Re: invading planets

Paul Dale ([email removed]) writes:
> Meson gun attacks against population centres until they surrender
> might work as might destroying the industrial potential of the planet.
> But as has been pointed out on this list before, it doesn't take that
> much effort to make a high population planet a fortress in space -- put
> a laser turret into every new building plus some basic passive sensors
> on many building and in many places around the globe and have some of
> the fabled deep meson gun sites.

Problem number one for this sort of defence is that one can easily build
streamlined, heavily armoured ships that will snigger at lasers.

Problem number two is that it will probably be impossible.  Try imagining
the same idea converted into real life, present day.  "It doesn't take much
effort to make the U.S.A. into one huge fortress - put an AA gun onto every
new building plus some basic sensors on many buildings and in many places
around the country, and have a few ICBM silos."  Then imagine a politician
trying to get elected with a promise to fit every house with its own 20mm
cannon, along with a tax bill to pay for it.  Of course, the fact that the
U.S.A. isn't actually at war with anyone (yet) makes such a proposal
difficult, but if you wait until you are at war, it will be too late.  The
same goes for the high-tech planet.

Of course, a dictatorship could implement such a policy more easily, as
long as the dictator trusted the people not to take over all those guns
and have a revolution - which they might be inclined to do, given the
taxes the dictator has just levied.  You'll note that even Saddam Hussein
doesn't have AAA on every building in Baghdad.

The first thing an invader would probably do is try to find all the planet's
power sources using his neutrino sensors, and give them all some free mesons.
If the invader doesn't have both the technology and the big force needed to
do this, he can probably forget the invasion anyway, because the defender's
SDB force will deal with him before he gets near the planet.  Without power,
those deep site meson guns are just holes in the ground.

- --
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!uknet!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian   |  ARPA:   [email removed]