Planetary invasions and other things

This is in response to several notes on a lot of topics:

First Scott Kellog's sub is a great idea. And I will grant him that
very few starships have sonar. But generally a sonar will not be
needed. A meson armed submarine could be detected by several armored
drones carrying densitometers and a maser, even at 5km depth. Which
incidently is very rare. Most modern subs have problems getting a mile
deep and part of the problem is that there are just not that many places
that are even close to being that deep. Geothermal sites would be picked
up by a Passive IR detector and could be targetted just as a matter of
course with nuclear missiles. If you try to stop them you are found.
If you don't then your crew is probably toast.

Somebody else pointed out that you could get a seismic shock pattern
reading from explosives. The question being what range you need to
be at from the surface(and the meson gun) while you are doing these
tests. Secondly wouldn't you pick up several false readings. There
could be a variety of metallic objects underground.... Lastly a LADAR
scan would be hampered by first the atmospheric conditions and secondly
its narrow beam. The seismic pattern reading can be done but not from
ship but from troops  on surface which would somehow have to be landed.
Once the troops, who are more expendable than ships, locate a meson gun
site for certain then capital ships could move in and knock it out.

Bertil Jonell's Battle for Naasakiira:

Nice set-up. However the Aenoegrr class cruisers had major design
problems. Built using High Guard they did not fit. As I recall after
the Spinal-E was inserted, there was only enough place for a powerplant
and fuel. No space for crew, jump or M-drives or dampers. Same problem
with Oegveng class gunned corvettes. Perhaps the reason your 5000t SDBs
died was because they were the only ones built by rules. I don't believe
that if a ship is impossible by High Guard standards that it would be
possible with MT starship generation system. Still I would like to see a
<10,000 t ship with Spinal Mt (any kind) and a reasonable jump and  maneuver
drives and Dampers and Screens. Most examples I have seen are basically
battle-riders.

As a side note on Battleship vs BattleTender question. I always thought
bringing 8 spinal mts to battle was always superior to bringing 2 or 3 even
if the other side ended up with 30-40% greater tonnage and better
"survivability" through jump drive availability.