RE: Communication and Travel

You wrote: 
>
>A secondary consideration is that a colony will *probably* use 2nd or
>3rd tier technology for it's defense forces. I mean imagine trying to
>engage a battalion of American M1 or British Challengers with Russian
>T-34s or German Panthers! Those particular tanks were stupendous for
>their era, but compared to a Chobham armored turbine driven tank armed
>with a hypervelocity smoothbore that is deadly accurate at 40 mph over
>terrain coupled with realtime satellite recce....

Not quite valid comparision.  Ever seen a swarm of size 2 HKP/3-armed 
tank destroyers with attitude problems?  It's ugly.  And cheap.  The 
other approach is to assume that since the colonies have limited 
manpower resources, and given the problems of transport, colonies might 
have the best money can buy.  Again, a colony is a major investment, 
and military power, in the middle of an interstellar war, would be a 
requirement.

John