[FT?] Planetary defenses

kwalsh@mail.ice.net spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> one of the standard ideas for Traveller is the Deep Site Meson Gun

Conventional wisdom was because the guns were miles deep in mantle, you didn't
attack them. Their sensors were not (but these were small, many in number, and
hard to kill all of them). So you attacked the sites from orbit. The active
ones could be targetted with missiles (HARMs) and the passive ones could be
attacked with area bomardments. Now, you'd kill some, but not all of the
passives, but if you
degraded the firing solution, you were better off - and then you
hoped you took the planet. It was also practical to use intel to gain sensor
maps to target your bombardment.

And orbital assault forces could be dropped on the planet (the Meson gun
couldn't get them all on the way down) and you would then hope that the
Marines in BattleDress could force access to the Gun Control site and
eliminate the gun. Alternately, a spec ops or covert mission could be inserted
ahead of fleet arrival with this in mind. (I once
had this happen to a planet the PCs were on - commandos destroyed the
deep site meson gun).

the sensors were carried on floats with long tethers,
> allowing the ships to maintain passive ops til the last minute.

SDBs should be anyway to get in and out of atmospheres and hide. SDBs on the
sea botttom can lurk until main line fleet elements leave and then emerge to
support guerilla operations by attacking second line fleet elements, supply,
repair, and troop ships.

> the idea of using a Trident sub as an SDB is almost appealing, you

And probably not all that expensive relative to spaceships.

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