Re: [GZG] Re: Gzg-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 9

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adrian Johnson" <adrian.johnson@sympatico.ca>
>>Yeah, I'm assuming these are fresh planets where you just throw wheat
seed 
>>on the ground and jump back. :-) The point was that even with
optimistic 
>>assumptions, your population is just not going to very big--sixteen 
>>millioin is enough to field an army but it's not going to compete with
the 
>>NAC, NSL, etc.
>
> Sixteen million is enough to field a pretty fair sized army, if you're

> willing to take the hits to the productive part of your economy with a

> large number of people off fighting.
>
> Canada put 600,000+ people into uniform during WWI, with a national 
> population around 7 million.	We had over 1.5 million people in
uniform 
> during WWII, with a population of 11 million.
>
> Now, supporting a modern military force with the *much* higher 
> cost-per-trooper than back in the WWI era would make it much harder
for a 
> 16-million population colony to support a 600,000 person military
force - 
> but it could support brigade and perhaps divisional-level forces.

What would be the technology level of a newly colonised planet? It's
likely 
that they would need considerable time to build up the infrastructure to

have a technology comparable to the home planet. In your examples Canada
had 
been colonised for ~200 years, by white people and far longer by the 
indigenous populations to build up the infrastructure that they had in
the 
1940s and they still used a lot of US designed equipment.

So a colony planet may be able to have 1% of its population in
unproductive 
military duties but what equipment would they have. Would the home
planet 
fleet come by and pick up loads of colonist soldiers and supply with
modern 
military equipment and training? Would colony planets be able to earn
hard 
currencies by supplying fit self sufficient bodies to fight in other
peoples 
wars?

John 

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