THE OPPOSING FORCES
Combined Battle Fleet Trafalgar
The seven fleets to be engaged in combat during the Battle for the Kite's Nest were named for famous ocean battles on Earth. Combined Battle Fleet Trafalgar was named for the unorthodox tactic used by the victorious British during that fight, whereby their ships broke the opposing French-Spanish line instead of duelling it out in the more traditional line versus line manner. This was a metaphor for the role to be played by the fleets themselves; Trafalgar would use Tower Bridge to bypass the Verge Wall and get amongst the batarian arrangements.
The forces under the command of Admiral Hackett consisted of four combat fleets; the Fifth Fleet, the Sixth Fleet, the Seventh Fleet and the Eighth Fleet. This force alone dwarfed that which had been sent to Elysium to spring the trap that crippled the Hegemony's First Fleet, and by 2178, was equal to two of the batarians' three fleets. In addition to the regular combat groups, the three WMD groups of the Deterrence Fleet were also deployed as part of Trafalgar, although their role was not to fight the batarian navy directly. Not since the Krogan Rebellions had a concentration of firepower of this scale been seen in the galaxy. The nuclear arsenal available to the deterrence forces alone could have scorched a hundred worlds' surfaces to ash. Alliance planners believed that every kiloton would be required in order to clear the space stations guarding the Viper Nebula relay, based on quite good estimates of batarian pre-war industrial capacity and information fed to the DID from spies before the FTL comm-buoys in the Yuki Cluster were destroyed.
The order of battle of the fleets was to be greatly altered for operations. Unlike every other species in the galaxy, humanity believed that the role of the traditional dreadnought was coming to an end. The turians, whose model was widely adopted as a paradigm, believed that the dreadnought was the real force of any fleet. This idea had shifted somewhat due to humanity's introduction of the carrier, but the turians saw the new class of ship as the dreadnought's equal, not its superior. The naval doctrines of the Hierarchy, the Asari Republics, the Salarian Union, the small elcor navy and the Batarian Hegemony all continued to place great faith on the sheer firepower of the dreadnought. Admiral Hackett and Admiral Hunt were both well aware of this, and determined to undo such ideas with a practical demonstration of the superiority of the carrier-borne fighter-bomber.
One carrier group each from the First, Second, Third and Fourth Fleets was replaced by one of the patrol groups from Battle Fleet Trafalgar. In effect, this meant that 75% of the Alliance's carrier strength both in escort carriers and fleet carriers was assigned to Hackett's command. This was easily justified by the huge battlespace available; no less than seven star systems would be contested. No dreadnought could project power over such vast distances, but carrier forces could. Similarly, carriers were mostly useless for forcing relay passages, whereas the dreadnought's huge broadside and forward firepower made them ideal for attacking the Viper Nebula relay jumpzone. As a result, all but one of Trafalgar's dreadnoughts was assigned to its opposite number, Battle Fleet Tsushima. Meanwhile, all five of the new Niké-class fleet carriers were assigned to Trafalgar.
In total, Trafalgar would consist of a little more than two thousand five hundred vessels, of which one thousand eight hundred were combat vessels; Sixteen fleet carriers, one dreadnought, four hundred escort carriers, seven hundred and eighty cruisers and heavy cruisers, six hundred frigates, one hundred deterrence frigates, and six hundred support and transport vessels.
Combined Battle Fleet Tsushima
The fleets that would force their way through to the Viper Nebula once the defences of that relay jump zone had been fatally compromised by the Deterrence Fleet's attack was named for the battle of Tsushima, where the Imperial Japanese Navy successfully 'crossed the T' against the Russian Navy in a textbook manoeuvre. As such, it was to act in a much more conventional manner from the perspective of the Citadel navies, using its dreadnoughts, cruisers and frigates in massed formations against concentrations of the enemy. The chaos sown by Hackett's fleets were to be exploited by Hunt's own attack groups, presenting themselves at the perfect moments to obliterate the remaining batarian ships.
Tsushima consisted of the Second, Third and Fourth Fleets of the Alliance Navy, although it too had been augmented by the dreadnoughts and carriers of the First Fleet. As such, it contained one thousand eight hundred ships; six dreadnoughts, five fleet carriers, one hundred and twenty five escort carriers, eight hundred and forty cruisers and heavy cruisers, four hundred frigates, and five hundred support and transport vessels.
US Delta Force, First Legion, Alliance Army
The exact composition of the Delta Force teams sent to eliminate the batarian outpost remains classified, as is the case with most major First Legion operations. It is estimated that two platoons of sixty soldiers were sent, based on the number of bombers used to deploy them and casualties sustained. Lieutenant-Colonel Belmont's task was simple; to capture the facility's shuttles and comms intact. The Alliance had no way of knowing if the Hegemony had a similar protocol relating to its outposts as they had; if an Alliance outpost or colony goes dark, a combat group or fleet is dispatched to investigate. The completion of Tower Bridge relied entirely on the secrecy of its existence, and it was the job of Delta Force to eliminate the most dire threat to that secrecy.
Batarian Hegemonic Navy
The batarian fleets had not been fully rebuilt by the time of the Battle of the Kite's Nest. The losses of Elysium combined with those of the blitz campaign, during which the general order from the Arch-Hegemon had been to stand and fight at all costs, meant that the entire Batarian Navy could call on just three thousand seven hundred and twenty ships. While a larger proportion of these were combat vessels, compared with the ratio of the opposing Alliance fleets, this left the Hegemony very much outnumbered.
During 2177 and the first half of 2178, Admiral Ar'dra had concentrated on increasing the capabilities of his existing ships. This was done for two reasons. The requirement to reinforce the Verge Wall with enough stations to make assaults near-suicidal was of paramount importance to the war effort. The batarians could tie up human efforts to breach it for decades, perhaps even permanently, if they could only point enough mass-accelerators at the relay jumpzones. Naturally, this tied up many resources that would have otherwise been used for ships. The second reason is related to the first, in that it answers the question of why Ar'dra did not simply build ships instead; Personnel shortages.
Unlike the Batarian Army, which could conscript swaths of the serf caste as required and used massed assaults, the Batarian Navy valued quality and could not operate as a conscript force to begin with. Space warfare was simply too complex and too technical to replace the crew losses of 2176 with any ease. By 2178, some of these losses had been ameliorated, but most of the replacements had no combat experience. Cruisers were brought back up to strength in numbers, but frigate production was halted entirely, batarian designs being vastly inferior to Alliance ones.
The dreadnought programme was the exception, and it was perhaps the most ambitious ship-building programme until the end of the Eden Prime War. Six new superdreadnoughts based on the Fang of Khar'shan were constructed, designed to fight frigates at the broadside and the Alliance's Thor-class dreadnought from range. Despite these developments, the Batarian Navy is considered by most historians to have never stood a chance. It was very well suited to its planned role; containment and counterattack. It was not well suited to fight long-range battles within a cluster against greater numbers and a better doctrine of spatial warfare.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Plenty of reviewers seem to be enjoying the human-centric aspect of this story, as opposed to the supposedly less HFW storyline of Battlefield 2183. Not sure I agree with that, given that the Alliance stands up for itself very well in that story, not giving too much of a shit about the Citadel's opinion of the war against the geth. Most complaints otherwise seem to regard the Shepard-Liara relationship as an indicator that Shepard is less than a full-blooded warrior for humanity. Definitely don't agree with that, and I'll address that in BF2183 itself.
I guess people are too used to curbstomps and hating on aliens. The batarians are a much easier opponent to portray in this way, as they started off about the same strength as humanity and they're slavers regardless. It's always a feel-good moment when shit happens to them.