re: planetary invasion

You wrote: 

>this brings me to another problem: even if they are brigade 
transports, the attacker will only have around 100 000 men on the 
ground. in the gzg universe, this is not so bad; i think a big planet 
might have 50 to 100 million people (remeber that the NAC capital world 
gets a population as large as england, and that this is amazing; then 
allow for growth), and so an army of around half a million (is this 
right? uk population is 60 million, our army is about 300 000, right? 
or am i way off message here?).

In 1994, United Kingdom's population was 58,394,600 persons, of whom 
48,707,500 lived in England.  The doubling time is 'not applicable; 
doubling time exceeds 100 years', and the 2010 population estimate for 
the UK was a mere 61,127,000.  It's safe to say that there probably 
won't be more than 75mil inhabitants, especially once colonization gets 
going to siphon off some of the excess.  In 1995, total active duty 
personell was a mere 236,900 persons, (army 49%, navy 21.3%, air force 
29.7%).  However, the UK is not exactally what I'd call the most 
militaristic of nations.  A colony organized with the intent of 
national defense may well have many more troops.  Israel, with 
5,619,000 inhabitants (counting the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, 
and settlers in Jewish localities in West Bank and Gaza Strip) has 
175,000 active duty military personel, and 76.6% of those are Army.  
More than 10 times as many per capita as the United Kingdom.  Plus what 
percentage of their population as a reserve?  Also I seriously doubt 
that there will be gun control on a frontier planet (especially if 
there is inimicable wildlife like Drake's "sauroids" from Raj's Earth 
<b>Bellvue</b> whatever.) and a lot of outdoorsy frontier types with 
hunting rifles can be a nuisance.  Just ask Bastard Tarleton about 
irregular colonists.  :)

> the english channel) from friendly territory (eg uk vs germany; i 
think a few us troops showed up for that one too :-).

Only on the defended beaches.

John M. Atkinson
who's division's lead regiment took 80% casualties in the space of a 
few hours on June 6th, and who's batallion was in the second wave, 
thankyouverymuch.