Mjr. Whoopass said:
Of course with the fact that Hobbes was tipping the Kilrathi off about the Behemoth project, any attempt to move a huge Confed fleet into Kilrah would've been met with a larger Kilrathi force no matter how sneaky Confed was about gathering the fleets. The more fleets Confed could've brought into the operation, the bigger the disaster would've been. Of course this is hindsight.
If Confed had any idea that Hobbes had leaked information about the Behemoth (both the Behemoth's location and its weak points) they probably would have recalled the Behemoth and tried to plan a new attack. Once the Kilrathi learned about the Behemoth, the only way to get it close enough to Kilrah would have probably been a massive escort fleet that might have survived long enough to get the Behemoth within firing range. Their fleet would have undoubtedly met heavy Kilrathi forces and taken severe losses, but if the Behemoth managed to destroy Kilrah it probably would have ended the war. A large Behmoth escort fleet would have left Earth open to a Kilrathi counterattack, however, so the Confederation fleet probably couldn't have managed to provide a heavy escort without leaving themselves almost totally defenseless.
Mjr. Whoopass said:
Given that it is hindsight, if I were a member of Confed high command I think I would've favored the Behemoth project over the Temblor bomb, and quite possibly dedicated more resources towards it. It just would've seemed to have a higher probability of success. The Temblor bomb required among other things extracting a scientist from a Kilrathi prison. Given the Kilrathi treatment of prisoners, I wouldn't be sure the scientist would still be alive, or if he was, he may no longer be mentally fit to develop the bomb. Also, who knew if the covert Confed team that Angel was a part of succeeded in their mission? The supply depots that were created may have been discovered and destroyed by the Kilrathi. The Behemoth project only requires managing to sail the huge ship close enough to Kilrah to hit it. This is by no means an easy task, but certainly has alot less variables than the Temblor project.
I actually would have put more resources into the Temblor bomb project. Once the Temblor bomb was completed it could have been mass-produced fairly quickly. They had at least two Temblor bombs hidden at each of the secret depots near Kilrah and they probably could have built dozens more if they needed to. The big advantages of the Temblor bombs are that they are much easier to deploy than the Behemoth (since they can be carried by a single heavy fighter) and you can build several of them and have backups to increase your chances of a successful strike. Kilrah was heavily defended, but Confed could have sent in dozens of Excaliburs armed with Temblor bombs. Even if only one of them makes it through, that's all you need to destroy Kilrah. With the Behemoth, you really only have one chance because if the Kilrathi can destroy or disable the Behemoth there aren't any backups.
Although I think the Temblor bomb would have been more useful than the Behemoth, I think it would have been most effective to deploy them both simultaneously in a combined attack on Kilrah. While the Kilrathi are busy trying to stop the Behemoth, the Excaliburs are making Temblor bomb attack runs on Kilrah. The Kilrathi didn't know anything about the Temblor bomb, so they wouldn't have even suspected the Excaliburs and would have probably focused entirely on the Behemoth. And even if they learned about the Temblor bombs and tried to stop the Excaliburs, that would divide their fire and give the Behemoth a better chance.
Mjr. Whoopass said:
Given the covert requirement of the Behemoth project, I would hope that I would have the good sense to be skeptical of putting a Kilrathi on a strike team destined to kill his own planet. Even if Hobbes was loyal to Confed, blowing up an entire planet that was the Kilrathi homeworld and had old friends and family living on it would be bound to cause conflict in even the most loyal defectors. Of course "loyal defector" seems to be a contradiction of terms.
Presumably Tolwyn had complete faith in Hobbes, since he was in charge of assigning personnel to the Victory in preparation for the behemoth attack. I agree that it probably wasn't a good idea to assign Hobbes to the Victory, but at that point he had served the Confederation for so long that his loyalty to the Confedreation was without question. There were many other human traitors that have betrayed the Confederation (Jazz and the government official from Fleet Action are two of the best examples), so the Kilrathi probably could have found another way to get information about the Behemoth by bribing a human officer in the Confederation Navy. I really don't like the idea of Hobbes being a traitor in the first place, since it takes everything about Hobbes from Freedom Flight and totally ignores it. Based on the information in Freedom Flight, Hobbes was supposed to be one of the few Kilrathi that understood that the war was meaningless and wasn't helping the Empire. Turning him into a traitor basically takes Cobra's anti-Kilrathi mentality and totally justifies it, since her suspicions about Hobbes were 100% correct in the end. Hobbes being a traitor is probably one of the only things I totally can't stand about the Wing Commander storyline.