War Plan Purple: Solar Eternal Archive

"If the Legion does not fight the way the Asimov's study says it does, this plan will fail in its first month."War Plan Purple, final paragraph, as issued by the Navy Board on 30 August 2320

War Plan Purple was the Unified Solar Navy's plan for war against the Voor Confederacy. The Navy Board issued it on 30 August 2320 after twenty months of argument between two schools of officers. It combined the New School's fleet of many light and medium hulls with the Old School's starforts at the three gate systems of the Ciriban Gulf. Its premise came from the Institute of Xenology's study of the Voor: every Legion engagement needed a General's sanction, and every General's move needed the High Command's. A Legion that waited for orders could be raided, drawn apart and defeated one hearth group at a time.

The plan governed the Navy's construction from 2320 to 2333 and its operations through the Voor War. Its central assumption held at the Ciriban Incident, in Operation Mirage and at the Battle of the Mog.

Background

In 2318 the federation saw a Voor hearth for the first time. It was a ship of 5 kilometres that carried plasma projectors with a range of 200,000 kilometres and a field no human weapon could break. The Naval Act of 2318 gave the Navy 8 trillion credits and no instructions. The Chief of Staff, Fleet Admiral Tiya Monaghan, told the Navy Board on 3 October 2318 that the budget would buy forty Thalanx-class light cruisers, which was forty ships a hearth could kill at twenty times their range.

Two reports closed the obvious options. A yard survey in 2319 found no slip in the solar system longer than 1,500 metres. It estimated six years to build a 2-kilometre slip and six more for a first hull. The Consortium reported in March 2320 that the federation could build neither plasma projection nor field shielding within a decade. The Navy could not build a hearth. It had to decide what a navy that could not build one was for.

The two schools

The Old School

The Old School argued from the Solar War. Its leaders were Monaghan, who had commanded a cruiser squadron at Himalia in 2247; Admiral Peter Ndambiri of the Central African Confederation, who commanded the fleet's Belt station; and Admiral Ruben de Haas of the Federation, the Board's shipbuilding member. They proposed to fix the Legion in place and starve it, as the Coalition had fixed the Confederation fleet at Europa:

a line of fortified systems along the Gulf's edge, at Cirban, Nomotar and Saolea, with starforts a hearth would have to close with and could not ignore;
heavy ships to hold the line behind the forts;
fast raiders to go round the line and cut the Legion's supply.

Their fleet was 20 forts, 12 battleships and 60 raiders, and de Haas's costing fitted it within the Act. Its weakness was one the Institute's study had found and Monaghan's paper did not mention. A hearth was self-sustaining for a decade and carried its own supply, so there was no convoy behind it to cut.

The New School

The New School turned Captain Smith's dispatch of 2318 from Hiverion into a doctrine. Its leaders were Fleet Admiral Izabel Beattie of the Pacific Union, who commanded the Interstellar Command and had built the base at Circumstance, and Rawiri Smith, promoted rear admiral and given the Board's planning seat in 2319. They accepted that the Legion had to be fixed and rejected the Old School's method.

A hearth and its forty escorts were one formation. The Confederacy had at most fifty of them for fourteen worlds and two frontiers, and every one of them had to arrive at a system's edge weeks out, in plain view. The New School's fleet would find the hearths, keep them apart and defeat them one at a time. Beattie's paper of February 2319 named its roles:

the corvette, to see;
the frigate, to screen and to raid;
the light cruiser, to lead the light forces;
the heavy cruiser and the battlecruiser, to strike;
the carrier, to put strike craft in numbers among a hearth's escorts;
the stealth frigate, built to be invisible at a system's edge, to watch the Legion's anchorages and count.

Its weakness was numbers. A New School fleet was 300 hulls, which the Board costed in 2319 at 11 trillion credits, 3 trillion over the Act.

The argument

The Board argued from October 2318 to June 2320. The argument is on the record because Monaghan, who lost it, insisted that it be. It came down to one question: what did the Legion do when it was attacked? The Old School said it concentrated, and a concentrated Legion could be fixed and starved. The New School said it concentrated, and a concentrated Legion was in one place and absent from every other.

The Asimov's study, published in April 2320, settled it. Its chapter on the Legion's command, written by Dr Wanjiru Kamau from six weeks at Hiverion and the Asimov's year in the Confederacy, described the chain of sanction. It also recorded the Legion's pride in a hearth group at Ladiom that had held its position under Fevarian raid for nine days, in the Fevarian wars' second century, until its General's sanction arrived. Smith read the paragraph to the Board on 5 May 2320. The Board voted for the New School's fleet on 11 June 2320, by 7 to 4.

The compromise

The Chamber's defence committee would not fund the 3 trillion credits by which the New School's plan exceeded the Act. Its chair, Representative Joaquín Ferrer of the Argentine Republic, proposed the compromise the plan is named for:

the New School's fleet at 240 hulls instead of 300, within the Act;
the Old School's forts at 8 instead of 20, at the three gate systems where the Legion's approach narrowed;
the forts funded from the Exploration and Settlement Fund's concession revenue, redirected over the Office of Settlement's objection.

Monaghan took the forts and gave up the fleet. Beattie took the fleet and gave up 60 hulls. The Board issued the result on 30 August 2320 under the colour designation its plans had carried since the Solar War.

The plan

Purple's text is 400 pages. Its logic fits on one. The Legion fights concentrated and moves on sanction. The federation cannot match a hearth and cannot hold a line against one. It can see a hearth coming, be where it is not, and build hulls faster than the Voor grow them. The plan therefore had four steps:

Fix the Legion where it must come, at the three gates, with forts it cannot ignore.
Find it, with stealth pickets at every Voor anchorage the Navy could reach.
Divide it, by raiding where it is not and threatening what it must defend, so that the High Command's sanctions send hearth groups apart.
Defeat it in detail, with a strike force of heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and carriers concentrated against an isolated group, then withdraw before the next group's sanction arrives.

Purple assumed a war of three to five years, an enemy of 50 hearths and a federation that could build 30 hulls a year. Its last paragraph warned that if the Legion did not fight the way the study said, the plan would fail in its first month.

Implementation

The forts

The starforts were the Old School's one victory and its lasting one. De Haas's committee issued the Bastion design in 2321: an unmanned platform of 1.2 million tonnes at a system's Pillai radius, with four mega mass drivers of a calibre no ship could mount, 200 missile cells and, from 2326, a Maweer-pattern field. Its purpose was to make a hearth stop. A Legion formation arriving at a gate system had to reduce the fort before it could fall inward. That took a hearth group a week, which gave the pickets a week to report and the strike force a week to arrive.

Eight were built: Delambre, Hellas Gate and Pauldron at Cirban; Tethers, Manila and Chasma at Nomotar; and Rhine and Io at Saolea. The Voor watched them go up from the Cirban Exchange and called the ring of them by a name the linguists render as the Iron Gulf.

The yards

In 2320 the West Rhine yard on Europa and the New Ares yard in Deimos could lay down six jump-capable hulls a year between them. Purple needed 30. Between 2320 and 2326 the Naval Act's shipbuilding title, which de Haas administered, built or expanded:

the Fortaleza orbital yard above the Brazilian tether, which laid down the battleships;
the Hangzhou One drydocks on Luna;
the Xi Lunar Yards at Copernicus;
the Anibesa yards at Mombasa's orbital, which built the heavy cruisers;
the Te Waipounamu Pūngao yard above the Pacific Union's South Island, which built the battlecruisers;
from 2323, the Zhangjiajie yard above Landfall, the first beyond the Sun, which built corvettes.

By 2326 the federation could build 34 jump-capable hulls a year. By July 2333 the Grand Armada had 306.

The officers

Monaghan retired in 2321 and de Haas succeeded her as Chief of Staff. The New School's fleet was therefore built by an Old School staff and commanded by the officers who had designed it. Ndambiri, who had voted with the Old School and was the Navy's best fleet commander, was given the Binami Fleet in 2330. In 2331 President Elliot O'Neil placed the whole jump-capable fleet under Grand Admiral Tyson Vol as the Grand Armada.

In the war

The plan's assumption was tested at Nomotar in July 2333, where three starforts and a strike wing drove off a Legion patrol in the Ciriban Incident. Operation Mirage applied the "divide" step from September 2333. Raids on Myrum and Kastaba made the High Command cancel the Legion's northern offensive after a nine-day wait for sanction. The First Battle of Media taught the Legion that the federation's strength lay in the south. At the Battle of the Mog in February 2334 the "defeat" step destroyed four hearths and General Volar Vex.

The Navy's histories record that the plan's last paragraph stopped being an assumption on 20 October 2333, when Purple's authors read the picket report of the northern offensive's cancellation. The plan did not survive the war unchanged. The Interstellar Blitzkrieg of 2334 to 2338 went beyond the Gulf to the Confederacy's core, an occupation Purple had not planned. The Siege of Hiverion was fought on a planet under a shield, a place Purple's authors had not written for.

Costs

Purple's first cost was the Old School's careers. Its second was the Office of Settlement's concession revenue, which the forts took and the Office never got back. The Gulf's colonies were fortified with money meant to found more of them. Its third was the assumption in its last paragraph, which the federation staked the war on.

Legacy

The plan's text was declassified in 2380 and published by the Navy's historical office in 2381, with the minutes of the Board's argument that Monaghan had insisted be kept. Its four steps, fix, find, divide and defeat, are taught at the Navy's staff college at Fortaleza. After 2341 the Republic cut its pickets and strike fleets. By 2399 its frontier was Cirban's three forts, a Gulf patrol of forty corvettes and the treaty line. When the Red Khanate struck the Confederacy in 2427, the Republic had no observation beyond the line.

BOOK SOURCES

Solar Eternal, Part VIII, §8.1 "War Plan Purple"
Solar Eternal, Part VIII, §8.4 "The Voor Legion" and §8.6 "The Ring of Iron"
Solar Eternal, Part IX, §9.1 "Operation Mirage"
Solar Eternal, Part X, §10.5 "Republican Stagnation"