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 Ground warfare in PDS/NGCS phase II
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| yasotay |
Posted on 16-03-2006 02:01
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 Posts: 637 Joined: September 09 2005 |
Nemmerle ? You make several assumptions that military planners cannot. I absolutely agree with you that speed is a critical factor in operations, but you ought to ask the current American administration about assuming a quick collapse of active resistance is the end of conflict. Especially if another of your assumptions was true, that one man with a missile has a reasonable chance of shooting down a flying vessel. As pointed out above America with massive technological advantage and complete supremacy of the air, let alone space, lost a conflict to an agrarian society. Therefore, unless you are willing to eradicate societies to bow them to your will your speedy invasion could end up with your fleet and ground forces caught in an operation in and around a planet. If your point is to use Taiidan tactics and then send in forces to scoop up the resources from the dead planet I can agree with you. You are correct that if you do not establish space supremacy then the ability to conduct operations close to the planet is very much in jeopardy. That is as true today as it has ever been in the last one hundred years of flight and will be in a future of space conflict. If you cannot dominate the space you will have a tough time with speed. So if you do not deal with orbital defenses and major terrestrial based weapon systems your invasion is already in trouble. A major part of that is technological prowess. If you do not have the means to defeat missiles and directed energy weapons as you transition from space, that one pissed off hold out with a Stinger is going to play Hobb with your plan. If your cannot ??just secure an area and bring down ships to take what you want.? Then someone ought to talk to most of the major military powers of the latter half of the 20th Century. It is done on a regular basis. Massive overwhelming force in a focused area, you go in get what you want and then leave. Much faster and economical than hanging around and building forts and such to secure an area. Besides that makes you less of a target by the time the defender comes up with a plan, that he has time to do if you are static in a defense. A small effort called the Normandy invasion is instructive at securing an area and bringing in what you want and the challenge of holding onto terrain once you grab it for good. I can personally attest to your point that leaving can be the more dangerous part of the operation, at least for the first group you bring in. If you have to do it more than once to the same place the defender usually takes just as much offense to the follow on effort in the landing phase as much as he did in the previous leaving phase. If you do not have the means to overcome what they might throw at you (passively or actively) you are at greater risk. Finally, and to prove I am not utterly at odds with your points, there is no one set methodology that works in all circumstances. That is what makes military planning as much an art as it is a science. There would certainly be times when your method would be the best way to conduct an operation. Others (especially if you repeat the same way continuously) will find ways to overcome your technique if you do not find the right strategy for each circumstance. Just like you learn how to beat the computer AI in games once you learn repeat behavior on its part. |
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| TelQuessir |
Posted on 17-03-2006 03:42
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 Posts: 2598 Joined: August 30 2005 |
I realise that my pre-emptive mass invasion doctrine is very risky if it doesn't work due to the reasoning of sending as much assets as possible into harm's way -hoping- that they will all make it down under the enemy's defenses or they will indeed, get blown to pieces like so many megatons of fireworks. However with the present scope of discussion it seems that such a doctrine can be feasible in the right situation, especially where a prolonged bombardment and conventional suppression and interdiction operation in the global scale would probably lead to a very long war ending up in a virtual standoff as your planet below has mobilised all its men and systems, blockaded most of its surrounding orbits et cetera, making it foolhardy for any sort of offensive action short of destroying the planet completely. Generally speaking, there is no perfect doctrine - use what you have and whatever works in the givne situation. I don't have the manpower, warship resources and the right leadership to wage a space to planet war on a multi-fleet scale. So I aim to drop in a whole bunch of stormtroopers en masse before even a declaration of war, and win it in the fastest, dirtiest manner possible using surprise and speed. With the amount of bloodshed in our present PDS-AS battlespace in fleet operations - see the 7.5 scenario and upcoming demonstrations on strategic interception - it makes sense to use whatever tools at your disposal to win before the enemy has sent a couple hundred nuclear missiles or attack drones into your orbital trajectory. This is also the justification for the development of what amounts to be superweapons, to break the stalemate of conventional massdriver, plasma cannon and missile warfare. |
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| Itharu |
Posted on 17-03-2006 04:46
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 Posts: 363 Joined: September 23 2005 |
I do not think Nukes would be used as to their effect on the planet when detonated in space. But yes, you could land troops and then declair war, which is the cheapest and is going to cost you interms of latter support from others. But from what has come up, it looks like planetary invasions are resembling midievil seiges, WWI trench warfair and the Korean War. Perhaps things would settle more like the Cold War (deturance through construction of super weapons), but I don't imagine that much diplomacy at work between Higariians and Vaygr. -Fear the Might of the Imperial Cortharian Fleet
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| TelQuessir |
Posted on 17-03-2006 04:54
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Posts: 2598 Joined: August 30 2005 |
Indeed, the land troops before declaration of war thing is similar to Pearl Harbour. But if you're in the situation of Japan, it seems an effective course of action that is prospectively made even more strategically dominating with modern weapons. Operating at an advantage over the enemy, like in the case of the 1991 Second Gulf War, you can of course elect to conduct overwhelming strikes on the enemy's defenses, blinding them then bombing them until they have no capability whatsoever to your ground invasion plans. This brings to mind gameplay in the Master of Orion series. There is rarely a prolonged WW1 style engagement unless at the start of the game, with perfect technological and economical parity. In a grand campaign, you either gain a decisive victory, or lose altogether. It's the same kind of war we are talking about here. Edited by TelQuessir on 17-03-2006 04:57 |
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| yasotay |
Posted on 17-03-2006 20:38
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Posts: 637 Joined: September 09 2005 |
I am really enjoying this thread. A fantastic discussion. I think that there are several likely common courses of action that would become norms within a large galactic war effort. The surprise attack that Tel mentions would be best used on secondary and other lesser planets that have little or no strategic value ON A CONTINUED BASIS. However as the Imperial Taiidan Fleet have just done in Talbock?s Patrol, to the Itaaran seat of power, the ?Coup de?Main? can be effective against larger significant planet if it is in fact a surprise attack with no prior notification. Indeed as Tel mentions it is a gamble, but all battle plans are. I would recommend that as well as the massive assault waves there would be a significant special operations effort beforehand to designate critical infrastructure to be attacked with precision strikes, and to conduct assassination of critical leaders in the hours leading to the initial strike. I would also recommend that you do as the evil Imperials (who also do not have a major fleet? yet) do and take as many large freighters with registries from a multitude of non-aligned star systems and pack them with your assault echelons. Other of these big fat freighters ought to be gutted to allow them to carry as many surface attack weapon systems and electronic warfare modules as is possible without making it obvious. At the appointed hour and at the same time as your special forces begin to cause chaos on the planet and in the defenses for it, the freighters break station keeping and rush the planet to execute the mission. This ought to happen before the remainder of the fleet shows up so as to make it less likely that the defense force is able to be fully prepared and focused on the invasion fleet that pops out of hyperspace. If you are really savy, you wait for the ?undercover? operation to send word that they are meeting their objectives, before you jump in with the real force. That way if things don?t work out you don?t jump in and deny that it was your forces that attacked the planet. The siege war model would be used where there are two forces of comparable size involved. This is a much more attrition based model, whereby a fleet completes the establishment of ?System-wide dominance? of space and then prepares to repel any attempts by the defenders to re-take that space from internal or external organizatons. In my fiction the 15th Hiigaran Fleet finds itself in a modified version of this sort of action in the Hemeridus Alpha system. While they have seized the space and fended off most of the Vaygr counter attacks, they have had to commit to a planetary assault earlier than one might have wanted to as it is a Hiigaran planet that they are trying to liberate. The initial intent was to draw out as much of the Vaygr units in the sector and execute a deliberate attack using their technological advantage that they assumed to have. The burn it to the ground model best fits operations that are looking to cover as much space as possible. I think that the Vaygr would have used this option more than others. While not necessarily nuking a planet to oblivion, large rocks or dense metal projectiles would cause enough damage to defenses and the surrounding terrain to make life hard. If you are in a hurry you really do not want to waste resources arguing. Give the defender a chance to surrender, then ?bam? smash and grab. |
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| Nemmerle |
Posted on 19-03-2006 18:25
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 Posts: 113 Joined: September 16 2005 |
yasotay - The Americans are losing in Iraq because they don't have the necessary will to perform a few simple necessary measures which our troops could easily be persuaded into. If for every soldier killed ten or twenty women or children, the weaker aspects of society, those that people feel an almost instinctive drive to protect which would probably be all the more emphasised in a tribal culture such as the vaygr, were rounded up and executed in public resistance would very quickly crumble. It is not a special gun or a mighty fleet that kills people, these things help but it is a will that kills people, be that will to press a button and destroy an entire city or to run someone through with a sword. If after these events a society still did not bow to your rule then indeed you would annihilate them, preferably with some form of biological or chemical weapon maybe a nerve agent in order to leave the infrastructure intact and then move on to the next group. As for the other, see Somalia for an example of exactly what happens when loitering over an enemy with the capability to take out your air units. This capability will only become more and more emphasised as time goes on leading to a situation where in order to 'secure' an area you must make sure that everyone between your landing site and the horizon you can see at the maximum range of the weapon is dead, to be brutally honest this would probably encompass a rough quarter of the planet. A particle beam is not that large a weapon in the grand order of things, nor is a missile, they are easily concealed weapons and a planet is a large place to hide them in. There would be thousands, if not tens of thousands of these weapons concealed on a planet, most probably under some form of stealthing. What people don't seem to realise is the sheer production capability of a planet, you're not going to be looking at a few major clustered defence centres you can hit and then land on as you would in a Normandy style invasion. As technology has advanced we have seen a continual blurring of the distinction between civilian and combatant, it is one you point out so clearly yourself in your example of post-invasion Iraq, it is one we have seen to a lesser extent in Afghanistan and earlier in the jungles of Vietnam. The simple rule is this, the more advanced a technology the more destructive power is put in the hands of individual people or small groups thereof, this creates a more distributed force base which in turn makes an area increasingly difficult to secure. Given the technological base that is present in the times we are talking about it would be next to impossible to secure an area and simply bring transports down to take what you wanted. It would be like Somalia only on an entirely different order of magnitude. |
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| yasotay |
Posted on 20-03-2006 01:36
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Posts: 637 Joined: September 09 2005 |
Nemmerle - does make a good point regarding the potential of a society to have an ability to be willing to make war on a grand scale; sort of a global Switzerland. If you do have to take on such, then as he points out you will likely have to resort to a extermination process through the introduction of weapons of mass destruction or mass effect on the populace. I imagine that the circumstances might be a bit different if one was trying to liberate a planet from an occupation force. Again this might not be very difficult with a society contentious in nature, willing to overwhelm the oppressor with shear volume, assuming they have the means to do so. Handheld or even crew served weapons would make the ?over the top? mass attack method even more useless than they were in WW1. As to Somalia and other events regarding the use of weapons against flying things. I agree with you very much that if you use incorrect tactics and do not have a means to overcome the weapons there is a good probability you will suffer for it. I happen to have very good insight into that particular event, and others like it within the context you discuss. US rotorcraft today are shot at on a very regular basis, with every sort of possible weapon. It becomes a matter of probability that eventually the odds will turn against you. In our world today hundreds of low altitude aircraft fly in harms way twenty-four hours a day. Yes every once in a while one is shot down. However it is something like one aircraft in every 50,000 flight hours. This is due to ever changing tactics and the addition of new and improved countermeasures for missiles. So I have to disagree that it would be impossible to achieve a superiority. You MUST have the means to overcome technology of your opponent, be it offensive PDS for missiles and shielding for directed energy (both very real in the HW universe), otherwise I would absolutely agree with your supposition. It is however possible to overcome the technology. Finally, I certainly hope America never finds itself willing to carry out the methods you mention. I can tell you categorically that I doubt you would find American soldiers or marines willing to do what you mention. They may talk in frustration about a desire to enforce a genocidal regime, but I know them well enough to know that very few would be willing to do so. While you are correct that the Arab society is vulnerable to such efforts, you might be surprised how many officers and soldiers alike would disobey such a morally debased order. Not to mention that it would impact tremendously on the almighty dollar and generally be bad for business, which is what really counts? oddly enough. Yes, it has happened. Mai Lai is a psychic scar within the Army and the American public memory. If such was acceptable then the prisoner abuse would be of little concern regardless of the media hype. Perhaps if it comes to that we should allow the Rwandan military to enforce the peace. |
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| Nemmerle |
Posted on 20-03-2006 22:20
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Posts: 113 Joined: September 16 2005 |
The problem is that western armies have typically had an overwhelming technological advantage, jaming devices, guided weapons, the ability to strike at a target from stand off range. Yet someone with an RPG and next to no training can still take out a chopper, perhaps not that easily but it can still be done. When you approach technological parity however this risk becomes ever more present. You may have the capability to protect yourself from a single defencive emplacement, which is perhaps doubtful considering ground based weapons are not restrained by the same limitations as those mounted on starships. But from ten such weapons, twenty? You stated earlier that technological superiority was highly important, that if you did not have the means to defeat the weapons fired at you you were already in trouble. Well technological parity, which is pretty much a certainty considering how long the war has raged on for is very likely to remove that advantage. As for a soldier's willingness to commit atrocities there are several factors involved. Milgram's study of obedience to authority is highly suggestive that the majority of people would indeed commit such an offence. Then there's Zimbardo's prison simulation study. Sometimes it's nice to think we'd never do such a thing, but evidence would suggest otherwise. |
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| Sun Tzu |
Posted on 20-03-2006 23:10
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 Posts: 528 Joined: September 08 2005 |
:topic: but related to Nemmerle's remarks about soldiers and authority During my instruction time when I was in the army, they organised a little simulation: a blue-helmet patrol in a city (it was the time of Sarajevo). Just two guys with assault guns and blank-munitions. We had very explicit orders not to shoot any civilian. At one point in the patrol path, a guy in a white t-shirt was going out of a door 5-6 meters before the patrol and started running away in the opposite direction with empty hands clearly visible. 50% of the patrols shot him in the back. :topic: |
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| Itharu |
Posted on 21-03-2006 00:04
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Posts: 363 Joined: September 23 2005 |
Things are spilling a little over into modern day, as opposed to the future. So I guess in the end of things, there's no specific or best method to invade a planet, but there are factors depended on many variables. Things such as : Political standing, planet size, planetary value, concentrations of populations in urban centres, military standings on both sides, support from people.... It's a very delicate balancing act of everything. Maybe in the end, invading planets might not even be nescessary. -Fear the Might of the Imperial Cortharian Fleet
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| yasotay |
Posted on 21-03-2006 23:15
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Posts: 637 Joined: September 09 2005 |
All good points and Itharu is correct about modern day and that each military situation will have different challenges to overcome. Hell by the 60th Century humans may be more Borg like than we can imagine, then all you have to do is figure out how to insert the virus telling the population to sleep.  Interestingly Nemmerle's point gets around to my original best method. Put everyone to sleep (so 10% don't wake up...eh) and declare victory. If you can do hyperspace and ion guns you ought to be able to come up with a means to put enough chemicals or snooze rays into the planetary atmosphere to make most of the population sleep. I have not read the studies mentioned but would have to agree that socialization play a big part in the willingness to do the deed (my crude analogy being the reference to Rwandan troops). Sun Tzu - point taken, but having lived those training simulations myself there is a big difference between a blank and a lecture and real bullets. |
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| TelQuessir |
Posted on 22-03-2006 03:49
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Posts: 2598 Joined: August 30 2005 |
Nemmele's point regarding the raw potential of a planet as an indestructible space control platform is definately valid. However just like the concept of fortifying an entire nation against attack in the real world - this is impossible to attain due to the resources and time required to build said defenses, and of course the mandatory maintenance costs. So said for Hitler's Atlantic Wall - did it manage to stop the Allies from invading Europe? Sure, it -could- have worked, if the Germans had committed their panzer divisions in counterattacking the beachheads immediately when the invasion started - but real life is never about perfect-case situations. A global defense system that theoretically secures a planet from an entire NAVY's assault would probably be a one-off galactic occurance that took a few decades to produce. Even if that monster of a natural fortress were created its defenses, like on historical forts, will probably never be used. And just like those forts, the money spent on creating those giant white elephants that got outdated from the natural evolution of warfare would be better spent on more practical mechanisms of defense - not restricted to just naval power but also the capacity of a nation to wage war far from its borders, thereby preventing a nuclear war on your homeworld. Which is a decidedly screwed up situation. By failing to prevent Makaan from achieving orbital positions over Hiigara, the HGN had failed in its most crucial mission. Now back on the fort topic - since we're talking about tens of thousands of super or even mega-capital class weapons on a planet, how are you going to support such a global defense system? Crew, power, resources, all will be sucked into just keeping the white elephant functional while the enemy naval power can simply isolate the planetary system (and leave it to rot on its own regard) and move on to less well protected targets - blitzkrieg fashion. Therefore I see PRACTICAL orbital defense revolves around a very few but very capable systems capable of extreme interception range. These ODS armaments will be supported by local system defense craft (defensive cruisers - "Monitors"). The actual defenses of this planetary system, however, lies in bringing the war to the enemy's doorstep - which means a decisive hand in galactic politics and knowing what is going to occur far beforehand, to strike at and destroy threats before they even go on the offensive (Israeli doctrine). In 61st Century technology, whomever gets on the offensive, wins. That much can be predicted from the trends we see in modern warfare. But in our realm you have of course, freedom of choice - want to isolate yourself under a seemingly invincible umbrella of planetary defense systems - thereby losing out in almost all aspects of successful national development; you can of course design something like that. Edited by TelQuessir on 22-03-2006 03:52 |
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| Ironwatsas |
Posted on 26-07-2006 14:16
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 Posts: 856 Joined: October 21 2005 |
THREAD REVIVE!!! But what about the other factions? The Hiigarans and Vaygr are nice and all, but what about all the other factions in the PDSverse? The Taiidan, with their mismatched technological base (hundred year old tech fighting alongside brand spankin' new hardware. The Cush, with their economic ties with Hiigara and numerical infiority should be much diffrent. The Elyassians, with decades of ethnic diversity and economic superiority. The Kassi with their unimaginibly advanced technology decades if not centuries ahead of the Hiigarans. The newly formed Arl-Coutl/Nalthorian alliance with their suprime industrial might and the funding to rival the greatest of superpowers. How would these factions be structured in their ground forces as opposed to the HGN or VMF? Discuss. Hai! |
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| Nemmerle |
Posted on 26-07-2006 18:25
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Posts: 113 Joined: September 16 2005 |
Quote TelQuessir wrote:Now back on the fort topic - since we're talking about tens of thousands of super or even mega-capital class weapons on a planet, how are you going to support such a global defense system? I wouldn't leave it turned on all the time  If we look at modern-day emplacement weapons such as nukes countries are typically able to maintain them once built for negligable budgets compared to their entire output. Even the production of such weapons is almost a negligable expense. The Manhatan project only cost a very small amount when looked at as part of the larger budgets at the time. In 1966 the US alone had thirty two thousand one hundred and ninety three nuclear warheads and that wasn't even the entirety of their budget. The production of an entire planet would increase with the technology level and would be quite incredible by the time you're looking at hyperspace level tech. It should easily be able to absorb the costs of creating thousands if not millions of such emplacements, we should view their presence in a defence grid as the likely standard after the protracted threat of war being placed upon an industrial planet rather than as the exception. |
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