Operation Red Queen

Operation Red Queen was planned during the Mars Crisis and intended to defang the Federation void navy[1]. It was planned as a response to the Federation blockade of Mars and the capture of two UN troop transports on May 20th, 2033[2].

Operational Plan

Source

• 2nd Cruiser Squadron Outer Detachment (Henceforth referred to as CruRon2(O)) will head for Saturn to scout out what forces they have there and possibly scare them around a bit. They will then join in on the pincer maneuver.
• 2nd Cruiser Squadron Inner Detachment (Henceforth CruRon2(I)) will shadow the prisoner fleet (LOST SHEEP) at as safe a distance as is possible without losing track of it. This plan assumes Fred manages to disable our ansible tracking of the Lictor and Venti, if they don't, so much the better.
• 1st Cruiser Squadron will stand by for 2 days, until the LOST SHEEP is a reasonable distance from the Mars Fleet. It will then begin circling the Earth and doing active sensor pings to locate the Federation's Earth Fleet, last tallied at one Skory and two Moskvas. Once we know exactly where those are, we settle in at outer Hornet missile range. Considering the time frame of the Lictor's travels, the exact date of attack has yet to be determined. We will open fire with an overwhelming volley of Hornets for reasons outlined below.

There are several reasons for using Hornets:

• A Berlin can launch ten of them every 30 seconds, instead of one Exocet every 240.
• A Samar or Surigao adds another 5 per salvo at the same rate.
• Going by our estimated Moskva layout, they have an interception chance of about half a missile per ship per salvo, with Exocets this would be 1/4th, but Exocets are 8 times as big and expensive as Hornets. With Hornets, we can do a salvo of 65 missiles, probably completely eradicating the Earth fleet in the first volley, even if the Skory takes down a dozen.

The main risk here is that, in taking out the Earth fleet, we might spread the zone of engagement to cover earth itself, however, this being about warships well beyond the orbit of the moon, we can probably get away with it if we widely announce our rules of engagement and a clause about leaving everything within lunar orbit alone.

Due to the risk of Federation meson cannons, doctrine for this operation will be to not go to Earth for reloads unless absolutely necessary.

Cancellation

The May 21st, 2033, mass movement of the Federation Mars Fleet to asteroid 24 Themis instead of Titan and the revelation of the Skory class's 1,500 kps speed invalidated the operation strategy. UN intelligence predicted that the bulk of the Federation void fleet would be used to protect the captured troop transports from any attempt at escape or re-capture by the UNIN[3]. UN Department of Defense Director Innocent_Bystander formally cancelled the plan and offered IRCabal suggested strategies Operation Phalanx and Operation Rubicon [4].