The First Battle of Harvest began on February 3rd, 2552 and later on hundreds of thousands of civilians evacuated from the planet. The C.A.A. sent the CMA Argo to investigate the cessation of communications from Harvest, and the scout ship arrived in system on April 20th, 2525.
After the Argo failed to return the C.A.A. sent Battle Group 4 to Harvest consisting of the CMA Heracles, and the frigates CMA Arabia and CMA Vostokon October 7th, 2525.
Why was the response to the Covenant attack on Harvest so slow? The Colonial Administration Authority didn’t send a scout ship to investigate until almost 3 months later in April and when contact with that ship was lost they didn’t send a battle group until October, over 5 months later!
What happened to all the civilians that were evacuated from Harvest? Didn’t they warn the C.A.A. and by extension the UNSC of the Covenant? What happened with them? The UNSC(which absorbed the C.A.A. by this point due to Emergency) did not begin a full counter attack until March of 2526. While it did take time for the CMA Heracles to get back to Reach due to the damage it sustained there was still a 5 month gap between the arrival of Battle Group 4 and the arrival of Battle Group X-Ray beginning the Second Battle of Harvest. Of course slipspace travel takes time but Human slipspace drives are not THAT slow, a jump from Reach to Harvest should only take a week or two at most not a few months. And the UNSC was also busy dealing with other Covenant attacks such as on Chi Ceti during the time but still.
Also how was the UNSC able to contest for the planet for the next 5 years until 2531? During most of the war the UNSC was quickly defeated in space battles, how did the UNSC hold the Covenant at bay for 5 years while other Covenant invasions were also going on?
Contact Harvest mentioned it took the better part of a month to travel to Madrigal, which was pretty close to Harvest. I imagine it would take around three or so months from Reach. Then the time it would take to organize a battle group, plus they probably didn’t think it would need much of an issue considering they initially thought it was pirates or rebels. So they also weren’t in a hurry. (And again, Johnson mentions the time it would take to set a battle group up.)
> Also how was the UNSC able to contest for the planet for the next 5 years until 2531? During most of the war the UNSC was quickly defeated in space battles, how did the UNSC hold the Covenant at bay for 5 years while other Covenant invasions were also going on?
Because It wasn’t a constant battle as people falsely spread around here, it was a tug of war game that lasted 5 years. Not to mention Cole used an extremely large percentage of the UNSC naval force to keep harvest as we thought that battle would give them the impression they don’t want to fight us.
> Contact Harvest mentioned it took the better part of a month to travel to Madrigal, which was pretty close to Harvest. I imagine it would take around three or so months from Reach. Then the time it would take to organize a battle group, plus they probably didn’t think it would need much of an issue considering they initially thought it was pirates or rebels. So they also weren’t in a hurry. (And again, Johnson mentions the time it would take to set a battle group up.)
I believe travel from Earth to Harvest in 2525 took about 3 weeks to a month. Post Human-Covenant War FTL drives are probably much faster.
I just got done reading Contact Harvest, and if I’m not mistaken, I believe that Sif said that it would take around 2 months for a message to get to Reach. So that would give some reason for the delay, but with the attack beginning in mid-late February, it would have been at least late April before the message of an attack would been received. Then Johnson, Burns and the other militia return shortly after. I would guess they would have wanted a debrief before they sent anything out there.