Re:Planetary insurgencies..was Planetary defenses

John,
Nah I don't need any examples about successful counter insurgencies.
I've spent most of my past twenty years specializing in both fomenting
and defeating insurgencies.... ;-)  And frankly the thought of
conducting either a planetary scale counter-insurgency OR a planetary
scale insurgency operation are both juicy propositions to me.

First off, about conducting a successful counter insurgency against
someone who's occupying their planet. There are a  large host of reasons
for making this a difficult proposition. I know you could think of them
just as easy as I.

One is the sheer size of the endevour. A huge amount of resources would
be needed. The planet is a big place. Lots of places for the insurgents
to hide as LONG as they have support of the people. As far as a the
counter isurgency having the planet balnketted with sensords from orbit
or whatever. Then I have to believe that similar sensoir defeating
technolgies will keep pace, as his been teh history of warfare with any
technological or operational development. As far as outside resources
go, they already have the resoruces of their whole planet. If given any
bit of thought to the prospect, they could have squirrelled away any
number of vast amounts of supplies and weapons.

Again either side could argue that with suffiicient resources, they
could attain their objectives. I'm just saying DO NOT  dismiss the power
of a palnet to conduct an insurgency all on it's own. It's not like a
country which may not have suffiecient resopurces. A home or well
established colony world, could have everything it needs to sustain
itself.

And what if it doesn't? If it has any allies at all, key equipment or
supplies could still be inserted, blockade or not. How easy would it be
in the FT universe for example to put a tight clamp down on solar system
say the size of ours?  Ships could be slipped through and insertions
made. Heck there are already rules for cloaking. Speical insertion
vehicles, specialists along the line of current day U.S. 1st Special
operations wing of TF 160, would make a living doing just that. Blockade
or no.

I'm just saying, don't discount the potential for a conducting a
successful insurgency given the right situation. And you know what,
regardless of whether it would ultimately be successful of not, there
are many that would undertake it anyway. Would you just roll over?

I always get embroiled in these discussions on here (foolishly I
suppose) because people come up with these knee jerk statements made
without IMO putting much though to the practicalities behind them. I'm
not syaing that you, John, do this as I think you make pretty good sense
about a lot of stuff. Some recent and past examples...(paraphrasing
here)
Oh once we gain orbital superiority it's all over for the planet, they
might as well roll over.
We'll just use robots or AI in the future, it'll be superior to man.
You can't conduct a successful insurgency on a planet.
and so on

I say don't discount any possibility.

Anyone who's been in the military probably has the experience of having
had to carry out stupid plans made by officers that have had these
kinds of ill thought-out ideas. Or maybe it's just me because we get
used for some damn dangerous things, be it training or live. Just some
examples:

"Oh let's have them infiltrate the enemies headquarters and implant a
sensor so we can momintor commo in the TOC." (Sure lets have our three
guys penetrate a division TOC, surrounded by teh division and guarded by
an MP company.)

"Well they're SEALs they can be parachuted into the ocean, they're
expert swimmers." (4 guys drown in ten foot waves)

"Oh they're SEALs lets have them attack the airfield and shoot the tires
off off the President's airplane so he can't escape". (4 guys killed in
an abortive raid)

Well I've got to guard this power station so I'll just station one
platoon at the power station and have the rest of the company humping
the hills in the 110 degree heat so as to catch any infiltrators (half
teh company is out with heat exhasution and we stillblew the thing up).

I won't even get into the larger policy miscalculations of what was
supposed to be sure things like Somalia, Barbarossa, etc etc. Never take
anything for granted and never underestimate anything.

Oh no, I'm driifffttiing...............aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh <plop>