Re: Planetary defenses

Eric brings up some interesting ideas, and I hearken back to my 
Traveller days to bring up a few interesting points regarding 
planetary defense.

one of the standard ideas for Traveller is the Deep Site Meson Gun
which can fire out to near orbit, no matter what the atmosphere. 
these sites are usually buried under mountains or undersea. 

In MegaTraveller, Terrance McInnes did a series of 3 articles that 
appeared in Challenge Magazine #55-#57 
which postulated the use of very large grav powered submersibles 
for last line of defense craft.
they were armed with a whole buncha detonation laser missles, and 
lasers. the sensors were carried on floats with long tethers, 
allowing the ships to maintain passive ops til the last minute.
they were hidden in undersea caves until needed.
this is also not a bad idea for small system defense craft, they just 
need to be streamlined.

the idea of using a Trident sub as an SDB is almost appealing, you 
could mount space combat nukes instead of ICBM's.
yeah I know thats a major stretch, but its the same basic concept