanks or infantry. More ships deployable means more seasoned ship commanders are available both to replace losses, and to teach/train/mentor the next generation.)
