Re: Planetary defenses

Tom McCarthy wrote:

> I figure the missiles launched from the planet take twice as long to
> reach
> their target (so make them cheaper and easier to shoot down).
>

Yes I believe it woudln't be too hard to get Salvo missles into orbit
with a booster. A whole planet and could conceivably ahd thousands of
these things sufficient to swamp anyone that get's too close.

> Railguns on the planet need way more power to overcome gravity, so
> they
> probably don't track well.
>

True but a planet could again have infinately more power available to it
than whatever a hsip carries. In fact now that I think of it, scew the
booster SML concept. Launch SMLS via railgun. (Small SMLs) It gets them
into orbit without a discernable signature,and then tey take over from
there.

> I'm not sure about particle beams or non-visible spectrum lasers, but
> the
> atmosphere is is great scatterer of visible light (especially sky
> blue, eh
> ?).  I don't know the numbers, but I bet Indy does.  I'd bet that
> visible
> spectrum lasers will also prove infeasible.
>

We talked about this a few weeks ago. The US is fielding an operational
fleet of seven 747-400 mounted ABM lasers. They've liked the atmosphere
thing in testing at least.  Power would be the main consideration.

> My best guess is close-orbit stations and automated weapons platforms.
>
>

   I agree this is obvously the best option. Don't loose the space
battle!

As far as fixed defenses, who needs them? We can have mobile defenses
based loosely on the Soviet rail mounted ICBM launchers where they have
a several hundred square kilometer area to stick and move from. Shitty
weather, good ECM, and electronic masking can make targetting from orbit
pretty damn hard.

And as for sitting around lobbing nukes into a planet. A nuke, a bomb or
a missile can be shot done given sophisticated tracking just like any
thing else.

Now dropping a boulder big enough to wipe out 300 sq miles is a little
tough to stop. Almost as tough as it would be to get the thing and fling
it into the planet with accuracy from a safe enough distance without
jeapordizing the ship. If you are using smaller boulder for point
underground targets, agian it's something that can be "hit". Though the
pieces will still come down somewhere, again we are looking to screw up
and enlarge the CEP of the falling object.

Obviously so much of this is situation specific, but I have to believe a
planet, could have greater potential resources and staying power than
the fleet sitting up in orbit.

Hey you guys are all intelligent enough to sit around and come up with
pat answers on bombing a planet into submisison but noone can think of a
way to defend it? I don't buy that. <grinning, ducking, running> I'm
looking for solutions that don't involve space based defense. That's
obvious. And essential. What about Close in defense? Think of a naval
example. When a naval task force losses it's air cover it stilll has
something to fall back upon to defend itself from missle and air
strikes. Nothing is 100% of course.

Los