1) Gravitic tech may make getting the required masses for a reaction lower
possible.
2) PA or Infantry Walkers (Heavy Gears) could easily deploy this in single or
few shot capacities and probably withstand the rads at some distance from the
blast (no direct primary or secondary area mind you, just the further out
rads).
3) Warheads could get smaller. If we're talking about.01 ktons we're talking
about 10 tons which is 10,000 kg. Which is about 20,000 lbs which is like
about the capacity of a flight of small attack craft. Gross, but not world
wrecking. But awful news for a lander. Something tells me THADs and such would
use larger versions of this.
4) As for escalation: They're invading your planet. They've already taken out
most of your orbital net and ortilleried you to soften you up. It doesn't get
much worse. Get the nukes out. You have little to lose.
5) As for not having any working comms: It is not that easy to take out a
redundant comm network. I'm sure a fair sized planet would have the
commsats you'd kill, but they'd have stealthed powered-down redundant
backups you'd never find. Even when they came up, you'd be lucky. You know how
hard it is to find a stealthed satellite? Pretty darn hard. They aren't that
big, they don't mass much, with low power output and stealth you'd have a real
time with them.... And you have buried fiber landlines which are hard to cut.
And ULF. And etc. etc. If you have Meson based comms, you cannot disable it.
(Of course, then you should have meson guns too....)
6) As it relates to landings: You plan to land where the enemy isn't. You
cover the contingency you will be wrong. Thus you arm your landers and armour
them. And yes, I think you do NOT let Marines drive them for good reasons. I'm
pretty certain Marines possess three useful military skills: Marching,
Shooting, and Dying Slowly. (Of course, Marine Air Corps, etc. have some more
technical MOS skills). They shouldn't be operating heavy machinery. Get them
down on the ground, they'll do what they do and sieze you a spacehead. (is
that the 2185 version of an airhead?). You'd have ortillery if things got hot
or if you were "assault landing"
(ortillerying otherwise might be a giveaway). You have orbital split-out
to make it hard to know where your forces are going (equivalent to OTH).
But the enemy has still-hidden spysats... you can't get them all. And
they have guys on the ground with fiberphones and binocs. You won't get that
much time. And if they are an inhabited world, they have missile batteries and
guns buried under tons of rock that you couldn't hope to hurt until they
expose themselves to kill your first wave. So..... expect a landing against an
inhabitted world (even if you have space superiority) to be a painful process.
Plan to minimize, but account for the Murphy's out there. They'll get you
every time.
> Thomas of Estoria wrote:
> 6) As it relates to landings:
I just have to reiterate one thing. In any type of major operation it is
probably quite inefficient to have your landers perform double duty as both
gunships AND transport landers. At first glance this seems odd but think about
it. This does not mean landers should not be armed and armored, they should
be. But effective gunship operations require different training different
skill sets and dedicated attention to be done effectively. There's a good
reason why this is so in just about every militray today. Examples of Vietnam
not withstanding even there you had dedicated gunships on every operation.
Sure slicks kicked in fire support on landing but the fact is that once they
dropped the troops off, they got the hell out of dodge UNLESS there was some
sort of extraordinary circumstances that they had to stick around and add
their firepower in (i.e. fuck up in planning or unexpected very bad turn of
events!)
During an air assault (I have been in many live ones and they are extremely
complex affairs, more so than straight parachute ops!) slick pilots need to
worry about getting out of orbit. Most likely they will not just plop down
right on the LZ but will come down some ways from the LZ and NOE to the target
in order to take advantage of terrain masking and what not. There's no time to
be screwing around with fighting the enemy. Leave that to dedicated resources.
Of course this will be an entire package with escort, sweep and weasel support
form aerospace fighters. The pilots need to concentrate on getting their loads
down as fast as possible, then getting the fuckout and back upstairs for more
troops or whatever. Naturally if there's fire on the LZ they will have their
won armament to add suppressive fire. Escort gunships will be the ones that
get to the LZ and loiter taking out last minute undiscovered resistance and
hanging around to provide immediate fire support and suppression at the
bequest of the landing troops. When my life is on the line I want a
porfessional gunship crew that spends all their time worrying about covering
my ass and understands all the ins and out of this particular skill. I also
want to make sure that the slicks will be around to pull me out or bring down
more troops. Or be my transportation for subsequent operations on planet. (You
are talking a lot of mass on transports to ensure everyone can get down in one
pass.) Note that assault landings are major undertakings and hence should have
all available resources dedicated to them.
Having said all that, there is obviously a very real niche for dual role
ships. The aliens scenario (for whatever other faults it has) despite and
isolated unsupported mission by one ship. So without the resources (Patrol
ships out in the fringe come to mind too) you do need to have a dual purpose
lander. Note that this is not a function of the lander itself, (I support like
airframe but modular package designs) but training and doctrine of the crew
which is the real issue. Another instance is "third world" powers on a limited
budget which may opt to combine the two into one, but they would probably be
default operate less efficiently at the point of action sicne they have to
worry about two seperate missions at once. And these lesser powers already
with strapped resources most likely will ahve less resource sto dedicated to
multirole crew proficiency. (Having experienced this myself first hand over
the years)
BTW once a force is down and means to stay on the ground (Say in a major
extended operation), then it probably makes more economic and operational
sense to have dedicated on-planet airframes to operate from field strips
both for transport and air support since they are cheaper to construct and
maintain. (Truck them down in modular containers.)
Note that the Canadians have an interesting model in that they rotate their
pilots between fixed witng and rotary wing paths throughout there careers but
almost never is a crew doing both within the same tour.
ANyway my two cents take it or leave it.
Cheers...