Re: Planetary defenses

> 
> 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
> 
> 

I would go for stealth 'one shot one kill' if I was designing ground
side
defenses.  I would accept that if my ground defenses (big guns) were
detected from orbit they would be destroyed without any impact on the
enemy
from a safe range.  My response would be to stealth them out (put them
in
the ground, power down, anything that would work).  The plan is that the
enemy fleet spends time out of range scanning my planet (is that an
industrial park, iron deposit, or a powered down weapon system?) and
wait
for it to decide things are safe and move in to drop troops.  I assume
an
enemy fleet could/would use any number of 'stand off' weapons to deal
with
a fixed weapon from outside the range of any of the planetary defenses
it
detected.  When the enemy fleet moves in the (remaining, some would be
detected - but then maybe they were decoys) ground weapons open up. 
Maybe
only one system would open up allowing the enemy fleet to retreat out of
range (after a kill or two hopefully) and sucker the fleet back in for a
second round with other weapon systems (I assume the destruction of the
first).

The weapons on the ground could also be impressive.  If a race can field
large numbers of 20-40 mass ships with lots of expensive things like FTL
drives then why not a couple of installations with the equivalent of one
shot pulse torps?  Ten pulse torps fired at close range (something in
orbit, would that be a 2+ hit?) could cause all kinds of damage and if
they
got a second shot off all the better.  You could even make an argument
for
weapons on the ground taking up less mass.  You wouldn't need all the
supporting stuff that is used in space, and if they are throw aways
(fire
off your one or two volleys and then evacuate the complex) then they
might
be smaller yet.

I would think that the targeting systems on my ground defenses would be
better also.  I could place them all over the planet, put stealthed
satellites with passive systems in orbit with the rest of the junk.  The
satellites could follow the same plan, stay 'passive' until the right
moment and then go strong active to support one shot and expect to die. 
I
would just hope to have enough in orbit that you will run out of ships
before I run out of satellites.  

The answer would be to send in the troops without the orbital support to
search and destroy any of these possible defenses prior to the fleet
coming
in.  The response to that would be to put up so much 'interface' defense
that you could slaughter any assault. 

I'm also assuming here that the enemy in question wants to capture the
planet/population/industry intact.  If genocide is acceptable then all
bets
are off.

Just a thought

Chad