Re: How big is a troopship? [DS/FT/SG2] (and what it all means)

Ryan M Gill wrote:

> Umm the over the horizon thing is new. They used to go in to hot
beaches.
> Remember IwoJima and all the other islands. LCPs, LCHs, and amtraks
all
> went in under fire.
>

While they beaches remained under some fire for days the initial waves
went in on
small craft. Unless your space fleet has the money to throw away on
loosing large
ships. Since the invasion timetables and resistance expected was way off
the charts
(we had expected had after 60 days or areial bombardment and two weeks
of shore fire
that the enemy had been suppressed sotrt of like you and your ortillery
thing) the
Americans were forced into that desperate situation. Not one that I
would plan for as
regualr SOP.

>
> > Ok picture this scene. Said Yahoo with shoulder fired launcher (oh
by the way a
> > nuke warhead right now weighs in at under 60lbs so lets half that or
quarter it
> > for a little micro nuke seeing we're talking 200 years from now 
lets fly and
> > vaporizes the back half of the lander a 1000 feet up.
>
> Nukes don't get any smaller due to physics. Also your guy fires a nuke
> 1000 feet up. How much lead is he carring around? I do not want to be
> anywhere close to 1000 feet from any nuclear detonation.
>

The ship is a thousand feet up, he can be miles away. Nor do nuclear
weapons HAVE to
be in the high yeild range. I'm not an expert on nucelar weapons
construction but they
have shrunk from the size of a VW bus to something I can stick in a
rucksack. No
reason to supose they won't get smaller if necessity demands it.
Especially for
subkiloton yield devices. There are plenty of propellor heads on this
list that can
lay out the specifics if I'm wrong.

Also keep in mind that shoulder fired SAMs have small warheads and punch
right now
only becasue they don't need larger warheads (as opposed to AT missles)
so there's no
reason to assume as ship size or tougheness goes up that SAM
countermeasures won't
follow suit.

> Murphy will always strike. Don't not expect him to. However, don't
pussy
> foot around and never do the job because he may.
>

ALways plan for Murphy. I learned that after the first day in the field.
(not that
that will get rid of him!)

> Perhaps one can take an example from Vietnam and the riverine combat.
> LCVP's with turrets and flame throwers. Some were turned into
monitors.
> Pretty hefty compared to what the vc trucked around typically.
>

Note that normally when this was used  a transport ship it  was used
primarily as a
special ops recovery vehicle which is a sort of a differnt genre of
craft and
discussion.

There's a very simple tactical principle that has been learned the hard
way. When
going into the assault (or the unknown) lead of with your smallest
tactical element.
This way if it gets hit you don't lose too much and you can react with
your other
forces. Send a company or battalion down onto a contested landing in one
big ship your
deserve what you get. Corrolary to this is that modern firepower
requires dispersion.
Again this flies in the fface of using large landers for assault
operations. BTW keep
in mind you can deploy a landing battalion landing force a lot quicker
in many
platoon-sized landers than you can in one huge lander where they all
make lucrative
targets.

Note that none of this flies in the face of having large landers
available for follow
on reinforcements or bringing in heavier equipemnt to secure beacheads.

Actually all of this fits right exactly in line and compliments the
marine landing
craft model you yourself mentioned in response to Tom's post so I don't
see why there
should be the slightest disagreement between us.

Cheers...

Los