Re: FT: Thought on Orbital Bombardment...

>For example, can you do orbital bombardment in Star Trek? Why sure! And
quite >accurately too! You can stun ONLY a single city block from
'standard'
(Note they never >gave a good idea how high this was :o) and you can
take
out a single building with the full >force of the ships weapons and even
carpet bomb and small area with fire without >endangering your landing
party!
>(Extra points for naming the episodes :o)

"A Piece of the Action" if I remember correctly...

>As I understand the 'background,' GZG 'standard' ships weapons are a
type
of particle >beam. Can you bombard a planet with them? Actually no. Why?
Having gotten an >opportunity to attend a class on proposed "High Energy
Weapons" for the Air Force, I >found that particle beams come in two
types:
Neutral and Charged.
>
>As I recall, Charged work wonderful out in the vacuum of space. And
they
are highly >ineffective inside a planetary magnetosphere. Neutrals are
just
the opposite.
>So if your ships are 'optimized' to fight in a vacuum, then they would
be
equipped with >Charged particle beam cannon. While any ground
bombardment
would require a VERY >low orbit and a dedicated Neutral particle beam
cannon.

There was an excellent article of this in the JTAS (Journal of the
Travelers
Aid Society).  I don't remember the issue.  In it listed the possiblity
of
having a combined particle beam capable of both charged and neutral. 
End
result is the best of both worlds...

>The 'idea' of comparing the Pacific Island campaign to a space campaign
only goes as far >as general operations and logistics. If your going to
think of shore bombardment as >comparable to surface bombardment from
orbit,
then you should really look at the success >rate of United States and
Japanese submarines in shore bombardment. From UNDER >WATER!
>(Needless to say it never happened :o)

They can do it now days with cruise missile and ballistic missiles.

>The environments and weapons used are different and the two, without
special adaptation >such as sub-roc, sub launched cruise missiles, and
land
attack missiles, rarely meet.

Sure, but the same platform carriers the weapons.  And often the weapons
mount fires both types, espcially torpedoe tubes that fire both
torpedoes
and cruise missiles.

ias