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From: http://forums.megatokyo.com/index.php?showtopic=1689246
The politicians suckered by the truce were now back in the saddle again. The first thing they did was to relieve Admiral Tolwyn of his "temporary" duty as head of Terran Defense and selected a series of Admirals and Generals (lackeys under the politicians payroll no less) to be the new Joint Chiefs of Staff. The government then refused Admiral Tolwyn's rightful promotion to a major fleet command, in which they had said he was too "valuable a commander" to be taken from the front lines. Besides this, bureaucrats and politicians were back bickering with the military and refusing to give extra funding and resources for the war machine. In addition, the Confed Senate endlessly debated and bickered on high priority targets to attack; this move kept the carrier fleet in a defensive rather then offensive postures along the front. Instead of attacking the necessary targets vital to the war, the Senate dictated ConFleet to spend their time attacking worthless targets. The end result was that the civilian government’s incompetence enabled the Kilrathi enough time to rebuild everything they lost at the Battle of Terra, and then more.
Kilrathi Reconstruction
Because the False Peace had enabled the Kilrathi to rebuild their construction and logistical resources, they had the edge over the Terrans in shipbuilding and fighter production. They had too also brought their next generation fighters online to counter the latest Arrows, Hellcats, Thunderbolts, and Longbows the Confederation Space Force wielded. They had also started increased productions on their new corvettes, destroyers, and cruisers. But more importantly, they started to mass-produce the new Bhantkara-class carrier design to counter the Terran's newest Lexington-class CVNs. They had also started the construction of massive space-colony sized dreadnoughts to act as flagships. Kilrathi carriers eventually outnumbered the Confed carriers by 2 to 1. Meanwhile, the Kilrathi had took their aging force of Snakier II, Fralthra, Ralatha, and Kamekh warships and put them to rear-echelon units.
Confed's Opening Gambit
During the first few months, the first Terran attacks were by raider units. One of the four Lexington-class carriers destroyed in the Battle of Terra was deemed salvageable and had been modified into a self-sustaining raider. This ship, christened the Lexington, and the Confederation's majority of their escort carriers were pooled together to act as the vanguard for the next Confederation war strategy. Familiar with the success of the escort carrier a few years past, ConFed High Command finally pooled the CVE raider units in their own major command, the 19th Battle Fleet. Under the command of Admiral Price Hancock, these raider ships were delegated into Recon-in-Force guerilla units and were sent independently of the front line to attack rear-echelon facilities and other secondary logistical resources. But unlike a few years past, these behind-the-lines strike missions were stopped cold. The Kilrathi were waiting for the CVEs with their reserve Snakier II-class carriers and their new class of Dubav-class light carriers. These Kilrathi forces well outnumbered the CVE forces, and many Recon-In-Force units never reported back to HQ.
The Kilrathi Counter-Attack
Destroying a majority of the attacking CVE forces, the Kilrathi military started to gain a momentum that would rear its ugly head in their massive counter-offensive that started near the beginning of March. Approximately twenty Kilrathi carrier groups attacked from all points along the front and steamrolled over the defending Confed forces. The Confederation Forward Fleet lost six of its twelve carriers in an utterly disasterous period lasting from March to June. The TCS Illustrious was destroyed in the Aloysius System by the famed Kilrathi ace "Bloodmist". The TCS Quinson battle group encountered one of the new Kilrathi dreadnoughts and the entire group was wiped out. The TCS Valiant battle group simply dissapeared along the border while enroute to the Gemini Sector. The TCS Winterrowd, also reassigned to the Gemini Sector, was destroyed by what Intelligence has determined to be a Kilrathi superweapon. The TCS Roosevelt went down during the failed Confed offensive in the Munro System.
But the most staggering loss occured when the TCS Concordia, the pride of the Confed Fleet, fell prey to a Kilrathi ambush in the rear-echelon Vespus system. The Concordia was mopping up raiders when a lucky torpedo hit crippled her engines and forced her to crash into the Mistral Coast off Vespus IV. There were no survivors on board. Paranoid by Kilrathi raids and fearing another attack on the inner homeworlds, the civilian government refused to deploy the Third Fleet’s five major carriers to the front. The TCS Armageddon, Saratoga, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Lincoln stayed behind to defend Earth under direct Presidential order as the core to the newly christened "Terran Defense Fleet".
