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No need for an army if you got a navy?


Bronze_Elemental

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Why do they even need an army of clones/droids/soldiers if you could just bombard the entire planet surface to dust by controlling the space around it?

 

Sure, have some marines on board your capital ships to prevent/initiate boarding actions but other than that, why bother going down to the planets surface?

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Uh, because the point of most wars isn't to just obliterate everything on a planet, but actually to conquer it? Come on.

 

This....besides the enemy could also hold vital information that is needed, or they have a shield generator that protects from bombardment...or they be in a bunker.

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By default don't you conquer a planet by blockading it long enough?

 

And if the planet is self sufficient? <_< Sure you can burn the planet to the ground, but a scorched earth policy on a galactic scale would, over time, dick you on morale, new recruits and most importantly (from the sounds of the strategy) supplies for keeping your fleet in working condition (Food, repairs, medicine etc.).

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By default don't you conquer a planet by blockading it long enough?

 

1. That might work for a planet like Coruscant which has no natural resources left and isn't self sufficient. But a planet is HUGE. Blockading a single planet would requires massive amounts of resources effectively ending your ability to wage war anywhere else. A blockade is a serious resource drain.

 

2. Most planets are going to be self sufficent because they are planets with self contained ecosystems that can produce their own food, water, and raw materials. Its possible they might not be living live to as high a standard, but most planets could probably hold out indefinitely.

 

3. How long do you think it takes to starve out an entire planet? More than likely, by the time a blockade would work, it wouldn't have any strategic value.

 

Uh, because the point of most wars isn't to just obliterate everything on a planet, but actually to conquer it? Come on.

 

Also this, bombarding a planet into submission is hardly fool proof unless you kill everyone on it. That's generally not the point of conquest. Historically, trying to force a surrender in this manner backfires and the defenders just dig in deeper.

 

But lets go with our logic for just a second and assume that an orbital bombardment would work. And the planet has now been pacified. How do you think you would verify that with you navy floating in orbit and no troops on the ground to take control of your newly conquered territory?

Edited by wrong_turn
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carpet bombing, napalm, or even calling in a nuclear strike?

 

You'd be amazed how many people want us to do that.

 

On topic; let's say you don't have an army, just a naval force. You go up against another political body with a navy, and a ground force. You try and launch an assault on one of their border worlds, which is guarded by their naval force, but also by a series of orbital defense cannons on the ground. All their navy has to do is hold you in place, while their cannons obliterate your forces, and there is nothing you can do about it.

 

And let's not even talk about planetary shields.

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If you haven'y read it before, I highly recommend you read Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. Aside from being one of the best Sci-Fi books out there, it sums your question up nicely at two different points.

 

Of course I don't actually have the quotes handy.

 

One of them referenced the army making war as personal as a punch in the nose. The other was a question of scale.

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By default don't you conquer a planet by blockading it long enough?

 

earth has blockaded itself from the outer universe. this isn't Age of Empires...

 

The British controlled 2/3rds of the world's people with only a tiny land based army thanks to their navy

 

but eventually they were ousted by those same people, and if anything Greece, Rome, Mongolia, England, Egypt, China, and Persia have all proven that large empires eventually destroy themselves.

 

Also we're not even talking about continents, we're talking about PLANETS. You can't imply (logically) that there is no need for an army ever. What if they live on a planet that has an unlivable surface so they live deep deep underground, but they're the only planet with a certain and abundant (Possibly combustible) resource that the republic depends on? no Army = No point in attacking.

Edited by Gantoris_Aym
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earth has blockaded itself from the outer universe. this isn't Age of Empires...

 

That's more a question of scale. Think of planets as islands in the pacific and space combat as the naval battles in WW2. Once the islands were cut off from the japanese sending in the marines was basically a formality as there was no possible way the japanese on the islands could win.

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That's more a question of scale. Think of planets as islands in the pacific and space combat as the naval battles in WW2. Once the islands were cut off from the japanese sending in the marines was basically a formality as there was no possible way the japanese on the islands could win.

 

but Pacific Islands are not sustainable environments. and the Japanese lost that war with what many historians would argue WAS a superior navy. Also, the US didn't bomb the crap out of those Islands (not in an irreparable way, with the exception of the A bomb used as a last resort, and maybe Iwo Jima). They wanted to use them as their own bases of further attack.

 

how do you explain the collapse of the Chinese Empire with Zheung He's Navy? How do you explain the Fall of Medieval Korea to the Mongols? Korea had a massive and sophisticated Navy, but the ragtag Mongolians with Tents and Horses conquered Korea with their superior horse driven ARMY? Korea also had many invasions from Japan.

 

and what about a planet with highly sophisticated air defense systems? Not every invading empire was lucky enough to have Basilisks.

Edited by Gantoris_Aym
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Only infantry can actually take and hold ground. Sure, you can park all the spaceships you want in orbit, but the planet isn't really conquered or pacified unless you have your troops and your government in place.

 

You can't simply bomb a planet into submission unless you're trying to make a point (the point being, don't screw with us if you like having planets to live on.) The whole reason the Yuuzhan Vong had to invade the Star Wars galaxy was because warfare had rendered their home galaxy uninhabitable, due in large part to an unorthodox but HIGHLY effective form of orbital bombardment called Yo'Gand's Core, in which a dovin basal (gravity-generating bioengineered organism) would pull a planet's moon down into the planet, shattering it completely.) In general, if a planet is valuable enough to conquer, it's valuable enough conquer relatively intact. Look at Grand Admiral Thrawn's conquest of Ukio. He used the cloaking shield and Joruus C'baoth's Battle Meditation-type ability to make it appear that his Star Destroyer could shoot cleanly through the planetary shield. The psychological effect of that was to have the Ukians surrender while their planetary shield was operational, meaning that the occupying Imperial forces didn't even need to rebuild or repair destroyed or damaged shield generators, they had full control of a fully operational planetary defense network. In terms of successful resource management, which is in the end what determines the victor of war, that's supremely important.

 

Now, did Thrawn's tactic seem to invalidate the need for an Army? One might think, but one would be wrong. After all, even though the trick worked and allowed a naval attack to force the planet's surrender, the ground forces still needed to seize control of key areas. . . such as those afforementioned planetary shield generators. After all, if Thrawn hadn't proceeded to land troops and take control of those defense stations, the Ukians could have simply turned their defenses back on the moment he left the system. Leading back to the original point:

 

Only infantry can actually take and hold ground.

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Why do they even need an army of clones/droids/soldiers if you could just bombard the entire planet surface to dust by controlling the space around it?

 

Sure, have some marines on board your capital ships to prevent/initiate boarding actions but other than that, why bother going down to the planets surface?

 

The same reason we don't just bomb Iraq or Afghan. Innocent civilians and bombardment will bring suffering and terribleness.

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If you haven'y read it before, I highly recommend you read Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.

 

One of my favorite novels ever. Even had the board game from SSI.

 

Here's one of the quotes you were thinking of...

 

War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing... but controlled and purposeful violence.

 

- Sgt. Zim

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The British controlled 2/3rds of the world's people with only a tiny land based army thanks to their navy

 

Controlled, yes, but not conquered. The British used a number of tactics to achieve that control. Take India as a good example. They took advantage of internal divisions within this huge land mass to eventually take control, but even then an army was required and it took a long, long time. It's been many years since I took my class on South Asian history, so I don't remember specific dates, but British control over India was a long process lasting a century, not just them bombing a few coastal cities and then walking to Delhi and saying, "We win!"

 

So in taking a planet, if you had internal divisions you could exploit, say such as with Earth, then a small army might be enough. But if one assumes a unified planet such as one typically finds in Star Wars (as in most sci-fi), then you either need an army or you settle for obliterating the planet, as others have pointed out.

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Planetary shields? LOL We have a planetary shield, called an atmosphere which renders laser/beam bombardment nearly useless. The atmosphere will absorb most of a direct energy attack rendering beam weapons nearly useless. Any weapon you can mount on a ship can easily and more economically be built 25 times more powerful on land....

 

But mass drivers? Mass drivers use a planetary gravity well against itself. Maybe 10% of laser power penetrates atmo, but 10,000,000 percent of asteroid bombardment impacts the planet.

 

Force = Speed X Mass....so a chunk of iron the size of a star destroyer moving at say, .1 c would equal.....instant planetary annihilation.

 

The energy required to deflect such destructive force is impossible to achieve. It would be like trying to deflect a ground zero atomic bomb with a wooden shield.

 

Your only chance would be to alter the incoming trajectory of the mass long before planetary intersection. Hence, space superiority = you own the planet.

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Planetary shields? LOL We have a planetary shield, called an atmosphere which renders laser/beam bombardment nearly useless. The atmosphere will absorb most of a direct energy attack rendering beam weapons nearly useless. Any weapon you can mount on a ship can easily and more economically be built 25 times more powerful on land....

 

But mass drivers? Mass drivers use a planetary gravity well against itself. Maybe 10% of laser power penetrates atmo, but 10,000,000 percent of asteroid bombardment impacts the planet.

 

Force = Speed X Mass....so a chunk of iron the size of a star destroyer moving at say, .1 c would equal.....instant planetary annihilation.

 

The energy required to deflect such destructive force is impossible to achieve. It would be like trying to deflect a ground zero atomic bomb with a wooden shield.

 

Your only chance would be to alter the incoming trajectory of the mass long before planetary intersection. Hence, space superiority = you own the planet.

10, 000, 000 percent you say?

Edited by Bronze_Elemental
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