Armies of the Fifth Frontier War, Impressions Not Errata

You don't commit the ground troops until you have orbital supremacy.

True, but I think situations would probably arise in which orbital supremacy was not held by either side.
  • The invading force secures orbital supremacy and lands troops. Defending forces go to ground. The invading fleet moves on to its next objective, and the defending ground forces deploy against the occupying forces.
  • One force has orbital supremacy. The planetside battle is raging, but a hostile fleet arrives in system and engages the fleet with orbital supremacy.
  • The invading force attempts to gain orbital supremacy, suffers severe losses from planetary meson emplacements, and troop carrier captains know they'll never make it to the 100 diameter limit. Some might jump anyway, but some might decide to land before higher priority targets are eliminated. They could land in civilian areas or critical facilities, in the hope that defending forces won't fire meson weapons on their own cities.
 
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You only need temporary command of aerospace to launch an invasion, to get enough troops on the ground, and possibly, only over that region to prevent interference by the enemy's remaining aerospace assets.
 
No one is talking about aerospace dominance.

Orbital dominance means you can shoot aeorospace assets out of the sfy, bombard troop concentrations, vehicles, artillery, ordnance depots.

You do not land an army on a contested world unless you have orbital superiority.
 
and overall if you have orbital dominance you have already won the ground war, this is why armies are kind of a waste of money that could have been invested into more battleships or cruisers.
 
People have said the same thing about aerospace control...

You can interdict a world with orbital dominance, but you do not control it, nor can you enforce your will on the civilian population unless you are willing to bombard the civilians as well.
 
Cropduster should be enough for counterinsurgency.

Once you have a fleet in orbit, uncontested, the planet should surrender.

If it doesn't, and you can't glass it, and you still want it, you have to send a lot of forces dirtside.
 
Cropduster should be enough for counterinsurgency.

Once you have a fleet in orbit, uncontested, the planet should surrender.

If it doesn't, and you can't glass it, and you still want it, you have to send a lot of forces dirtside.
Take out the infrastructure with Meson Ortillery. Now they cannot build or maintain their equipment. Destroy their food stores. Destroy their water purification and storage facilities. They either starve or surrender without ever putting a boot on the ground and without glassing the planet. If not, at the very least you are now facing a lower TL army (because their infrastructure is gone) than you were before the invasion.
 
One assumes that they're prepared for that.

Since, they should be quite aware of the consequences.

It could be that the idea is to tie down enemy forces in that system.
 
Take out the infrastructure with Meson Ortillery. Now they cannot build or maintain their equipment. Destroy their food stores. Destroy their water purification and storage facilities. They either starve or surrender without ever putting a boot on the ground and without glassing the planet. If not, at the very least you are now facing a lower TL army (because their infrastructure is gone) than you were before the invasion.
Sorry, but still comes down to will to fight - as we're currently seeing in Gaza (NOTE: not seeking a political discussion!). If they won't give up after you've destroyed pretty much everything, and still hide amongst the civilian pop you have a problem as invader.
 
Sorry, but still comes down to will to fight - as we're currently seeing in Gaza (NOTE: not seeking a political discussion!). If they won't give up after you've destroyed pretty much everything, and still hide amongst the civilian pop you have a problem as invader.
Yeah, that is why it eventually escalates to atrocity level stuff, like glassing planets. If you have already destroyed everything else and they still want to fight, you either give up or commit more atrocities. This is something unlikely to change over the millenniums, unless aliens are just smarter than we are.
 
You can go underground, or in the sewers.

The Russians have started using oil pipelines as line of communications, logistics, troop movements, both inside their own territory, or as a means to infiltrate.
 
As said any army forces you have should not be trained as a actual military force meant to perform sweeping moves and establish zones of control, instead they should be trained to act as small team insurgents and in general just try to be a disturbance for as long as possible while the planet itself should surrender the minute you no longer have orbital control.
 
People have said the same thing about aerospace control...

You can interdict a world with orbital dominance, but you do not control it, nor can you enforce your will on the civilian population unless you are willing to bombard the civilians as well.

Example. In 1939, the German high command issued orders that numerous industrial facilities in multiple countries were to be captured without damage. These facilities had already been purchased by German corporations before the war with the intent of using them to supplement German industrial capacity during the war. Factories and so on are useless with occupation forces getting use out them.

In a Traveller context, threats and demonstration strikes will only go so far. People will scatter or technical experts will drag their feet, sabotage work, sabotage facilities, etc. The force which crosses the line and bombs civilian targets to force planetary populations into slave labor can look forward to their own worlds getting slagged.

Consider: There would probably be zones of dead worlds in the Spinward Marches and Sol Sector, star systems filled with dead worlds and new asteroid belts, each one honeycombed with meson emplacements and SBD hangars.
 
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You do not land an army on a contested world unless you have orbital superiority.
Orbital supremacy is no doubt the textbook answer, but war is uncertain. You may decide you want orbital supremacy, but the enemy gets a vote too. No doubt their textbook will tell them to contest your established orbital superiority, and they will also have very smart and determined people trying to figure out how to do that.
 
There is also contested orbital...
an army on the ground doesn't need to worry about ortillery if there are enemy space forces that can contest orbital space - a warship in orbit is a sitting duck compared with the maneuverability it has in open space.

So to roll back a bit - achieve orbital dominance so you can land your army, then if an enemy force is strong enough to contest orbit you have a battle space there as well. Your orbital force and their orbital force have similar objectives, achieve temporary dominance to support the ground action, achive total space superiority if possible.
 
Orbital supremacy is no doubt the textbook answer, but war is uncertain. You may decide you want orbital supremacy, but the enemy gets a vote too. No doubt their textbook will tell them to contest your established orbital superiority, and they will also have very smart and determined people trying to figure out how to do that.
We still don't have a technical solution to "throw rocks at them". Able to be done with the most rudimentary space technologies. Just like space golf. This can be accomplished with zero orbital supremacy. So, We already have tactics that have no counters in Traveller.
 
We still don't have a technical solution to "throw rocks at them". Able to be done with the most rudimentary space technologies. Just like space golf. This can be accomplished with zero orbital supremacy. So, We already have tactics that have no counters in Traveller.
So the strategy would be to perform a immediate retreat on detection of enemy units and have the civilian government surrender to the attackers while you then start spreading the info about the attack so that you can assemble your fleet in force and then turn around and smash the enemy fleet.
 
So the strategy would be to perform a immediate retreat on detection of enemy units and have the civilian government surrender to the attackers while you then start spreading the info about the attack so that you can assemble your fleet in force and then turn around and smash the enemy fleet.
Where are you getting these extra ships for your fleet? So far, this discussion has been about once a fleet has orbital superiority, what can the planetary population do about it. The answer is, basically nothing. The planet's defenses are out-ranged by the enemy fleet who can just keep throwing rocks. They do not even have to be planet-destroying rocks. They can be smaller rocks that only destroy a few miles of planetary surface, throw a few hundred of those at once and wait for all resistance to cease. It is about as damaging as massed meson weapon fire, but with much less risk to the fleet, since they are out of range of the planetary weapon emplacements.
 
Where are you getting these extra ships for your fleet? So far, this discussion has been about once a fleet has orbital superiority, what can the planetary population do about it. The answer is, basically nothing. The planet's defenses are out-ranged by the enemy fleet who can just keep throwing rocks. They do not even have to be planet-destroying rocks. They can be smaller rocks that only destroy a few miles of planetary surface, throw a few hundred of those at once and wait for all resistance to cease. It is about as damaging as massed meson weapon fire, but with much less risk to the fleet, since they are out of range of the planetary weapon emplacements.
See: Drinax years 884 to 885
 
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