Plus over a century of war films (and reality) has "taught" us this is what war looks like.
What is the utility of ground warfare?
- Thread starter Citiprime
- Start date
No, they have a much easier time doing that to their own population.
Last edited:
No, you need ground troops to deal with the granular work of advancing and holding territory. There is nothing particularly different about the capacities of the US Air Force: it can pinpoint attacks, choose to deal damage to an area or go deep into the ground. However, it could not do the work of taking out Al Quaeda or controlling the territory of Afghanistan. Same is true in Ukraine: Russia's air advantage (which hasn't resulted in air superiority, for various reasons) has not translated into victory, meaningful or otherwise. I'm sure that Putin would prefer to pound Ukraine into defeat, but that would not produce a meaningful victory.
They most likely want said ___ resources for themselves.
"Scorch Earth-ing" or "Glassing the Planet" would just deny themselves eventually of having access to it.
Any temporary loss of Space Superiority can be eventually regained.
And then, you would have control of said resources.
Having to fix the damage that you caused yourself isn't worth it in the long term for a short term denial of resources to the enemy.
e.g. Dilithium Mines (If UFP/StarFleet wants it, you can bet your Latinum that every single Warp Capable Race will want it too!).
Destroying said resources would be largely pointless since you're denying yourself said resources in the long term.
It's about holding said site/facility/mine/planet.
Those specific type of munitions are supposed to be designed to fight terrorists & insurgents while minimizing collatoral damage.Well ... we do use Hellfire R9X missiles which kill people with ninja "ginsu" blades instead of explosives.
It qualifies for the it "looks cool" and "precision" components of weaponry.
Better to slice & dice than blow up the entire neighborhood to get rid of 1x person.
You're not going to be able to take over entire countries with a hand full of small teams of marines.
IRL has proven it, even with Air/Space supriority.
Occupational Forces can be waited out, no matter how long.
Vietnam & Afghanistan prove that point multiple times over.
No matter how many decades you occupy a region, if the local populace doesn't like you, they can wait you out & fight you with guerilla warfare.
The only way to convert a local populace to your cause is to win their hearts & minds.
If you don't do that, you can only hold a local area for a finite amount of time, even if it measures in decades.
Doesn't matter if you have Air/Space supriority.
The US had that in Vietnam, Iraq, & Afghanistan.
We also ended up dealing with insurgencies in all those regions.
With Iraq, we did far better in getting rid of ISIS. Eventually we were able to Nation Build there.
Afghanistan was a boon doggle to hold due to it's costs to do so.
We only lasted 2 decades before we were pulled out forcefully.
The US didn't have a long term solution to solve the Taliban problem.
So you need troops to hold territory & eventually work your way to win over the local populace if you intend on using their resources.
Given the nature of StarFleet & the UFP, they aren't about Glassing Planets or Blowing up Planets.
So sadly, ground forces makes more sense since they would rather not do horrible things like destroying nature just to harvest resources.
Don't forget Planets are part of InterStellar Nature.
So if they want anything locally, especially amongst the populace, they have to work with them, even if they have to occupy any region during wartime.
Anti-Transporter Jammers can probably cover large swaths of Atmospheric Volume, similar to Radar Coverage.
Especially if you have floating jammers that are cloaked (Klingons have cloaking tech, transporter Jamming isn't new, Anti-Grav tech isn't new).
But it can't be perfect, and ground / terrain would probably limit the range of any Anti-Transporter Jammers, so having a minimum altitude for your jammers is practical.
That means you can beam horizontally, below a certain low altitude on the planet, but you can't get yourself into space due to the massive Transporter Jamming blocking access to space.
They probably couldn't park any ships in orbit, Space would probably be heavily contested all the time.
Any ground fighting for control of the surface would need field hospitals, so the medical base is the equivalent of a MASH unit, but updated to StarFleet standards.
Ground fighting will always be relevant, especially CQB & Urban Warfare which is becoming more prevalent due to Urbanization.
With any "Near Pears", Space/Air Superiority isn't a given. That's usually highly contested.
We've seen Planetary Shields, I'm sure there are local Planetary Base Shields that are ridiculously powerful as well, something that can withstand StarShip grade Weaponry as the norm.
It should be easier to defend a smaller volume like a Planetary Base with ridiculously Strong Shields.
And access to raw resources would give your Fusion or M/A-M reactors a near infinite supply of fuel to power the Base Shields.
Don't forget Anti-Space weaponry can be mounted on the surface of a Planet, especially behind Base Shields, and the volume of space that can be covered by any point on the surface is usually huge if there is no terrain to obstruct your FoV / Line of Fire.
You do know that StarFleet isn't about "Glassing Planets".
Most Alien Races want to use a planets resources, they aren't about "Glassing Planets".
Very few Alien Races want to do that, they rather control the planet for their resources of some sort.
"Glassing Planets" would literally deny the Alien Races of said resources.
Be it Material gain or Colonial Expansion with colonists.
And StarFleet just doesn't murder civilians, even enemy civilians, especially in wartime.
Just because a enemy civilian is armed, doesn't meant they are part of the enemy forces necessarilly.
They could be just a regular civilian with arms.
People do have the right to bear arms, especially civilians.
You don't get to go full Rambo on somebody just because they carry small arms.
It's probably not that easy to target if it's down there, there are most likely shields & Anti-Air/Space weapons to protect that area.
Last edited:
Starfleet General Order 24: referenced in both TOS' "A Taste of Armageddon" and "Whom Gods Destroy"
A Starfleet captain is empowered to destroy all life within a planet's biosphere if that planet is deemed a threat to the security of the Federation.
Let's take the SNW episode as an example. If you control the space around J'Gal, and are able to pacify the ability of the other side to project power into space, why would you need to put a massive deployment of troops on the ground?
I can understand it if there's something there that you need on the surface. Or if it's taking a while to get all of the colonists evacuated.
But once you have the civilians out of the way, if the Klingons have a division of troops trapped on J'Gal, and you're just trying to push them back into their space, LEAVE THEM THERE TO ROT! If you control the skies, they're not being resupplied, which will either soften them up for when you're in a better position to come back and mop up, or maybe make them more compliant for an offer of repatriation. Also, by isolating them and not engaging, you can create a situation for the enemy force where you can bait them into trying to mass forces to reach their people, diverting the advance of their forces into Federation space, and possibly allowing for a counteroffensive.
In an interstellar war, you're trying to project your control across light-years of space. Fighting on the ground with the scale of troops we do now (massing hundreds of thousands of people in infantry), planet by planet, just seems incredibly wasteful unless there's an inherent reason to control a piece of property, when logistically what matters is control of space on the scale of light-years with starships (where you only need a crew that numbers in the hundreds). And if you control the space, that puts you in a much better position to dictate terms to the people on the ground.
The only issue I have with this argument is that I can't see putting troops in tents on the surface, where they're not even in a reinforced structure, being a better option than doing hit and run tactics where starships do quick runs at a planet and beam down teams in coordinated events and then return to pick them up at a pre-agreed rendezvous point and time.
Even if you go with the idea that shields planetside offer an order of magnitude more power, we're talking about the difference between a stationary target with a fixed position and limited supplies, and would be under constant threat of attack, versus a starship that's mobile, offers protection and resupply/replicators, and can withdraw to a safe area.
Also, if you can beam people back and forth on the surface from the battlefield to a forward medical base, that means if you have shields or transport inhibitors, you're dropping it on a regular basis to move forces anyway. In order to provide relief to your forces, you're creating gaps in your defenses for the enemy to take advantage of.
And if troops can beam out to a landing zone or beachhead from a transporter on the surface (which is under fire), then they should be able to do the same thing from a starship's transporter in orbit. And if you can transport troops to the Klingon's position, then you should be able to send photon torpedoes there too.
Last edited:
Now I also wasn't a big fan of that depiction of ground war (similar to DS9' siege of AR558), because it's always depicted as too close to WW2 style weaponry & tactics.
However - every single type of warfare will always be important in any war. Even if dwarfed by other types of warfare. Because if you don't, the enemy will use it to gain an advantage where you don't spent resources.
So I assume: 1) The space around the planet was contested. No side head clear "air superiority" so to speak. 2) The surface was "cloaked under war" (e.g. sensor & transporter jammers, holograms, shields,...), so fast run-by's by starships wouldn't be effective. But 3) The planet was still tactically important to control. At least to put up enough resources so that it doesn't fall into the hand of the other side.
So, basically, both sides just did some "drop & run" routines, put down troops, and then left. Because if they didn't, only the other side would do this & would win. However the place was also not as important/urgent for both sides that they spent all their big guns (starships) on it - O assume a few starships contested the whole sector. So turned it into a meat grinder on site, just to stop the other side from winning, but also spending "just" the amount of resources to do, while focusing the main effort on other fronts.
IMO they should have instead portrayed it more as ENT-like MACO's fighting inside/underground in planetary super structures. No open sky visible. But yeah. Television budget. IMO it was effective enough at what it wanted to show. Miles better than, say, "clone wars" type battles.
However - every single type of warfare will always be important in any war. Even if dwarfed by other types of warfare. Because if you don't, the enemy will use it to gain an advantage where you don't spent resources.
So I assume: 1) The space around the planet was contested. No side head clear "air superiority" so to speak. 2) The surface was "cloaked under war" (e.g. sensor & transporter jammers, holograms, shields,...), so fast run-by's by starships wouldn't be effective. But 3) The planet was still tactically important to control. At least to put up enough resources so that it doesn't fall into the hand of the other side.
So, basically, both sides just did some "drop & run" routines, put down troops, and then left. Because if they didn't, only the other side would do this & would win. However the place was also not as important/urgent for both sides that they spent all their big guns (starships) on it - O assume a few starships contested the whole sector. So turned it into a meat grinder on site, just to stop the other side from winning, but also spending "just" the amount of resources to do, while focusing the main effort on other fronts.
IMO they should have instead portrayed it more as ENT-like MACO's fighting inside/underground in planetary super structures. No open sky visible. But yeah. Television budget. IMO it was effective enough at what it wanted to show. Miles better than, say, "clone wars" type battles.
Effectively, war can't be reduced to a single doctrine or policy, and a state does so at it's peril. War means one state imposing its will on another through violence. Attempts to limit one's involvement to only one type of warfare has largely kicked states in the ass at least as far back as Britain's overreliance on its navy. In a different vein, the competing notions of Dukat, Weyoun, and the Female Changeling show three flawed visions that arguably foretold the defeat of the Dominion.
Last edited:
How often has that happened within UFP history?
It's usually rare to do so, and Sisko poisoned a planet for "Human Habitation" for 50 years, not glass it.
He also gave ample "Early Warning" to the Maquis to "Evacuate" before he makes the planet "Un-Inhabitable" for human life for 50 years.
That's hardly the same as "Glassing a Planet" and turning it into a Toxic Waste Land that can't be inhabited for Thousands to ten's of Thousands of years.
50 years is a "Blink of an Eye" on the Geologic Time-scale, but a significantly long time for us as humans.
That forces the enemies to leave their occupied planet post haste which completes the Federation & StarFleets main objectives.
That's quite a difference compared to what the Obsidian Order & Tal Shiar would do when the found the "Supposed Founder's HomeWorld".
Which they proceeded to bombard the surface of the planet with their armada.
That's assuming you have full control over space, which in this example, you don't. J'Gal was highly contested.
Why else would they need to use a shuttle to fly low to the surface of the Planet, just to do a quick delivery run by beaming Nurse Chapel down and flying away to safety?
You saw the Anti-Air fire at the beginning. It's not there without reason.
Transporter Jamming into the Atmosphere of the planet must be obviously preventing Beaming onto a StarShip in Space, Orbiting around the planet.
Beaming through the Planet on the other side isn't an option given how much dense rock affects beaming distance.
So you're left with Horizontal beaming, or just covering low surface area below the Anti-Transporter Jammers that block Orbital Beam-Ups.
Or StarFleet has objectives to take control of.
Remember in the Siege of AR-558, StarFleet captured a Dominion Communications SubSpace Relay node.
They weren't able to crack the Encryption yet. On top of that, they were dealing with "Houdini" Anti-Personnel mines that were slowly killing the ground forces randomly.
You're assuming the local civilians will leave willingly or can leave. You're also assuming they will listen to you or follow any instruction from you or co-operate with you.
Sometimes, they will oppose you out of spite or fight you through Guerilla style warfare and resist you at every turn.
It's better, but if you have loyal obediant troops like the Jem'Hadar. They'll follow orders to the last command & the last breath of each & every soldier.
They were willing to murder the entire populace of Cardassia if the Female Changeling didn't give them the "Cease Fire" command.
The reason you usually want access to the surface of a Planet is that Planets are filled with all sorts of resources that you can harvest.
The sheer volume of elements that you can harvest and sift through is insane & many orders of magnitude larger than compared to the poultry amount of floating asteroids that you have to travel around to get in a Star System. Planets are the key / lynch-pin to resource control & harvesting on a massive industrial scale.
You're assuming you have the luxury to do that. You're also assuming that your plans won't go south if you try to pull the hit & run tactics.
There will be a high chance that your troops get trapped under the Anti-Transporter Jamming fields when you attempt a hit & run mission.
Then the enemy forces will come in to drive away your StarShip/Fleet in orbit.
Then your troops will be trapped on the surface with enemy forces coming in to get them.
If you don't stay and slug it out, risking the loss of your space assets; you're guranteed to lose your ground assets.
Then you've just thrown away the lives of your ground soldiers & space forces for nothing.
So you have to risk alot just to even attempt to do a hit & run. Otherwise the enemy has control of the Planet & the space around it.
Then you're back to square one or worse if you don't attempt to do it.
So the only good solution is to slug it out and prevent them from holding such territory.
Forcing them to commit their resources while you commit yours since there is something on said Planet that you want, and that you intend to deny your enemy.
That's why modern warfare is a Coordinated Multi-Domain Joint Venture.
Nothing operates by-itself anymore. Every asset on the Battle Field is there to help each other.
Combined Arms is the name of all future warfare, covering EVERY single Domain.
Land/Sea/Air/Space/Cyber/EM COMMs/etc.
Back then, in the 23rd century, they couldn't beam through shields, it wasn't until the 24th century that it was a regular feature.
But even on the surface, there must be pauses in warfare where you know you can swap people by beaming in/out.
Again, you're assuming they don't have Anti-Transporter Jammers to block access to/from space.
That would be the #1 thing to do in any Planetary Ground Campaign.
Establish control To/From Space with Anti-Transporter Jammers that you control and make sure there are no gaps to your network.
Deploying a set of these should be easy enough to cover the planet.
Both sides would be jamming nearly everything that functions on the EM/SubSpace bands that are commonly used.
Have you watched the battlefield footage going on in Ukraine right now?
There are Open Trenches every where, and combined with modern use of Drones, modern Warfare has devolved into WW1 & WW2 style tactics mixed with modern tech.
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Last edited:
And it's usually a resource, as well as intelligence gathering. What's being ignored is that by controlling the orbit of a planet and trapping them, you're still dedicating a whole ship's worth of resources to contain the enemy, vs. dedicated a battalion of 300 troops, and able to keep the enemy occupied, while allowing the ship to project force elsewhere.
Sure, but that's a last resort, not the first option for managing resources.
This seems to be a very limited viewpoint of warfare that ignores a lot of the nuance that isn't just about "killing the enemy." It's putting the enemy in a position that they do not wish to expend the resources so you have greater control to enforce your policy and desire.
Bombing out a planet is swatting a fly with a machine gun sometimes.
Unknown. But they made a rule about it.
i had a comic about Pike's period in command of the Enterprise where in the end he does just this and it ignites the dilithium and lights a whole large planetoid aflame. the issue was called "The Fires of Pharos"
