So, I was giving some serious thought (after watching StarShip Troopers and reading assorted military fiction) into the logistics of invading a planet. What would be the best general doctrine? (I’m assuming that nobody here has any real-world experience with invading a planet from space)
I figure the StarShip Troopers method wouldn’t work very well. Even in the book it struck me as a poorly concieved attack. You can’t just drop down troops everywhere and have them go about blowing up the enemy willy-nilly, there has to be an actual goal which will result in you being in control of the planet. Heck, in many examples of sci-fi, folks won’t even try to invade a planet, prefering to pound it from orbit until the enemy capitulates. But of course, for the sake of argument, let’s assume the invaders are rather fond of the concept of invading the planet.
Assume a planet with enough capability to have at least a small fighting force in space, and some kind of planet-wide defenses (be they in the form of orbiting forts, laser and missile armed weather satelites, or even long-range missile or beam weaponry fired from the planet surface itself) as well as assorted planet-based fighting forces (armies, navies, air forces, etc.)
Why? Well, mostly because I’m bored and at work, but I’m also toying around with a sci-fi story I’m writing in my free time, and the SDMB seems like a handy sounding board to bounce ideas off of.
A very valid proposition, but let’s say you want the planet as intact as possible. Perhaps you need it’s agricultural capability or something, needless to say, you don’t want it to glow on the night side when you’re done.
I picked it up from a different message board I used to frequent. Though it now suddenly occurs to me that that abbreviation doesn’t show up on this board at all. :smack:
I don’t think invading a planet is practical, in any sense of the word. Not if you want/need to keep a majority of the indigs alive and functioning. If all you want is the planets resources, then dump a tailored bio-weapon into the ecosphere and wait for the natives to all drop dead. If you need the population…you are SOL.
Assuming you want to keep the populace and infrastructire reasonably intact, you’ll want to drop troops to capture key command points, disabling the enemy government as quickly as possible. You’ll want to start by disabling anything the enemy has in orbit. This will be the most critical - and probably hardest - part of the job. Once you control orbit, you can drop precision-guided bombs from orbit to take out communcations centers, radar (or whatever) installations, and missile sites so that the enemy will be unable to prevent your troops from landing.
If you wanted to make the story completely un-awesome, you could make it a giant hacker battler for the computer systems that control the infrastructure of the planet. No bombs or explosions, just furious typing.
Is that a reference to Clerks: The Animated Series?
If you’ve developed the technology to survive indefinitely in deep space and propel yourself across the interstellar void, how likely is it that you need to fight over a planet? There are vastly more resources available that around bound up in a deep gravity well.
Planets can make handy places for bases, where you can just pile up extra supplies, communcations centers, etc. If the planet is habitable, even better, because then the base can be self-supporting, bringing in food and materials found on the planet rather than having to get it shipped out there (in the case of say, a base in an asteroid field or in orbit over a gas giant or something). Depending on communcations technology used in whatever universe this planetary invasion is occuring in, you might need something like a planet to build a communications center powerful enough to send messages over long distances in short enough periods of time to be useful.
Plus, if you’re building a space station type base, then planets make handy anchors to keep the station from floating about willy-nilly. Not entirely clear though on the orbital mechanics of two spacecraft of differing mass (and thus, presumably, different orbit characteristics) docking together though. I guess the orbit would change somewhat every time a ship docked at a base or left.
[ol]
[li]“Habitable” planets are almost certainly a rarity; even worlds that are Earth-like in terms of size, mass, and orbital distance/temperment relative to solar output are likely to be uninhabitable (without extraordinary efforts of terraforming) owing to differences in atmospheric content, rotational inclination, relative albedo and climatology, et cetera. [/li][li]Communication centers (assuming we’re talking about some kind of electromagnetic or gravitic transmissions) are better located in space rather than on the surface of a planet to prevent interference.[/li][li]The ability to voyage between stars, even if done with some kind of speculative superluminal or nonlocal path propulsion implies the ability to construct and manage large structures in space, which also implies the ability to mine resources and be self-sufficient in basic needs (food, water, air). You’re not going to develop a space-going population by lugging stuff up against Earth’s gravity. Once you have the ability to do so the necessity of a planetary surface is much reduced; basically, the only things a planet uniquely provides is gravity (which can be simulated by rotating a body about an axis), and radiation shielding (accomodated by adding dense, impermeable mass to the outside of your habitat/ship). [/li][li]Habitats, like planets, can do just fine orbiting around a star, and indeed, if you’ve the ability to sustainably generate power independant of a star, there’s no reason why you couldn’t just survive indefinitely in deep space.[/ol] [/li]
We’re prejudiced about planets because they’re all we’ve ever known, and the assumption about space exploration (and space opera) is that we’ll hop from planet to planet. In fact, once we’ve the ability to survive indefinitely sans an expensive umbilical cord of supplies, there’s no particularly good reason to live on a planet. No doubt we’ll still be interested in them–they can be awfully pretty and they are, presumably, an environment where other intelligent life might develop–but I doubt we’d have any need to fight over one.
Sometimes you have to conquer a planet just to prevent it from being used as a base of attack against your forces, who are busy pillaging the system for useable hunks of asteroid. Again, bio-weapons would be the tool of choice. Quick, easy, self-perpetuating, self-targeting, etc.
You’re assuming the final destination, not any interim steps. That’s like saying, “once you can send video over the Internet, no one will ever need a television set again.” Or even, “once you have home theaters with excellent sound and video quality, no one will ever go to the movies again.”
Perhaps things are headed that way, but we’re not there yet, and millions still go to the movies and watch their TVs.
We could also say that living on dry land isn’t all that essential to life. People could easily set up floating cities that aren’t tied to the land, growing hydroponic crops, etc.
Habitable planets are just easier. You don’t have to worry about your oxygen recycling system breaking down. You have millions of acres of arable land for agriculture.
Plus, let’s not forget the luxury, and the human love of wide open spaces and varied scenery. Yes, people can live perfectly fine in tight apartment blocks in major cities, with artificial lights, bad air, food and water shipped in from a great distance, etc. But people still like to go to the mountains or the beach for vacation.
If it were up to me, I’d just attach some sort of propulsion to their moon (assuming they have one) and nudge it slightly into a death spiral. “Okay, y’all have a month before your moon plows into you. You’ll be able to start measuring the change in two or three days, and you’ll have irrefutable calculations of the end result a day or so after that. Now we’re going to knock down all your satellites so you can’t talk to each other. We’ll be listening to the following frequency for your surrender.”
Then just sit back and wait, and knock down any ships they send up with hyperaccelerated fragments of asteroid.
As a player of EV Nova, let me tell you invading a planet that doesn’t want to be invaded is not a task to be taken lightly.
As silenus pointed out, invading a planet whose populace & resources you want it almost pointless.
Instead, dominate the planet. First, you’ll want to lure all their space forces off the planet and lead them on a merry chase around the solar system, picking off the smaller, faster lead ships.
Then, you can concentrate on taking out their larger, slower, but more powerful main ships. Try to get one off by itself if possible, and concentrate your firepower on it. Rinse, repeat.
Once you’re removed their space fleet, they’re pretty much defenseless, and you can demand tribute in the form of resources, manufactured goods, etc.
