Thunderbolt
Rear Admiral
The question basically goes from the title.
So I've finally got hold of and managed to read most of the Wing Commander novelisation and its kicked my interest up again in the WC universe.
Fleet Action gives us a reasonable amount of detail on the Battle of Earth although not so much the aftermath. WC3 also skips the immediate aftermath but doesn't really tell us very much about the state of the Confederation outside of Blair's first person perspective.
So is it possible that humanity could have pulled through without the super weapons? The Excalibur project definitely had the means to outmatch Kilrathi space superiority but it needed a few months of development to get it into mass production.
The biggest immediate problem that Confed seemed to face was lack of carriers. How critical was this? I'm under the impression that Confed still had heaps of fleet carriers in cold storage at Carnavon station, Ella Superbase, Jupiters moon and elsewhere. And even with a shortage of carriers could Confed have held its line by falling back to the various starbases in Vega and holding these points?
Then the carrier shortage could also be remedied by constructing more CVEs to either spread the kilrathi out further or to support larger carrier groups.
Although for Confed's side it doesn't look good long term as the destruction of the lunar shipyards & drydocked assets would have put a serious shortfall in Confeds production essentially making a war of attrition unviable. I would expect to see Confed in a lot of trouble in about 2-3 years following the battle of Earth since the carrier shortage would than be quite acute but not immediately after - once the rest of the navies assets were mobilised.
And what do we know about the state of the Kilrathi economy? Fleet Action constantly paints a picture that the Empire was on the verge of rebellion and the Kilrathi economy was overstretched and fatigued from decades of war. So was this actually true or was Kilrathi counterintelligence feeding false information to Confed that overstated the weakness of the Kilrathi military industrial complex? Because by WC3 the Kilrathi don't seem to be facing any immediate issues either politically or economically. In fact they seem to be doing so well that within just months of the Battle of Earth they are already capable of first launching a large enough offensive to almost push Confed out of Vega sector entirely (despite that the terrans spent huge resources building a network of starbases over the years to consolidate it) and then to assemble a new fleet to attack Earth. That paints the picture that they were doing very well and that the Kilrathi had long since recovered from the damage that the Tarawa and confed strikes on Kilrathi shipyards and logistics.
So I've finally got hold of and managed to read most of the Wing Commander novelisation and its kicked my interest up again in the WC universe.
Fleet Action gives us a reasonable amount of detail on the Battle of Earth although not so much the aftermath. WC3 also skips the immediate aftermath but doesn't really tell us very much about the state of the Confederation outside of Blair's first person perspective.
So is it possible that humanity could have pulled through without the super weapons? The Excalibur project definitely had the means to outmatch Kilrathi space superiority but it needed a few months of development to get it into mass production.
The biggest immediate problem that Confed seemed to face was lack of carriers. How critical was this? I'm under the impression that Confed still had heaps of fleet carriers in cold storage at Carnavon station, Ella Superbase, Jupiters moon and elsewhere. And even with a shortage of carriers could Confed have held its line by falling back to the various starbases in Vega and holding these points?
Then the carrier shortage could also be remedied by constructing more CVEs to either spread the kilrathi out further or to support larger carrier groups.
Although for Confed's side it doesn't look good long term as the destruction of the lunar shipyards & drydocked assets would have put a serious shortfall in Confeds production essentially making a war of attrition unviable. I would expect to see Confed in a lot of trouble in about 2-3 years following the battle of Earth since the carrier shortage would than be quite acute but not immediately after - once the rest of the navies assets were mobilised.
And what do we know about the state of the Kilrathi economy? Fleet Action constantly paints a picture that the Empire was on the verge of rebellion and the Kilrathi economy was overstretched and fatigued from decades of war. So was this actually true or was Kilrathi counterintelligence feeding false information to Confed that overstated the weakness of the Kilrathi military industrial complex? Because by WC3 the Kilrathi don't seem to be facing any immediate issues either politically or economically. In fact they seem to be doing so well that within just months of the Battle of Earth they are already capable of first launching a large enough offensive to almost push Confed out of Vega sector entirely (despite that the terrans spent huge resources building a network of starbases over the years to consolidate it) and then to assemble a new fleet to attack Earth. That paints the picture that they were doing very well and that the Kilrathi had long since recovered from the damage that the Tarawa and confed strikes on Kilrathi shipyards and logistics.