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Surface Warfare in the 23d & 24th Century...
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Masao: [QB] I have thought about this problem before when I was preparing one of my articles for the Starfleet Museum (open every day). I think the reason that realistic ground combat has not been shown much in ST is that doing so is prohibitively expensive. You have to design and build all sorts of new equipment and possibly vehicles as well as hiring a bunch of extras. (Sounds like good stuff for a Trek movie!) Therefore, I think the fact that ground combat has not been shown should not be taken as evidence that it does not exist. I agree with the esteemed Baloo that ground combat will continue to be necessary to hold ground during the 23rd and 24th centuries. However, attempting to invade a heavily industrialized, densely populated planet, like Earth, and invading and occupying a largely or completely uninhabited planet garrisoned with nonindigenous troops are two different things. Obviously, what you do depends largely on your goals in each case. If you want to subdue an inhabited planet or prevent them from making trouble off world you can bomb or burn them into submission by taking out few big cities, but this, of course, is not in the Federation play book. What the Feds would probably do in this case would be to establish orbital control, blockade the planet, and wait it out. This would result in the fewest civilian casualties. Any surface batteries firing either phasers or torpedoes at orbiting Fed ships could be taken out from orbit after their shields had been cracked. The orbiting ships would, of course, be shielded as well. Specialized heavily armed �monitors� or �arsenal ships� could be used for bombardment. Of course, the orbit of the planet would have to be swept for any stealthed (ie, cloaked) phaser platforms, mines, or ships. The number of men in uniform would be irrelevant unless you actually wanted to engage them in combat. If you wanted to actually expell or subdue hostile troops you might try to shell them from orbit, but there are many places to hide on a planet. They could be deep underground, behind heavy shielding, or cloaked. If you do try orbital bombardment, doing so will also be easier if you have control of orbit and nearby space, as above. In World War II, all successful US amphibious landings, either in Europe or the Pacific, required air superiority or supremecy. However, pre-landing bombardment wasn�t always successful in subduing the defenders. Getting down: Another trick is how to get down to the surface for fighting or maybe for rescuing hostages, spying, or stealing stuff. As countless episodes have shown, beaming down is the statistically safest form of transportation, perhaps because there are so many times where they don�t even try it because of interference from ion storms, radiation, magnetic rocks, scary animals, etc. Therefore, transport would be pretty easy to stop using phaser fire, shields (planetary or local), orbital gun platforms, and mines (stealthed but activated to emit radiation when a transport beam is detected), or even suspended metal particles. In particular, standard orbits (geosynchronous?) would be particularly well defended. If you go to a lower orbit, the distance for transport is less, but the speed relative to the beam-down point is higher and you are easier to hit from the ground. A higher orbit would be safer from ground fire but increases the distance for transport and the relative speed. Also, what about the inability to transport while shielded? Therefore, you might want to maintain a mechanical landing capability, ie, flying down your troops in landing craft or shooting them down in little capsules, as in the book �Starship Troopers.� You�d want to protect the capsules or ships by using lots of drones, chaff, and decoys and heavy ECM to confuse any defenders. Our boys in uniform: If I were sending down troops I�d put them in some kind of armored suit, both to give them a livable environment and to protect them against shrapnel, etc. Even if they weren�t any good against phasers, suits are still a good idea: after all, modern helmets don�t protect against bullets, but soldiers still wear them to protect their heads against other things. As long as you have suits you might also like to add some waldos to augment muscular strength (both for physical tasks and to carry heavier weapons), sensors, night vision, personal energetic shielding, ECM, etc. Maybe even personal flight capability. Regarding fighting drones or robots, I suspect the Fed might have some sort of taboo against ones that could kill, maybe because of Asimov�s laws. You could, however, have drones remotely controlled by operators up in orbit. That might be somewhat more kosher. But, as Baloo points out, the link could be jammed. Heavy weapons: I think with antigrav technology, the distinction between tank, artillery, and aircraft may vanish. I envision some sort of heavily armored and shielded land speeder, like in Star Wars, that could carry some troops and some guns and bombs heavier than a man can carry. I�d load them up with ECM and energetic shielding to hide them and protect them if they are hit. I can�t see any real use for tracked, wheeled, or legged vehicles other than they�d look cool. Armor and big guns are a must: If they had used any sort of armor in Starship Troopers (the movie) or any guns bigger than a machine gun the bugs could�ve have done any damage. Angels on your shoulder: I would think that having a ship or ships in orbit is a must for any assault landing. They can give you intelligence and fire support and beam you out of trouble in a hurry. They can also chase away any thing in orbit that wants to bother your troops. I would also set up a whole bunch of satellites to make communications easier. If you could designate targets for destruction or pick up with a laser (like they do now) or some sort of signal emitter you could have pinpoint accuracy. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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