There is a scene of surgical orbital bombardment in the series so it is quite possible for regular fleets to do it. However, if one is either trying to wage a war of conquest or suppress a rebellion (which appears to be a primary task of the Imperial Fleet), reducing all population centers to craters is not going to be productive. It would be seen as an atrocity and even if that were not the case, you would still have ended up destroying resources you could have ended up using. Westerland is a case in point of the bad effects of indiscriminate bombardment. Even the one noted "surgical" bombardment ended up blasting quite a big crater. The sparing usage of aerospace strafing and ground attack missions might be again due to the above factors (and the fact that Spartanians like FPA capital ships don't appear equipped for atmospheric operations). If the enemy is a partisan or guerilla group, you have a Vietnam situation. You'll have difficulty picking out enemy from civilian and the enemy can simply lie low til the fighters are gone and reemergy. Thus the need for the ground troops to take and hold ground. From a planetary perspective, it appears that only a few systems are ever on the frontlines (and those seem to be military outposts). Except for key systems like Heinessen, the majority of inhabited systems don't have ground to orbit weapons. Why should they if by having them they risk provoking an orbital bombardment? Seems like the safer bet would be to surrender to the enemy and hope for liberation or conduct partisan fighting against occupation forces. If the enemy never appears, then there is no need to spend however many billions of dinars or marks it costs to make ground to orbit weapons. The respective ruling classes of both sides don't seem like the type to invest in such things especially when they can embezzle the funds instead. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com