Re: [GZG] Small thought re: Orbital Assault

John Atkinson wrote:

>On 11/23/05, Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@telia.com> wrote:
>
> >Which is pretty much what the US did in Iraq too - in spite of your
quite
> >considerable troop transport capabilities, you had to drop off in a
rather
> >useless part of the desert before you could move to the places you
really
> >wanted to be... and quite a lot of your equipment and supplies were
carried
> >by commercial freighters. (Not sure about the troops themselves,
though.)
>
>That had to do with the physical geography.

If all that matters had been physical geography, you could've landed 
directly at Basra and saved yourselves a lot of marching through the 
desert. If the Iraqi defences there were unable to interfere, why didn't

you do that? :-)

> >And, of course, it is *exactly* what the Imperial troops did on Hoth
<g>
>
>Sure.	However, the defenses on Hoth, while apparently
>near-invulnerable to bombardment, covered such a limited area that in
>the space of a few hours from entering the system, the Imperials
>managed to land a large force (brigade-sized?	More?) and lumber at
>the speed of an AT-AT to within line of sight of the shield generator.

Which is basically what the UK did in the Falklands too - or, for that 
matter, what the US did in Iraq.

>At which point the Rebels were screwed.  Not precisely the best
>planetary defense plan if you mean to hold the system.  I'm still
>unclear on how, other than handwaving, the Rebels managed to evacuate
>the planet coming from a known location on the surface.

By having a planet-based weapons battery powerful enough to at least 
temporarily disable a Star Destroyer with a single hit clear the
would-be 
blockading units out of the way. (We only see one SD disabled in this
way 
on-screen, but since the gun kept firing throughout the evacuation it is

probably safe to assume that Vader tried to close the gap thus opened.)

> >>Because of the difficulty of logistical support,
> >>there was practically no armored support availible.
> >
> >The lack of armoured support in the Falklands had at least as much to
do
> >with the terrain as with the logistics. Even if the Brits had been
able to
> >get MBTs ashore, they wouldn't have been able to drive very far
without
> >running major risks of bogging down. The light vehicles they did use
were
> >far better suited to the terrain - and since the Argies didn't have
> >anything heavier to oppose them with, they were sufficient to do the
job.
>
>Eh, even a few more trucks, never mind some more helicopters,

You were talking about ARMOURED support above. Generally speaking,
trucks 
and helos aren't considered to be "armoured support" - although I've 
noticed that the US Army now calls a platoon of 4xM1114 armoured HumVees
a 
"motorized tank platoon", so maybe the requirements to count as
"armoured" 
are being softened nowadays <g>

Like I said, even if the Brits had been able to put a serious armoured 
force on the Falklands they would've had severe difficulties to use them
- 
unless they by some miracle had managed to land them within firing range
of 
Port Stanley... but I don't think that even the US would've been able to

pull *that* off :-/

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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