Planetary Invasion Methods

[Morpheus]

Hi there, I have been thinking lately if one want to perform a planetary invasion, will he use dropships to deliver the troops to the surface (like starship troopers) or bringing the entire fleet down while terrorizing the enemy ground troops (like Star Wars, geonosian battle).

If dropships are used than it would require a command carrier in the orbit for the dropships homebase, likewise it can only carried limited personel (or some military hardware).

And if we have a capital ship goes down to the surface, it could delivered more troops and war machine at the same time.

Which one do you prefer? Or a combination of it?

[EXO]

Hi there, I have been thinking lately if one want to perform a planetary invasion, will he use dropships to deliver the troops to the surface (like starship troopers) or bringing the entire fleet down while terrorizing the enemy ground troops (like Star Wars, geonosian battle).

If dropships are used than it would require a command carrier in the orbit for the dropships homebase, likewise it can only carried limited personel (or some military hardware).

And if we have a capital ship goes down to the surface, it could delivered more troops and war machine at the same time.

Which one do you prefer? Or a combination of it? 

345495[/snapback]

They're already here...

[kalvasflam]

Hi there, I have been thinking lately if one want to perform a planetary invasion, will he use dropships to deliver the troops to the surface (like starship troopers) or bringing the entire fleet down while terrorizing the enemy ground troops (like Star Wars, geonosian battle).

If dropships are used than it would require a command carrier in the orbit for the dropships homebase, likewise it can only carried limited personel (or some military hardware).

And if we have a capital ship goes down to the surface, it could delivered more troops and war machine at the same time.

Which one do you prefer? Or a combination of it? 

345495[/snapback]

I'm bored, so I'll answer, it's too open ended a question. Are you assuming the enemy is same technology level? Do you have space superiority? etc, etc

Assuming you have space superiority, and you have to take the planet with substantial enemy ground forces. You start by pounding their positions to dust from orbit. If there are strategic locations you have to take intact, you send in your troops to those. I would not send a capital ship to the surface.... you might be open to more attacks that way from enemy ground troops.

[Graham]

use dropships to deliver the troops to the surface (like starship troopers)

345495[/snapback]

Just to clarify, it is the Starship troopers movie that used dropships, not the original RAH novel, where the M.I. in their powered armor were droped in individual capsules.

Graham

[DARKWIND]

I say send in a stand off weapon or or send in a flight of drones, to test or (if possible) eliminate the planets upper atmosphere/arieal defenses.

Then send in a crushing bombardment, followed imediately by a fullscale invasion force consisting of heavy weapons and shock troops.

Having it contain and or eliminate small pockets of resistance

But never land my capital ships, ever!

(In case the locals decide to bring about a rebellion)

That way I can keep global fire support of my troops.

By using four mid-sized or heavy cruisers in a (N)pole to (S)pole, E hemisphere to W hemisphere standard orbit.

Keeping one carrier class vessle at a higher orbit for air support.

Stationing two more carriers with my larger capital ships in a lunar orbit.

While setting up a base on said moon(s) for deep space comms to my home planet.

[wolfx]

I'll ride down lightning storms into tri-pedal mecha I planted ages ago, harvest the indigenous creatures for the greatest steak in this galaxy, then end up with explosive diarhoeaa.

If it were me, I'd take the least risk available. If i have space superiority, do some planetary bombardment to soften their defences and then have dropships or individual drop capsules, whichever is more economical.

Landing with a cap ship on a planet, nah too risky. Besides most space-borne capships aren't made for planet landings. They're just too huge, this of course is based on sci-fi cliches.

[Isamu Atreides 86]

I'd nuke the site from orbit. its the only way to be sure.

[Zentrandude]

Screw planets. I would order the insanely large fleet of ships to make the sun supernova and let collection drones recover anything still left and usuable.

[Yohsho]

I'd go with orbital bombardment of key areas on the planet; centers of government, powerplants, communications, military installations, then send troops to take control over the larger cities and go from there.

[jenius]

This thread needs more Southern Cross -

First you arrive and abduct some humans and alter there brains enough so you can use them as pilots for your own mechanized terror. Then you sit in orbit and use them as inefficiently as possible until the day one of them finally turns against you and destroys you despite your clear tactical, physical, and scientific advantage.

Wait, this thread needs more MOSPEADA

First you arrive in a fiery hellfire blast of biblical proportions by morphing your entire population into pure energy. Use the blast to wipe out locations of strategic importance and any area using a high level of advanced energies but ignore areas of high population. Place bases, or hives, along major transit routes and then single out and destroy all remaining insurgents... no matter how small their group may be. Be sure to only send out your least capable and clumsy troops to fight the insurgents though as you never know when space-borne foes may arrive in massive numbers.

[Morpheus]

Well, the main goal is to conquer the planet without destroying it.

Well there are several methods which I know in planetary invasion.

- Dropships attack or jumptroop (starship trooper)

- Jamming, city destroyer, and then troops invasion (ID4)

- Gas probe, troop invasion via teleporter (Battlefield Earth)

- Fleet supremacy, then ascend down with a battlefortress (Macross II)

- Full scale suicidal invasion with large number of troops (Genesis climber Mospeada)

Somehow I think coming down with a large fleet of battleship should intimidate the population aka 'resistance is futile'

SPOILER

This is based from the LoGH series when they invade Phezzan and Heinessen, the population practically surrender when they see over 20,000 ships covering the sky.

Edited November 17, 2005 by Morpheus

[wolfx]

Somehow I think coming down with a large fleet of battleship should intimidate the population aka 'resistance is futile'  . This is based from the LoGH series when they invade Phezzan and Heinessen, the population practically surrender when they see over 20,000 ships covering the sky. 

345534[/snapback]

Same thing happened at the beginning of Crest Of The Stars. In fact, the Hyde system had no choice but to surrender...and ppl still bitch about Jinto's father. Idiots.

Which brings me to another topic, the LoGH gunships look alot like the COTS gunships as well.

[Radd]

Little note, if you must use examples that contain plot points of series that many haven ot yet finished, such as...say..Legend of the Geleactic Freaking Heroes wich is only up to episode 50 or so in fansubs, so many fans have not yet been able to finish it, please for the love of God and all that is Holy, use spoiler tags!

[F-ZeroOne]

Cat-girls and bishies. The entire population will be too busy fawning over them to notice me occupying No. 10 Downing Street.

[robokochan]

I would use something small....obscure...

HAMSTERS!

Nobody would suspect a Hamster! Start at the bottom and work my way up....

[kanata67]

it's called a "gravity well" people. If you are already in orbit all you have to do is drop rocks

[Father Jack]

Long range planetary bombardment with radioactive asteroids. I would sit in my huge underground palace and watch all this on my big T.V. while I drink out of spiked wine glasses.

(Special thanks to Space Battleship Yamato.)

[JELEINEN]

I'd say wait until after a long seige where you systematically destroy all industrial capability from orbit and wear down their defences. Of course invading is one thing; holding on is another, especially if you're having to deal with a lot of insurgency. If you have a really good method for dealing with that, please contact our own government immediately.

I believe the general consensus among scientists and hard SF writers has been for the last fifty years or so that actual planetary invasion is probably economically infeasible. Most SF writers who attempt it in stories, like Heinlein and Pournelle, usually do so in order to prove the consensus wrong, but almost invariably end up with special case situations that tend to prove the rule rather than disprove it.

[UN_MARINE]

I'd use an over-complicated DEATH RAY !!! built on the closest orbiting moon or asteroid.

And I'll watch the doom unfold on a 50 foot TV & sitting on a remote controlled chair

[Gui]

I'd code a crappy OS and set up a marketting campaign to convince everyone in the world that it's the best OS ever despite its constant crashes and compatibility issues. But because the core of the OS simplify considerably coding of softwares, all companies will soon use and encourage the use of my OS. Later, hardware manufacturer will follow the crowd. Then I'll begin to invade the gaming consoles sector because of the huge amounts of money which gravitate around it. After that...

Well, didn't this already happen?

[Agent ONE]

I'd go with a Zjentohlauedy style attack. Ground zero from space.

[Ghadrack]

Well if they are a technologically advanced indaver, and it they have significant numbers and acurate from space bombardment weaponry and were under my command. First destroy the energy production capabilities, power stations, oil refineries. Interrupt the water supply and sanitation systems by bombing or blasting water and sewage processing centers, then cut off supply lines by bombing shipping and trucking companies and major highways, bridges between cities. Keep this up for about two weeks and the populations of the major cities will begin to starve and will begin eliminating each other especially if you can trap large population centers by bombing their exit routes frequently.

As most of the major population centers on this planet are entirely dependent upon outside resources for food and water those pupulations would be relatively easy to eliminate.

Were I technologically advanced, but lacked large numbers my plan would involve altering the atmosphere of the planet skewing CO2 or nitrogen levels by enough to destroy human the population but not be enough to destroy the entire ecosystem. Devising a method to manipulate CO2 production in the oceans and burning of several major forested areas would do the trick. If you could manage to manipulate global oxygen levels taking this rock would be comical.

[LORD KUNGFU]

pishhh! So easy. IF your looking to kill humans with out destroying the planet. Just spread some diseases or a virus like the bird flu around. It would wipe out the the human race in about a week if you could spread it fast enough. Maybe even some kind of chemical warfare. That would be way more powerful than having a bunch of drop ship or bombs ect......OR mentioned earlier, just poison the water supplies. Drop ships and lasers are for the movies. IN real life, biological creatures like us are easy to kill off, so eazy for sheezy, makes my arms feel breezy.

[capt.actionjackson]

The best way to take over a planet is to start out with small land and air based attack craft. Then you go in with a mutant that has been enhanced by Hagar the Witch and enlarge him to ginormous proportions to take care of the mop up.

Obviously, your only weakness will be against giant combining robots.

[LORD KUNGFU]

Also, if you had the technology for space travel, then you could create loud enough sound or noise globally, you could just make sound or noise so loud and constant, that nobody on earth could sleep and we would just eventually commit suicide from lack of sleep or kill eachother. Eventually, we would die. Actually, you could creat a sound wave that could simply travel the planet like a sunami blowing everyones eardrums and killing them. IIRC, you can die by sound if its loud enough.

[wolfx]

LOL! If sound can make glass crack, i wonder if there's a frequency high enough to make your brains burst.

[LORD KUNGFU]

Nah, killing the kids would still leave adults to have more kids. Also, that would leave time for people to come up with a way to have kids and hide them knowing that the human race was being exterminated. It was be too time consuming to round up all the children and hold them hostage. It would be easier to just wipe everybody out and spend your resources cleaning up the mess. Then take over the planet. If you are tring to take the planet for its natural resources, then killing everybody at once would not be a good option as it would pollute the natural resources. Also, you may want to use humans as slaves. Leaving humans alive though, would give us time to think, and even fight back. If you killed my kid, yeah, Id be demoralized, but that would just make me angrier for revenge. You really could not psychologically stop a lot of people. It would just make us fight back harder. So if somebody killed my kid, I would not stay home and just pout feeling bad. I would be out with guns ablazing, or hide out, take my time, make a plan, and wipe out the entire family of the person who killed my kid. So, there would be a violent frenzy by a lot of people if kids were captured, yet there will be others ready to take action. A risky proposition by the aliens, because humans do have weapons and can fight back.

Humans would not have time to fight back or find a way to protect themselves if sudden attack by chemicals or disease. Hell, humans would not even know they were under alien attack until its too late. How many people do you know saying that the bird flu is caused by aliens. NONE! So, we could be bombarded by disease at this very moment, and would not even know that its some E.T. doing it to us. Silent, but deadly. TO EASY DRILL SEARGENT! TO EASY!

[Nightbat]

I'd introduce politicians into their society

Works like a charm in destroying civilisations

[pfunk]

it's called a "gravity well" people. If you are already in orbit all you have to do is drop rocks

345568[/snapback]

I like the combination of Monkeys and Katana's,,, drop hamsters

[tetsujin]

it's called a "gravity well" people. If you are already in orbit all you have to do is drop rocks

345568[/snapback]

Yeah, but you can't just "drop" them, you have to "de-orbit" them - apply enough force to them to make them fall out of orbit, and quickly. For the amount of energy needed to de-orbit something massive enough to survive atmospheric entry and do some significant damage after the ground-based defensive weapons have taken a crack at it, I feel like the amount of energy going into this attack (especially if the rocks aren't readily on-hand, if they need to be imported from an asteroid belt or something) could be better spent elsewhere, unless the particular circumstances of the battle are such that you really need a lot of cheap, disposable ballistic mass. Plus bombardment can only accomplish so much. At some point you need to get your hands dirty.

Here's my take on the situation. IANAMC ("I am not a military commander" for those not familiar with this every-day shorthand... )

First I assume there's a compelling reason to take the planet and/or a large portion of its population alive rather than blasting them to space dust. I'm also going to assume the attackers don't have an overwhelming advantage in technology or numbers - because what fun is that? If my troops have godlike powers we'll just invade however we like.

Troop drops (Starship Troopers/Gundam Seed style) have the advantage that the enemy isn't presented with large targets, but rather a multitude of small targets and comparable decoys. This is great for establishing an invasion on the ground or for harrassment attacks as depicted in ST. Once some territory is secured, I would want to reinforce the ground forces by sending down larger drop-ships carrying more troops and heavier units (large land/air/naval battleships, etc.), and establish a base of sorts. A drop-capable cap ship could serve in that capacity, though I expect there would be better ways of doing it. (Normally a space ship would be specialized for space, not generalized for all environments. An all-environment ship could get the job done, and be good when the base needs to be established quickly - but I expect a better option would be to send down materials to set up a field station - something that would be semi-permanent and likely abandoned if need be.)

Space superiority is important, but like air superiority it alone can't get the job done. I would think an orbital bombardment happening concurrently with the land invasion would be best - if the bombardment happens first and goes on for too long then the defenders have time to rally their defense and harden their position, making the ground invasion tougher. Rather I'd want the initial bombardment to cause chaos, which the drop troops could take advantage of. So the bombardment happens just as the troops are being sent into the atmosphere, and the troops arrive to promptly mop-up the military forces not already blasted into atoms.

The initial invasion would likely have to be concentrated on one defensible area - a small continent or two, perhaps. (I'm assuming my invasion force isn't large enough to immediately conquer the whole planet.) This has the disadvantage that the defending forces on the rest of the planet will have an opportunity to rally for their defense and counter-attack, but it makes it much easier for my forces to become established on the planet's surface. The space forces would likely hold mostly to a stationary orbit over that area, while ground and space forces establish defenses against long-range missile attacks which could threaten the fleet. The fleet's space superiority would be used as an offensive tool to expand the ground forces' territory, and the ground forces' territory would be used to establish defensive measures to protect themselves and the space fleet.

[Briareos9]

Well... to maintain peace keeping ratios I'm going to need over 60 million troops with supporting personnel, armor, etc. ignoring any lost on the way in. That's if they actually surrender "peacefully." To hold a planet that doesn't want to be held will require significantly more people on the ground.

As you're attacking from space, nukes and anything radioactive or particularly fancy is rather pointless. Dropping a large enough rock will do just fine, and be probably be easier to clean up after. Biological agents can be used to kill a decent amount of people, but in order to actually use them you'd already have to have a presence on the ground. Not to mention they can back fire on you all to easily, and promote levels of collatoral damage which may be unacceptiable. Chemical agents ditto, although it's harder to affect a wider area. Dropping BC agents from a re-entry vehicle seems of questionable value as there is almost no way they can't catch on and counter or minimize the effects.

If possible it's probably best to insert appropriately sized asteroids to hit key military targets. This would be conducted while aerospace fighters enter their airspace clearing the way for the deployment of ground forces to seize control.

One of the big questions has to be though, why bother? You can obtain the resources you need from asteroids and stuff you don't have to fight for, you can build robots and industrial machinary to do the work of slaves, and with the proper setup you can grow stuff in space. Unless you can actually seize a planet intact enough to take advantage of perhaps its industrial base, what is the point? To do that you either are going to have to invest considerable resources to nail the planet down, or be exceedingly clever with what amounts to political maneuvering.

Edited November 17, 2005 by Briareos9

[Jolly Rogers]

You may fire when ready.

[chrono]

I'd just install a planetary sized solar reflector and freeze their asses into submission. Either that or wait 20 years for the population to decrease alot and then move the reflector and wait 5 years for the world-wide melting to further decrease the population (via drowning, mudslids, etc). And then just stroll in and claim the newly terraformed planet as mine.

Or fire Sub-lightspeed hamsters in from their local moon!