Something Important.

[Rexian]

Been reading the Fall of Reach recently and something sprung to mind. Reach was no doubt a military disaster, but was there any way we could have won it? Any tactics or alternate decisions that could have turned the battle in our favour?

[Faclan]

Not a human expert so dont take this as fact but I dont think so;

Having a planetbase is like holding a castle or a fort. Its great if the enemy cannot breach it and you have sufficient supplies to hold it. But if people get inside and 'open the door' so to speak your fort now because an easily surroundable trap for your own forces. As we saw from the Reach game the Covies managed to land secretly and so were inside before the Humans knew. Then it was just a matter of disabling the right machines down there and then bringing in the fleet. The UNSC could have gotten reinforced to possibly hold it but the Covenant would have had a massive lead on their fleet so unless they could hold out for a long time (very difficult with the enemy already in the fort and without huge supplies) I think they were kind of doomed. With the seige weapons of the Covenant (ships) pounding the fort walls and the Covenant already able to get inside the fort I dont see how they could have stopped it.

[Cabel]

There were several possibilities in which the Siege of Reach could have been won by the Defenders. Reach has been compared to Pearl Harbor, with Battleship Row, Henderson Field and more including the untrained RADAR operators which mistook a group of incoming aircraft as a flock of geese. Now, that's not to assign blame. I wouldn't do that and that's only a moment in history -- not to downplay it or those that fought in it.

If we were to look back on Pearl Harbor, we could say using today's standards and how RADAR is common place and RADAR Operators have been heavily trained in its use. We could say that, but we don't or at least I don't. I'm not a fan of that sort of thing.

With the Siege of Reach, one could argue that either the UNSCDF hadn't utilized or tightened their communication satellite nets or deployed their ground forces or even Naval forces in a more efficient manner. They could argue that, but it wouldn't change anything.

The Planet Reach had been a fortress world, a port, safe harbor, munitions and re-supply center, with Intel operatives to boot. Faclan's views aren't wrong. It's difficult, though not impossible, to determine an enemy's plan of approach to a heavily fortified target -- in this case the Planet Reach with its two moons. He's right in another matter, where if you have someone capable of sneaking inside or an agent already on the inside that the "enemy" has bribed in some fashion can "open the gates"...either transmitting codes or coordinates or even schedules. It's an old problem, but very relevant even from Antiquity and Biblical Times. I'm not going to delve into an historical lesson on any of those. It'd take a lot of time, and a lot of interest.

He's right in that the UNSC could have requested more reinforcements, between Naval Assets to Ground Forces and Air Assets. They could have, but didn't. It wasn't a matter of "if they could", or "did they want to". It was more a matter that the UNSC Forces or more likely the officers and the top brass on Reach had decided to have adhered to protocols such as the Winter Protocol (or however it went) and followed the Cole Protocol too. Reach had become a field of engagement, with the Covenant having "discovered" or rather "tracked" one ship to Reach. It had been out of pure surprise, something ONI and the UNSCDF Intel departments hadn't predicted. It hadn't been because they hadn't been able to, but that as with the Battle of France in 1940 where the Ardennes Forest had been considered a natural barrier between Germany and France. While the Covenant's use of a "tracking beacon" wasn't the same thing, it is when you consider that the UNSC Top Brass and ONI and the UNSC Intel Departments hadn't predicted that the Covenant would find Reach in that manner because they had dismissed it. They didn't expect the Covenant to have resorted to that given their past behavior, and there had most likely been some arrogance in that in which they believed Reach had been beyond detection. Or that the Satellites and System Detection Systems would have been able to have transmitted an early warning of any Covenant presence, allowing the UNSC to mobilize and reinforce. We all know the Covenant decided to go through the backdoor, first by hooking a "tracking beacon" to one ship knowing that ship would sail as normal back to its home port. This method hadn't allowed the UNSC to react as many plans and contingencies had been mapped out. They were caught with their pants around their ankles.

The UNSC's Top Brass had decided on a call for reinforcements too late in the Battle or Siege to have made any real difference, and would have only drained the UNSC of both manpower and its fighting capabilities.

If you were to defend a location, a stationary location -- installation or planet or oasis (you get the idea), the notion of defending it comes down to how much the opposing force wants it and whether that location's Defenders can be re-supplied in a way that can't easily be severed or blocked. According to Sun Tzu, a Commander should place their troops in a position where they neither retreat or flee and it'll force them to fight better. Now, I'm not going to say it's entirely accurate. If there's a way, it'll be found. In the case of the Siege of Reach, the Covenant managed to cut off any venues of escape, or re-supply for the UNSC (save for a few ships or the like) in general. From the outset, the UNSC had lost the Siege or Battle of Reach. They had the manpower on the Fortress World, to the ODP Platforms, the Satellite Networks to the Ships and the Will to Fight, but with the Covenant's arrival in orbit the options of fleeing, ending in a route, or evacuation save for a few had been eliminated. At least, that's how I view it. The Covenant were able to cut off any venue of escape or re-supply and it hadn't mattered how hard the UNSC fought if the routes of escape, retreat are cut off and if they can't be re-supplied the Defenders can only hold out so long.

[MrKill]

This is a double edged sword.

Could the UNSC have held Reach?

Absolutely; however it would have been a Pyrrhic victory at best.

The UNSC was in orbital position to defend the orbital defense grid that remained after the initial attack, and the Pillar of Autumn had already destroyed the Super Cruiser that was engaging the UNSC fleet from beyond orbital defense ranges. If the UNSC had consolidated their forces around the remaining orbital defense platforms, they would have been in an excellent position to engage the Covenant in a battle of attrition.

Think about how powerful the ODPs really are; they destroy all but one Covenant warship in a single shot and reload in five seconds, in which it fires again with high efficiency and accuracy, over and over. When Regret arrived with his reinforcements during the Battle of Earth, it was the largest fleet in recorded history, which meant that it was a larger composition than 750+ ships.

Earth's 300 ODPs - which weren't all in firing position at the same time (unlike Reach, where they were all clustered in a group of twenty) - whittled that force down to 48 active warships when it started glassing New Mombasa to discover the Ark. Earth still had a significant chunk of orbital defense platforms still active, they were just on the other side of the globe and unable to engage. That's the issue with orbital platforms, sometimes there are massive pockets of space between stations that is unprotected.

Get a medium sized globe and some large pins. Place those pins over cities and see if a ODP in - say Russia - could defend Washington, DC. The answer is no, regardless of where the ODP was, because the ODP would never see Washington DC because of the Earth's curvature. For example, Nassau Station - still active after the Battle of Earth - destroyed a Covenant warship over Cleveland during the engagement but was unable to help the rest of the fleet battling over Africa because it simply couldn't aim that way.

Nassau Station is in geo-sync orbit over Nassau.




The biggest mistake the UNSC made during the Fall of Reach was bombing the Marine garrison sent to defend the ground-side power generators for the Orbital Defense Platforms; yes, you read that correctly, the UNSC bombed an entire marine garrison that was defending the generators because a nervous officer was afraid the Covenant would disable the generators.

That officers actions lead to what he feared most.

The Covenant regrouped and attacked the generators, and not even the SPARTANs could stop them. Eventually the ODPs lost power, and with no power, the UNSCs biggest assets were dead in the water. The fleet alone was out matched ten to one and never even stood a chance when the ODPs 'went dark'.

However!

Imagine if that Marine garrison had their tanks, Warthogs, gunships and a constant supply of resources from the nearby base? It would have been a much longer battle where the outcome would have turned into a more traditional fight. The UNSC has always been better on the ground, but could never translate that into space.

If the Marines were able to defeat - or hold out until reinforcements arrived - then the defending UNSC fleet would still have the powerful ODPs operational inflicting casualties every five seconds.



That was the turning point for Reach. Once the ODPs fell, the Covenant rolled right through. If the ODPs held, the Covenant would have had to destroy the ODPs to gain space superiority; if the UNSC had the ODPs, I'm positive the UNSC would have won the battle of Reach, but at a major cost.

Just my $0.02