Re: [LoGH] Life expectancy, take 2
Justin Ho (iluvatar45@hotmail.com)
Fri, 15 Dec 2000 07:36:03 +0800
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.
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