Landing Troops on a Planet

Just an offhand thought . . .

I would do it similarly to how an invasion might be launched on earth now. First, select the point were the defenses are weakest, then, right before the invasion, hit them hard with unmanned weapons (or with some sort of advanced weapon-the future equivalent of stealth fighters), then concentrate the invading forces so they would be quickly overwhelmed, then establish my own defensive positions.

Same way we went into Iraq.

Take out any air craft, anti arcraft batteries and the power grid and infrastructure that supports anything that could stop you from landing troops.

The problem is that your army would have to be in the size of several million, or even more, or have a HUGE technological advantage over the enemy. Invading any halfway technological planet would be absurdly hard - see In the Balance, by Harry Turtledove for a good book about just how hard that is - and invading any planet with technology similar to or equal to you would be impossible from space.

Really, the best way to pacify the planet is to virus bomb it until the sentient species is dead, then wait for the virus to die, then go down there and take over what they left behind.

It's the only way to be sure.

well that would depend on what type of species already existed on the new planet.

Any civilization advanced enough to travel to another planet is more than likely advanced enough to engineer a virus that would affect only a certain species.

A simpler invasion technique might be to use EMP to take out solid state technology (assuming the technology level is vulnerable). Usually, you don't want to destroy the indigent population-- you need a workforce to do whatever it is you want the planet for (mine, manufacture, grow food, etc). If you want a lot of their technology infrastructure, though, you have to disable it in a way that allows you to assume control, but that doesn't take too many years to bring back.

Aerial

Sue-proof Armour said:

So, in the future they'll probably have SDI, what with people not wanting to get nuked for some reason.

This gives one a reason to land on the planet and occupy (Since you can't nuke it into submission) it. However this same reason would mean that any troops you sent through the atmosphere would suffer horrendous losses from the planetary defenses.

Click to expand...

This does not really follow. Troops wouldn't be any harder to shoot down than nukes.
That aside, it's actually quite the opposite, a planetary defender has no way to defend against attacks from orbit. (short of StarWars planetary shields) The attacker in orbit can just drop junk and the defender will have to shoot it down or get hit hard. Kinetic weapons are cheap, very hard to shoot down, and if your target's inside a gravity well, you don't even have to accelerate the projectiles, just drop them. (although you do need to decelerate them from orbital velocity if you're in orbit)

Any ideas on how to land troops without them suffering Somme like casualties?

Click to expand...

Follows from the above. Pick a place you don't need, and glass it. Maybe a big desert. Bomb everything in a wide area to dust so there's no unwelcome surprises left, then land your troops there. Depending on the range of the weapons the people on the planet use, "wide area" might mean something like a few thousand kilometre radius.

Yes, there is no way to economically conquer a planet. If the defenders are willing to resist, there will be nothing worthwhile left standing. On the other hand, the defenders will know they have no way of resisting orbital attacks. So the question is whether the defenders will rather just surrender and survive, or resist and die, denying the attacker any gain from conquering the planet. Likewise, the attacker can choose between not conquering the planet or having nothing left that was worth conquering.
The only way for one side to win is if the other gives up. Otherwise, both lose.

Energise.

JimmyB27 said:

Energise.

Click to expand...

ROFL

Sue-proof Armour said:

But once you've punched your way through the defenses, why not just threaten to glass the planet into submission? Unless the enemy surrenders.

Click to expand...

No need to target defences, specifically in one area, for that. If you're going to sterilize the planet, you can go for the big targets right away. And the question was how to land troops.

BTW I never said nukes would be harder to shoot down than troops.

Click to expand...

Well, your troops aren't going to appreciate being used to soak up defensive fire so you don't waste bombs.

It all depends on what the goals are...

Rape a planet of its natural resources? If so, you'll need cheep slave labor.

Or,

Colonize a planet for your own civilization. If so, you want to get rid of all the indigenous population so as not to have problems down the road with rebellion.

Trying to conquer a planet for resources makes no sense. Resources are in practically infinite supply in the universe, it's much easier to find an empty one instead of expending huge amounts of resources on military operations to get hold of one already occupied.

Assuming you've done enough worldbuilding to know the capabilities of the various military powers in play here, then this ancient thread may be of use in planning a troop landing operation: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153332

In all truth, I think Objective is your big concern. Why are you invading? I can think of a couple of reasons that, again, depend on your worldbuilding.

First possibility: habitable planets are rare, and you need one intact. Possibly for an expanding population. But a certain level of technology makes that moot. If you can terraform or construct viable artificial environments, then you why go through the expense of invading?

Second: They're going to kill us all. For whatever reason. But then, why aren't you just killing them? Unless you want their planet intact for some reason.

Third: They need to be our religion. Religion can get people to do some pretty crazy things. Wouldn't be the first time.

Fourth: Unobtanium? I mean the actual reasons for the invasion can be overshadowed by a powerful story. (Not that Avatar was all that powerful, but if yours is, then not many will really question why you're invading. Conjure an excuse and go. Word of warning: weak writing will make this hand-waving incredibly obvious and possibly insulting to the reader's intelligence.)

Anyway, you get the idea. When you get to where you can travel between stars, resources aren't really a factor. Which is a shame since they're such a huge source of conflict and, therefore, story.

My .02 credits.

Lhun said:

Trying to conquer a planet for resources makes no sense. Resources are in practically infinite supply in the universe, it's much easier to find an empty one instead of expending huge amounts of resources on military operations to get hold of one already occupied.

Click to expand...

Breathable atmosphere, potable water, and land are all forms of resources. It does not have to be mineral...

thothguard51 said:

Breathable atmosphere, potable water, and land are all forms of resources. It does not have to be mineral...

Click to expand...

There are too many variables. It depends on the Universe created by the writer what will and will not work. If we are sticking to current technology in our current universe, then it doesn't really matter. Space travel is way too expensive for there to be any economically viable resources to exploit.

However, given sufficient technology, there could be reasons. Luhn is correct that there are infinite resources. However, there are always limitations in availability of said resources. That's always the choke point, even here on earth. Therefore, there will be scarcity which will potentially drive economic reasons for coveting a particular planet in a particular region.

Let's not make the jump from current tech to super future mind blowing tech in this discussion though. Both pretty much remove any viable reason for space war. If you put things somewhere in the middle though, there will be reasons. Will there be a way to fight it without completely destroying everything worth fighting over? I don't know; it depends on the universe created by the writer.

thothguard51 said:

Breathable atmosphere, potable water, and land are all forms of resources. It does not have to be mineral...

Click to expand...

Still not limited. You need to provide all that for your troops anyway, even if you can't find an empty planet with breathable atmosphere, building habitats for people on asteroids or other planets is still much cheaper than building military ships. (which are pretty much habitats with weapons)

Hallen said:

However, given sufficient technology, there could be reasons. Luhn is correct that there are infinite resources. However, there are always limitations in availability of said resources. That's always the choke point, even here on earth. Therefore, there will be scarcity which will potentially drive economic reasons for coveting a particular planet in a particular region.

Click to expand...

"Therefore" is a bit misplaced. Just because we are so used to scarcity of resources doesn't make it some kind of natural law. There have been plenty of examples in history where some resource wasn't scarce, and if you have cheap interstellar travel, that applies to all basic material resources.

Cheap interstellar travel or strong nanotechnology.

Zoombie said:

Cheap interstellar travel or strong nanotechnology.

Click to expand...

Strong nanotechnology would negate any costs of manufacturing and thus devalue manufactured products down to the value of the raw materials, but you still need to get the raw materials somewhere.

Sue-proof Armour said:

So, in the future they'll probably have SDI, what with people not wanting to get nuked for some reason.

This gives one a reason to land on the planet and occupy (Since you can't nuke it into submission) it. However this same reason would mean that any troops you sent through the atmosphere would suffer horrendous losses from the planetary defenses.

Any ideas on how to land troops without them suffering Somme like casualties?

Click to expand...

"'A world cannot be conquered' -- was true before he came,
But there is no army yet who can fight off Ian and Donal Graeme."

Ahem. But anyway...

SDI is usually envisioned as a system of space-based satellites, because it's easiest to hit ICBMs at the top of their trajectory. If you're coming from outer space, it's trivial to wipe a planet's satellites away.

But let's assume you have a planet with ground-based defenses capable of shooting down any incoming projectile or ship. That's a difficult level of technology to imagine, but let's go with it.

If the attackers have time, they can install a sunshade, blot out the sun, and siege the planet. Eventually the planet will run out of resources -- heat, electricity, and/or food. It's hard to run a defense when your atmosphere starts condensing.

If the attackers have enough mass, they can overwhelm the defenses. They might not get anything to the ground but dust, but they can bury the planet in dust. Or they could just rope a largish asteroid and drop that on the planet.

However, both of those options fall into the 'scorched Earth' category -- there wouldn't be anything left on the planet worth fighting over.

Space-based energy weapons -- lasers and EMP -- might be able to destroy the ground defenses, but if so that's bad planning on the defender's part.

Unless the attackers can kill the defenders with radiation or sneak a virus down, I don't see any way to take over the planet without turning it into a barren rock. I think your best bet is subterfuge. Get a double agent on the ground capable of shutting down the defenses or throwing the planet into chaos, then take advantage of that opportunity.

Sue-proof Armour said:

Only if the defender doesn't have lasers, rail-guns, and missiles of his own. And shooting the 'junk' down would count as defending IMO

Click to expand...

Sitting on the bottom of a gravity well (and inside an atmosphere) is a strategic disadvantage that's too big to overcome. All the attacker needs to do is drop stuff, and it'll accelerate to lethal speeds on the way down. Shooting down a kinetic projectile is very hard, and the attacker can always either use more at once to saturate defences or scale them up until they're to big to shoot down (or a combination of both). The attackers don't even have to bring them along, they can just pick up any asteroid in the system, and use the material to cast vaguely arrow shaped bits of various size.
Hell, kinetic projectiles are cheap enough that the attackers could just keep dropping them until the defenders run out of missiles.

Lhun said:

Still not limited. You need to provide all that for your troops anyway, even if you can't find an empty planet with breathable atmosphere, building habitats for people on asteroids or other planets is still much cheaper than building military ships. (which are pretty much habitats with weapons)

"Therefore" is a bit misplaced. Just because we are so used to scarcity of resources doesn't make it some kind of natural law. There have been plenty of examples in history where some resource wasn't scarce, and if you have cheap interstellar travel, that applies to all basic material resources.

Click to expand...

No, it's not misplaced. There is a difference between infinitely available raw material and infinitely available usable materials. Let me stick you in a room full of water and no electricity. You have huge quantities Oxygen in the water. Go ahead and breath. I'm pretty sure at that point you'll realize that you have a scarcity.

If spaceships are expensive, then materials will be expensive and if materials are available that are closer and easier to get, then people will fight over them.

If space travel is inexpensive, the question will be how inexpensive is it? Is traveling from one planet to another within a solar system the same cost as moving a ship from China to the US? If so, there is still room for trade and making money. Yes, we'll have lots more raw materials, but there will still be trade and relative costs could be significant enough that there would be fighting over certain things. Only in the case where space travel is inexpensive will it ever be plausible that dropping rocks on a planet will be a useful war tactic. Otherwise, moving the rocks would be either really slow or really expensive.

Unless we have Star Trek style Replicators, or nanobots that can convert raw materials into usable objects virtually for free, then you're still going to have scarcity. Space isn't a utopia. It ain't the garden of Eden where everything you need drops in your lap. It is fraught with peril and risk. The lazy will always try to take from those who work for it. There will be fighting. The question will be how and why.

As to the original question, you'll need to determine what technologies exist and how much it all costs. Then you'll need to determine how wars will be fought and why they will be fought. Then, you'll be able to answer your own question about the best way to deliver troops onto a planet and how they will fight.

Asking an open ended question on this board will simply turn into an argument where Luhn states that space war is unreasonable and others point out that people will still fight. Narrow down your technologies and universe and then ask the question again. It will have to be understood that certain "technologies" are really just magic, but it's your book so you get to make the rules.

Hallen said:

Only in the case where space travel is inexpensive will it ever be plausible that dropping rocks on a planet will be a useful war tactic. Otherwise, moving the rocks would be either really slow or really expensive.

Click to expand...

There's a really big difference between moving a few rocks inside a solar system and getting there in the first place over interstellar distances. Even if you've got some magic drive that doesn't work for both, it's not like you're going to move megatons of the stuff. If you're going to throw chixulub sized asteroids against the planet you might as well just use a long range KKV because there'll be nothing left anyway.

Unless we have Star Trek style Replicators, or nanobots that can convert raw materials into usable objects virtually for free, then you're still going to have scarcity. Space isn't a utopia. It ain't the garden of Eden where everything you need drops in your lap. It is fraught with peril and risk. The lazy will always try to take from those who work for it. There will be fighting. The question will be how and why.

Click to expand...

The worth of manufactured products is a completely different issue from the worth of raw materials. Manufactured products have a worth that is determined by the rarity of materials and amount of work required to produce them. Raw materials on the other hand are in effectively infinite supply in space. And since one planet is pretty much like another, there is no place worth fighting over for the raw materials. That's why fighting over a planet would only be economically feasible if you have a reasonable chance of taking the infrastructure intact, which depends on just how willing to die the occupants are to deny you that.