It's not obvious to me how the toughs will avoid getting killed the same way Petey's other fleets apparently got killed. I think it's obviously true that Petey could have been defeated in force despite his best efforts, what with the paanuri fighting on their home turf and also having a bigger galactic core generator than Petey does. But how the toughs can single handedly change the balance is not obvious to me.

I somewhat suspect Howard forgot Petey already had sent troops to Andromeda.