Re: Planetary defenses

It is a similar situation to what is currently available in terms of
Air superiority.  Currently, unless you own the air, you are highly
vulnerable to aerial strikes - bombs, missiles etc.  You can set up
static AA defenses, even dig them in, but in relative terms they are
immobile and easily identified and therefore can be easily disrupted,
if not destroyed.

Translating this to a space based superiority it should be relatively
easy
for attacking ships to remain outside of the effective range of ground
based systems or at least out of arc, map them out and then deal with
them
appropriately.	Whether that is dropping a 50M boulder to make a crater
2 miles wide and 300 meters deep, shaking everything for dozens of miles
to a dozen titanium rods to penetrate a missile silo cover, these things
can

be done leisurely and accurately once a fleet has acheived space
domination.

On the other hand, a good offense is a good defense.  If you're stripped
down
to only planetary defenses you' probably in dire straits anyway.  Having
a
good space navy could make planetary defense a much less critical job
since
you can intercept stuff with time and space to spare.

--Binhan

Los wrote:

> OK I've noticed that many people on this list seem to assume that
> orbital strikes, ortillery and woning orbit means it's pretty much all
> over for a planet, that it might as well roll over and die.
>
> I'd like to throw it back at everyone and ask, if you had to design a
> planetary defense to counter such a situation what could be done? How
> effective would be ground based wepons? Obviously they could be very
> effective against atmospheric craft but what about Stuff in space?
>
> I know fixed defenses may be a problem but what about underground
> defense complexes connected by hundreds of kilometer of underground
rail
> where heavy weapons fuel with the vast power reserves available to a
> planet could pop up shoot and scoot? Any ideas? I'm thinking about
> defensing the planet here not subjugating it.
>
> Los