Re: Troop Capacity

You wrote: 

>Okay, but it would be fair to say the reason we use active sensors is 
>they give us more data, faster. Passive solutions take longer to 

You've gotta fly in-system.  Plenty of time for a good sensor network 
(sensor bouys strung out into the asteroid belt, wot?) to refine a 
firing solution.

>develop and are usually less deterministic. So there is a point in 
>having active sensors. And these can get located from orbit or by EW 
>fighters or recon missions by SF. Now... once the active sensors for 
>PD are down.... then they can go to passive and still be a threat. 
>But a lesser one, and perhaps slower to react, giving the invader 
>opportunity if he is quick. 

PDSs will have to use active to deal with multiple small maneuverable 
targets, but the anti-ship batteries won't have to.

>With computer power doubling every couple of years, would you care to 
>speculate how easy this simple pattern analysis (simple i'd guess 
>with the heurestic expert systems employed in 300 years) is even for 
>a whole continent? I'm thinking that this might be hard to do now... 
>but isn't too hard in the future. So locating ground sensors might be 
>a competition of your camouflage system vs. the enemy's terrain AI.  

Way too complicated without really, really advanced AIs.  It's still an 
art today--with all the digitalized doohickys to help it out, you still 
need someone with a certain temperment and talent, plus a good bit of 
specialized training.  Pattern recognition isn't very easy, and when 
you take into account the various methods of camoflage available today, 
let alone 200 years in the future.

John