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Orbital Superiority is certainly a necessary thing to take a hostile planet from the 'natives'. However, unless you're willing to glass sections of the planet that you want for yourself then you're going have to send something in to dig out your enemy. I'm assuming that the ground based forces...

Why are we spending so much time on things not involving ground forces?

The IoM does that all the time. They're the conscripts and penal legions that are sent into the meat grinder to die. You rarely hear stories about them except to say that they redeemed their previously worthless lives by dieing for the Emperor.

That's going to depend on how much the denuding of the planet the aggressor force is willing to do. Obliterate a few forest around your beachhead...might be an OK decision.

Now you just need Aquatic HK Drones to go hunt subs, OR you can go the boring manned route. Can just take some nice wide open plains in the middle of a continent. Less likely to be ambushed by underwater missiles that way, and you can still control wide swathes of ground with the kind of...

Yup, have to be able to access a beachhead, land on it, then reinforce it enough to be able to hold it for follow on forces. I'm thinking you'd need LOTS of ground based AA (for both anti-air as well as anti-bombardment) as well as heavily dug in armored forces.

All I know is that, at this level of energetic transfer, dead is dead. We're just theorizing the results of said weapons. For all I know a kinetic penetrator that has the potential to go THROUGH the crust into the mantle may result in such an intense shock wave that global earthquakes begin...

I did but I wasn't clear on the point. C-fractional kinetic strikes from powered missiles. Kinetic energy will cause so much more damage at that speed than the nuke/whatever will. Unless you want to go the "Anti-matter" warhead used on a planet.

As long as you don't care about civilian casualties and reprisals in the same vein.

You're making a LOT of assumptions here, especially about future sci-fi tech. 1. The equipment may be self sustaining and stupid easy to fix. Maybe it just needs base elements for a nanite harvester to repair itself. 2. Training is not necessarily stupid expensive for a planetary govt...

@bintananth I think you just argued my case for me.

Assuming your sensors are FTL capable. Otherwise, you realize you're being shot at when you're hit.

At the level of tech we're talking about...the only thing 'unguided' are going to be light-speed weapons. Surface - Orbit there is not time to dodge.

The other point to bring up is that a Space-going Warship may not need to even be in close orbit or 'in the neighborhood' to be a threat to a planetary body. Harrington-verse is a prime example of this type of weaponry. Take missile that weighs anywhere from 20-100 tons. Accelerate said...