I think the 1 big problem w/the Word's plan is getting to the Homeworlds with surprise intact.
The Blakist (really Herb’s) plan for approaching the Homeworlds appears to have been the Blakist Super-Jump Drive. Basically rewires a standard K-F drive and lithium fusion battery to enable a 900ly jump radius at the cost of burning out the drive and battery (one-way ticket) and some greater chance of misjump. The Exodus Road was 1000ly, so the Super-Jump Drive would have enabled a Shadow Division armada to reach the Homeworlds in a single jump from some staging position(s) in the near Periphery. Unless the Clans came across intel on those staging positions, they wouldn’t have known what was coming. More here:
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Super-Jump_DriveThere were 13? Shadow Divisions? Without a lot of surprise & a lot of nukes
A lot of nukes appears to have been the Blakist/Herb plan. The Blakists had manufactured or developed Mule Pocket Warships and Mule Q-Ships that each hid four AR-10 launchers, 20 to 36 capital missiles, and six aerospace fighters. So if those capital missiles were nuclear-tipped Asset Management Weapons, Santa Anas, and Peacemakers, a single Invader jumpship rigged for Super-Jump and carrying three of these Mules could deliver 60 to 108 nukes against a single Clan Homeworld after one 900ly jump. More if the aerospace fighters were carrying Alamos. Obviously enough nukes to send any Clan Homeworld back to the Neolithic assuming the nukes get through. At that point, the clean-up by Shadow Division conventional forces could have been trivial.
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Mulehttps://www.sarna.net/wiki/Nuclear_WeaponsThere were something like 40 Clan Homeworlds, so using my example in the prior paragraph, we’re talking a force of 40 Super-Jump Invaders, 120 Mule Pocket Warships/Q-Ships, and 7K to 13K nuclear-tipped Capital missiles to effectively sideline the Clan Homeworlds in a single strike. Given we’re talking about modifying the most common jumpships and dropships in the Inner Sphere and given that there are over 12K nuclear warheads on the real world Earth today, even doubling that “to make sure” seems within the capabilities of the Blakists.
This is just me, but I suspect Erinyes and the Blakist preoccupation with biochem weapons was to help the nukes get through. Some weeks before this nuclear strike force jumped into the Pentagon and Kerensky Cluster, I think the Blakists’ two Erinyes/Newgrange Yardships would have sneakily jumped into the far reaches of a handful these systems and unleashed relativistic asteroids to create on-world crises that would have drawn Clan aerospace assets away from the other worlds. Same goes for sneaking some Class V biological agents onto a handful of other Clan Homeworlds. Tie up Clan warships, jumpships, and dropships with evacuations, emergency supply runs, and/or heightened patrols of, say, ten Clan Homeworlds, and the aerospace defenses of the other 30 might be greatly degraded. And then paint the Blakist Mules in Clan colors and false flags, equip them with the right IFF codes, and teach their captains how to say “emergency supply run from Clan X” with the right Clan accents, and it might be very straightforward to unleash scores of nukes against most/all the Clan Homeworlds before the Clanners could realize what was happening and react. The conventional Shadow Divisions forces would follow some days/weeks later for cleanup.
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Erinyes_(Individual_WarShip)
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Biological_WeaponsIt’s all subject to fiat — some misjumps and/or a couple smart Clan strategic defense system operators could spoil these attacks at certain Clan Homeworlds. But I think all the pieces for such a plan were there in the Jihad sourcebooks even if those books weren’t very explicit about it.
FWIW...