Strategy of the Human Covenant War; -Were humans really the better strategists?

[Created by timh1990 on the main site and moved over here.] Personally I’m of the opinion that throughout the war the Covenant maintained a strategic if not tactical advantage that the UNSC led humanity decisively lacked. From a pure analytical point of view I base this augment on the fact that the Covenant Empire is clearly a highly militarized society which has aggressively expanded and absorbed an undetermined yet significant portion of the galaxy over its history. While there is no direct evidence I strongly suspect that the Covenant up until is fracturing in 2553 shared borders with several equally large and technologically sophisticated alien empires as the very existence of a professional military suggests the presence of an external and very tangible threat. The almost perpetual state of conflict that I suspect the Covenant has been immersed in over its history would form the basis for an extremely efficient, experienced and well led military. By comparison the UNSC of 2525 was a backwater isolated power with absolutely no experience in dealing with alien cultures or external military threats prior to first contact at Harvest. Admiral Preston Cole’s autobiography made clear that up until the outbreak of the Insurgency in the last decade of the 25th century, the human Navy acted primarily as colonial administration force settling disputes between colonies and chasing of the “occasional” pirates. Nylund’s specifically stated that the Navy’s officer corps was mostly composed of the UNSC elite with the right “connections” who saw the Navy as a cushy career to success. Like it or not the Covenant’s campaign against humanity was the model of an extremely successful interstellar war, with the UNSC pushed all the way back to their homeworld and the Covenant gaining a substantial (if brief) foothold on Earth itself in the final months of the war. Naturally as in any waypoint discussion there were those who disagreed with my own viewpoint (with credible reasoning), with a counter view that it was humanity who maintained a continuous advantage over the Covenant in terms of technological innovation and military tactics. When I directly asked if this was true then why was the war only waged in human space and why did it end with the human military “scattered and crushed” (Halo 2’s own description) at Earth, the answer was as follows; The Covenant military success was down to two factors; - The Employment of superior Technology - The Employment of superior numbers and Resources As I said before while this answer seemed creditable it was also frustratingly inflexible, hence the reason you are likely reading this post now. For simplicity on my own part I’m going to break down this debate into two sub-topics in relation to UNSC & Covenant tactics, tactical and strategic. The tactical analysis will consists of the tactics humanity and the Covenant employed during the actual individual battles of the Human-Covenant, how they fought. The strategic side of this analysis will consist of the general strategy employed both sides during the war, namely how did each side plan to end the war. - Tactical From a tactical point of view I would concede that while humanity may not have started off with one, the UNSC did gain at least a partial tactical advantage over the Covenant Empire as the war progressed. I would like to stress that in my opinion this advantage was one likely born out of shear desperation, as humanity needed a way to compensate for the Covenant’s vast technological advantage granted by their faster ships, energy shielding and directed energy weapons. A naturally high attrition rate amongst the human officer corps would also ensure that only the best, brightest and luckiest human were chosen to captain vessels, as incompetent officers were likely removed of killed in the line of duty. At the same time the Covenant’s decisive advantage in technology over their human counterparts would likely breed a natural arrogance as they would become too reliant on their superior weapons and defences at the cost of their own intuition and initiative during engagements. This being said I disagree that the Covenant outnumbered humanity during the war. While Doctor Hasley did state in Ghosts of Onyx that the Covenant Empire as a sovereign entity was much larger than the UNSC, she also believed that up until 2552 the majority of the Covenant military had been engaged in another conflict and as a result humanity had only faced a token force representing a small fraction of the Covenant’s total military strength. This would fit well with my own view of the Covenant Empire as a dominant yet contested intergalactic power which shared borders and may have been at war with several equally powerful and aggressive alien empires during the events of the human-covenant war. While humanity may have maintained a slight tactical edge, I do not believe this gave them a decisive military advantage. Covenant technological superiority outstanding, the UNSC still seemed to maintain numerical advantage over the Covenant in most battles and yet still suffered a disproportionate and consistent casualty rate throughout the course of the war. There were exceptions to this rule in which the Covenant seemed to be able to field an overwhelming number of ships against their human opponents such as the battle of Battle of Psi Serpentis and the Fall of Reach, however these events seemed to be rare and few between. The remaining battles that we have knowledge off seem to suggest the opposite of the UNSC proponents assertion that the Covenant outnumbered humanity, as the below figures show; - Second Battle of Harvest (2525) o 40 UNSC warships vs 1 Covenant Battleship  Result: 13 UNSC warships destroyed vs 1 Covenant warship destroyed - Battle of Alpha Aurigae (2526) o 117 UNSC warships vs 12 Covenant warships  Result: 37 warships destroyed vs 12 Covenant warships destroyed - Battle of XI Boötis A (2528) o 70 UNSC warships vs 8 Covenant warships  Result: 30 UNSC warships destroyed vs 8 Covenant warships destroyed - Battle of Groombridge (2530) o 17 UNSC warships vs 3 Covenant warships  Result: 11 UNSC warships destroyed vs 3 Covenant warships destroyed - Second Battle of Sigma Octanus IV (2552) o 48 UNSC warships vs 20 Covenant warships  Result: 25 UNSC warships destroyed vs 18 Covenant warships destroyed Pursuing this argument further, I would also point out that while the Covenant’s technological superiority may have breed both overconfidence and arrogance among the Covenant elite, the Covenant also proved capable of some stunning tactical innovations. During the Battle of Reach depicted in the game, rather than hitting Reach via a direct assault, they infiltrated the surface and transported their SuperCarrier beneath Reach’s orbital defenses, subsequently obliterating Reach’s orbital defenses forces in a single engagement. This in turn forced the UNSC to react on both a tactical and strategic level by pulling their remaining battle-groups back to Reach where an overwhelming Covenant fleet was waiting for them to emerge. In conclusion from a tactical perspective I would say that humanity maintained a consistent if at times tenuous and contested advantage over the Covenant throughout the course of the war. The trade off for this tactical advantage in terms of tactical innovation and resourcefulness (thinking outside the box) was an appalling attrition rate suffered by the UNSC in both personnel and materials (starships, material resources and infrastructure). Despite this in my opinion human ingenuity was never able to fully compensate for the Covenant’s technological sophistication, and as a result most human victories could only ever be considered Pyrrhic at best, brought about by superior numbers more than better tactics and resulting in wholly disproportionate casualties. The presence of UNSC naval captain’s like Andrew Del Rio by 2553 shows that even after 28 years of devastating war, the UNSC High Command still has grossly incompetent officers at its highest levels. While the same could be true of the Sangheili and Jiralhanae Ship and Fleet Masters, the presence of Covenant leaders such as the Arbiter and Rtas’ Vadum indicates that the Covenant like humanity also had very competent and experienced officers. This when combined with the Covenant’s undeniable technological sophistication and ability to deploy vast fleets of warships when the situation warranted it could prove to be disastrous for the UNSC, as it was at the Fall of Reach. - Strategic While the UNSC may have maintained a tactical advantage over the Covenant for the majority of the war, from a strategic perspective I believe the UNSC was at a substantial disadvantage. The reason I say this if that from the admittedly limited information we have regarding the progress of the human Covenant war, there seems to be almost no indication that the UNSC ever had a specific strategy to win the war. From the very first engagement at Harvest in 2525 all the way through to the Battle of Earth in 2552 the UNSC’s strategic plan seemed to be primarily defensive and at no time do they ever seem to try and take the war into the Covenant Empire. A small number of surgical attacks on Covenant supply bases were launched, however these only ever seemed to be aimed at slowing the Covenant’s advance into human territory rather then halting or reversing it. The result of the UNSC solely defensive campaign is that the Covenant were free to dictate the course of war, picking which worlds to strike at and which worlds to bypass, depriving the UNSC of precious raw materials and manpower with each glassed world or pyrrhic human victory. At the same time Covenant’s ability to manufacture new warships, train fresh warriors and finance their war remained unmolested, and year after year the cycle repeated until the Covenant finally reached Earth in 2552.