My only Grip with this is. When you want the infrastructure of that planet intact. Like in star wars when there is a Construction world. that Builds Space ships. If Possible, You would want to take it with as little collateral damage as you can. For not only is the Industry of that planet Important. and would literally Take Decades at best to repair or replace. But the Workers you want to keep working for you, If you can. So Attack from Orbit with Space Artillery. Is not a use-able Method at that point for such a world. Also there are times when the enemy you want to take out on a world is not known where they are. So you waste Huge amounts of resources to Glass a Planet like that. and then their are times when Waging a war is possible, And you don't want to glass it. Like with a Farming world. You want the Food Production for your self. And the Population is small enough that you can ether Bully them into obeying, Or You can literally win a Straight out land war. Lastly what about worlds that have these 4 things, 1) Planetary Shield Generators, Which makes Bombardment from Space nay impossible, 2) Weapon Platforms that can return fire at your space ships from the planet surface, 3) Underground Infrastructure that Makes it Pretty hard to locate and Bombarded them and deal proper Damage to your enemies. 4) Planetary Defense forces that Use Mass Short Distance Fighters and Orbital small war ships, Including mass Boarding Parties from the planet surface.
What if you want the planet for a resource that would be destroyed by bombing and they refuse to surrender, then you gotta get hands dirty and if you remember during the clone wars there were opposing warships and during the imperial era forget bombing the planet they just destroy it, also keep in mind half the planets had friendliest on them and were simply held by the enemy, as opposed to purely enemy control such as the planet ryloth during the clone wars, to be honest I think the only clone wars invasion I remember where the planet had no friendlies was umbara and we have the morals of the Jedi generals to thank for no planetary scale bombing, they only wanna fight people who fight back not the women and children too.... unless it’s anakin
Also you said about space battles and make them surrender as opposed to destroy them... what if the enemy is programmed not to surrender? (Clone wars battle droids seem too dumb to get the concept of surrender anyways) then either the clones have to match this resolve or they will lose the war
I would like to point out that Halo is actually a *subversion* of this trope. Sure, *we* see Spartans and ODSTs doing ground battles all the time, but that's because the player is playing as a *marine.* Every game makes it abundantly clear that while the UNSC has parity on the ground, they're getting curbstomped in space, which is why the UNSC is losing horribly. Orbital bombardment is so common that they have a name for it, "glassing". The only reason ground forces even get the chance to fight at all is because a) It's a boarding action of some kind, or b) the Covenant want something on the planet's surface, undamaged by orbital bombardment (IE Reach, or Earth, both of which held Forerunner artifacts the Covenant weren't willing to glass). Additionally, while you list Star Wars as your other main example of planetary invasions used in the media (And let's be fair, it is), the series has given good explanations for not using wide scale orbital bombardments. Specifically, in Star Wars Rebels, it's shown that even a halfway decent planetary based shield can stand up to an ISD's bombardment, which is consistent with other portrayals of Star Wars invasions. Hoth's invasion, the one you reference, was the same setup, where the Rebels had a planetary shield, forcing the Empire to do a ground invasion. This explains why most navies won't solely drop bombs on entrenched positions, since it'd take too long to have an effect, and gives the enemy time to respond (As what happened in Rebels, and ESB). It should also be noted that orbital bombardment is hell on the native peoples living on a planet. During the clone wars, when most of the D-Day style invasions occurred, the Republic wasn't trying to bomb the separatists into submission, they were trying to liberate worlds, to bring them back into the Republic without commiting enough violence on them to alienate their people for centuries to come (See: Mandalore). So planetary invasions actually make sense in that context. Also, this is nitpicking, but in the specific example you used, when Obi Wan invades Ryloth, is actually *another* subversion of this trope. Obi Wan *wanted* to bombard the Separatist position, but the droid commander was using human shields, which made that infeasible. So while I get what you mean by adding those examples, Halo *fully* acknowledges the implications of orbital bombardment, and Star Wars at least has *some* justification for the practice.
@@es4583 Incorrect. Most shields protect specifically against high-velocity objects. If a missile went in with low enough velocity, it would just be shot down by anti-air defenses.
@@danielm.595 Questionable, obviously we can't speak to a history that never happened, but the somewhat successful US push through the pacific and more successful but later soviet push through the senkaku islands were significant factors. Without dimensional travel it'd be impossible to say if they'd surrender without them, but I feel it's safe to say it would take a lot longer and lead to a far smaller Japanese population... Not to say that wouldn't be covered by marines though, dropping marine units from space to take key strategic locations or capture satellite facilities would likely still coexist with planetary siege.
@@SheezyBites Well, history says that Japan surrendered shortly after the Nuclear Bombings, so, in my book, I'd say that it was one of the main factors in the surrendering of the country
This. They'd land troops to recover any Forerunner relics and then glass the whole planet before moving on. They only didn't do it to Earth due to the immediacy of their need to activate and use the portal to get to the Ark, while they didn't do it on Halo rings due to their sacred nature to the Covenant, instead fighting on foot while on those rings.
You would only glass a planet when you have no intention of holding or extracting anything of value from it. If you want either of the later, then expect years of guirilla warfare from the inhabitants.
@@VegetaLF7, also the only reason why they sent land troops to Reach was because it was one of the few colony worlds with some strategic benefit to them, and even then they still ultimately glassed the planet.
um ever met polish people? Poland during ww2 soviet threatened to kill 10K poles if they the rebels didn’t stop. polish rebels replied make it 20K we don’t care! Give me liberty or give me death! polish rebels never stop fighting the Soviet’s the polish raids on Soviet Union ended when Soviet Union fell So it depends how willed they are ever met a right wing Americans who love freedom... they find them hard to break even when there oppressed in current period ever met a Russian they fighting sweat police whom have been known to use tanks to slaughter Russians during protests... some are just unbreakable, specially the kraig marine whom have no home but a Dead Rock consider themselves already dead... these are traits of radical soldier that’s unbreakable
@@insidious7329 a lot of WH40K material is thoroughly grounded in realism, but a lot of it os over shadowed by the over the top stuff and contradicting material.
Counterpoint: Ground-based anti-space defenses. I could see a grounded setting using small-scale invasion forces to neutralize anti-orbital defenses, assuming the setting has ground installations that could threaten a far-orbiting fleet. Then you might need a bigger invasion force to counter a ground army, and so on. It's a bit contrived, but slightly plausible.
That describes Hoth. They had a powerful shield and the Ion cannon so they couldn't bombard it easily from space. Hence the ground assault. Once the Empire destroyed the shield generator the battle was pretty much over for the Rebels.
A fleet in space will most likely always have an edge over any planetary installation. After all the fleet can "evade" or straight up hide from ground fire, while the planetary installation is most likely in a fixed position on a planet following a known orbit. All the enemy needs to do is launch some missiles from the other side of the sun.
My large rock laughs in the face of your anti-space defenses. If you hit it, you turn it into smaller rocks. Amusingly enough, many smaller rocks would almost certainly be worse.
@@BatteryH1862 My metamaterial fallout bunker equipped with self-sufficient systems and fusion power laughs at your rock. Now excuse me while my underground factories produce more Exoatmospheric Ballistic Missiles and mass driver munitions to send at you and your rocks and a planet-wide vacuum train network transfers the materiel and munitions required for it. Also, our allies across the system are in an intercept burn with your fleet, so good luck.
In his defense Halo, star trek, and star wars all have the ability to reduce a planet to molten slag on a planetary scale then caves don't save you like they do against any non-nuclear attacks. If you don't care able the planet and just want them gone that is....
@@viperstriker4728 In Halo, that's exactly what the Covenant did. The problem is that the Covenant believes that some human-occupied worlds have Forerunner technology that they want to preserve. Once they extracted the Forerunner artifacts, they orbitally bombarded the planet until no life was fit to survive in it.
@@RealmO20 Some shots show the planets crust completely molten when they are glassing so I think "no life was fit to survive in it." is an understatement lol
@@CoolMyron True, and they work great they have them. But shields are expensive military hardware. Asymmetric warfare means one side can't afford same military hardware their enemy is using. We really don't see much asymmetric warfare in star wars, since the rebels hardly have a tech disadvantage when you look at x-wings, b-wings, the echo base ion canon and shields. And as soon as the empire gets tech that is far more advanced (the death star) they immediately switch to bombardments (notices no ground forces were deployed at Yavin 4).
That Battle of Hoth in Empire Strikes Back isn't unrealistic, since the Empire is just storming the one and only rebel base in that planet. It would be dumb not to try.
Not to mention they had a shield generator that would block incoming fire and an ion canon to prevent the enemy from overloading the shield with massed firepower
It was also a retreat, which he claims doesn't happen. The fact that the rebels still could run away made taking it fast through assault, rather than slow siege, more important to try and catch as many rebels as possible before they ran away.
Not really. Their goal is to get rid of the rebel alliance seems like it's a great target? Have you seen the imperial military? Trust me I don't think they are hard up for resources.
Also it’s not like the Rebels were completely defenseless. They had an ion cannon that you could clearly see was more than enough to knock out power on multiple star destroyers. This ion cannon was staffed exclusively by survivors from Alderaan, so these were people who had lost their homes and were fanatically loyal to the Rebel Alliance and would rather die and be made martyrs than surrender to the Empire. The Empire had no choice but to fight the Rebels the hard way if it meant snuffing out one of the last few pockets of resistance that could seriously jeopardize the Emperor’s rule.
Responding to the concept of surrendering in space battles: there is a precedent for this. In the age of sail, when combat was often decided by boarding action, surrender was common. In WW1 and WW2, however, surrender was so rare as to be almost unheard of. In WW1 and WW2, no capital ships of any nation surrendered to an enemy force. No British, American, French, German, Dutch, Italian or Japanese capital ship ever surrendered at sea during either conflict, no matter the circumstances. It may seem insane, but it happened. When the German battleship Bismarck was crippled, outnumbered and surrounded by British ships, it fought to the bitter end. When the British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter was overwhelmed by Japanese ships, they fought to the bitter end. When the USS Astoria was overwhelmed by Japanese ships, they fought to the bitter end. And when the American task force Taffy 3 was hilariously and horrifically outgunned by a Japanese fleet, they fought to the bitter end. When Scharnhorst was outnumbered and overwhelmed by a British fleet, including a British battleship that outgunned her, Scharnhorst fought until she was sunk. Psychology plays a part in this. The British in particular developed a naval philosophy of aggression and pride where surrender was considered completely unacceptable, which then affected the navies of other nations, particularly the Americans and Japanese. Nobody wanted the stigma and dishonour of surrendering their ship, typically preferring to abandon ship and scuttle. This has a knock-on effect in sci-fi. There is certainly a disconnect between naval psychology (space forces psychology, in this example) and ground psychology. Naval battles are typically short, and there are clear escape routes since lifeboats typically aren't fired upon. Victory is assured by simply sinking the enemy ship, a clear and relatively easy goal. Ground battles tend to be longer, larger, more bloody, and it's much harder to achieve a "total" victory. Moreover, individual troops are more likely to surrender on their own accord, which isn't an option for sailors who are stuck on a ship at sea or in space. There's much more to the topic, of course. Still, that's something to keep in mind.
This is a great point that I had never thought about before. It probably doesn't help that a naval battle can completely flip with just a single lucky shot disabling large guns or causing an ammunition explosion. Therefor if you can just keep firing it's totally possible that your next salvo will win you the battle. Ground battles don't work like that, even a well placed artillery strike won't completely wipe out an army. And even if they start retreating they can always regroup and counterattack, a sinking ship can't do that.
There's an exchange between a marine officer and destroyer captain mentioned in Neptune's Inferno. The marine was fresh out of the mud with low rations and the captain gave him a full officer's meal. Even so, the marine said he'd prefer a foxhole. Cause while the ship does have lifeboats, at least on land you weren't completely stranded with little to no hope of rescue
During WWII, the allies had many large Battleships parked beside islands in the Pacific, and still had to invade them, as the enemy would hunker down to avoid the bombardment. And if you genuinely want the planet, you can only bombard so much, before rendering it uninhabitable for yourself.
And then there's the fact that some civilizations, could be perfectly fine with living in a bombarded world. If you dig deep enough, most conventional weapons can't hit you.
I mean, are you comparing an island full of entrenched enemy soldiers to a city filled with helpless civilians? Even if the entire planet is against you, you only have to kill a few million from orbit until the civillian population has enough and retalliates against their own government.
If an enemy has captured your colony planet, and that planet still has your civilians and infrastructure. It would be wise to not blow up yourself. Plus escalation is a thing that all politicians would have a problem with why is Orbital bombarding their people from an enemy force of a few ten thousand with your population of ten million.
He's American what do you expect? They kinda have a history of nuking innocent people like cities full of kids. He's OK with it because he doesn't have to deal or see the repercussions of his actions. You know out of sight out of mind kinda like how government leaders are so willing to go to war because it's not them who is going. Do you think they would want to go to war if they knew they had to go to? Lol
It also kinda illustrates why bombardment is a bad idea, remember Narn got blown back to the stone age. That's generally a bad idea, because it makes the natives restless and means the planet is useless until you pour resources into making it habitable, or even somewhat useable. Resources which you'd supposedly have saved by not committing a ground invasion.
"No matter how many men with rifles you have, you can't fight off a fleet of warships that is 50.000 miles above you." You underestimate my faith in the God Emperor.
Ok so we dig a hole. No. A bigger hole. Now line it with concrete and fill half way with water. Get a nuclear weapon with a yield appropriate to the size of the hole and how much water is inside. Now, cap the hole with a big metal plate. Detonate the nuke, the explosion and the evapprated water will have enough pressure to put that plate into orbit.
Didn’t the rebels from Star Wars have a planetary defense cannon on hoth capable of hitting ships in space? Also think kashyyyk got orbital bombed in legends and most of its valuable resources went up in flames
this assumes that the planets have huge populations, if the enemy colony is only one major settlement or the entire planet only has 10 million people on it invading and occupying could be very feasible. The video also says two forces fighting on an island are meaningless if a battleship is next to the island but the US had complete Naval and Air dominance at Okinawa but the Japanese fought on for months just trying to inflict the most damage they possibly could.
@@jobhighschoolofcrosscity8430 many countries fought to the bitter end even thought they knew that the war was already lost. (japan, germany) And even if you think the war is already lost you may be wrong (ussr ww2)
Let's see if SD2020 recognizes these words and phrases: THIS IS SPARTA! I REGRET I ONLY HAVE ONE LIFE TO GIVE FOR MY COUNTRY. BATTLE OF BRITAIN. NUTS! BATTLE OF SAMAR. KAMIKAZE. MUJAHIDEEN. Did you take even one day of a class in human psychology or history, bro?
Third Reich: "We are gonna park our navy, army and luftwaffe just offshore and across the channel and grind you into submission then invade and wipe you out... you should surrender because you can't win so, in any sense, don't fight." Churchill and all of Britain (during the Battle of Britain): "piss off... wanker!"
Imperial Japanese Navy (to US Marines at Guadalcanal): "We have driven off your navy and have you surrounded. Surrender now. You cannot win therefore, in any sense, don't fight." US Marines: "Come at me bro" US Navy (in Arnold voice): "I'll be back" IJN: .....
Yeah but 2 nukes and the capitulated. Thats literally a good equivalebt of planetary bombardment. Fight an unwinnable battle and be annihilated completely or surrender and live.
Just as an interesting note: HALO actually does have an answer for landing ground forces in the Novels. They're capital ships have massive sensors that ID Forerunner tech. But the sensors pick up Humans and some of their tech as Forerunner. So they tend to land invasion forces to (in their minds) seize holy artefacts, thinking that Humanity is aware of the tech, and defending it.
And since the Forerunners declared humanity as the true successor to their tech, one could say that humans in Halo are, technically, Forerunner's artifacts.
In Star Wars there is also an example given on why they need to invade the planet. The Hoth system has a planetary shield that prevented The Empire to bombard the planet from the space. They needed to invade it in order to destroy the shield generator which then would allow The Empire to win the battle easily from the orbit.
This is a video where SpaceDock have no idea what he is talking about. All the planetary invasion by the Covenant are to seize forerunner artifact. They can’t glass the planet until the artifact is secure. he just make himself incredibly ignorant of the context of situation
And considering that wherever Humans are in the games, then typically there's also actual Forerunner tech, then that's also another reason for them not to glass every army they see.
So, during world war 2 in the pacific the whole point of parking a huge fleet off the coast of an island was to commence bombardment in preparation for a landing. And those islands were held by a fiercely dedicated enemy that would rather die in battle than surrender. And on most islands days of battleship bombardment and bomber sorties from carriers did nothing to the vast majority of the well hidden defensive emplacements. Ultimately each island took thousands to tens of thousands of Marines lives to secure victory. So I would say a fleet can intimidate, but any space based military will ultimately need to be prepared to take the planet with ground forces with support from the fleet.
Still one thing. Chemical, biological and nucreal weapons. Its more likely that small force woud be send to figurete out how meat/steelsuit its working, and then send enought viruses, gas and dirty bombs down, to decimate population enought to couse them to surrender. this is a solution when you want to WIN campins, and don't realy care about what politics say. If you are atacking a basicly a planet size city, there is no other way. Bomb to submision. If it is some fresly-colonised planet, you coud land troops there to perform small raids to not waste amunition. if its a huge-mine/factory style planet, then gas and viruses woud be bast way to minimalise damage to valuble places. Planetary invasion coud take place, in scenario similar to war in 1984. War as tool to "force" people into submision and sacryficies. Just far away frontiere world, with nothing valuvle to send man to die, with nearby civilisation constatly changing the role of "atacker" and "defender" to get rid of unwanted people, and those who stay, force into even more poverty and sarcrifice.
@@dertafors keep in mind if this was human on human fighting there is a thing called the Geneva convention. Unless they are some super space dictatorship it would be pretty hard to convince your populous that nuking a planet let alone killing their populous is a good idea. Look at the Japanese and their suicidal honor preventing americans from capturing islands with ease and the americans being forced to use a nuke to prevent thousands of men dying in an invasion of Japan and that was frowned upon by a lot of people.
In a FTL space universe, you do not need the planet. You need some planets, you need some resources, but if you are fighting a war and you have to deal with an enemy planet, you do not need that planet. You can mine resources in space, you can build space stations, space colonies, and space shipyards. There is no reason why you would need the planet, aside from getting its populace to stop resisting. So you defeat their fleet, their space stations, and you have the planet sieged down. But there are still the people on the planet. Why would you send an army down? You don't need anything on the planet. You just need them to stop fighting you. You have space superiority. Why would things go any farther? You tell the planet, "We have you over a barrel, surrender. Agree to terms. We don't care about your planet, aside from you not continuing to fight." The planet surrenders. Even if they hate your guts, they can't do anything about it. Yeah, we can't go down and push people around, but they can't effect space maneuvers either. If they refuse, then we just start blasting. What is the point from their end? Now, if you want some other objective that must be accomplished by controlling the planet's surface, and the populace won't allow that in the terms of their surrender, and you can't for some reason just glass the planet and then go down to accomplish your objective, then maybe you would need to invade. But you would need more than a planet's population and resources in order to invade a planet. But that's a niche and frankly cherry picked scenario. In a truly galactic war, you would defeat the planet's means to fight in space, and then siege their planet, maybe bombarding them, and have the rest of your fleet move on to other, more pressing, objectives.
dertafors >just commit warcrimes and atrocities, that'll make the population want to surrender! Why don't you ask the Germans how well that worked in Russia, I heard the local populace loved them.
@@nuggs4snuggs516 well, initially local population (especially in recently incorporated territories) was usually quite receptive to German occupation, but atrocities often made locals to prefer "red plague" over "black death"
Yeah but Halo and Star Wars often have situations that rule out planetary bombardment. Such as with planetary deflector shields, or the battles taking place on a holy installation of religious importance.
Correct. More often than not, the planetary invasions in Star Wars aren't to try and take over an entire planet, it's specifically targeting a vital area on that planet that makes the planet valuable for something. Hoth was a land battle because the Rebels put of a shield that was strong enough to protect against bombardment long enough to let them escape. During the Clone Wars most ground battles were to target certain areas like destroying a factory or wiping out a certain base, etc. In Halo the Covenant would just glass the world if there was nothing of value there for them, but if there was a Forerunner artifact detected, they'd launch an invasion to recover it, or to land troops to knock out ground-side generators for the orbital defenses, things like that.
Also in the clone wars, the whole purpose on either side was to win the people over to your cause, which can't really be done if your blowing them to kingdom come. Also most populated planets in star wars have planetary shields that prevent that sort of thing
Please note he said realistic sci fi. If in my universe there is a god of ani bombardment who deletes all attempts at planetary bombardment, then yes in my universe you have to have planetary invasions. If you had a BS invincibility shield you would use it every ware not just at strategic plot points. If their is something important enough that we can't drop 100 tzar bombas on it, ok we glass the other 99.9% of the planet then send down like 500 guys to clean up the 2 square miles we did not destroy.
So, here's the thing. I've heard of something called "The Garden World Protocol". Essentially, green worlds are somewhat...expensively rare. Essentially, ground assault is required because terraforming is expensive as hell, and anyone that would DARE to glass a garden world would find themselves suddenly facing off against anyone else in the star-faring level. If: A: I'm on a garden world AND B: You can't (or rather, won't due to treaties) glass my world THEN You can only assault via ground OR Blockade. That's it. Any setting that has any variation of the "Garden World Protocol" WILL, therefore, include ground-based combat. Guaranteed.
Unless the garden world, is no better to an alien races eyes than a gas giant or barren rock would be to us. If the aliens needed spacesuits just to be able to breath in the atmosphere of what would be a garden world to us, then I think they would be far less likely to care about orbital bombardment or even in the worst case terraforming the planet while it is still inhabited.
@@felixbeutin8105 the Empire wasn't taking over ALL of Hoth. They literally just invaded for the super specific Rebel Base. in The Clone Wars, most of the battles are for specific cities or political leaders on the planets they are invading. In episode 1, they captured the Queen and Theed Palace and from what we see, they weren't really anywhere else. The Republic attacked Utapau because their objective was to capture or kill Grievous. Geonosis was to liberate Padme, Obi-Wan and Anakin.
There really isn't unless you stretch the defintion of planetary invasion. Also the most important one is that it's literally impossible, unless the enemy is hyper centralized, which most people aren't
This video assumes that the goal is conquest for the sake of having conquered. Much how island hopping was important in denying and establishing air fields and points from which to resupply or launch attacks, its clear this is an often important objective and is often written about as well.
@@MrBrranch He did mention that he means planetary invasion in the sense of killing every living thing or taking over every square inch of a planet. Those 'surgical' strikes you mention he went over as feasbile reasons for a force to land and engage ground targets.
I feel Warhammer 40K does this concept extremely well because every planetary war lasts years, with reinforcements being constantly brought in by the attacking force, and having a space naval advantage as an extremely important factor in who wins or loses.
40K is completely unrealistic in almost every regard. With the exception of the Tyranid and Necron, none of the other governments in 40K are even remotely feasible, especially chaos and the Impirium. functionally they would collapse under the weight of their own stupidity and ineptness. Chaos would be too busy killing themselves to get anything accomplished and the totalitarian impirium would just collapse due to tactical stupidity. Example, Impirium captain of a battleship deviates from standard tactics in their codex. Wins said battle, then after the battle he is executed by a commisar for doing so. Sorry, does not work.
@@evilspoon5280 my friend, thats the whole point of 40K the imperium of man is in constant collaps for 10k years now. but its sheer vastness keeps it from collapsing liek the roman empire did. i recommend you read into factions that actually work. like the Tau for example. one of two factions in 40k that actually thrives in the setting.
That’s what they say in the indexes, but all the books have fleets and armies annihilating vast amounts of ancient machines just to drive up the drama.
@@evilspoon5280 The Templin Institut: Imperium of Man | Warhammer 40,000 "the imperium carries on only through the weight of it’s one immensity ever expanding and ever declining" a perfekt explanation
Space dock: “If you can’t win, in any sense, don’t fight” Tell that to Polish people during WW2 - Germany destroyed us at the beginning but we still did fight and not surrender - and we did not have a country full of "self-destructive sociopaths" Or why did allied forces land in Normandy? They could bomb Germany until they would surrender. (The same thing different scale - they had to fight whole continent).
The Normandy landings were actually because a unified communist continent was scarier than Nazi Germany, especially to America. Of course a lot of more benevolent reasons played a part too. But if Roosevelt had thought Stalin was a decent and trustworthy man, he very well may have stuck to bombing Germany and let the Soviets do all the ground stuff. Normandy definitely helped shorten the war, but it was not absolutely necessary to end it.
As for the Polish people: Nazi Germany made quite clear that surrender would mean execution, slavery, or starvation. And the Polish are a proud people; they wouldn't take all those atrocities without revenge. But, in short, you can't stop fighting if your conqueror doesn't let you surrender :/ The closest analogy in Sci-Fi that comes to mind is the Reapers from Mass Effect.... You can bow and serve them until they let you die from neglect, or fight them until death.
@@MrNicoJac There was also the fact that Stalin was begging the allies to open up a second front in the west to ease some of the pressure off his country. So for that reason alone I think we would have invaded. Can't risk a WWI situation where the Soviets get exhausted and negotiate a peace deal.
@@Arctrooper2091 True. But the whole reason Roosevelt felt comfortable making that promise at all, was because the US wanted their democratic part of Europe too. But technically, they could've just A-bommed Germany into the dirt, no invasion needed (although none knew that when those promises were made, of course)
The Germans suffered severe casualties, losing plenty of planes, soldiers and tanks. Poland was preparing a strong line of defense, but then the Soviets attacked too and that changed everything.
I think the game BattleTech sums planetary invasion up best. Invade, destroys the other guys army, then occupy. The civilian population won't fight so long as their lives aren't heavily impacted by their new rulers. What's one flag over another.
@@bthsr7113 It got so bad the creation of the Battlemech was seen as a more humane way to conduct war and thus became the face of the setting. Not every day you create a weapon of war that's considered more merciful then the alternative.
No. Firstly, we have PLENTY of examples in history, where "parking large ship at an island" does not make it surrender. Whole War in the Pacific is exactly that scenario. Second, well equipped land based fortifications have a total edge against space ship. Ship is always a compromise between engines, tanks, size, armor, weapons, energy etc. You can put only so much stuff inside space-faring vessel. This is not an issue with land based installation. You can have literally thousands of missiles, guns of any caliber you can produce, infinite energy, all protected by vast territory and/or whatever amount of armor plating you can build. And this would be way cheaper than building a fleet. If your IP has shields, any shield generator on planet would be way more powerful than one on a ship. Third, what kind of planet are we talking about here? It might be an ecomenopolis - than it would be definitely unassailable, like fortresses of the past. It would be much easier to starve it to submission by system-wide blockade. It could be a small colony with a couple of cities - then assault is completely feasible. You don't need to hunt every last partisan in the wilds - just take over key points and manpower concentrations, and that's it. There would be partisan action for years, but it's expected, and you are effectively holding the planet. This would be no different to invading a nation on Earth IRL. The planet might be uninhabitable apart from sealed habitats with controlled environments. In such case, you won't even have partisans after rooting out the resistance. And a multitude of other options. The reason for Mars being unable to invade Earth in Expanse is because number of troops Mars can lift and drop to Earth is pathetic, both in comparison to Earth's population, and it's military. This is not the case in every possible scenario.
Alejandro Ochagavía If you're going to sling asteroids at it, destroying their manpower, industry, and infrastructure (obviously meaning none of that matters to you), why not just... bypass the world? If nothing on it matters to you, why even try securing it via what one could amount to genocide and risk the PR disaster when you can just avoid it?
Another reason for Mars being unable to invade Earth in Expanse is that Martian troops would find it difficult to function in Earth's higher gravity without some mechanical aid.
@@rare_kumiko those are some good points, which I'd like to discuss. First point, re: threat of bombardment. While this theoretically could work, for an isolated planet (example - modern day Earth vs alien threat), this might not be politically possible. If planet is a part of nation, and fleet is part of other nation, then MAD doctrine would probably exist, and that would severely undermine legitimacy of the threat. Even if one of the opposing nations aren't able to destroy a planet in return, there might be third parties, which won't look kindly to such exchange. I mean, even though USA is a nuclear superpower, every conflict since WW2, including ones that arguably failed, was conducted with conventional weapons. Second point. While powered asteroids is of course a valid threat, especially in "low-tech" sci-fi, it's not like it's an ultimate weapon. If tech levels are equal, a man-made weapon would be more effective than just a rock, albeit more expensive. An accelerated asteroid would fly at still (relatively) low speed and predictable trajectory. It can be intercepted, diverted or destroyed even via conventional weaponry. And this whole process with fleet capturing rocks, attaching engines or towing them and planetary defense trying to intercept them would look very much like a typical siege scenario. It might take a long time, time which attacker might not have. And I'm not saying that planet is undefeatable - far from it, it is, like you said, an object that can't maneuver. However, if you move your fleet out of planetary defense range, you are also moving away from effective range of your fleet's weapons. The further you are, the more time there would be for ground defense to intercept whatever you throw at it, and, with advanced enough technology, even railgun shots would be intercepted. Again, it all boils down to scenario. Powerfull enough fleet might threated weak enough planet into submission without a fight, but in different scenario, landing a couple million boots on the ground might be the only available solution.
A land fortification is useless against even the smallest space ship. your fortification can't doge my ship can. Let say your fort has 10^10000 missile launchers and infinite ammo for all of them. I have 1 missile. your missiles have 200X my missiles range. I sit out of range of your missiles and fire. I will hit you because you are fixed to the plaint which is moving in orbit. a high schooler can calculate the ballistic trajectory for my missile. If you fire back I wait till your missiles go ballistic and then just move a bit. It would be the same for any weapon you care to name. Forts only work when the enemy has to get in range of the fort to take it out. On earth this works because of air resistance slowing down your missile ect meaning if the two sides have similar range. but in space if I am willing to wait enough I can launch my weapon from another galaxy and still hit your fort.
Dude, just like you don't invade a country by securing every square meter, you wouldn't need to capture everywhere on a planet. Just the capital and key industrial zones would be enough to push a public into submission as long as you are not a tyrant or a fanatical purifier.
@@dexfm8927 except it is, the enemy force has landed and secured planetary territory among which are key areas of industrial, political, financial, and cultural influence probably with dense population centers which would be likely to force a capitulation of the PDF.
I also think the size of planet is a double edged swors sure some rebels partizans or whatecer can hide in mountains jungles or whatever but when all of the factories and cities on the planet are yours they become just annoying than hindering.
Bombing a world into subjugation from orbit doesn't work so well if it's a planet whose infrastructure you want to keep intact for your own use. It's also less effective for an enemy that is entrenched underground. If the planet has useful resources, you don't want to just start cracking open continents with cyclonic torpedoes, just to collapse enemy tunnel systems. Also, in the event that the enemy DOES have orbital defenses, or even their own fleet of warships that can be brought to bear on the invaders, it gets more complex still. You might need to drop troops to the surface to attack the planet's command and control structure or communications network, for example. Finally, if the planet you're attacking has something of value, for example an ancient relic, or even an individual or group that you want to capture alive, then you're forced to make planetfall. You can't use the threat of planetary destruction to achieve your goals, because you don't want to be sifting through the ashes for what's left of your target.
Yeah, not to mention the EXTREME value of proper escalation. Going all the way from peace time to dropping nukes is going to backfire on you VERY quickly when you're dealing with a near-peer foe. I mean; we actually ran into that problem and didn't like the prospect of our own "planets" burning just so we could taste that delicious victory. In reality, Spacedock's argument works against him more than it supports him: survival instinct is what stops us from going straight to total annihilation. We don't want the enemy glassing our territory so that's why we don't do it despite having the capacity to do so.
I would imagine planetary invasions would be less invasions and more planetary sieges. The threat of orbital bombardment would force many local governments to just straight up surrender, like old times castles, and if they resisted it would look more like a planet wide WW1 London blitz with the occasional Okinawa than a planet wide D-Day. Also the way you talked about bombing the planet makes me think of Star Ruler, where there's no way to invade planets and your ships just automatically genocide everyone on them when getting close enough. 3:22 Eh with the kind of manpower and automation a space faring civilisations would have, it's plausible. A computer doesn't care about survival, and neither does a sufficiently patriotic sentient.
You are correct about armies fighting to the death. There could be many reasons for it including if one side shows no intention on letting the other win or want to treat them well. If you know your enemy is going to kill you if you surrender, then you might as well die fighting anyways. Or that the armies are expandable, like as you pointed out, robot armies. Or enslaved armies with self-destruct collars, etc etc. This is something that spacedock like to do, assume that everything follows the same logical thinking. To expect everything to be logical is itself illogical.
@@Marinealver - worst part of an otherwise really good game. You invade a planet for the same reasons you invade a country. Resources or strategic advantage. Not directed at you maldus, just a general statement: As far as people not being willing to fight to the death... There was a guy, Sun Tzu I think his name was. Not very smart, didn't know much about war I don't think. But I believe he mentioned something on this subject once or twice. I don't think he is very well known so people will probably need to do some serious searching to find anything. But it might be an interesting read
@@Avarus-Lux - not really. Resources and strategic location are significantly more valuable. No ones ever been invaded because of their nifty highways.
There is already a “proof of concept” battle from history to examine regarding the bombing of an enemy into surrender - it’s now known as “The Battle of Britain” and it completely failed. Any orbital battle fleet would have to do far more than just “bombard until surrender” - it would require a means of cutting off enemy supplies, disabling any ground-based defenses they have, be careful not to harm vital infrastructure in the planet (assuming the goal is to take a functioning planet - the resource cost of rebuilding infrastructure can be very high), etc... This would require at least some form of ground assault at key points on the planet.
You just fail to grasp what space battle is, and what it actually means. When you are bombing a planet you are not dropping 50 kg bombs, you don't need to cut supplies, you just need 5 minutes of space superiority and then just drop a 10km asteroid on the planet. That costs nothing, and just destroy the planet. The simple fact than any space ship could push a 10km asteroid toward your planet should be a threat enough to surrender. Because it's just a cataclysm close to what destroyed the fucking dinosaurs. You don't even need to aim. You don't need logistics. Just a spare engine to push the damn rock toward the planet and let gravity do the rest. You don't need a functioning planet. You just need one exemple and everyone will surrender in the whole galaxy. "Surrender, or be changed to molten rock". And everyone would be using that tactic, because there's no reason not to.
@@ZheinPasRoux Just one problem here - turning a planet to molten rock can backfire horribly from a political standpoint: demonstrating a willingness to do such a thing can easily motivate other worlds to form alliances against you to avoid becoming the next Alderaan.
I also think that it's unlikely that when civilisations are at the point of "space warfare" that they wouldn't have developed technologies or strategies to deal with this. The day after the first successful flight of man was the first day of development of the anti-aircraft gun...
@@ZheinPasRoux Extinction-scale asteroids wouldn't be used for the same reason megaton bombs don't get used, except destroying worlds would be even more so political suicide.
@@FrankCastle-tq9bz The rest of the world has not joined together against the united states when they used an atomic bomb on japan. They built their own. And you expect that there will be anything else than using rocks from space to obliterate anything that stand on the ground ? That they will instead make some d-day-starthip-trooper landing style to take a planet ? We didn't bother with japan. We won't bother in case of interplanetary war. Nobody will. Because just the idea of planetary invasion is a logistical nightmare 10000 times of what is a naval invasion.
The issue is, civilizations in these sci-fi universes have MASSIVE armies in addition to truly massive fleets, and most planets, unless it's a homeworld of a species (with some exceptions) are REALLY, REALLY sparsely populated, so I don't think conquering a planet that has at best a few million sentients spread across a few settlements is any difficult for them. Especially when most of the population refuses to fight unless they face total annihilation. For example - during clone wars, except a few volunteers here and there, most of the fighting was droids vs clones. Like 98% population was like "whatever". Another example - Naboo. Most of the small human population were pacifists, the only thing close to a military they had were few volunteer Royal Guards and the rest was literally just the police force. Since they only had a few settlements on the planet, Federation was able to LAND pretty much all their troops without any problems close to cities and then just take over. What little portion of people were even armed just fled to form a guerilla militia cause they couldn't do squat against an organized army, even if that army had collective IQ of a bucket. Planetary shield generators also make sieging fleet almost useless. Unless that planet is entirely dependant on import/export for basic needs (like Coruscant with food import and waste removal), they could just wait behind the shield theoretically forever. I mean sure, Coruscant supposedly had planetary shield too (at least in "Legends" (aka the REAL star wars)), but that was more of a "umbrella" against wreckage and rogue shots while their defense platforms and defense fleet dealt with the attack on the planet. Coruscant would drown in it's own waste in matter of days. Maybe hours.
> they could just wait behind the shield theoretically forever Maybe the enemy could cover the planet from the sun, like humans tried in Terminator. Though the planet still has access to nuclear energy, geothermals, fossil fuels etc. It would be pretty uncomfortable to transit completely to artificial illumination tho.
The video assumes a couple of things that would not necessarily be true in many situations. 1. The attacking fleet would be willing to bomb civilians. There is certainly precedent for all out total war but there is also precedent for less serious wars. And in those the attacking fleet would likely not bombard cities even if just so that the enemy doesn´t do the same to them. It´s also possible the attacking force has to worry about public opinion if they start nuking planets. 2. Ground based defenses. Ships in space are like thermal beacons. There is likely no real stealth in space contrary to what even settings like the Expanse depict.That however is not true for ground based installations. They can disperse heat into the ground and be basically impossible to detect from space. A camouflaged railgun with radar deflective covering could launch missiles into space all day and recieve and endless supply from the industrial capacity of the planet. The only way to deal with such installations might be landing ground troops. Or carpet bombing the entire planet with WMDs/crashing an asteroid into it but for that case see point 1 for one but also the attacking fleet could very well not have the capacity for this. 3. Depending on how stretched supply lines are a continued siege as implied in the video may simply not be possible. Even if the attacking fleet was willing to bomb cities and had the capacity to overwhelm ground-space defenses to achieve this they might not have the capacity to outlast said defenses. A planet worth taking would have a quasi infinite supply of ammo and even material to repair installations or even build new ones. Same would not be the case for the fleet or it would likely be very costly at least to continually supply it. It may be much easier to at least invade part of the planet and use it´s industry to resupply the fleet so that it can siege the rest.
If you invade a planet, those streets are gonna run red with the blood of civilians. Which makes the point about bombarding civilians moot. And as far as planet side defenses, you would have to deal with that when launching an invasion as well, along with every kind of defense that can't reach space, but can reach your atmospheric troops.
@@shorewall Compared to nuking the planet a lot less civilians will die in a land invasion. There will certainly be collateral damage but also a lot less than you might think as weaponry is bound to be much more precise in the future. And of course you´d still have to deal with defenses. But ground vs ground isn´t slanted against the attacker. Ground vs space very much is.
1 assumes the invaders care about civilian casualties. If the invaders are a different species, it will be much easier to take the planet by making the natives extinct. 2 The ground defenses better have long range, when a ship can go anywhere in the solar system grab a big rock and send it on an impact trajectory to the planet, no nukes needed. Again big enough to make the natives extinct. 3 if they came from another star, depending on how long it takes to get there, they may indeed have enough supplies to last long enough for the natives to die out. Or they could drop a few big rocks, leave and come back in a couple decades once the dust settles. Repeat if there are survivors.
@@chrisbrantley6120 I don´t see humans just genociding an alien species unless they are Space Nazis which I doubt. And logically same would apply to Alien Species. I highly doubt pretty much any species capable of interstellar travel would be so primitive as to just kill billions of people. Even if they are they are they still have to slug it out with ground defenses. Any advanced planet could easily intercept incoming asteroids. Shit we will probably develop the ability to be able to intercept just about any asteroid within the next 50 years or so. For a civilization capable of interstellar travel it would be an every day task. No fleet would could carry even remotely enough supplies to outlast a planet worth of resources unless it´s stupidly large but then we aren´t talking about a remotely equal fight.
@@bkane573 The UK was never at risk of being completely obliterated by a few dozen bombers. Not only that it's not like they were in the war with no allies, and no capacity to resist.
@@insidious7329 At one point they were in a War with No Allies. There was The British Empire and there Was Nazi Germany. Everyone else had been conquered, or like the French Empire, just rolled over.
A settlement underneath an ocean would be almost immune to kinetic bombardment. Worlds with entire surfaces of liquid are somewhat common, and without controlling the ocean floor you can harvest no resources. You would be forced to land and fight undersea, since even bombs and torpedoes can be intercepted since all movement is slowed by water.
A safer spot could be deep within the crust even the low parts of a planet's mantle. Convention bombardment simply can't go that far. And you would have to get asteroids bigger than the dino killer. (Which you would realistically rather use for raw resources.) ruclips.net/video/jZQP2oNDkAM/видео.html
SunTzu was living in the time where it had no technology like guided missiles. What he was saying is how to besiege a city. If you read on you will learn he also says to use misdirection. The Vietnamese used Sun Tzu's teachings and they won. Like that one time where they wanted to attack a picticular American base on their land. So they hit the other bases to draw majority of the Americans away. And when they did they attacked and no help was coming 😊 Americans was playing chess while the Vietnamese was play Go 😊
Actually, in the unlikely scenario that the planet and the fleet are equally matched, the fleet is at a massive disadvantage. The ships must carry their armor, weapons, energy, and ammo. The planet, however, will never run out of any of that and can have more of it bc it doesn't need to carry it.
Battletech actually addressed this in its Age of War where Warships would just nuke from on high until they surrendered. Then garrison units, and leave. It wasn't until the galaxy saw the sheer scale of death and destruction, that the Aries Convention basically outlawed orbital bombardments, and aiming to stop senseless killing of civilians.
The problem is, Spacedock MacNamara, that bombing a country to the ground isn't necessarily going to make them surrender. The USA learned this the hard way when dealing with Vietnam during the mass bombing campaign they conducted. A ground invasion may be unrealistic (as in invading literally every square inch), but as you said, the point is to make them surrender, and the best way to do that is to take strategic locations on that planet through invading them and preventing them from being used by those who want to hide within them. Bombardment simply isn't going to win the war unless your idea of bombardment is to turn everything into radioactive slag and render the planet entirely uninhabitable for carbon based life. Ground invasions don't have to be as over the top as other sci-fi make them, but they're definitely going to be necessary to force surrenders by capturing capital cities, production centres, and other important regions for the function of the planet's economy and politics. Siege tactics work for towns and cities because they can't produce their own food on a large enough scale to sustain them, it doesn't work on a planet which has the entirety of that planet's agriculture still under their control. And if that planet's resources and people are important, then unfortunately bombing them until the planet is completely barren isn't going to be an option either. While I agree with some of the points made, that bombing can be useful, bombing is only so useful as it can support ground forces for the purpose of conquest. The Expanse example of yours makes partial sense, but nations (or rather multinational state in the case of the UN (still don't know how it hasn't collapsed because most nations hate eachother and longterm unity between the powers through just 'agreeing to be friends' is generally impossible so long as there is a continued rivalry between varying powers (oh right yeah there's also the matter of non-power nations that were subjugated, is the UN expecting them to not resist?)) not having dedicated military ground forces (especially the UN, as they'd have to subject their colonized nations on Earth to harsh occupation in a lot of cases, considering the UN in the Expanse is a very US-centric polity) is a very bad idea, and Mars should definitely be able to comprehend the simple idea that important places should be taken, and the unimportant ones will surrender. Anyway yeah the argument has gotten off point, but regardless, planetary invasions are still definitely a strategy that could be used for forces in a way that would deal with important cities as opposed to having to invade everywhere on the planet. kill me
Have you read the books? Spoilers... When dealing with space warfare, you don't need to bomb the entire planet to bring civilization to a halt. Let orbital mechanics, K = 1/2mv^2, and some rocks do it for you lol. Sure, bombing nam didn't work, but an extinction level event is quite enough to make people surrender. Marco's plan could have worked if only he coordinated his strikes on the Martian convoy better, and if he wasn't carried away by the roci in BA, which left him hanging out to dry (which was Duarte's plan all along). That being said, he never wanted to set foot on Earth, but only remove it from the equation for good. All in all, just throw rocks man!
@@K.Gthealmighty "The USA learned this the hard way when dealing with Vietnam during the mass bombing campaign they conducted" and ignored the lesson of WW2: neither the Brits nor the Germans surrendered.
From space you have lots of options. If you just want to eliminate the threat then bomb all their big industry. They now can't launch any sort of space ship and will not be able to for years. From a big space war perspective they might as well not exist now. Or if they NEED to go down sling shot a huge asteroid into them. The Vietnamize would have surrendered/ stopped existing if the US had dropped a few thousand nukes on them.
That was my first thought too, but then when I started to think about it, the list is truly endless. Sparta, Germany, Russia, Athens (their plans for losing the battle of Marathon), Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis, Iraq, Iran...
I love Spacedock videos but I think pretty much everything in this video was wrong. Giulio Douhet said the same thing about airpower in the 1920s, but he has been proved wrong in many conflicts since. Bombing does not lead to surrender against a determined population, it just angers them and they come up with ways to withstand the bombing. Also, invasion is just a matter of scale. If you invade a sparsely populated planet like Tatooine it would be easy with any decently-sized force. If you invade an ecumenopolis with 800 billion people you are going to need tens of BILLIONS of soldiers but it could be done with the resources that would really be available to interstellar civilizations.
What's funny about your last point is this: the amount of soldiers you can muster is directly proportional to your technology level and your population size. Early technological empires could barely muster even 0.1% of their people for war. Modern nations are ready muster 20% of their entire population AND HAVE DONE SO. So star nations with ecumenopolis would EASILY have the forces necessary to take enemy ecumenopolis... And that's with assuming that they can only muster 20% of their population.
The difference in planetary bombardment vs modern bombing campaigns is a question of scale. Even most modern munitions used on large scale, long term bombing are far FAR weaker than anything dropped or shot from orbit. A tungsten rod just dropped from orbit with no warhead can hit with the force of a nuclear bomb, without any secondary radiation. Any population directly hit by this would not be around to be angry after the debris settles. Once a few population centers were annihilated, unless the people on the planet knew another fleet was on the way to save them they would have to surrender or at least start negotiating very quickly before their leadership was dethroned by terrified and helpless civilians. Just look at the Japanese after the 2 atom bombs were dropped on them. They did not just get angrier and fight harder. Overwhelming force is not easy to overcome, either militarily or psychologically.
@@Ryanowning Yes, I agree. It is just a matter of scale. If we are talking about universes with ecumenopolises to invade, we are talking about universes with the resources to field millions or billions or even trillions of soldiers. So planetary invasions...still a thing.
@@Scudboy17Well sure, but you are not trying to bomb a few cities, but an ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET! You would need significantly more firepower for that.
@@xx_gamer_xx8315 you don't have to destroy every city to force a surrender. Real warfare is not about killing the enemy. It's about forcing your enemy to retreat or surrender. Having an enemy hovering overhead that you can't attack directly but can attack you at any time is highly demoralizing.
@@TheCoolCucumber WW2 was unlike most modern wars. There could very well be an all out war like WW2 in space but certainly not every war or even most would be like that. Simply because those wars will end with either both sides fucked or one winning decisively so in the aftermath it might take a while until there even is another side to fight a total war against.
I disagree that planetary invasions would never happen, they would happen in more limited circumstances. Basically were you need a logistics base or some other objective. For a real world look at what in interstellar war might be like look at the USN island hopping campaign in the pacific in WW2. Planet hopping I think is a realistic space born strategy.
The island hopping was also to establish supply lines. The Americans ignored or hopped unnecessary islands and took useful ones. So if that's a thing in space war then you're correct.
I agree with almost everything here, but the Battle of Hoth in Star Wars was a ground battle because of a shield that the Rebels deployed that could defend against the planetary fleet. In that situation, planetary, or even localized, shields would change this dynamic.
@@eoinchadwick9381 I agree. Hoth was never an invasion. Once the rebels knew they were found they immediately started to evacuate. They only fought to hold out long enough to get everyone on ships and out of the system. Remember that the imperial commander hyperjumped to close and was detected early. If he had done his job right he would have probably captured most of the rebels. The only reason the imperials didn't just bomb them out of existence is they wanted prisoners to question and intel from rebel systems in the base. If they just wanted them dead they would of came in with six star destroyer's and bombarded the base from orbit till it was just loose atoms. Shields only mattered in this case because it held up landing troops closer to the rebel base.
@@eoinchadwick9381 well in a senario where shield generators are numerous then an invasion force is needed. Give me a number of what you think the requirements are for invasion, I cant win an argument over vague terms.
Not really since Shields can be forced to collapse with enough fire. No matter the reactor power the Rebels had, if the ISD´s in orbit decided to bombard the Shields with their impressive weapons array it would have collapsed at some point. Then the Bombardment just continues until the Base and the surrounding area are reduced to rubble. ISD´s are laid out for a strategy called "Base Delta Zero" in which a Fleet of them go into formation around the planet and systematically bombard the entire surface until all that is left is a burning rock unable to sustain life. Not to mention the Superstardestroyer, that one can Base Delta Zero a planet all by himself in a matter of days and nothing withstands that sort of firepower.
Sieges/blockades are undoubtedly effective in contemporary warfare, but would they still work on interplanetary scales? If the planet has the capacity to sustain itself with food, energy, and other vital resources, then they might be able to wait out an enemy force in orbit, depending on that enemy's supply lines and rations. Moreover, if it's an industrialised world, they might be able to build and then deploy capital weapons like long-range missiles, or something like planetary defence cannons. While I agree that the idea of literal legions of Space Marines falling from the sky in drop-pods isn't optimal (ignoring that in 40K the rule of cool wins out over heretical logic), I think that the burden of urgency will often be on the attacker. Unless, of course, they're willing to bombard it into a state of complete ruin.
Yes burden of urgency. What if the planet has HVT (High Value Target) hidden/hold hostage somewhere? Then they can't afford to bombard nor wait out a siege. Heck, the entire planet itself could be HVT.
Yeah! A planet's too big too conquer, but by the same measure, it'd be easy to conceal almost anything of value, like a person or information. Essentially, it's a case of why the planet needs conquering versus being outright destroyed: if the planet isn't necessary, then I'd guess the assaulting forces would choose to bombard everything into submission or annihilation - but, if there's necessity to keeping the world inhabited/habitable, then some kind of ground attack would be required. It might be more clandestine, or maybe large deployments against selected targets, but I doubt that space supremacy alone would be enough.
well you can deny that sustenance if you hold the orbit - unless some sort of proper planetary scale fortification (like shields) is available to defenders, you can just bombard the fields where they grow their food. And if they started building weapons to assail you, you could still just as well bomb these before they can be fired now if they had such weaponry to threaten your fleet on the orbit before your arrival it would be more messy :)
The only risk to attacking farmland, etc. would be how quickly the invaders could rejuvenate and restore it for their own use, either as colonisers, or occupiers. Something I learnt from the Mass Effect codex which might be relevant, is the notion of placing defending forces or positions near or obscuring things of potential value to the attackers. This essentially means any successful assault would end up costing the attackers things of worth to them. An example might be placing defence weapons in a spaceport, so any direct bombardment would deny an occupying force that resource.
Ground based defence systems say hi. If talking about sci fi, then you'll have to contend with shielding and ground based defence systems, which may need ground forces to disrupt or take out. Plus, what if you want to capture the infrastructure without reducing it to molten slag? If talking irl, them once again, ground based defence systems with ICBMs bring reprogrammed to strike space targets. Either way, unless you really don't need planets and can somehow ignore the shields and defence systems, you'll always need ground forces.
About the ground based defence systems: The problem with trying to hit something in orbit, is that it is really hard to alter your course. We're talking about going several thousands of kilometers per second, without any air you could use to turn (like a plane would). If a fleet could detect an incoming ballistic missile, it could just do a slight course alteration.
@@todorus except you could use a MIRV concept, with a large delivery rocket and release the warheads once in orbit or space, as well as chaff to counter PD systems.
@@ivanivanovitchivanovsky7123 I think that still wouldn't solve it, as we're not really about near misses here. The gap that spread would need to cover makes it just as feasible that the fleet would actually move between the payloads. Then there's the option of having the missile being able to alter course, but then we're talking about a far larger rocket, capable of orbital flight. That would also give you the advantage of getting multiple passes at the target, every orbit. Fact just is that it is incredibly hard to rendez-vous in space, with two vehicles that are cooperating and coordinating. If one of those is uncooperative it falls apart pretty quickly. The solution I would go with is an orbital station that would launch volleys of guided rockets. But that's basically another warship in space and not ground defence
@@todorus I'm not talking about near misses. If you have good enough computers to guide the missiles, you can easily knock out a satellite, and a realistic spaceship is practically just an armed satellite. It cannot feasibly accelerate faster than the missile either, because the g forces would shred the crew iirc. All you need is a large rocket to boost the actual warheads up, such as with those cluster munitions except each munition is an armed missile instead.
@@ivanivanovitchivanovsky7123 the warheads don’t even need to be explosive, kinetic penetrators would do the job quite well you could load a lot more as well, a couple clouds of depleted uranium rods traveling through the void would utterly devastate anything in their path.
I think this is the first spacedock video I've ever disliked... There's loads of reasons to fight on a planetary surface. Plus you don't land and invade across a solid, long battlefront like the eastern front in world war two. We see in the clone wars there are garrisons either in cities or bases that either the CIS or republic land forces to take. Umbara, there are two battling fleets too, so you cant bombard a planet. I saw someone else comment Anti Space defenses. The ion cannon on hoth? Shield generator can withstand bombardment? Ion cannon knock down star destroyers? Guess you better land a ground force to knock out the base. What about cities you want intact? The problem going around just flattening any city in order to get them to submit, is just going to cause resistance to rise against whatever garrison force you drop there (i.e. see star wars EU). There's loads of reasons not to just murder and flattwn an entire city dude... It's perfectly justifiable for planetary invasions. Yeah some reasons might lead to an orbital bombardment (ie see covenant glassing) but there are other very good reasons to not do that. You are objectively wrong to state they would never happen.
The Siege of Vraks is a perfect example of this. The enemy wouldn't surrender because they knew execution was all that would await them for betraying the Imperium, and planet cracking weaponry wasn't an option because the Imperium needed the weapons on the planet. For these exact reasons, they fought a war that lasted more than a decade to retake Vraks.
@@CanONuke yeah, Reach was a rare instance where the Covenant actually wanted something of the planet. Thats why they were secretive about it. In any other case the Covenant would just arrive, destroy the fleet surrounding the planet, glass it, and carry on like nothing happened. The entire strategy for the covenant was to simply overwhelm the enemy with technological and numerical superiority followed by glassing the planet without even touching the surface of the planet.
I like how your argument revolves around reasons to not orbital bombard a planet when there are hundreds of examples of humans basically doing that in the real world. I mean, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a perfect example. There are reasons not to "nuke" them like resources, civillians, and possible POWs. But it was easier to threaten Japan to surrender, and bomb them if they didnt, rather than risk American lives in an invasion thay would last months if not years. Not to mention, that even after the first bomb fell, Japan didnt surrender until the US did it again. The same applies to planetary conquest. Give the option for surrender, if they dont bomb a city and continue to do so until they do. Its a lot easier to be constantly dealing with small insurrections than it is to fight an entire organized army with a set command structure. So save the lives of your own troops and threaten the glassing of a city.
Spacedock 5 moths ago: Planet destroying super weapons are pointless. Spacedock now: Invasions are pointless, just threaten them with annihilation so they surrender!
@@cmdrshprd4219 Humans being killed for sport only happened at the end of the war, when the Brutes came to power. Before, captured or surrendering UNSC forces, were executed on the spot, until that policy was changed when the Covenant discovered, only humans could activate the Halo Array.
This assumes conventional technology of course. If you can put something like planetary shields as a common technology, then ground battles can be worked in, albeit with different objectives
Even camouflaged railguns could make sustained planetary bombardment impossible. No need for shields. Ships are relatively easy to spot. Hidden ground installations on the other hand would be extremely difficult to spot. Nevermind that the planet would have a quasi infinite supply of ammo and material to build new installations as the battle continues. I actually have the complete opposite opinion to Spacedock. I think in a realistic setting a attacking fleet would have to strike hard and fast at a specific point of the planet to land ground troops. That is if it´s a highly developed planet. A prolonged slug fest with ground defenses would be suicide.
MysticHero the problem there is that space doesn’t really have a range limit, whereas railguns do, they could simply bombard from out of range, it might be less precise, (although that’s by no means certain) but railguns only serve as a minor inconvenience
Actually, I can see conquest of the valuable or resource rich areas of the planet followed by constant scattered warfare with resistance groups in the hills being fairly normal. The Inca did it too the Spanish and the welsh did it to British, but once you already have the best parts of the planets you can just ignore or only fight the native resistance movements when they are the aggressors
Spacedock: Conquering an entire populated planet is literally impossible Me: Challenge excepted EDIT: Also, am I the only one who thinks "World Anvil" would be the name of some sort of gargantuan ancient spaceship/space station that is discovered to be able to seed worlds with sentient life, like the Precursors in Halo?
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 Some of us are willing to die for freedom, we aren't coward boot lickers like some of yall. No matter the odds, we will resist. We would rather die than be slaves. Liberty or death
@@AdmiralJT - It's amusing how the people who were so willing to die for freedom, because they would rather die than be slaves... Had absolutely no issue in keeping a few slaves around for themselves.
"If there's a giant battleship parked next to the island, none of the potential outcomes involve an invasion of the island." *Glances at Iwo Jima and Okinawa*
It’s one thing I like in 40k, a bunch of the conquests in the universe start with orbital bombardment or the threat thereof, but even when there does need to be an invasion, the operation takes months to years of grueling attrition, not the days to weeks we see in things like Star Wars. And it’s usually just to accomplish one specific objective before letting garrison troops handle the rest.
And to be fair, in OT any ground combat was fighting retreat, commando raid or boarding action (not counting policing actions like on Tatooine in ANH). TPM was at first occupation duty (and offscreen rolling over remaining resistance) and in latter part guerilla fights. In AOTC separatists were pretty much with pants down (they were already loading into the ships) and later in TCW cartoon Geonosis was retaken by CIS when Republic pulled off most assets to fight the war. Kashyyk was the matter of high value targets, relatively low population and possibly simultaneous battles on and over planet, so both sides could not use bombardment without exposing themselves
@@OrDuneStudios well, I usually reject ST in thought process as it is contradictory mess - not only with other trilogies as well as with other films of said trilogy. But yeah, rebels 2.0 base got nuked from orbit because it had no theater/planetary shield, but one has to admit that they were more or less packed to leave
Not necessarly. When we analize something like that, we should look for analogue sitiuation in the history of warfare. Luckly we have that. It is often thought that you can subdue an entire Planetary Defence Force with bombardment alone. Well you can't, and even if that would mean either: a) use of an insane ammount of ordnance, which is just not cost effective. - b) poisoning the biosphere and atmosphere of the planet. - Sure you can do it, but then why are you invading a planet, if you can mine asteroids? If you invade a planet it's for a reason. Also we can look back to Island Hopping campaigns of WWII and see that you just can't do everything with bombardment and air support. - The real issue is that if you intend to take over a hostile world, you are doing it for a reason. It's either planetary facilities (shipyards, production facilities, population centres) or the need of a base where a hull rupture is not a death sentence. Probably the radiation - free aspect is also nice. - If it's the first goal, you need ground troops to secure it. The defenders know that it is valuable, so they will use it as cover. - If it's the second goal, you can bomb it, but after a certain time you will start to have diminishing returns. Also there will be some survivors. Congrats, you just created a fanatically hostile spy network that reports everything you do to other civilisations in the galaxy. And to root them out, you will need ground troops (unless you want to waste ordnance) - And there's the possibility of ground based - anti ship installations. Luckly, we have an analogue for that as well, in the AA emplacements vs aircraft sitiuations. Sure you can overwhelm those batteries with enough air support, but you will sustain losses as a result. Why take the losses, if you can drop ground troops outside of it's engagement zone and wait untill they destroy them?
What a lot of these sort of videos forget is that if bombardment alone worked, we would already be doing that now. We have the capability to completely wipe countries from existence if we so choose, but we don't. The bigger powers don't use it against each other due to the MAD doctrine, but using the bombardment logic no would care if say, the US nuked Afghanistan in 2001 rather than invade. Annihilation wasn't the goal however, so invasion was necessary, despite the Taliban having nigh infinite places to hide and we look at a long war scenario. Goals matter in war, whether it be terrestrial or otherwise.
The "insane amount of ordinance" thing isn't true, at least relatively speaking. If you have the power to accelerate a ten thousand ton warship to a sizeable fraction of the speed of light (which is what you'd need to traverse star systems) then you'd also have the power to easily exterminate most of the life on an earth-sized planet from orbit. You could do this with a kinetic kill weapon (accelerating to interstellar speeds then dropping a rock on 'em at high speed) or you could just build a bomb using the same tech that powers your engines.
@@Hemroyd_Skankins Really you don't even need that much. Mass Effect had a good example of this where a group of Batarian terrorists took control of an asteroid and threatened to kill its orbit and crash it into the planet by just strapping giant engines to it. Imagine the consequences of something similar happening with our moon. The affect on tides and sea levels alone would be cataclysmic long before it ever collided with the planet. Theoretically, it wouldn't take much to do something like this, and the threat of tampering with any natural satellite's orbit alone would be enough to give any civilization pause. Disturbing the delicate balance of orbits could have sweeping rammifications that would compound upon one another and cause widespread damage with even the slightest nudge.
@@nastrael As I told the other person, chucking a giant rock at a target isn't going to work in a setting. That has legitimate FTL travel for two reasons. If your ships can survive impacts at such speeds then you either have _insanely_ powerful construction material or _insanely_ powerful power generators. In either case, literal shields would suffice to stop any projectile from impact. The fact is that you could build and armor a planetary installation far more easily than you could a warship. The same fact also applies to any weapons you or pier civilizations might have.
"Doesn't matter if you are 500 guys with rifles on a tiny island...if there is a giant battleship parked next to the island none of the potential outcomes involve a invasion of the island." Battle of Iwo Jima: "Am I a joke to you?"
Umm Spacedock. The US Navy and Marines would like to have a word from World War II with numerous invasions of islands against guys with Rifles facing battleships parked off the coast.
Well, he said "if you can't win" and "if you have any sense" - too bad that sense (as in common sense) is usually among the first victims in any conflict, in part due to propaganda skewing the narrative and misleading people to believe in "alternative facts"
Also from all the wars they've had since, when they definitely had the ability to turn their enemies into piles of molten slag at the push of a button.
The difference is there wasn't really much those offshore ships could do. The bombardment strategy requires there to be something to actually threaten to bombard in order to work, it which most cases there wasn't with many of the small pacific islands. And if you want to use the Pacific campaign then you have the use of the atomic bombs on mainland Japan as an exact example of forcing surrender without invasion.
The point is you need an actual reason to have to invade. I see most fights being like he said if its just about whose fleet is in orbit. But this doesn't take into account ip's where there are ground batteries capable of launching ship destroying ordnance into space or if the world has some sort of shielding or even a planet wide energy shield. I think you would probably need a marine-army hybrid force that would be used to move in a secure or destroy key points like major cities and anti-orbital canons. Then that force would act as the garrison after a few days as you don't really need to take the whole planet just the important bits.
It depends on the type of shielding. If it blocks even ships then you couldn't land ships to bring the troops, so it's back to bombarding the shield until it gives in. But there would be valid reasons as to why planetary invasion could happen. It could be that you want to preserve the infrastructure and environment of the planet as much as you could, a HVT (High Value Target) is hidden/hold hostage somewhere, or that the enemy managed to dug in too deep that short of destroying the planet, you won't be able to harm them. In Mass Effect, this is why the Krogan was needed to win the Rachni war and not ships. The Rachni's nest was too deep and they couldn't be sure if their bombardment would have destroyed them all.
To cite Honor Harrington: "A planet can't dodge." If there is a planeary defense wich throws rockets or Energy the fleet can simply go a little further away from the surface and throw some heavy rocks or lumps of metal on that specific continent, or region till the planet stops firgin back.
The 'Marine-Army' hybrid part, I've actually been working on a story with something like that (side note that is heavily influenced by Star Wars and in covert addresses some issues with Star Trek). The hybrid is sort of a back story but the concept is that when hover tech was invented, it sort of killed the Navy as the hover vessels were designed for the Air Force. One Naval Officer used political connections to switch branches and then worried about friends he had made in the Marine Corps as the idea was that if the Navy 'went down with the ship' then the marines being attached would go down with them. So he rallied a few Air Force officers to form a new 'replacement' branch. The Army heard, 'hey, lets get rid of the Marines' and without asking questions joined in. The officer won his argument for a new 'replacement' branch and to the Army's surprise, got themselves replaced as the former Naval officer wanted to get back at the Army for a past event to fulfill a 'Sailors Revenge'. Anyways to end the quick explanation, the combination of both Army and Marines you would in full force 'send in the troops' so they called 'Troopers' (again influenced heavily by star wars but in this case.....it's the only thing that makes sense a s too what to call the branch so in terms of 'copyright infringement' I think I'm safe......but then again, 'Disney' so I don't know.)
"If you can't win, you don't fight" Tell that to me when playing Stellaris, I face off against Fanatic Purifiers whose whole deal is to clear the Galaxy for their future generations and colonization. They outnumber me 20:1, guess I should start a new game. Or instead I can fight an interstellar guerilla war where i use hit and run tactics to grind their forces down into dust as they conquer an area so vast they couldn't possibly hope to hold it. Also land battles are feasible if you look at it as the giant battleships being used as a nerve center for invasion campaign. Larger ships will have stronger sensor arrays, those arrays will scan for heat signatures, and they'll be able to coordinate the electronic signal that their troops will inevitably give off to identify them, and direct them after the heat signatures without that signal, or, even more likely, during prolonged war, said ships will be able to detect any signals the resisting forces might give off and use that instead. Also ground campaigns often involve building military outposts, and one thing they could build would be sensor arrays sophisticated enough to detect enemy life signs within a certain area/distance, as well as a dedicated command center for the war effort. Planetary Invasion IS feasible, because even if you spend 50 years, the planet's resources, or god forbid, archaeological potential outshadows it, as well as it being habitable if that's a rare thing in said universe. The thing is: it just takes way more effort and investment than most Sci-fi series are willing to admit. While the "exterminating the resisting populace" line does have merit, outside of insectoid hive mind species, the enemy will eventually run out of numbers, and they will either die off completely after a point, no longer able to keep their species alive via natural reproduction, or they will be slain outright as they continue to resist despite having no chance, even if there is a single person left, You, however, will not. You have millions of troops off-world, if not literally billions you could send a portion of. tbh I was kinda thinking that this video would've been more of a "most sci fi get ground invasions wrong" kinda deal and it'd be a video praising Warhammer 40K's drop invasion method of "just drop your army from orbit and start killing everything literally across the whole damn planet" I like the video though C: Got me thinking and in the end, ain't that mostly the goal of it?
First of all if it's just you? You should be running not taking on a military for by yourself. Sure you could do hit and run tactics but you won't do anything other then maybe getting yourself killed. If it's just you? They only have one target to aim at lol No you shouldn't be getting into a fight. Either join some people. Or keep your distance. Time and place. And it definitely not the time or the place. You have the advantage of being more mobile. You have the advantage of staying on a downlow. Think you should use that. Not fighting a war by yourself. Think someone needs to put down the super hero movies and maybe get some life experience if you think you can take on a military by yourself. There is no such thing as a one man hit and run. You: "woo-hoo! One down 299,000 more to go!" Lol that's just for the ship's only lol
I mean you can bombard a planet to rubble and kill most or even all of a planetary population in Stellaris. It's my favorite method to play Fanatic Purifiers, choose Tomb World origin and use percussive terraforming to conquer the world.
This reminds me of a really old board game called “Stellar Conquest” where one player can conquer another player’s colony after destroying any defending ships and defense bases merely by keeping at least one ship in orbit afterwards, but if for any reason all of the conquering player’s ships leave or are destroyed, the original player gets the planet back (unless the 2nd player’s ships were destroyed by a 3rd player).
I feel like this isn't really true. Let me explain: 1) treath of bombing to force surrender, or even bomb them until surrender: Both Japan and Germany (and to a lesser extent Great Britain) give enough proof why this is a beautiful myth. Only nuclear bombing could achieve this (perhaps) and that brings me to the next point. 2) If you want the planet, you don't destroy the planet. Yeah, you could force them to surrender by dropping enough nukes to create twenty godzilla's. And then you made the planet useless, great resource management. 3) Massive surface area: Good point, but we can take photographs from space with a resolution of one meter, and those are not even spy satellites. Surely a fleet would have much better sensors, capable of recognising a human being, or a human being with guns. And they'd have a much larger field of view (this wouldn't work on tropical worlds or heavely forested onces) 4) "it doesn't matter if you're 500 guys with rifles when there is a giant battleship parked next to the island" The entire "island hopping" campaign in the Pacific was literally that and Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of WW2. While bombing surely has its place, it needs to be used to destroy important infrastructure like dams, factories, bridges, canals,... and the invasion force should be landed on small, key area's. It is very much like a siege of a castle, you can utterly destroy it and then it won't be of any use ever again or you can try to wait it out, hoping no relief force shows up, or you can try to storm it. By taking farmland you can starve them out, by taking important trade choke points you can starve them out. It doesn't matter how you turn it, unless you are willing to destroy the planet, you need to invade or need to have an insane amount of patience.
Agreed. I get the impression that this was mostly a rant against the Starship Troopers movie, where they make All The Mistakes and play it off as heroism.
To paraphrase the starship troopers book, you can nuke a planet till it glows but now no one has the planet so the only way to take a planet is to kick the other guy off it and that's why you have the MI. Do you want to know more?
""it doesn't matter if you're 500 guys with rifles when there is a giant battleship parked next to the island" The entire "island hopping" campaign in the Pacific was literally that and Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of WW2." The difference here being that WW2 battleships couldn't just destroy all japanese installations from the sea, and a huge battleship next to the planet would have it a tad easier. And as soon as they could drop nukes they did that to avoid having to try to conquer "traditionally" any more islands. "If you want the planet, you don't destroy the planet. Yeah, you could force them to surrender by dropping enough nukes to create twenty godzilla's. And then you made the planet useless, great resource management." No need for nukes. nukes are expensive, and you need to deal with weird consequences of their usage. You are already holding orbit. Couple of tungsten rods is all you will need. Don't need to even fire them. Just drop them. Untill some sort of planetary energy shield becomes a thing there will be no countermeasure to that. And when the rod actually impacts the ground the force it will deliver will be greater than most of nukes. And you don't even need proper fleet to mantain that threat over the planet - you could just scatter a network of satelites with rods all around the planet, and govern it from orbit. Someone try to take one down? Drop a rod on next city. Bonus points if your satelites come equipped with point defence to actually fend off missiles coming from the planet. You have destroyed couple of bigger cities, rest shat their pants over concept of doom they cannot stop and surrender. No radiation, no resources that are actually lost. No need for invasion.
@@MehrumesDagon but see, that is exactly the point. You don't need to "destroy a few big cities" that is exactly what we did. Germany got hit with everything we had. We dropped napalm bombs on cities where many buildings were made from wood in japan. They didn't surrender because of it. Yes, you can drop asteriods. And yes, they can do more damage than nukes. It could work. And what then? Will they surrender? No. Unless you show zero mercy and the population realises you are perfectly fine with wiping them out they won't surrender. And if you do that, the entire universe would jump on you. Because you just wiped out billions of creatures only to try to make them surrender. In the end. The best thing, both for the people on the ground and for your own pr, it is better to launch an invasion alongside tactical bombardment. And the battleships... I'd like to see a battleship from space trying to destroy a bunker complex embedded in a mountainrange. Exactly the same as a bunkercomplex on an island threathend by bombers and battleships, the only diffrence is scale.
@@hmswarspite1064 well for the rest of the universe to turn on you, they would need to know about it. issue with germany is that the bombings were not the kind that would deliver the point on "impending doom and you can do nothing about it" japan got hit with two nukes and they did surrender - because it did deliver the point. as for drilling through mountain bunkers - well it would highly depend on tech available tothat battleship. that being said in the meantime I've started debating the topic with a friend,and he raised a very interesting point in here. point of "why do you need to conquer that planet in the first place", resources available planetside for our current knowledge are laughtable compared to the rest of the solar system. So if they were posing threat to your operations you can just glass the planet and you won't loose anything of value. and the answer to that question would pretty much dictate what's feasible and what is not feasible :)
I recommend you read a few books such as On Combat and On Killing, or at least watch Lindybeige’s video on the effectiveness of bombardment. People don’t surrender to bombardment. People surrender to infantry. They do it more easily after being broken by bombardment, but the infantry has to physically reach them first.
Yeah, because here on earth we have so many historical examples where parking a big battleship next to a small island caused the people holding the island to just surrender. Or all those cases where the mere threat of bombing cities caused people to surrender. Really, if military history teaches one thing, its that bombing cities doesn't work and that expecting people to surrender just because you have superior firepower aimed at them is hopelessly naive. But lets assume for a second that it would, there are a few problems with planetary bombardments. First, once you start with that, you can start wondering if perhaps you are the bad guy. Assuming that your military force isn't part of some absurdly fascist regime, people might have a problem with their government dropping rocks from orbit on civilian targets. Furthermore, assuming that you are bombing them with rocks, you aren't just dropping precision munitions on a city, you are essentially nuking cities. Indiscriminate murder. Second, assuming for a moment that you are indeed a fascist government that doesnt care about murdering civilians, say you nuke the shit out of a planet, you potentially trigger a nuclear winter, you destroy every bit of valuable infrastructure, you essentially reduce the worth of the planet you are trying to capture. A garden planet is worthless if you cause mass extinctions following a drastic climate shift due to orbital bombardment. Third, say your threat works and you indeed capture the planet without much of a fight. Then what? A garrison force? Whats to stop the locals from starting an insurgency? More orbital bombardments? Drop nukes on your own garrison. Its not that difficult to make it nearly impossible to hold a place with just a garrison. The insurgency will force the garrison to come out and chase them or else just suffer constant attrition. Which means that the attacker needs to massively ramp up its presence in order to retain control. Again, plenty of real world examples where a technologically superior force with access to overwhelming firepower got their ass handed to them by technologically inferior insurgents. Ultimately planetary invasions will never happen. Not even small ones with garrison forces. The logistical nightmare of supporting planetary garrisons would bankrupt any invading force. And make the whole endeavor economically unattractive from the start.
Not even planetary but even nation wars to conquer other nation turns out to be unattractive in modern times. The thing about being the conqueror is that you have to bear almost all the cost especially in rebuilding if you want your conquered zone to be productive. It's much easier to wage a 'trade war' than an actual war.
I'd guess, invasions are only feasible if the attackers are technologically way ahead of the defender and they are only interested in some resources. So in a darker - no-win for the Navii - Avatar Scenario, where you just want to get rid of the natives and don't care if the planet is doomed, since you could never live there without an environment suit anyways. So: Nuke the most "dangerous" places (break the defenders) and build up your mining camps.
@Michiel van der Sijs """Ultimately planetary invasions will never happen. Not even small ones with garrison forces. The logistical nightmare of supporting planetary garrisons would bankrupt any invading force. And make the whole endeavor economically unattractive from the start.""" I mean, ultimately the exact same thing would've been said about cross-continental invasions a millennia ago, but lo and behold, we've had dozens since then. Obviously the no modern nation would be able to bankroll the invasion of another planet, but in the future we might be looking at multi-planet economies with the sorts of radically powerful technologies and industries needed to do it. @SecondSein, I feel you're assuming the *only* reason to go to war and invade somewhere is to extract a net profit from a conquered territory via a colonial administration, but we've seen historically that's simply not the case. Rampant Ideology, Perceived threats, Religious disputes, People just being massive fuckwits. There are plenty of reasons to go and butcher other people from halfway across the galaxy.
I agree with everything except your conclusion, conquest of a planet rich in Resources or Commerce can prove quite profitable for a spacefaring Empire as it wishes to gain a monopoly on trade routes and markets over their rivals, most of history here on Earth provides a good example of this and depending on the planet’s population size and cooperation with locals it probably wouldn’t be nearly as expensive as you think, even so the cost of an occupation force would likely be offset by the potential wealth brought into the State. After all it wasn’t military expansion which bankrupted Rome and the other great Empires of history
@@ummdustry5718 well, your other points can be solved with orbital bombardments as usually those points are perceived by the user to be solvable with force. You could argue that there are regulations in place to stop orbital bombardment. There might, but who knows, the ones who make space laws might think that orbital bombardment is acceptable as long as it is within acceptable parameters and that it bring disputes to a swift end instead of dragging it out with a planetary invasion.
*Objection* There is one concept that is quite neglected in most sci-fi: planetary weapons. It is much easier and cheaper to construct and maintain surface weapons that can shoot on anything that gets near the planet or attempts to bombard the surface. Even in historical context, coastal artillery was quite common form of defense against approaching enemy fleet. There are few shots in the video where it actually makes sense to launch the ground invasion. The Klendathu invasion was a catastrophic failure, but it shows that you cannot just hover above the planet and shoot on any place that has trees and houses still standing. The ground force on Klendathu was quite successful at destroying the Plasma Bugs, so there is still some potential for (at least limited) ground strikes in case the ships or air force are not able to strike those objectives, or would suffer high losses in attempt to do so. The battle of Hoth is another example of the threat the planetary ion cannons can be. Any populated planet with much larger garrison than of the Rebel Alliance on Hoth would be able to set up much greater defense network across the planet. The Galactic Empire had to land armored vehicles to break through the Rebel's defenses, disable their shield, and allow for borbandment of the Echo base from space. The Empire still could afford to deploy the fleet and blockade the planet, because despite the fact the Rebels could disable any ship on orbit, they likely couldn't exploit it and destroy the Imperial star destroyers, because they were missing necessary means, such as bombers, capital ships, and other surface-to-space weapons. If the planetary cannons were part of the game, any invasion would be much more difficult to handle. Both sides would have to decide what their approach is going to be, but there will always be high losses, whether it be ships destroyed while bombarding the planet, or whole ground divisions wiped out. As I noted, ground invasions would still make sense in striking critical objectives, such as the planetary cannons, to secure the space around the planet and allow for the fleet to deploy and bombard however it desires. The defenders, on the other hand, would have to decide whether they would activate their weapons and expose their position, making them easier to target by the next invasion wave.
A planet is also pretty much the largest possible platform for placing weapons, so the fleet would have to be quite large to challenge a planet that has completely turtled up.
In defense of the Battle of Hoth: The empire just needed to bombard the rebel base, not the entire planet. They could not bombard them due to plot device Shield Generator. They could not starve them out because Vader wanted results (movie time limit) and the rebels used a surface to space ion cannon to create gaps to escape through with their transports. They needed to stop the rebels from escaping AND lower the shield to bombard them from space, so their launch a ground assault. The Empire is known for bombarding planets to bring them under it's thumb. They also could have send in commandos and blown it up that way. But the movie demonstrates how the empire can control a population it garrisons.
Also, Vader would be hesitant to bombard Hoth anyway because he wants Luke alive. Bombing the rebel base could mean killing the whole reason he is there in the first place.
@spacedock as Sun Tzu says, it is better to take the enemy whole and intact. So that you can utilize what it is your capturing. So to that end, launching invasions to do the same thing as your bombing would, and force the enemy to surrender but without dealing as much damage to the infrastructure that the bombing would, as a method would be possibly/probably more efficient. Using an invasion force to convince the enemy to surrender would be more ideal then deleting whole cities of usable resources including manpower.
This is entirely nonsensical. The same, “too big to conquer,” argument could be made for large nations, but as an example the Mongolian Empire took and held most of Asia. This puts that entire argument to bed instantly. Secondly, the orbital superiority argument fails for the same reason mere air superiority never wins a fight. To take and hold territory requires having an actual presence there. Mass bombing Britain never worked for Germany for these reasons and that’s before we even get into how you don’t want to obliterate territory you might want to exploit. This entire argument relies on utter ignorance of military precedent or strategy.
What you don't account for is gravity. The ships in orbit don't need to throw nuclear warheads at the planet. Rocks do the same job, but cheaper. If you throw enough of them, you can sterilize the planet by reducing it to a ball of liquid magma. No bunker can keep the defenders safe from that. At that point, the spirit of resistance, strength of arms and logistics of a long siege and guerrilla warfare become irrelevant. When your options are surrender or magma, it's not a tough choice. I wrote a roleplaying game, Dust Bowl Galaxy, which describes results and operations of interstellar warfare, but it's mostly about space exploration. Spacedock nailed this one.
@@Roxfall I think you forget that we have real world examples of similar things happening and time is an issue. WW2 American basically had infinite resources in comparison to Japan, and probably Germany for that matter. You also have to think about the purpose of your conquest. Are you trying to subjugate the population? Do you want to keep the planet intact for future use? Some other considerations: Are you afraid of how the political situation will change if you bombard civilian areas? Is there an equivalent of the Geneva Convention which bans it? If you start doing it, are you ok with the other guy deciding its fine to do to you?
Yeah, and from my perspective extensively bombing the planet would be impractical since you'll need to rebuild it again and you would lose part of whatever the planet output has and would guarantee to turn its entire population against you. Moreover, you'll need an army to some degree and not just a marine which was attached to the Ships as the population would not pacify by itself.
@@tadoshka5170 that depends on the physical form of an attacker / invader. when they cant use our stuff, the have to destroy it anyways to use the planet. And to what extend they need the planet for... just mining resources ? - kill all population. Slaves? - now you have to subjugate the population..
The moment I saw the title, I knew this was going to be like when the Templin Institute tried to debunk why the idea of a mega-corp government wouldn't work. Five to fifteen minutes of the speaker making a statement that only shows HUGE gaps in their knowledge. With Templin, it was a dubious understanding of economics as well as the history and organization of the East Indian Trading Company. Here... we have the assumption that everyone is making logical, rational decisions in an activity where emotional extremes run hot and people let patriotism and nationalism take over. While yes, space warfare would likely see a much greater emphasis on smaller units of elite SPESS MAHRINES performing surgical attacks and commando raids, the idea that ground armies designed for large scale engagements would become obsolete is inaccurate and shows the speaker suffers from the "sci-fi writers have no sense of scale" problem. If you have an empire that spans multiple planets, then raising an invasion force of a billion soldiers is not a huge problem if each of those planets has the same number of people as modern day Earth. I have not read the Expanse series but from what I picked up second-hand, that sounds like a bad example. Mars is still in the process of being terraformed (which limits the amount of habitable space available on Mars) while Earth still has the lion's share of the Solar System's population. And if the author built the Expanse universe to be like the last age of colonialism, Earth has virtually all of the manufacturing assets of note as well (meaning they can drown the other planets in ships as well as bodies if they desire.) The example you gave sounds more like a commentary on propaganda that ignores reality (commentary that's still quite relevant these days) then on the impracticality of planetary invasions in general. And as others have noted, your statement doesn't take into account things like planetary defenses (such as missile silos and giant rail guns for destroying enemy ships in orbit) or that there might be planet-side assets that the invader does not want to destroy. OR maybe the invader only wants to destroy military assets and deploys ground forces because orbital bombardments may be too imprecise? For example, what if the Evil Galactic Empire (TM) decides to put a hospital for maimed children next to their biggest garrison on the planet? If you hit the garrison from orbit, you might destroy the hospital. Which regardless of your moral compass would be something the Empire's propagandists will RUN with and use to whip up the rest of the Empire's people into a frenzy.
This video makes a few assumptions, but the one I want to focus on is people's willingness to bombard non-combatants. The nastiest potential example of this is retaking one of your own worlds which has been occupied. Imagine two governments at war in space, early on one of them loses control of a border system and is forced to retreat their military. The colonized planets surrender, and an occupying force lands. Later in the war, momentum has shifted and they retake control of this system, and force the enemy space navy out. But the occupying forces are still present. And bombing them out of existence would require bombing your own citizens, which presents a bit of a problem. Similarly, when fighting an enemy, presumably you're not looking to wipe out their people entirely but just topple or push back their government. One of the biggest reasons for our existing rules of warfare is reducing civilian casualties, and just bombing cities into dust seems to ignore that point. This is definitely an interesting line of discussion/thought, but perhaps not quite as cut and dry as you present it here. Would love to see more properties explore this kind of thing more though.
World history is against your assertion of "If you have a Battleship parked of an island, you don't need to invade." Guess you never read WWII pacific history.
Except there is a large difference between threatening an entrenched military force and threatening a planet with typically a much larger percentage of civilian population. Additionally, there is a large difference between the US which was trying to accelerate a victory by rapidly island hopping until they were in flight range of bombing Tokyo as well as cutting off shipments of oil from Indonesia, thus they decided to invade instead of blockading and starving them out. As opposed to any presumed space navy which would find it far faster to sit back and bomb a planet to oblivion rather than try to invade and occupy it. Additionally everyone here seems to forget that in this analogy, the US was trying to work its way towards the Japanese mainland. If a nation had ships in orbit, they practically have free range to threaten wherever they want.
Apparently Spacedock guy has no clue about holding ground. Reminds me of technophiles in the 1920s arguing that infantry will not exist in future wars because "no human can fight a tank or aeroplane". Or the barmy Murican philosophy of "body counts win wars". To go with the silly island vs. battleship analogy: it doesn't matter how much it outguns them if nobody can land to actually take control of the island.
until the island runs out of supplies and starves. I think the analogy holds if its a civilian world but if you need to take military worlds to get within striking distance of the civilian ones then yeah you have to do quite a siege to make a military outpost surrender.
@@viperstriker4728Except it´s self sufficient while your also can´t really deploy your full arsenal against civilian areas whiteout diplomatic backlash and also can cause far more resistance. Besides this ignores like the last 20 years of asymmetrical warfare against occupation where you don´t have clear enemies. You basically require the support of the local population when you want anything more from a place than raw resources which are pretty abundant and just expensive to get up from planets. From how i would see this it would just pretty much never make sense while also i heard Issac arthure argue the kinda obvious case Planets are far more armed and able to withstand damage because of the enormous mass in relation to some fleet. Just seems when i think about it that they are pretty much fortresses you kinda ether have to bomb done over a very long time or acutely storm and somehow get massive amounts of troops on the planet. Which all seems enormously costly and would just be done for greater strategic reasons like that planets similar to earth are pretty good for projecting power over a solar system to have control over the surrounding area or as a critical refuel station.
@@kingoliever1 Depends on which scifi, star wars worlds mostly have one climate so many of them can't be self sustaining. And when you consider the complex trade that must exist in any sci fi to support their tech, you might have planet of food but run out of fuel if that is your major import. It can go either way easily depending on which scifi. But most scifi don't care about armor, only shields matter and if you targeting an unshielded planet with shielded ships it will suck, just ask the UNSC. I completely agree with your 3rd point, any siege tactic is going to cost more then the planet is worth unless it has some major strategic value.
@@viperstriker4728 I was more talking about harder Scyfy like the Expanse and a Planet also can stock up more then a fleet and has 1.000.000 the mass.
@@kingoliever1 The expanse isn't a great example given that it is basically earth and mars. A better example for your point is mass effect. Lots of planetary invasions by enemies that literally are ships. And because they can't effectively wipe out a planet with bombardment like other scifi they deploy ground troops.
You see, something you might be overlooking is that in certain situations, bombardment is either Impossible or not viable. If you want to capture this planet then why destroy it's infrastructure, and if the planet has some way to resist that bombardment then you need to land troops to disable shield generators or anti-orbital weaponry. Also, what about the point where the Planet itself does not house the central government of whatever nation, sure you can get the planet to surrender, but what if the troops from that larger nation still fight on and attack your occupation forces.
Hoth had a giant shield stopping the bombardment. Dune actually has a reason for this since bombardment was stopped by treaties and had structured warfare. With the common people just wanting to survive
This is how planetary invasion is handled in Honor Harrington. Space-based warships are so much more overwhelmingly powerful vs ground units that planetary control is determined entirely in space.
While invading and taking an entire planet from space might be infeasible, it's funny that you showed the ground battle on Hoth, which is a PERFECT example of a feasible ground action: the Imperials aren't trying to take a whole planet, but they ARE trying to take (or destroy) a smaller area (the base) ON that planet.
Well, here's the thing. Any substantial body is far more resistant to orbital bombardment than most people assume. Sure, you can theoretically sterilize the surface. But with hydroponics, nuclear and geothermal power, deep underground tunnel networks and infrastructure, etc., its not entirely unreasonable in a sci-fi setting to have the planet break before the garrison does. Depending on the capabilities of the tech in the setting, you could even have them capable of blasting ships out of the sky. We even have a very light version of this IRL, with Cheyenne mountain and other nuke-hardened command bunkers.
If the enemy is so deep underground that orbital bombardment can't touch them, they can't touch anything on the surface either. So you can just collapse the entrances and set down your own facilities while leaving a minor garrison behind. Repeat step 1 any time they try and poke their heads out.
@@thepsion5 I mean sure but the enemy will know that, and make an intricate system of tunnels. What you thought was an entrance was actually a decoy and now your bases are being nuked from within, your water poisoned or the ground underneath collapse on you. What Im saying is that a competent army could have really good odds in the wait for reinforcements. Plus, what if most of the planet already lives underground? We are assuming a habitable planet but invasions could happen in places that are so well built against asteroid hits and radiarion that they are immune to bombardment.
@@robertoguzman6556 The intricate system of tunnels would be collapsed by a very brief bombardment, and you can't build new ones without alerting seismometers and ground-penetrating radar. It's like a castle siege - very easy to lock people in, and very hard for the defenders to do meaningful damage to the attacking force.
Also ground based railguns would be difficult to detect and a serious threat to orbiting vessels. The assumption that the attacking fleet could bombard with impunity just because they overwhelmed space defenses is utterly ridiculous.
I've been going through your backlog and I gotta say I really like it, but here I think I have to disagree. One reason even in the far future I think you'll still see traditional armies in the future would still be for much of the reasons we use them today. You would still need to land troops to take and hold positions on the planet for either strategic or political purposes, that would never really go away. Potentially made even more important if an enemy decides that turning a whole planet into a veritable fortress and staging point, as any civilization capable of making starships would surely make some form of land to space based weapons platforms meant to defend against such attacks as well. From massive gun platforms, surface to space missiles, air bases for fighter craft capable of going from planetside to space for local defense. If even a regular planet had even a fraction of these defenses you'd have to land forces down to remove the threat to your fleet in the area otherwise said enemy forces will continue to harass your fleet until dealt with. I think the best way to represent it that I actually got to play out was Star Wars: Empire at War. You had to first take the space around a planet before you could begin an invasion and even then you really only needed to remove the opposing forces to take the planet, not the whole damn planet. It also had the strangely to true to reality basis that most naval engagements will probably be next to some kind of identifiable mass that would be of some kind of importance as engagements out in the open would be rare and mostly by accident. Just my 2 cents.
You should study Iwo Jima. You should also study any land war ever fought. WWII is a great example. If you are an interstellar species, you can presumably bring a lot of troops to the fight.
You DO know that there's a difference between a country and a planet? Let me guess... american? "This channel doesn't have any content" aaah, yes. Supidest comments are always from people who have never done anything themselves.
@@WardancerHB It's almost like the majority of people present on RUclips aren't here to make content or something. He's being a bit of an ass about it, but John C. M.'s point is still valid despite the differences of scale. Sometimes threatening massive destruction would be the way to go, but if you give a shit about civilian casualties or the infrastructure of your target remaining intact it doesn't work.
@@WardancerHB You do know there's a difference between capturing territory with infrastructure and resources intact and just blowing it up? Let me guess....disingenuous arse? "Brings up his channel which doesn't have any content" aaah, yes. "Supidest" comments are always from people who think RUclips videos are the only thing people can do.
@@nicholasavasthi9879 Yeah, but invading planets for territory is simply not gonna happen in sci-fi space settings for a reason: Space is ridiculously big, it has virtually unlimited territory and resources. As the video pointed out, planetary invasions are not logical at all. You can, however, have wars over literally any other reason (religious, ideological, diplomatic, xenocidal crusades...)
wasn't it kind of explained in Star wars, that during the battle of Hoth they had a massive planetary shield preventing the bombardment of the actual base? so the empire had to land elsewhere on the planet and invade from the ground?
Admittedly, ground invasions are usually there to make things more interesting. However, I don't think it's as unlikely as your think. Use the ships to blast major population centers and military strongholds. Then invade and mop up. The conceit is that those starships in orbit are usually depicted as having incredibly powerful sensors. The kind that can find a resistance hiding in a hill. The fault in the plan isn't that the planet is too big for men to take, the fault is that a near peer planet with have giant anti-spaceship cannons to nuke your invasion fleet. It will likely have orbital defenses and system monitor ships. Such an invasion would be incredibly costly to attempt against a near peer foe with no guarantee of success. Unless the planet you want to invade has significant tech and industry disadvantage, this would be a total war of attrition.
In all the sci-fi media I have consumed, I have never understood planetary invasions to have the goal of completely eradicating those living on it (except for extermination-centric series, like Starship Troopers or Warhammer 40k) I had always assumed that the goal of the planetary invasions was to take and control population centers, like capital cities or large industrial sectors. You know, actions that would prevent a possibly self-sufficient society from being able to simply out-last a siege, but also without massive amounts of damage to infrastructure. For most sci-fi, constructing (or in this case, re-building) entire cities is still presented as a massive undertaking that can take years or decades, and a massive amount of imported goods and labor.
There is one major concept of war that is prevalent in ALL humanity's wars. As in: 100% of all wars fought actually STRONGLY held this as a principle. Throughout time. Throughout the planet. War IS NEVER about killing. War is about making your enemy do what you want them to. It is purposeful, controlled, violence. The idea of "hur dur just die" is 100% not how humanity actually thinks. We may be psychotic, but we're not THAT psychotic. We capture Prisoners of War, enemy cities, enemy armies- not because we necessarily want them outside of wartime, but because they are bargaining chips to force a surrender. There are ZERO examples of wars exclusively about eradication; that includes genocidal empires such as WW2 Germany and Japan: they STILL very deeply cared about capturing key pieces to force a surrender. All these scifi stuck on this inanely stupid prospect of "hur dur all war is genocide" is telling that our species is not ready to join the stars... Because that is INSANELY childish. War is not genocide. War can include genocide, but that is NOT what war is. War is pure and simple: make the enemy do what your government wants them to do. If that goal is to end their war then you've just described 50% of ALL war goals throughout ALL of human history.
Guerrilla, schorched earth and terror tactics developed in the scenario of a big invincible opponent where you win by making the enemy victory unsustainable. Sometimes you can't just nuke a enemy into submission. A dedicated ground force could help by projecting a military presence or controlling a specific area in a way a ship simply can't do, and for cheap.
Its interesting you picked the Battle of Hoth, where there actually was a reason for them not to just bombard the rebel base, in that Vader was interested in taking specific captives alive. If you need to capture a specific person or location unharmed, thats where the marines become relevant.
There are countless reasons available that make planetary invasions plausible, e.g. a treaty might prevent the invaders from building warships, the invaders might not be willing to use weapons of mass destruction, the invaders are interested in the infrastructure and workforce of a planet not its raw resources, so destroying it would be counter productive, the goal of the invasion might be to liberate the population from an occupation force. There are of course countless examples where planetary invasions don't make sense and are just used for the spectacle, but I wouldn't rule them out in general.
Interestingly, in the Starship Troopers novel the mobile infantry was usually employed as a smash and run force. Drop _individually_ from orbit with enough firepower and numbers to make a fearsome show of force, secure an LZ for extraction than cause as much havoc as you can before the situation becomes untenable then pull out. The goal is to strike a specific instillation that is not particularly viable as an orbital bombardment target or to break the public will to fight of your enemy. But....... don't forget: if you are in orbit you are a very visible and predictable target for any ground to orbit weapons. You will want to take them out before parking your fleet a few hundred km up. So, you have a small force of ground troops inserted at known GtO emplacements to take out the biggest threat (ship launches are very visible and fairly easily countered unlike hyper-sonic missiles and even less energy weapons) similar to special forces and cruse missiles taking out AAA and AA-missile batteries today. You then use orbital bombardment to take out major command and control centers, weapons production facilities, and financial centers. Then ground troops with the twin mission of tending to those who surrender and making others wish they had. That last bit is vital! You _must_ send the message that resistance is death and compliance is compassion and fairly comfortable life.
Unless they want to capture the resources, intel, or important personnel Or unless it’s amazingly small amounts of effective ground fighters can be launched to space.
@@TheGahta Planets would likely have much of the industry. Perhaps not on the planet but in orbit but i still imagine most intelligent species would tend to have their industrial capacity around where they actually live. Maybe not for military industry but certainly for consumer products. Humans like nature and I imagine Aliens would also prefer the environment they evolved in to space. So factories would either be on the planet proper or on and around orbital rings/space elevators. You´d also find most scientific installations on planets. Nevermind anything of cultural or political significance. There would be a lot of reasons to take a planet.
@@XMysticHerox Neither resources nor industry is a reason to invade a planet. You would need more than a planet's worth of resources, manpower, and industry in order to overcome the defender's advantage. If you have that, then what do you need from the planet? The main reason to deal with a planet is to take them out of the war. Once you defeat their fleet, once you control the space around their planet (and you would need to do all this in order to land an invasion force), then they are done. You can tell them to surrender, order them to surrender or else you'll bombard their planet, or just leave a small force to keep up the blockade while your main fleet moves on to more pressing objectives. There is no reason to send an army planetside. Objectives can be accomplished by special forces infiltration, but no D-Day style offensives. The Japanese fought tooth and nail to defend every worthless rock in the Pacific. But when the US dropped two nukes on their Home Island, they surrendered. The amount of destruction and the futility of resistance even moved those fanatics. People are not zealots. They don't want to die for your thought experiment. Unless they are facing a war of extermination, the planet will surrender when it's not worth it to keep fighting. And when the enemy has total space superiority over a planet (which they would need in order to land an invasion force), and it is not a war of extermination, then that is when it is no longer worth it to keep fighting.
I would argue a planetary bombardment is a planetary invasion. And much like you stated, if you bomb a target into submission then it will submit. Which will allow you to land troops on the planet, and if some resist (as they will inevitably do) then you can fight them - you're not fighting the planet, just isolated countries or cities.
A few points: 1. Planetary Bombardment may not be possible. If the goal is to take land or resources, any Bombardment that would eliminate a sufficiently dug in enemy may well also damage the planet or resources beyond repair, making an air/ground campaign the only option. 2. Siege and blockade is a viable option, but is very time consuming, and there are numerous reasons one may not have the time to wait out the enemy. Additional, the planet may be self sufficient, making Siege completely ineffective.
Well, i suppose it depends on the planets population, if there is just some cities, it's probably possible to invade it, it would be like invading a small country. Despite that you make a lot of good points.
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My only Grip with this is. When you want the infrastructure of that planet intact. Like in star wars when there is a Construction world. that Builds Space ships. If Possible, You would want to take it with as little collateral damage as you can. For not only is the Industry of that planet Important. and would literally Take Decades at best to repair or replace. But the Workers you want to keep working for you, If you can. So Attack from Orbit with Space Artillery. Is not a use-able Method at that point for such a world. Also there are times when the enemy you want to take out on a world is not known where they are. So you waste Huge amounts of resources to Glass a Planet like that. and then their are times when Waging a war is possible, And you don't want to glass it. Like with a Farming world. You want the Food Production for your self. And the Population is small enough that you can ether Bully them into obeying, Or You can literally win a Straight out land war. Lastly what about worlds that have these 4 things, 1) Planetary Shield Generators, Which makes Bombardment from Space nay impossible, 2) Weapon Platforms that can return fire at your space ships from the planet surface, 3) Underground Infrastructure that Makes it Pretty hard to locate and Bombarded them and deal proper Damage to your enemies. 4) Planetary Defense forces that Use Mass Short Distance Fighters and Orbital small war ships, Including mass Boarding Parties from the planet surface.
What if you want the planet for a resource that would be destroyed by bombing and they refuse to surrender, then you gotta get hands dirty and if you remember during the clone wars there were opposing warships and during the imperial era forget bombing the planet they just destroy it, also keep in mind half the planets had friendliest on them and were simply held by the enemy, as opposed to purely enemy control such as the planet ryloth during the clone wars, to be honest I think the only clone wars invasion I remember where the planet had no friendlies was umbara and we have the morals of the Jedi generals to thank for no planetary scale bombing, they only wanna fight people who fight back not the women and children too.... unless it’s anakin
Also EldrenOfTheMist makes some great points
Got to refute the last point about 500 guys on an island verses a battleships .
See the entire second world war Pacific campaign.
Also you said about space battles and make them surrender as opposed to destroy them... what if the enemy is programmed not to surrender? (Clone wars battle droids seem too dumb to get the concept of surrender anyways) then either the clones have to match this resolve or they will lose the war
"Insane, entire planet of self-destructive sociopaths" shows Imperial Guard
Sounds about right
rokg95 Navy but yes haha
Or Orks, Chaos or Genestealer tainted humans. There are many sociopaths or faithful Imperial citizens in the 41st Millennium.
the planet cracked before the guard
It's actually the exterminatus in Dawn of war 2 and that was because of Tyranid or chaos infestation, I can't quite remember
"Insane, entire planet of self-destructive sociopaths" Death Korps of Krieg anyone?
I would like to point out that Halo is actually a *subversion* of this trope. Sure, *we* see Spartans and ODSTs doing ground battles all the time, but that's because the player is playing as a *marine.* Every game makes it abundantly clear that while the UNSC has parity on the ground, they're getting curbstomped in space, which is why the UNSC is losing horribly. Orbital bombardment is so common that they have a name for it, "glassing".
The only reason ground forces even get the chance to fight at all is because a) It's a boarding action of some kind, or b) the Covenant want something on the planet's surface, undamaged by orbital bombardment (IE Reach, or Earth, both of which held Forerunner artifacts the Covenant weren't willing to glass).
Additionally, while you list Star Wars as your other main example of planetary invasions used in the media (And let's be fair, it is), the series has given good explanations for not using wide scale orbital bombardments. Specifically, in Star Wars Rebels, it's shown that even a halfway decent planetary based shield can stand up to an ISD's bombardment, which is consistent with other portrayals of Star Wars invasions. Hoth's invasion, the one you reference, was the same setup, where the Rebels had a planetary shield, forcing the Empire to do a ground invasion. This explains why most navies won't solely drop bombs on entrenched positions, since it'd take too long to have an effect, and gives the enemy time to respond (As what happened in Rebels, and ESB).
It should also be noted that orbital bombardment is hell on the native peoples living on a planet. During the clone wars, when most of the D-Day style invasions occurred, the Republic wasn't trying to bomb the separatists into submission, they were trying to liberate worlds, to bring them back into the Republic without commiting enough violence on them to alienate their people for centuries to come (See: Mandalore). So planetary invasions actually make sense in that context.
Also, this is nitpicking, but in the specific example you used, when Obi Wan invades Ryloth, is actually *another* subversion of this trope. Obi Wan *wanted* to bombard the Separatist position, but the droid commander was using human shields, which made that infeasible.
So while I get what you mean by adding those examples, Halo *fully* acknowledges the implications of orbital bombardment, and Star Wars at least has *some* justification for the practice.
Well spoken.
@@es4583 The shield that warded high velocity ordinance? Like missiles?
@@es4583 Incorrect. Most shields protect specifically against high-velocity objects. If a missile went in with low enough velocity, it would just be shot down by anti-air defenses.
Human shields?
Dude, I'm pretty sure those were Twi'leks.
Obi Wan should have purged the filthy xenos.
Except we know you can send ships through shields now...which means you can send bombs through them or things moving a hyperspace.....
Spacedock 2020: we can just bomb them until they surrender
American during Vietnam war: we can just bomb them until they surrender
Germany 1940: "Ve vill bomb London until they surrender."
US Military to Japan: "We will bomb them until they surrender"
@@Isaacreeper hey, that one worked
@@danielm.595 Questionable, obviously we can't speak to a history that never happened, but the somewhat successful US push through the pacific and more successful but later soviet push through the senkaku islands were significant factors. Without dimensional travel it'd be impossible to say if they'd surrender without them, but I feel it's safe to say it would take a lot longer and lead to a far smaller Japanese population...
Not to say that wouldn't be covered by marines though, dropping marine units from space to take key strategic locations or capture satellite facilities would likely still coexist with planetary siege.
@@SheezyBites Well, history says that Japan surrendered shortly after the Nuclear Bombings, so, in my book, I'd say that it was one of the main factors in the surrendering of the country
In Halo the covenant did mostly just glass human worlds, except when forerunner relics needed to be captured.
This. They'd land troops to recover any Forerunner relics and then glass the whole planet before moving on. They only didn't do it to Earth due to the immediacy of their need to activate and use the portal to get to the Ark, while they didn't do it on Halo rings due to their sacred nature to the Covenant, instead fighting on foot while on those rings.
They also did it to gather vital information on Earth forces
You would only glass a planet when you have no intention of holding or extracting anything of value from it. If you want either of the later, then expect years of guirilla warfare from the inhabitants.
Or in the case of reach or earth where they slipped ground forces in to take out the defence grid.
@@VegetaLF7, also the only reason why they sent land troops to Reach was because it was one of the few colony worlds with some strategic benefit to them, and even then they still ultimately glassed the planet.
"full of soldiers and ship crews who were unwilling to surrender"
Imperial Japan and some allied warships would like to have a word with you
To go even further back.... "I have not yet begun to fight!" -John Paul Jones
@@viperstriker4728 Or the Greeks during the Persian Wars.
There was one soldier who didn't surrender for like 30 years after the war ended.
"everyone has a basic self-preservation instinct": shows 40k footage
40k is many things, but realistic isn't one of them.
It’s a good joke.
um ever met polish people?
Poland during ww2 soviet threatened to kill 10K poles if they the rebels didn’t stop. polish rebels replied make it 20K we don’t care! Give me liberty or give me death!
polish rebels never stop fighting the Soviet’s the polish raids on Soviet Union ended when Soviet Union fell
So it depends how willed they are ever met a right wing Americans who love freedom... they find them hard to break even when there oppressed in current period
ever met a Russian they fighting sweat police whom have been known to use tanks to slaughter Russians during protests...
some are just unbreakable, specially the kraig marine whom have no home but a Dead Rock consider themselves already dead...
these are traits of radical soldier that’s unbreakable
Kek
@@insidious7329 a lot of WH40K material is thoroughly grounded in realism, but a lot of it os over shadowed by the over the top stuff and contradicting material.
Counterpoint: Ground-based anti-space defenses. I could see a grounded setting using small-scale invasion forces to neutralize anti-orbital defenses, assuming the setting has ground installations that could threaten a far-orbiting fleet. Then you might need a bigger invasion force to counter a ground army, and so on. It's a bit contrived, but slightly plausible.
Also I acknowledge a raid of this sort isn't really a "planetary invasion," so to speak.
That describes Hoth. They had a powerful shield and the Ion cannon so they couldn't bombard it easily from space. Hence the ground assault. Once the Empire destroyed the shield generator the battle was pretty much over for the Rebels.
A fleet in space will most likely always have an edge over any planetary installation. After all the fleet can "evade" or straight up hide from ground fire, while the planetary installation is most likely in a fixed position on a planet following a known orbit. All the enemy needs to do is launch some missiles from the other side of the sun.
My large rock laughs in the face of your anti-space defenses. If you hit it, you turn it into smaller rocks. Amusingly enough, many smaller rocks would almost certainly be worse.
@@BatteryH1862 My metamaterial fallout bunker equipped with self-sufficient systems and fusion power laughs at your rock. Now excuse me while my underground factories produce more Exoatmospheric Ballistic Missiles and mass driver munitions to send at you and your rocks and a planet-wide vacuum train network transfers the materiel and munitions required for it. Also, our allies across the system are in an intercept burn with your fleet, so good luck.
It’s kind of strange how the video completely disregards the history of asymmetric warfare.
In his defense Halo, star trek, and star wars all have the ability to reduce a planet to molten slag on a planetary scale then caves don't save you like they do against any non-nuclear attacks. If you don't care able the planet and just want them gone that is....
@@viperstriker4728 In Halo, that's exactly what the Covenant did. The problem is that the Covenant believes that some human-occupied worlds have Forerunner technology that they want to preserve. Once they extracted the Forerunner artifacts, they orbitally bombarded the planet until no life was fit to survive in it.
@@RealmO20 Some shots show the planets crust completely molten when they are glassing so I think "no life was fit to survive in it." is an understatement lol
@@viperstriker4728 star wars has shields for planets. Cant take it or bomb it. Thats what it's made for.
@@CoolMyron True, and they work great they have them. But shields are expensive military hardware. Asymmetric warfare means one side can't afford same military hardware their enemy is using.
We really don't see much asymmetric warfare in star wars, since the rebels hardly have a tech disadvantage when you look at x-wings, b-wings, the echo base ion canon and shields. And as soon as the empire gets tech that is far more advanced (the death star) they immediately switch to bombardments (notices no ground forces were deployed at Yavin 4).
That Battle of Hoth in Empire Strikes Back isn't unrealistic, since the Empire is just storming the one and only rebel base in that planet. It would be dumb not to try.
Plus the rebels had a shield which prevented orbital bombardment, so the empire HAD to land and destroy the shield generators.
Not to mention they had a shield generator that would block incoming fire and an ion canon to prevent the enemy from overloading the shield with massed firepower
It was also a retreat, which he claims doesn't happen. The fact that the rebels still could run away made taking it fast through assault, rather than slow siege, more important to try and catch as many rebels as possible before they ran away.
Not really. Their goal is to get rid of the rebel alliance seems like it's a great target?
Have you seen the imperial military? Trust me I don't think they are hard up for resources.
Also it’s not like the Rebels were completely defenseless. They had an ion cannon that you could clearly see was more than enough to knock out power on multiple star destroyers. This ion cannon was staffed exclusively by survivors from Alderaan, so these were people who had lost their homes and were fanatically loyal to the Rebel Alliance and would rather die and be made martyrs than surrender to the Empire. The Empire had no choice but to fight the Rebels the hard way if it meant snuffing out one of the last few pockets of resistance that could seriously jeopardize the Emperor’s rule.
Responding to the concept of surrendering in space battles: there is a precedent for this. In the age of sail, when combat was often decided by boarding action, surrender was common. In WW1 and WW2, however, surrender was so rare as to be almost unheard of. In WW1 and WW2, no capital ships of any nation surrendered to an enemy force. No British, American, French, German, Dutch, Italian or Japanese capital ship ever surrendered at sea during either conflict, no matter the circumstances. It may seem insane, but it happened.
When the German battleship Bismarck was crippled, outnumbered and surrounded by British ships, it fought to the bitter end. When the British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter was overwhelmed by Japanese ships, they fought to the bitter end. When the USS Astoria was overwhelmed by Japanese ships, they fought to the bitter end. And when the American task force Taffy 3 was hilariously and horrifically outgunned by a Japanese fleet, they fought to the bitter end. When Scharnhorst was outnumbered and overwhelmed by a British fleet, including a British battleship that outgunned her, Scharnhorst fought until she was sunk.
Psychology plays a part in this. The British in particular developed a naval philosophy of aggression and pride where surrender was considered completely unacceptable, which then affected the navies of other nations, particularly the Americans and Japanese. Nobody wanted the stigma and dishonour of surrendering their ship, typically preferring to abandon ship and scuttle. This has a knock-on effect in sci-fi.
There is certainly a disconnect between naval psychology (space forces psychology, in this example) and ground psychology. Naval battles are typically short, and there are clear escape routes since lifeboats typically aren't fired upon. Victory is assured by simply sinking the enemy ship, a clear and relatively easy goal. Ground battles tend to be longer, larger, more bloody, and it's much harder to achieve a "total" victory. Moreover, individual troops are more likely to surrender on their own accord, which isn't an option for sailors who are stuck on a ship at sea or in space.
There's much more to the topic, of course. Still, that's something to keep in mind.
This is a great point that I had never thought about before. It probably doesn't help that a naval battle can completely flip with just a single lucky shot disabling large guns or causing an ammunition explosion. Therefor if you can just keep firing it's totally possible that your next salvo will win you the battle. Ground battles don't work like that, even a well placed artillery strike won't completely wipe out an army. And even if they start retreating they can always regroup and counterattack, a sinking ship can't do that.
How about surrender bc of overheat. Buckle up, realism time!
Taffy 3 didn't fight to the bitter end: they won. They could have held out for at least five or six minutes more...maybe as long as ten!
at least a sub surrendered and some freighters
There's an exchange between a marine officer and destroyer captain mentioned in Neptune's Inferno. The marine was fresh out of the mud with low rations and the captain gave him a full officer's meal. Even so, the marine said he'd prefer a foxhole. Cause while the ship does have lifeboats, at least on land you weren't completely stranded with little to no hope of rescue
During WWII, the allies had many large Battleships parked beside islands in the Pacific, and still had to invade them, as the enemy would hunker down to avoid the bombardment. And if you genuinely want the planet, you can only bombard so much, before rendering it uninhabitable for yourself.
And then there's the fact that some civilizations, could be perfectly fine with living in a bombarded world. If you dig deep enough, most conventional weapons can't hit you.
Taboritsky disapproves
@@CausticSpace
Not familiar with that name. Could you please explain?
@@mill2712 He's a crazy leader in a HoI4 mod who tries to purge Russia of all impurities.
I mean, are you comparing an island full of entrenched enemy soldiers to a city filled with helpless civilians?
Even if the entire planet is against you, you only have to kill a few million from orbit until the civillian population has enough and retalliates against their own government.
This Video is pretty much the same as: "We could just nuke the country"
Mister Spacedock, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
mister spacedock wants a spacestar .
he can pretend to not like the empire but he subscribed to the tarkin doctrine
It's bad idea to use nukes not because politics, but because you live on same planet
@@Haskell-Curry It's a bad idea to use the death star not because politics, but because you live in the same galaxy.
If an enemy has captured your colony planet, and that planet still has your civilians and infrastructure. It would be wise to not blow up yourself. Plus escalation is a thing that all politicians would have a problem with why is Orbital bombarding their people from an enemy force of a few ten thousand with your population of ten million.
He's American what do you expect? They kinda have a history of nuking innocent people like cities full of kids.
He's OK with it because he doesn't have to deal or see the repercussions of his actions.
You know out of sight out of mind kinda like how government leaders are so willing to go to war because it's not them who is going.
Do you think they would want to go to war if they knew they had to go to? Lol
points for using the bombardment of Narn.
Agree, but minus one point for including the battle of hoth, this was not a planitary invasion but an attack of a single base.
this is a feelsbad moment for londo
Londo: Great Maker...what have I done?
It also kinda illustrates why bombardment is a bad idea, remember Narn got blown back to the stone age. That's generally a bad idea, because it makes the natives restless and means the planet is useless until you pour resources into making it habitable, or even somewhat useable. Resources which you'd supposedly have saved by not committing a ground invasion.
@@entylsa And ground invasion was only done because of defenses from orbital bombardment.
"No matter how many men with rifles you have, you can't fight off a fleet of warships that is 50.000 miles above you."
You underestimate my faith in the God Emperor.
Ok so we dig a hole.
No. A bigger hole.
Now line it with concrete and fill half way with water. Get a nuclear weapon with a yield appropriate to the size of the hole and how much water is inside.
Now, cap the hole with a big metal plate.
Detonate the nuke, the explosion and the evapprated water will have enough pressure to put that plate into orbit.
WWII, first Battle of Wake Island, US Marines drove off a Japanese invasion fleet. Oorah!
Problem is you cant hit them in space well if you find a way sure
The planet broke before the guard did
Didn’t the rebels from Star Wars have a planetary defense cannon on hoth capable of hitting ships in space? Also think kashyyyk got orbital bombed in legends and most of its valuable resources went up in flames
this assumes that the planets have huge populations, if the enemy colony is only one major settlement or the entire planet only has 10 million people on it invading and occupying could be very feasible. The video also says two forces fighting on an island are meaningless if a battleship is next to the island but the US had complete Naval and Air dominance at Okinawa but the Japanese fought on for months just trying to inflict the most damage they possibly could.
"If you can't win, you don't fight" -people who've never read any military history.
elaborate
There are several conflicts in world history that defies that belief. The American Revolution is the best example.
@@jobhighschoolofcrosscity8430 many countries fought to the bitter end even thought they knew that the war was already lost. (japan, germany)
And even if you think the war is already lost you may be wrong (ussr ww2)
@@ryancreevy418 If you´re talking about the revolutionaries having no chance...
Let's see if SD2020 recognizes these words and phrases:
THIS IS SPARTA! I REGRET I ONLY HAVE ONE LIFE TO GIVE FOR MY COUNTRY. BATTLE OF BRITAIN. NUTS! BATTLE OF SAMAR. KAMIKAZE. MUJAHIDEEN.
Did you take even one day of a class in human psychology or history, bro?
Space dock: “If you can’t win, in any sense, don’t fight”
Imperial Japanese military 1942-1945: “I can’t hear you”
This sign can't stop me because I can't read
Third Reich: "We are gonna park our navy, army and luftwaffe just offshore and across the channel and grind you into submission then invade and wipe you out... you should surrender because you can't win so, in any sense, don't fight."
Churchill and all of Britain (during the Battle of Britain): "piss off... wanker!"
Imperial Japanese Navy (to US Marines at Guadalcanal): "We have driven off your navy and have you surrounded. Surrender now. You cannot win therefore, in any sense, don't fight."
US Marines: "Come at me bro"
US Navy (in Arnold voice): "I'll be back"
IJN: .....
@@Rubicon2305 "We are gonna park our navy just offshore and across the channel " *Laughs in the Royal Navy*
Yeah but 2 nukes and the capitulated. Thats literally a good equivalebt of planetary bombardment. Fight an unwinnable battle and be annihilated completely or surrender and live.
Just as an interesting note: HALO actually does have an answer for landing ground forces in the Novels. They're capital ships have massive sensors that ID Forerunner tech. But the sensors pick up Humans and some of their tech as Forerunner. So they tend to land invasion forces to (in their minds) seize holy artefacts, thinking that Humanity is aware of the tech, and defending it.
And since the Forerunners declared humanity as the true successor to their tech, one could say that humans in Halo are, technically, Forerunner's artifacts.
In Star Wars there is also an example given on why they need to invade the planet. The Hoth system has a planetary shield that prevented The Empire to bombard the planet from the space. They needed to invade it in order to destroy the shield generator which then would allow The Empire to win the battle easily from the orbit.
This is a video where SpaceDock have no idea what he is talking about. All the planetary invasion by the Covenant are to seize forerunner artifact. They can’t glass the planet until the artifact is secure. he just make himself incredibly ignorant of the context of situation
And considering that wherever Humans are in the games, then typically there's also actual Forerunner tech, then that's also another reason for them not to glass every army they see.
So, during world war 2 in the pacific the whole point of parking a huge fleet off the coast of an island was to commence bombardment in preparation for a landing. And those islands were held by a fiercely dedicated enemy that would rather die in battle than surrender. And on most islands days of battleship bombardment and bomber sorties from carriers did nothing to the vast majority of the well hidden defensive emplacements. Ultimately each island took thousands to tens of thousands of Marines lives to secure victory. So I would say a fleet can intimidate, but any space based military will ultimately need to be prepared to take the planet with ground forces with support from the fleet.
Still one thing.
Chemical, biological and nucreal weapons. Its more likely that small force woud be send to figurete out how meat/steelsuit its working, and then send enought viruses, gas and dirty bombs down, to decimate population enought to couse them to surrender.
this is a solution when you want to WIN campins, and don't realy care about what politics say.
If you are atacking a basicly a planet size city, there is no other way. Bomb to submision.
If it is some fresly-colonised planet, you coud land troops there to perform small raids to not waste amunition.
if its a huge-mine/factory style planet, then gas and viruses woud be bast way to minimalise damage to valuble places.
Planetary invasion coud take place, in scenario similar to war in 1984. War as tool to "force" people into submision and sacryficies. Just far away frontiere world, with nothing valuvle to send man to die, with nearby civilisation constatly changing the role of "atacker" and "defender" to get rid of unwanted people, and those who stay, force into even more poverty and sarcrifice.
@@dertafors keep in mind if this was human on human fighting there is a thing called the Geneva convention. Unless they are some super space dictatorship it would be pretty hard to convince your populous that nuking a planet let alone killing their populous is a good idea. Look at the Japanese and their suicidal honor preventing americans from capturing islands with ease and the americans being forced to use a nuke to prevent thousands of men dying in an invasion of Japan and that was frowned upon by a lot of people.
In a FTL space universe, you do not need the planet. You need some planets, you need some resources, but if you are fighting a war and you have to deal with an enemy planet, you do not need that planet. You can mine resources in space, you can build space stations, space colonies, and space shipyards. There is no reason why you would need the planet, aside from getting its populace to stop resisting.
So you defeat their fleet, their space stations, and you have the planet sieged down. But there are still the people on the planet. Why would you send an army down? You don't need anything on the planet. You just need them to stop fighting you. You have space superiority. Why would things go any farther?
You tell the planet, "We have you over a barrel, surrender. Agree to terms. We don't care about your planet, aside from you not continuing to fight." The planet surrenders. Even if they hate your guts, they can't do anything about it. Yeah, we can't go down and push people around, but they can't effect space maneuvers either. If they refuse, then we just start blasting. What is the point from their end?
Now, if you want some other objective that must be accomplished by controlling the planet's surface, and the populace won't allow that in the terms of their surrender, and you can't for some reason just glass the planet and then go down to accomplish your objective, then maybe you would need to invade. But you would need more than a planet's population and resources in order to invade a planet.
But that's a niche and frankly cherry picked scenario. In a truly galactic war, you would defeat the planet's means to fight in space, and then siege their planet, maybe bombarding them, and have the rest of your fleet move on to other, more pressing, objectives.
dertafors >just commit warcrimes and atrocities, that'll make the population want to surrender!
Why don't you ask the Germans how well that worked in Russia, I heard the local populace loved them.
@@nuggs4snuggs516 well, initially local population (especially in recently incorporated territories) was usually quite receptive to German occupation, but atrocities often made locals to prefer "red plague" over "black death"
Yeah but Halo and Star Wars often have situations that rule out planetary bombardment. Such as with planetary deflector shields, or the battles taking place on a holy installation of religious importance.
Correct. More often than not, the planetary invasions in Star Wars aren't to try and take over an entire planet, it's specifically targeting a vital area on that planet that makes the planet valuable for something. Hoth was a land battle because the Rebels put of a shield that was strong enough to protect against bombardment long enough to let them escape. During the Clone Wars most ground battles were to target certain areas like destroying a factory or wiping out a certain base, etc. In Halo the Covenant would just glass the world if there was nothing of value there for them, but if there was a Forerunner artifact detected, they'd launch an invasion to recover it, or to land troops to knock out ground-side generators for the orbital defenses, things like that.
Thats the challenge of writers, to reasonably justify their stories advents with in-universe lore.
Also in the clone wars, the whole purpose on either side was to win the people over to your cause, which can't really be done if your blowing them to kingdom come. Also most populated planets in star wars have planetary shields that prevent that sort of thing
Please note he said realistic sci fi. If in my universe there is a god of ani bombardment who deletes all attempts at planetary bombardment, then yes in my universe you have to have planetary invasions. If you had a BS invincibility shield you would use it every ware not just at strategic plot points. If their is something important enough that we can't drop 100 tzar bombas on it, ok we glass the other 99.9% of the planet then send down like 500 guys to clean up the 2 square miles we did not destroy.
@@taloob493 Shields won't last forever.
So, here's the thing.
I've heard of something called "The Garden World Protocol". Essentially, green worlds are somewhat...expensively rare.
Essentially, ground assault is required because terraforming is expensive as hell, and anyone that would DARE to glass a garden world would find themselves suddenly facing off against anyone else in the star-faring level.
If:
A: I'm on a garden world
AND
B: You can't (or rather, won't due to treaties) glass my world
THEN
You can only assault via ground
OR
Blockade.
That's it. Any setting that has any variation of the "Garden World Protocol" WILL, therefore, include ground-based combat. Guaranteed.
Unless the garden world, is no better to an alien races eyes than a gas giant or barren rock would be to us. If the aliens needed spacesuits just to be able to breath in the atmosphere of what would be a garden world to us, then I think they would be far less likely to care about orbital bombardment or even in the worst case terraforming the planet while it is still inhabited.
I swear he just makes these kinda vids so people argue in the comments because this misses some pretty major points of why u would invade a planet.
Which are?
@@felixbeutin8105 the Empire wasn't taking over ALL of Hoth. They literally just invaded for the super specific Rebel Base.
in The Clone Wars, most of the battles are for specific cities or political leaders on the planets they are invading. In episode 1, they captured the Queen and Theed Palace and from what we see, they weren't really anywhere else.
The Republic attacked Utapau because their objective was to capture or kill Grievous. Geonosis was to liberate Padme, Obi-Wan and Anakin.
There really isn't unless you stretch the defintion of planetary invasion. Also the most important one is that it's literally impossible, unless the enemy is hyper centralized, which most people aren't
This video assumes that the goal is conquest for the sake of having conquered. Much how island hopping was important in denying and establishing air fields and points from which to resupply or launch attacks, its clear this is an often important objective and is often written about as well.
@@MrBrranch He did mention that he means planetary invasion in the sense of killing every living thing or taking over every square inch of a planet. Those 'surgical' strikes you mention he went over as feasbile reasons for a force to land and engage ground targets.
I feel Warhammer 40K does this concept extremely well because every planetary war lasts years, with reinforcements being constantly brought in by the attacking force, and having a space naval advantage as an extremely important factor in who wins or loses.
40K is completely unrealistic in almost every regard. With the exception of the Tyranid and Necron, none of the other governments in 40K are even remotely feasible, especially chaos and the Impirium. functionally they would collapse under the weight of their own stupidity and ineptness. Chaos would be too busy killing themselves to get anything accomplished and the totalitarian impirium would just collapse due to tactical stupidity.
Example, Impirium captain of a battleship deviates from standard tactics in their codex. Wins said battle, then after the battle he is executed by a commisar for doing so. Sorry, does not work.
@@evilspoon5280 my friend, thats the whole point of 40K
the imperium of man is in constant collaps for 10k years now.
but its sheer vastness keeps it from collapsing liek the roman empire did.
i recommend you read into factions that actually work. like the Tau for example.
one of two factions in 40k that actually thrives in the setting.
That’s what they say in the indexes, but all the books have fleets and armies annihilating vast amounts of ancient machines just to drive up the drama.
@@evilspoon5280 actually it does works because the entire imperium is run by the death cult of the ecclesiarchy.
@@evilspoon5280 The Templin Institut: Imperium of Man | Warhammer 40,000 "the imperium carries on only through the weight of it’s one immensity ever expanding and ever declining" a perfekt explanation
Space dock: “If you can’t win, in any sense, don’t fight”
Tell that to Polish people during WW2 - Germany destroyed us at the beginning but we still did fight and not surrender - and we did not have a country full of "self-destructive sociopaths"
Or why did allied forces land in Normandy? They could bomb Germany until they would surrender. (The same thing different scale - they had to fight whole continent).
The Normandy landings were actually because a unified communist continent was scarier than Nazi Germany, especially to America.
Of course a lot of more benevolent reasons played a part too.
But if Roosevelt had thought Stalin was a decent and trustworthy man, he very well may have stuck to bombing Germany and let the Soviets do all the ground stuff.
Normandy definitely helped shorten the war, but it was not absolutely necessary to end it.
As for the Polish people:
Nazi Germany made quite clear that surrender would mean execution, slavery, or starvation.
And the Polish are a proud people; they wouldn't take all those atrocities without revenge.
But, in short, you can't stop fighting if your conqueror doesn't let you surrender :/
The closest analogy in Sci-Fi that comes to mind is the Reapers from Mass Effect....
You can bow and serve them until they let you die from neglect, or fight them until death.
@@MrNicoJac There was also the fact that Stalin was begging the allies to open up a second front in the west to ease some of the pressure off his country. So for that reason alone I think we would have invaded. Can't risk a WWI situation where the Soviets get exhausted and negotiate a peace deal.
@@Arctrooper2091
True.
But the whole reason Roosevelt felt comfortable making that promise at all, was because the US wanted their democratic part of Europe too.
But technically, they could've just A-bommed Germany into the dirt, no invasion needed (although none knew that when those promises were made, of course)
The Germans suffered severe casualties, losing plenty of planes, soldiers and tanks. Poland was preparing a strong line of defense, but then the Soviets attacked too and that changed everything.
I think the game BattleTech sums planetary invasion up best. Invade, destroys the other guys army, then occupy. The civilian population won't fight so long as their lives aren't heavily impacted by their new rulers. What's one flag over another.
Yep. Context and culture MATTER when it comes to determining how effective planetary bombardment is vs invading and the force sizes required for each.
@@bthsr7113 It got so bad the creation of the Battlemech was seen as a more humane way to conduct war and thus became the face of the setting.
Not every day you create a weapon of war that's considered more merciful then the alternative.
No.
Firstly, we have PLENTY of examples in history, where "parking large ship at an island" does not make it surrender. Whole War in the Pacific is exactly that scenario.
Second, well equipped land based fortifications have a total edge against space ship. Ship is always a compromise between engines, tanks, size, armor, weapons, energy etc. You can put only so much stuff inside space-faring vessel. This is not an issue with land based installation. You can have literally thousands of missiles, guns of any caliber you can produce, infinite energy, all protected by vast territory and/or whatever amount of armor plating you can build. And this would be way cheaper than building a fleet. If your IP has shields, any shield generator on planet would be way more powerful than one on a ship.
Third, what kind of planet are we talking about here? It might be an ecomenopolis - than it would be definitely unassailable, like fortresses of the past. It would be much easier to starve it to submission by system-wide blockade. It could be a small colony with a couple of cities - then assault is completely feasible. You don't need to hunt every last partisan in the wilds - just take over key points and manpower concentrations, and that's it. There would be partisan action for years, but it's expected, and you are effectively holding the planet. This would be no different to invading a nation on Earth IRL. The planet might be uninhabitable apart from sealed habitats with controlled environments. In such case, you won't even have partisans after rooting out the resistance. And a multitude of other options.
The reason for Mars being unable to invade Earth in Expanse is because number of troops Mars can lift and drop to Earth is pathetic, both in comparison to Earth's population, and it's military.
This is not the case in every possible scenario.
Good points, but i think video addresses the concept of FULL BLOWN EARTH-LIKE WORLD TOTAL CAPTURE more then else.
Alejandro Ochagavía If you're going to sling asteroids at it, destroying their manpower, industry, and infrastructure (obviously meaning none of that matters to you), why not just... bypass the world? If nothing on it matters to you, why even try securing it via what one could amount to genocide and risk the PR disaster when you can just avoid it?
Another reason for Mars being unable to invade Earth in Expanse is that Martian troops would find it difficult to function in Earth's higher gravity without some mechanical aid.
@@rare_kumiko those are some good points, which I'd like to discuss.
First point, re: threat of bombardment. While this theoretically could work, for an isolated planet (example - modern day Earth vs alien threat), this might not be politically possible. If planet is a part of nation, and fleet is part of other nation, then MAD doctrine would probably exist, and that would severely undermine legitimacy of the threat. Even if one of the opposing nations aren't able to destroy a planet in return, there might be third parties, which won't look kindly to such exchange. I mean, even though USA is a nuclear superpower, every conflict since WW2, including ones that arguably failed, was conducted with conventional weapons.
Second point. While powered asteroids is of course a valid threat, especially in "low-tech" sci-fi, it's not like it's an ultimate weapon. If tech levels are equal, a man-made weapon would be more effective than just a rock, albeit more expensive. An accelerated asteroid would fly at still (relatively) low speed and predictable trajectory. It can be intercepted, diverted or destroyed even via conventional weaponry.
And this whole process with fleet capturing rocks, attaching engines or towing them and planetary defense trying to intercept them would look very much like a typical siege scenario. It might take a long time, time which attacker might not have.
And I'm not saying that planet is undefeatable - far from it, it is, like you said, an object that can't maneuver. However, if you move your fleet out of planetary defense range, you are also moving away from effective range of your fleet's weapons. The further you are, the more time there would be for ground defense to intercept whatever you throw at it, and, with advanced enough technology, even railgun shots would be intercepted.
Again, it all boils down to scenario. Powerfull enough fleet might threated weak enough planet into submission without a fight, but in different scenario, landing a couple million boots on the ground might be the only available solution.
A land fortification is useless against even the smallest space ship. your fortification can't doge my ship can. Let say your fort has 10^10000 missile launchers and infinite ammo for all of them. I have 1 missile. your missiles have 200X my missiles range. I sit out of range of your missiles and fire. I will hit you because you are fixed to the plaint which is moving in orbit. a high schooler can calculate the ballistic trajectory for my missile. If you fire back I wait till your missiles go ballistic and then just move a bit. It would be the same for any weapon you care to name.
Forts only work when the enemy has to get in range of the fort to take it out. On earth this works because of air resistance slowing down your missile ect meaning if the two sides have similar range. but in space if I am willing to wait enough I can launch my weapon from another galaxy and still hit your fort.
Dude, just like you don't invade a country by securing every square meter, you wouldn't need to capture everywhere on a planet. Just the capital and key industrial zones would be enough to push a public into submission as long as you are not a tyrant or a fanatical purifier.
Yeah I just don't get why he assumed "planetary invasion" would be "extermination mission".
What you described it is NOT an invasion
@@dexfm8927 except it is, the enemy force has landed and secured planetary territory among which are key areas of industrial, political, financial, and cultural influence probably with dense population centers which would be likely to force a capitulation of the PDF.
@@dexfm8927 Invasion is forceful entry into enemy territory. What you are confusing invasion with is OCCUPATION.
I also think the size of planet is a double edged swors sure some rebels partizans or whatecer can hide in mountains jungles or whatever but when all of the factories and cities on the planet are yours they become just annoying than hindering.
Bombing a world into subjugation from orbit doesn't work so well if it's a planet whose infrastructure you want to keep intact for your own use. It's also less effective for an enemy that is entrenched underground. If the planet has useful resources, you don't want to just start cracking open continents with cyclonic torpedoes, just to collapse enemy tunnel systems.
Also, in the event that the enemy DOES have orbital defenses, or even their own fleet of warships that can be brought to bear on the invaders, it gets more complex still. You might need to drop troops to the surface to attack the planet's command and control structure or communications network, for example.
Finally, if the planet you're attacking has something of value, for example an ancient relic, or even an individual or group that you want to capture alive, then you're forced to make planetfall. You can't use the threat of planetary destruction to achieve your goals, because you don't want to be sifting through the ashes for what's left of your target.
Yeah, not to mention the EXTREME value of proper escalation. Going all the way from peace time to dropping nukes is going to backfire on you VERY quickly when you're dealing with a near-peer foe. I mean; we actually ran into that problem and didn't like the prospect of our own "planets" burning just so we could taste that delicious victory. In reality, Spacedock's argument works against him more than it supports him: survival instinct is what stops us from going straight to total annihilation. We don't want the enemy glassing our territory so that's why we don't do it despite having the capacity to do so.
I would imagine planetary invasions would be less invasions and more planetary sieges. The threat of orbital bombardment would force many local governments to just straight up surrender, like old times castles, and if they resisted it would look more like a planet wide WW1 London blitz with the occasional Okinawa than a planet wide D-Day.
Also the way you talked about bombing the planet makes me think of Star Ruler, where there's no way to invade planets and your ships just automatically genocide everyone on them when getting close enough.
3:22 Eh with the kind of manpower and automation a space faring civilisations would have, it's plausible. A computer doesn't care about survival, and neither does a sufficiently patriotic sentient.
SINS of a Solar Empire. Bombardment frigates and capital ships. Absolutely no armies.
You are correct about armies fighting to the death. There could be many reasons for it including if one side shows no intention on letting the other win or want to treat them well. If you know your enemy is going to kill you if you surrender, then you might as well die fighting anyways.
Or that the armies are expandable, like as you pointed out, robot armies. Or enslaved armies with self-destruct collars, etc etc.
This is something that spacedock like to do, assume that everything follows the same logical thinking. To expect everything to be logical is itself illogical.
The problem with orbital bombardment is loss of assets and resources.
@@Marinealver - worst part of an otherwise really good game. You invade a planet for the same reasons you invade a country. Resources or strategic advantage.
Not directed at you maldus, just a general statement: As far as people not being willing to fight to the death... There was a guy, Sun Tzu I think his name was. Not very smart, didn't know much about war I don't think. But I believe he mentioned something on this subject once or twice. I don't think he is very well known so people will probably need to do some serious searching to find anything. But it might be an interesting read
@@Avarus-Lux - not really. Resources and strategic location are significantly more valuable. No ones ever been invaded because of their nifty highways.
There is already a “proof of concept” battle from history to examine regarding the bombing of an enemy into surrender - it’s now known as “The Battle of Britain” and it completely failed.
Any orbital battle fleet would have to do far more than just “bombard until surrender” - it would require a means of cutting off enemy supplies, disabling any ground-based defenses they have, be careful not to harm vital infrastructure in the planet (assuming the goal is to take a functioning planet - the resource cost of rebuilding infrastructure can be very high), etc... This would require at least some form of ground assault at key points on the planet.
You just fail to grasp what space battle is, and what it actually means. When you are bombing a planet you are not dropping 50 kg bombs, you don't need to cut supplies, you just need 5 minutes of space superiority and then just drop a 10km asteroid on the planet.
That costs nothing, and just destroy the planet. The simple fact than any space ship could push a 10km asteroid toward your planet should be a threat enough to surrender. Because it's just a cataclysm close to what destroyed the fucking dinosaurs. You don't even need to aim. You don't need logistics. Just a spare engine to push the damn rock toward the planet and let gravity do the rest.
You don't need a functioning planet. You just need one exemple and everyone will surrender in the whole galaxy. "Surrender, or be changed to molten rock". And everyone would be using that tactic, because there's no reason not to.
@@ZheinPasRoux Just one problem here - turning a planet to molten rock can backfire horribly from a political standpoint: demonstrating a willingness to do such a thing can easily motivate other worlds to form alliances against you to avoid becoming the next Alderaan.
I also think that it's unlikely that when civilisations are at the point of "space warfare" that they wouldn't have developed technologies or strategies to deal with this. The day after the first successful flight of man was the first day of development of the anti-aircraft gun...
@@ZheinPasRoux Extinction-scale asteroids wouldn't be used for the same reason megaton bombs don't get used, except destroying worlds would be even more so political suicide.
@@FrankCastle-tq9bz The rest of the world has not joined together against the united states when they used an atomic bomb on japan. They built their own.
And you expect that there will be anything else than using rocks from space to obliterate anything that stand on the ground ? That they will instead make some d-day-starthip-trooper landing style to take a planet ? We didn't bother with japan. We won't bother in case of interplanetary war.
Nobody will. Because just the idea of planetary invasion is a logistical nightmare 10000 times of what is a naval invasion.
The issue is, civilizations in these sci-fi universes have MASSIVE armies in addition to truly massive fleets, and most planets, unless it's a homeworld of a species (with some exceptions) are REALLY, REALLY sparsely populated, so I don't think conquering a planet that has at best a few million sentients spread across a few settlements is any difficult for them. Especially when most of the population refuses to fight unless they face total annihilation.
For example - during clone wars, except a few volunteers here and there, most of the fighting was droids vs clones. Like 98% population was like "whatever".
Another example - Naboo. Most of the small human population were pacifists, the only thing close to a military they had were few volunteer Royal Guards and the rest was literally just the police force. Since they only had a few settlements on the planet, Federation was able to LAND pretty much all their troops without any problems close to cities and then just take over. What little portion of people were even armed just fled to form a guerilla militia cause they couldn't do squat against an organized army, even if that army had collective IQ of a bucket.
Planetary shield generators also make sieging fleet almost useless. Unless that planet is entirely dependant on import/export for basic needs (like Coruscant with food import and waste removal), they could just wait behind the shield theoretically forever. I mean sure, Coruscant supposedly had planetary shield too (at least in "Legends" (aka the REAL star wars)), but that was more of a "umbrella" against wreckage and rogue shots while their defense platforms and defense fleet dealt with the attack on the planet. Coruscant would drown in it's own waste in matter of days. Maybe hours.
> they could just wait behind the shield theoretically forever
Maybe the enemy could cover the planet from the sun, like humans tried in Terminator. Though the planet still has access to nuclear energy, geothermals, fossil fuels etc. It would be pretty uncomfortable to transit completely to artificial illumination tho.
The video assumes a couple of things that would not necessarily be true in many situations.
1. The attacking fleet would be willing to bomb civilians. There is certainly precedent for all out total war but there is also precedent for less serious wars. And in those the attacking fleet would likely not bombard cities even if just so that the enemy doesn´t do the same to them. It´s also possible the attacking force has to worry about public opinion if they start nuking planets.
2. Ground based defenses. Ships in space are like thermal beacons. There is likely no real stealth in space contrary to what even settings like the Expanse depict.That however is not true for ground based installations. They can disperse heat into the ground and be basically impossible to detect from space. A camouflaged railgun with radar deflective covering could launch missiles into space all day and recieve and endless supply from the industrial capacity of the planet. The only way to deal with such installations might be landing ground troops. Or carpet bombing the entire planet with WMDs/crashing an asteroid into it but for that case see point 1 for one but also the attacking fleet could very well not have the capacity for this.
3. Depending on how stretched supply lines are a continued siege as implied in the video may simply not be possible. Even if the attacking fleet was willing to bomb cities and had the capacity to overwhelm ground-space defenses to achieve this they might not have the capacity to outlast said defenses. A planet worth taking would have a quasi infinite supply of ammo and even material to repair installations or even build new ones. Same would not be the case for the fleet or it would likely be very costly at least to continually supply it. It may be much easier to at least invade part of the planet and use it´s industry to resupply the fleet so that it can siege the rest.
If you invade a planet, those streets are gonna run red with the blood of civilians. Which makes the point about bombarding civilians moot. And as far as planet side defenses, you would have to deal with that when launching an invasion as well, along with every kind of defense that can't reach space, but can reach your atmospheric troops.
@@shorewall Compared to nuking the planet a lot less civilians will die in a land invasion. There will certainly be collateral damage but also a lot less than you might think as weaponry is bound to be much more precise in the future.
And of course you´d still have to deal with defenses. But ground vs ground isn´t slanted against the attacker. Ground vs space very much is.
1 assumes the invaders care about civilian casualties. If the invaders are a different species, it will be much easier to take the planet by making the natives extinct. 2 The ground defenses better have long range, when a ship can go anywhere in the solar system grab a big rock and send it on an impact trajectory to the planet, no nukes needed. Again big enough to make the natives extinct. 3 if they came from another star, depending on how long it takes to get there, they may indeed have enough supplies to last long enough for the natives to die out. Or they could drop a few big rocks, leave and come back in a couple decades once the dust settles. Repeat if there are survivors.
@@chrisbrantley6120 I don´t see humans just genociding an alien species unless they are Space Nazis which I doubt. And logically same would apply to Alien Species. I highly doubt pretty much any species capable of interstellar travel would be so primitive as to just kill billions of people. Even if they are they are they still have to slug it out with ground defenses.
Any advanced planet could easily intercept incoming asteroids. Shit we will probably develop the ability to be able to intercept just about any asteroid within the next 50 years or so. For a civilization capable of interstellar travel it would be an every day task.
No fleet would could carry even remotely enough supplies to outlast a planet worth of resources unless it´s stupidly large but then we aren´t talking about a remotely equal fight.
@@XMysticHerox We'd genocide a planet of Xenomorphs without a moment's hesitation.
"Everyone has a self-preservation instinct"
Tell that to Cadia, which broke before the guard did
or the United Kingdom.
@@bkane573 The UK was never at risk of being completely obliterated by a few dozen bombers. Not only that it's not like they were in the war with no allies, and no capacity to resist.
@@insidious7329 At one point they were in a War with No Allies. There was The British Empire and there Was Nazi Germany. Everyone else had been conquered, or like the French Empire, just rolled over.
...would you surrender to CHAOS?
Death Korps of Krieg has entered the chat.
A settlement underneath an ocean would be almost immune to kinetic bombardment. Worlds with entire surfaces of liquid are somewhat common, and without controlling the ocean floor you can harvest no resources. You would be forced to land and fight undersea, since even bombs and torpedoes can be intercepted since all movement is slowed by water.
A safer spot could be deep within the crust even the low parts of a planet's mantle. Convention bombardment simply can't go that far. And you would have to get asteroids bigger than the dino killer.
(Which you would realistically rather use for raw resources.)
ruclips.net/video/jZQP2oNDkAM/видео.html
If Sun Tzu cautioned to never beseige cities, imagine what he'd think of planets
SunTzu was living in the time where it had no technology like guided missiles.
What he was saying is how to besiege a city. If you read on you will learn he also says to use misdirection.
The Vietnamese used Sun Tzu's teachings and they won.
Like that one time where they wanted to attack a picticular American base on their land.
So they hit the other bases to draw majority of the Americans away.
And when they did they attacked and no help was coming 😊
Americans was playing chess while the Vietnamese was play Go 😊
Spacedock: Bombing the planet would make the enemy surrender
Principality of Zeon: *Well yes, but actually no*
When you wipe out half of your enemy's population but you still lost
They gave up too early and didn't go to far because they wanted to 'save' the planet. No Earth. No Earth Federation.
@@pll3827 Yeah cause all the Sides love the Zeons... :P NOT ;)
@@edwardbarillas7263 Zeon also lost half their population.
@@pll3827 untill Chars Rebellion, there he tried to create a planetary exinction event .
Actually, in the unlikely scenario that the planet and the fleet are equally matched, the fleet is at a massive disadvantage. The ships must carry their armor, weapons, energy, and ammo. The planet, however, will never run out of any of that and can have more of it bc it doesn't need to carry it.
Battletech actually addressed this in its Age of War where Warships would just nuke from on high until they surrendered. Then garrison units, and leave.
It wasn't until the galaxy saw the sheer scale of death and destruction, that the Aries Convention basically outlawed orbital bombardments, and aiming to stop senseless killing of civilians.
The problem is, Spacedock MacNamara, that bombing a country to the ground isn't necessarily going to make them surrender. The USA learned this the hard way when dealing with Vietnam during the mass bombing campaign they conducted. A ground invasion may be unrealistic (as in invading literally every square inch), but as you said, the point is to make them surrender, and the best way to do that is to take strategic locations on that planet through invading them and preventing them from being used by those who want to hide within them. Bombardment simply isn't going to win the war unless your idea of bombardment is to turn everything into radioactive slag and render the planet entirely uninhabitable for carbon based life. Ground invasions don't have to be as over the top as other sci-fi make them, but they're definitely going to be necessary to force surrenders by capturing capital cities, production centres, and other important regions for the function of the planet's economy and politics. Siege tactics work for towns and cities because they can't produce their own food on a large enough scale to sustain them, it doesn't work on a planet which has the entirety of that planet's agriculture still under their control. And if that planet's resources and people are important, then unfortunately bombing them until the planet is completely barren isn't going to be an option either. While I agree with some of the points made, that bombing can be useful, bombing is only so useful as it can support ground forces for the purpose of conquest. The Expanse example of yours makes partial sense, but nations (or rather multinational state in the case of the UN (still don't know how it hasn't collapsed because most nations hate eachother and longterm unity between the powers through just 'agreeing to be friends' is generally impossible so long as there is a continued rivalry between varying powers (oh right yeah there's also the matter of non-power nations that were subjugated, is the UN expecting them to not resist?)) not having dedicated military ground forces (especially the UN, as they'd have to subject their colonized nations on Earth to harsh occupation in a lot of cases, considering the UN in the Expanse is a very US-centric polity) is a very bad idea, and Mars should definitely be able to comprehend the simple idea that important places should be taken, and the unimportant ones will surrender. Anyway yeah the argument has gotten off point, but regardless, planetary invasions are still definitely a strategy that could be used for forces in a way that would deal with important cities as opposed to having to invade everywhere on the planet.
kill me
Have you read the books? Spoilers...
When dealing with space warfare, you don't need to bomb the entire planet to bring civilization to a halt. Let orbital mechanics, K = 1/2mv^2, and some rocks do it for you lol. Sure, bombing nam didn't work, but an extinction level event is quite enough to make people surrender. Marco's plan could have worked if only he coordinated his strikes on the Martian convoy better, and if he wasn't carried away by the roci in BA, which left him hanging out to dry (which was Duarte's plan all along). That being said, he never wanted to set foot on Earth, but only remove it from the equation for good. All in all, just throw rocks man!
*Shoots you in The face*
@@K.Gthealmighty "The USA learned this the hard way when dealing with Vietnam during the mass bombing campaign they conducted" and ignored the lesson of WW2: neither the Brits nor the Germans surrendered.
From space you have lots of options. If you just want to eliminate the threat then bomb all their big industry. They now can't launch any sort of space ship and will not be able to for years. From a big space war perspective they might as well not exist now. Or if they NEED to go down sling shot a huge asteroid into them. The Vietnamize would have surrendered/ stopped existing if the US had dropped a few thousand nukes on them.
"If there's a giant battleship next to the island, none of the situations involve an invasion of the island"
*Confused WW2 Pacific noises*
My first thought was Iwo Jima
That was my first thought too, but then when I started to think about it, the list is truly endless. Sparta, Germany, Russia, Athens (their plans for losing the battle of Marathon), Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis, Iraq, Iran...
@@AndrewHughes32 I was going to post exactly that. We had a fleet of battleships, carriers and support craft. Still had to perform a bloody invasion.
I love Spacedock videos but I think pretty much everything in this video was wrong. Giulio Douhet said the same thing about airpower in the 1920s, but he has been proved wrong in many conflicts since. Bombing does not lead to surrender against a determined population, it just angers them and they come up with ways to withstand the bombing. Also, invasion is just a matter of scale. If you invade a sparsely populated planet like Tatooine it would be easy with any decently-sized force. If you invade an ecumenopolis with 800 billion people you are going to need tens of BILLIONS of soldiers but it could be done with the resources that would really be available to interstellar civilizations.
What's funny about your last point is this: the amount of soldiers you can muster is directly proportional to your technology level and your population size. Early technological empires could barely muster even 0.1% of their people for war. Modern nations are ready muster 20% of their entire population AND HAVE DONE SO. So star nations with ecumenopolis would EASILY have the forces necessary to take enemy ecumenopolis... And that's with assuming that they can only muster 20% of their population.
The difference in planetary bombardment vs modern bombing campaigns is a question of scale. Even most modern munitions used on large scale, long term bombing are far FAR weaker than anything dropped or shot from orbit. A tungsten rod just dropped from orbit with no warhead can hit with the force of a nuclear bomb, without any secondary radiation. Any population directly hit by this would not be around to be angry after the debris settles. Once a few population centers were annihilated, unless the people on the planet knew another fleet was on the way to save them they would have to surrender or at least start negotiating very quickly before their leadership was dethroned by terrified and helpless civilians. Just look at the Japanese after the 2 atom bombs were dropped on them. They did not just get angrier and fight harder. Overwhelming force is not easy to overcome, either militarily or psychologically.
@@Ryanowning Yes, I agree. It is just a matter of scale. If we are talking about universes with ecumenopolises to invade, we are talking about universes with the resources to field millions or billions or even trillions of soldiers. So planetary invasions...still a thing.
@@Scudboy17Well sure, but you are not trying to bomb a few cities, but an ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET! You would need significantly more firepower for that.
@@xx_gamer_xx8315 you don't have to destroy every city to force a surrender. Real warfare is not about killing the enemy. It's about forcing your enemy to retreat or surrender. Having an enemy hovering overhead that you can't attack directly but can attack you at any time is highly demoralizing.
I feel like someone should point out that planetary bombardment may or may not be a bit of a war crime
Valid, but that's only if there's a galactic governing body like the UN and even they are kinda just a paper tiger. A valid point, regardless though.
@@FilmGuy7000 Or if your own people are disgusted by such actions or is illegal.
@@TheCoolCucumber WW2 was unlike most modern wars. There could very well be an all out war like WW2 in space but certainly not every war or even most would be like that. Simply because those wars will end with either both sides fucked or one winning decisively so in the aftermath it might take a while until there even is another side to fight a total war against.
unfortunately, the winners in war, determines who gets charged with what crimes.
"We have treaties..."
"Ink on a page!"
I disagree that planetary invasions would never happen, they would happen in more limited circumstances. Basically were you need a logistics base or some other objective. For a real world look at what in interstellar war might be like look at the USN island hopping campaign in the pacific in WW2.
Planet hopping I think is a realistic space born strategy.
The island hopping was also to establish supply lines. The Americans ignored or hopped unnecessary islands and took useful ones. So if that's a thing in space war then you're correct.
@@khartog01 that is exactly what I am thinking.
Tell that to the defenders of Iwo Jima, I think they missed the memo.
I agree with almost everything here, but the Battle of Hoth in Star Wars was a ground battle because of a shield that the Rebels deployed that could defend against the planetary fleet. In that situation, planetary, or even localized, shields would change this dynamic.
It's a raid not an invasion - which makes complete sense as something that would continue to exist
@@eoinchadwick9381 I agree. Hoth was never an invasion. Once the rebels knew they were found they immediately started to evacuate. They only fought to hold out long enough to get everyone on ships and out of the system. Remember that the imperial commander hyperjumped to close and was detected early. If he had done his job right he would have probably captured most of the rebels. The only reason the imperials didn't just bomb them out of existence is they wanted prisoners to question and intel from rebel systems in the base. If they just wanted them dead they would of came in with six star destroyer's and bombarded the base from orbit till it was just loose atoms. Shields only mattered in this case because it held up landing troops closer to the rebel base.
Besides, the Empire wanted some high-ranking rebels so they could find other Rebel cells. And of course Vader wanted Luke.
@@eoinchadwick9381 well in a senario where shield generators are numerous then an invasion force is needed. Give me a number of what you think the requirements are for invasion, I cant win an argument over vague terms.
Not really since Shields can be forced to collapse with enough fire. No matter the reactor power the Rebels had, if the ISD´s in orbit decided to bombard the Shields with their impressive weapons array it would have collapsed at some point. Then the Bombardment just continues until the Base and the surrounding area are reduced to rubble. ISD´s are laid out for a strategy called "Base Delta Zero" in which a Fleet of them go into formation around the planet and systematically bombard the entire surface until all that is left is a burning rock unable to sustain life. Not to mention the Superstardestroyer, that one can Base Delta Zero a planet all by himself in a matter of days and nothing withstands that sort of firepower.
Sieges/blockades are undoubtedly effective in contemporary warfare, but would they still work on interplanetary scales? If the planet has the capacity to sustain itself with food, energy, and other vital resources, then they might be able to wait out an enemy force in orbit, depending on that enemy's supply lines and rations.
Moreover, if it's an industrialised world, they might be able to build and then deploy capital weapons like long-range missiles, or something like planetary defence cannons.
While I agree that the idea of literal legions of Space Marines falling from the sky in drop-pods isn't optimal (ignoring that in 40K the rule of cool wins out over heretical logic), I think that the burden of urgency will often be on the attacker. Unless, of course, they're willing to bombard it into a state of complete ruin.
Yes burden of urgency. What if the planet has HVT (High Value Target) hidden/hold hostage somewhere? Then they can't afford to bombard nor wait out a siege. Heck, the entire planet itself could be HVT.
Yeah! A planet's too big too conquer, but by the same measure, it'd be easy to conceal almost anything of value, like a person or information.
Essentially, it's a case of why the planet needs conquering versus being outright destroyed: if the planet isn't necessary, then I'd guess the assaulting forces would choose to bombard everything into submission or annihilation - but, if there's necessity to keeping the world inhabited/habitable, then some kind of ground attack would be required. It might be more clandestine, or maybe large deployments against selected targets, but I doubt that space supremacy alone would be enough.
well you can deny that sustenance if you hold the orbit - unless some sort of proper planetary scale fortification (like shields) is available to defenders, you can just bombard the fields where they grow their food. And if they started building weapons to assail you, you could still just as well bomb these before they can be fired
now if they had such weaponry to threaten your fleet on the orbit before your arrival it would be more messy :)
The only risk to attacking farmland, etc. would be how quickly the invaders could rejuvenate and restore it for their own use, either as colonisers, or occupiers.
Something I learnt from the Mass Effect codex which might be relevant, is the notion of placing defending forces or positions near or obscuring things of potential value to the attackers. This essentially means any successful assault would end up costing the attackers things of worth to them. An example might be placing defence weapons in a spaceport, so any direct bombardment would deny an occupying force that resource.
@@mikeyjones5901 Why would a planet be too big to conquer? By that logic nations would be too big to conquer too but that is clearly not the case.
Ground based defence systems say hi.
If talking about sci fi, then you'll have to contend with shielding and ground based defence systems, which may need ground forces to disrupt or take out.
Plus, what if you want to capture the infrastructure without reducing it to molten slag?
If talking irl, them once again, ground based defence systems with ICBMs bring reprogrammed to strike space targets.
Either way, unless you really don't need planets and can somehow ignore the shields and defence systems, you'll always need ground forces.
About the ground based defence systems:
The problem with trying to hit something in orbit, is that it is really hard to alter your course. We're talking about going several thousands of kilometers per second, without any air you could use to turn (like a plane would). If a fleet could detect an incoming ballistic missile, it could just do a slight course alteration.
@@todorus except you could use a MIRV concept, with a large delivery rocket and release the warheads once in orbit or space, as well as chaff to counter PD systems.
@@ivanivanovitchivanovsky7123 I think that still wouldn't solve it, as we're not really about near misses here. The gap that spread would need to cover makes it just as feasible that the fleet would actually move between the payloads.
Then there's the option of having the missile being able to alter course, but then we're talking about a far larger rocket, capable of orbital flight. That would also give you the advantage of getting multiple passes at the target, every orbit.
Fact just is that it is incredibly hard to rendez-vous in space, with two vehicles that are cooperating and coordinating. If one of those is uncooperative it falls apart pretty quickly.
The solution I would go with is an orbital station that would launch volleys of guided rockets. But that's basically another warship in space and not ground defence
@@todorus I'm not talking about near misses.
If you have good enough computers to guide the missiles, you can easily knock out a satellite, and a realistic spaceship is practically just an armed satellite. It cannot feasibly accelerate faster than the missile either, because the g forces would shred the crew iirc.
All you need is a large rocket to boost the actual warheads up, such as with those cluster munitions except each munition is an armed missile instead.
@@ivanivanovitchivanovsky7123 the warheads don’t even need to be explosive, kinetic penetrators would do the job quite well you could load a lot more as well, a couple clouds of depleted uranium rods traveling through the void would utterly devastate anything in their path.
I think this is the first spacedock video I've ever disliked... There's loads of reasons to fight on a planetary surface. Plus you don't land and invade across a solid, long battlefront like the eastern front in world war two. We see in the clone wars there are garrisons either in cities or bases that either the CIS or republic land forces to take. Umbara, there are two battling fleets too, so you cant bombard a planet. I saw someone else comment Anti Space defenses. The ion cannon on hoth? Shield generator can withstand bombardment? Ion cannon knock down star destroyers? Guess you better land a ground force to knock out the base. What about cities you want intact? The problem going around just flattening any city in order to get them to submit, is just going to cause resistance to rise against whatever garrison force you drop there (i.e. see star wars EU). There's loads of reasons not to just murder and flattwn an entire city dude... It's perfectly justifiable for planetary invasions. Yeah some reasons might lead to an orbital bombardment (ie see covenant glassing) but there are other very good reasons to not do that. You are objectively wrong to state they would never happen.
The Hoth shield wouldn't matter. The Empire could just lay waste to the surrounding land until the rebels were perched on an unstable mesa.
The Siege of Vraks is a perfect example of this. The enemy wouldn't surrender because they knew execution was all that would await them for betraying the Imperium, and planet cracking weaponry wasn't an option because the Imperium needed the weapons on the planet. For these exact reasons, they fought a war that lasted more than a decade to retake Vraks.
Even Covenant glassings started with hidden invasions to take down defenses.
Look at Reach.
@@CanONuke yeah, Reach was a rare instance where the Covenant actually wanted something of the planet. Thats why they were secretive about it.
In any other case the Covenant would just arrive, destroy the fleet surrounding the planet, glass it, and carry on like nothing happened.
The entire strategy for the covenant was to simply overwhelm the enemy with technological and numerical superiority followed by glassing the planet without even touching the surface of the planet.
I like how your argument revolves around reasons to not orbital bombard a planet when there are hundreds of examples of humans basically doing that in the real world.
I mean, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a perfect example. There are reasons not to "nuke" them like resources, civillians, and possible POWs. But it was easier to threaten Japan to surrender, and bomb them if they didnt, rather than risk American lives in an invasion thay would last months if not years. Not to mention, that even after the first bomb fell, Japan didnt surrender until the US did it again.
The same applies to planetary conquest. Give the option for surrender, if they dont bomb a city and continue to do so until they do.
Its a lot easier to be constantly dealing with small insurrections than it is to fight an entire organized army with a set command structure. So save the lives of your own troops and threaten the glassing of a city.
Spacedock 5 moths ago: Planet destroying super weapons are pointless.
Spacedock now: Invasions are pointless, just threaten them with annihilation so they surrender!
my thoughts exactly, he just invented the Tarkin doctrine.... after explaining the flaws with it.
I gotta say, the history of warfare really kind of seems to go against your argument here.
Spacedock is not the fastest ship in the fleet unfortunately
So many examples of planetary invasions in history, alright!
Well in Halo the Covenant does Glass a lot...
Yeah, they only tended to commit to a ground invasion when there were some Forerunner structures or relics they wanted to capture.
They only ever land if they detect Forerunner artifacts planetside. If a humam colony world is unimportant it's glassed entirely.
The only real reason that
They send ground troops is to secure forruner relics and to kill humans for sport so even more points
@@cmdrshprd4219 Humans being killed for sport only happened at the end of the war, when the Brutes came to power. Before, captured or surrendering UNSC forces, were executed on the spot, until that policy was changed when the Covenant discovered, only humans could activate the Halo Array.
@@Dark_Fusion19 still happened though
This assumes conventional technology of course. If you can put something like planetary shields as a common technology, then ground battles can be worked in, albeit with different objectives
Wasn't that the whole point of the ground invasion in Empire Strikes Back? It was about disabling the shield generator and capturing the princess.
@@draeh well, her and the rest of the rebel leadership, as well as Luke Skywalker
Even camouflaged railguns could make sustained planetary bombardment impossible. No need for shields. Ships are relatively easy to spot. Hidden ground installations on the other hand would be extremely difficult to spot. Nevermind that the planet would have a quasi infinite supply of ammo and material to build new installations as the battle continues.
I actually have the complete opposite opinion to Spacedock. I think in a realistic setting a attacking fleet would have to strike hard and fast at a specific point of the planet to land ground troops. That is if it´s a highly developed planet. A prolonged slug fest with ground defenses would be suicide.
MysticHero the problem there is that space doesn’t really have a range limit, whereas railguns do, they could simply bombard from out of range, it might be less precise, (although that’s by no means certain) but railguns only serve as a minor inconvenience
Actually, I can see conquest of the valuable or resource rich areas of the planet followed by constant scattered warfare with resistance groups in the hills being fairly normal. The Inca did it too the Spanish and the welsh did it to British, but once you already have the best parts of the planets you can just ignore or only fight the native resistance movements when they are the aggressors
Spacedock: Conquering an entire populated planet is literally impossible
Me: Challenge excepted
EDIT: Also, am I the only one who thinks "World Anvil" would be the name of some sort of gargantuan ancient spaceship/space station that is discovered to be able to seed worlds with sentient life, like the Precursors in Halo?
Mankind in the future engaged in a bloody war across the stars: Challenge accepted
This is 2020, surely you mean challenge expected....
"Entire planet of self-destructive sociopaths." So...Earth then?
Not necessarily sociopaths, but self-important idiots by and large. Yes. Close enough I suppose.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 Some of us are willing to die for freedom, we aren't coward boot lickers like some of yall. No matter the odds, we will resist. We would rather die than be slaves. Liberty or death
@@AdmiralJT tbh i am not willing to die over politics. i rather be invaded than die in some petty war.
@@AdmiralJT - It's amusing how the people who were so willing to die for freedom, because they would rather die than be slaves... Had absolutely no issue in keeping a few slaves around for themselves.
@@AdmiralJT
Can't live free if you were killed for resisting.
"If there's a giant battleship parked next to the island, none of the potential outcomes involve an invasion of the island."
*Glances at Iwo Jima and Okinawa*
came here for this.
It’s one thing I like in 40k, a bunch of the conquests in the universe start with orbital bombardment or the threat thereof, but even when there does need to be an invasion, the operation takes months to years of grueling attrition, not the days to weeks we see in things like Star Wars. And it’s usually just to accomplish one specific objective before letting garrison troops handle the rest.
And to be fair, in OT any ground combat was fighting retreat, commando raid or boarding action (not counting policing actions like on Tatooine in ANH). TPM was at first occupation duty (and offscreen rolling over remaining resistance) and in latter part guerilla fights. In AOTC separatists were pretty much with pants down (they were already loading into the ships) and later in TCW cartoon Geonosis was retaken by CIS when Republic pulled off most assets to fight the war. Kashyyk was the matter of high value targets, relatively low population and possibly simultaneous battles on and over planet, so both sides could not use bombardment without exposing themselves
@@Jfk2Mr and then in the ST we see what happens without ground defences. You get orbital bombardment
@@OrDuneStudios well, I usually reject ST in thought process as it is contradictory mess - not only with other trilogies as well as with other films of said trilogy.
But yeah, rebels 2.0 base got nuked from orbit because it had no theater/planetary shield, but one has to admit that they were more or less packed to leave
Not necessarly. When we analize something like that, we should look for analogue sitiuation in the history of warfare. Luckly we have that.
It is often thought that you can subdue an entire Planetary Defence Force with bombardment alone. Well you can't, and even if that would mean either:
a) use of an insane ammount of ordnance, which is just not cost effective.
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b) poisoning the biosphere and atmosphere of the planet.
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Sure you can do it, but then why are you invading a planet, if you can mine asteroids? If you invade a planet it's for a reason. Also we can look back to Island Hopping campaigns of WWII and see that you just can't do everything with bombardment and air support.
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The real issue is that if you intend to take over a hostile world, you are doing it for a reason. It's either planetary facilities (shipyards, production facilities, population centres) or the need of a base where a hull rupture is not a death sentence. Probably the radiation - free aspect is also nice.
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If it's the first goal, you need ground troops to secure it. The defenders know that it is valuable, so they will use it as cover.
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If it's the second goal, you can bomb it, but after a certain time you will start to have diminishing returns. Also there will be some survivors. Congrats, you just created a fanatically hostile spy network that reports everything you do to other civilisations in the galaxy. And to root them out, you will need ground troops (unless you want to waste ordnance)
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And there's the possibility of ground based - anti ship installations. Luckly, we have an analogue for that as well, in the AA emplacements vs aircraft sitiuations. Sure you can overwhelm those batteries with enough air support, but you will sustain losses as a result. Why take the losses, if you can drop ground troops outside of it's engagement zone and wait untill they destroy them?
What a lot of these sort of videos forget is that if bombardment alone worked, we would already be doing that now. We have the capability to completely wipe countries from existence if we so choose, but we don't. The bigger powers don't use it against each other due to the MAD doctrine, but using the bombardment logic no would care if say, the US nuked Afghanistan in 2001 rather than invade. Annihilation wasn't the goal however, so invasion was necessary, despite the Taliban having nigh infinite places to hide and we look at a long war scenario. Goals matter in war, whether it be terrestrial or otherwise.
The "insane amount of ordinance" thing isn't true, at least relatively speaking. If you have the power to accelerate a ten thousand ton warship to a sizeable fraction of the speed of light (which is what you'd need to traverse star systems) then you'd also have the power to easily exterminate most of the life on an earth-sized planet from orbit. You could do this with a kinetic kill weapon (accelerating to interstellar speeds then dropping a rock on 'em at high speed) or you could just build a bomb using the same tech that powers your engines.
@@Hemroyd_Skankins Really you don't even need that much. Mass Effect had a good example of this where a group of Batarian terrorists took control of an asteroid and threatened to kill its orbit and crash it into the planet by just strapping giant engines to it.
Imagine the consequences of something similar happening with our moon. The affect on tides and sea levels alone would be cataclysmic long before it ever collided with the planet.
Theoretically, it wouldn't take much to do something like this, and the threat of tampering with any natural satellite's orbit alone would be enough to give any civilization pause. Disturbing the delicate balance of orbits could have sweeping rammifications that would compound upon one another and cause widespread damage with even the slightest nudge.
@@Hemroyd_Skankins If you have the power to _shield_ a ship traveling at "interstellar speeds" then you definitely have the power to shield a planet.
@@nastrael As I told the other person, chucking a giant rock at a target isn't going to work in a setting. That has legitimate FTL travel for two reasons. If your ships can survive impacts at such speeds then you either have _insanely_ powerful construction material or _insanely_ powerful power generators. In either case, literal shields would suffice to stop any projectile from impact. The fact is that you could build and armor a planetary installation far more easily than you could a warship. The same fact also applies to any weapons you or pier civilizations might have.
"Doesn't matter if you are 500 guys with rifles on a tiny island...if there is a giant battleship parked next to the island none of the potential outcomes involve a invasion of the island."
Battle of Iwo Jima: "Am I a joke to you?"
Umm Spacedock. The US Navy and Marines would like to have a word from World War II with numerous invasions of islands against guys with Rifles facing battleships parked off the coast.
Well, he said "if you can't win" and "if you have any sense" - too bad that sense (as in common sense) is usually among the first victims in any conflict, in part due to propaganda skewing the narrative and misleading people to believe in "alternative facts"
Also from all the wars they've had since, when they definitely had the ability to turn their enemies into piles of molten slag at the push of a button.
Yeah, he’s pretty much managed to forget the entire Pacific campaign from WWII in that island-battleship example.
That's what I was thinking.
The difference is there wasn't really much those offshore ships could do. The bombardment strategy requires there to be something to actually threaten to bombard in order to work, it which most cases there wasn't with many of the small pacific islands. And if you want to use the Pacific campaign then you have the use of the atomic bombs on mainland Japan as an exact example of forcing surrender without invasion.
The point is you need an actual reason to have to invade. I see most fights being like he said if its just about whose fleet is in orbit. But this doesn't take into account ip's where there are ground batteries capable of launching ship destroying ordnance into space or if the world has some sort of shielding or even a planet wide energy shield.
I think you would probably need a marine-army hybrid force that would be used to move in a secure or destroy key points like major cities and anti-orbital canons. Then that force would act as the garrison after a few days as you don't really need to take the whole planet just the important bits.
It depends on the type of shielding. If it blocks even ships then you couldn't land ships to bring the troops, so it's back to bombarding the shield until it gives in.
But there would be valid reasons as to why planetary invasion could happen. It could be that you want to preserve the infrastructure and environment of the planet as much as you could, a HVT (High Value Target) is hidden/hold hostage somewhere, or that the enemy managed to dug in too deep that short of destroying the planet, you won't be able to harm them.
In Mass Effect, this is why the Krogan was needed to win the Rachni war and not ships. The Rachni's nest was too deep and they couldn't be sure if their bombardment would have destroyed them all.
To cite Honor Harrington: "A planet can't dodge." If there is a planeary defense wich throws rockets or Energy the fleet can simply go a little further away from the surface and throw some heavy rocks or lumps of metal on that specific continent, or region till the planet stops firgin back.
The 'Marine-Army' hybrid part, I've actually been working on a story with something like that (side note that is heavily influenced by Star Wars and in covert addresses some issues with Star Trek).
The hybrid is sort of a back story but the concept is that when hover tech was invented, it sort of killed the Navy as the hover vessels were designed for the Air Force. One Naval Officer used political connections to switch branches and then worried about friends he had made in the Marine Corps as the idea was that if the Navy 'went down with the ship' then the marines being attached would go down with them. So he rallied a few Air Force officers to form a new 'replacement' branch. The Army heard, 'hey, lets get rid of the Marines' and without asking questions joined in.
The officer won his argument for a new 'replacement' branch and to the Army's surprise, got themselves replaced as the former Naval officer wanted to get back at the Army for a past event to fulfill a 'Sailors Revenge'.
Anyways to end the quick explanation, the combination of both Army and Marines you would in full force 'send in the troops' so they called 'Troopers' (again influenced heavily by star wars but in this case.....it's the only thing that makes sense a s too what to call the branch so in terms of 'copyright infringement' I think I'm safe......but then again, 'Disney' so I don't know.)
"If you can't win, you don't fight"
Tell that to me when playing Stellaris, I face off against Fanatic Purifiers whose whole deal is to clear the Galaxy for their future generations and colonization. They outnumber me 20:1, guess I should start a new game.
Or instead I can fight an interstellar guerilla war where i use hit and run tactics to grind their forces down into dust as they conquer an area so vast they couldn't possibly hope to hold it.
Also land battles are feasible if you look at it as the giant battleships being used as a nerve center for invasion campaign. Larger ships will have stronger sensor arrays, those arrays will scan for heat signatures, and they'll be able to coordinate the electronic signal that their troops will inevitably give off to identify them, and direct them after the heat signatures without that signal, or, even more likely, during prolonged war, said ships will be able to detect any signals the resisting forces might give off and use that instead.
Also ground campaigns often involve building military outposts, and one thing they could build would be sensor arrays sophisticated enough to detect enemy life signs within a certain area/distance, as well as a dedicated command center for the war effort.
Planetary Invasion IS feasible, because even if you spend 50 years, the planet's resources, or god forbid, archaeological potential outshadows it, as well as it being habitable if that's a rare thing in said universe. The thing is: it just takes way more effort and investment than most Sci-fi series are willing to admit.
While the "exterminating the resisting populace" line does have merit, outside of insectoid hive mind species, the enemy will eventually run out of numbers, and they will either die off completely after a point, no longer able to keep their species alive via natural reproduction, or they will be slain outright as they continue to resist despite having no chance, even if there is a single person left, You, however, will not. You have millions of troops off-world, if not literally billions you could send a portion of.
tbh I was kinda thinking that this video would've been more of a "most sci fi get ground invasions wrong" kinda deal and it'd be a video praising Warhammer 40K's drop invasion method of "just drop your army from orbit and start killing everything literally across the whole damn planet"
I like the video though C: Got me thinking and in the end, ain't that mostly the goal of it?
First of all if it's just you? You should be running not taking on a military for by yourself.
Sure you could do hit and run tactics but you won't do anything other then maybe getting yourself killed.
If it's just you? They only have one target to aim at lol
No you shouldn't be getting into a fight.
Either join some people. Or keep your distance.
Time and place. And it definitely not the time or the place.
You have the advantage of being more mobile.
You have the advantage of staying on a downlow.
Think you should use that. Not fighting a war by yourself.
Think someone needs to put down the super hero movies and maybe get some life experience if you think you can take on a military by yourself.
There is no such thing as a one man hit and run.
You: "woo-hoo! One down 299,000 more to go!" Lol that's just for the ship's only lol
"If they are insane, if they are an entire planet of selfdesctructing sociopaths." *Shows Warhammer 40k*
"WELCOME TO PANDORA!" -- Handsome Jack
Forget 40K look at the news to read about an insane species.
Stellaris: I'm gonna pretend I didn't see this
*laughs in colossus*
I mean you can bombard a planet to rubble and kill most or even all of a planetary population in Stellaris.
It's my favorite method to play Fanatic Purifiers, choose Tomb World origin and use percussive terraforming to conquer the world.
I can imagine small-scale invasions focusing on gaining control over key infrastructure without too much collateral damage.
This reminds me of a really old board game called “Stellar Conquest” where one player can conquer another player’s colony after destroying any defending ships and defense bases merely by keeping at least one ship in orbit afterwards, but if for any reason all of the conquering player’s ships leave or are destroyed, the original player gets the planet back (unless the 2nd player’s ships were destroyed by a 3rd player).
I feel like this isn't really true. Let me explain:
1) treath of bombing to force surrender, or even bomb them until surrender:
Both Japan and Germany (and to a lesser extent Great Britain) give enough proof why this is a beautiful myth. Only nuclear bombing could achieve this (perhaps) and that brings me to the next point.
2) If you want the planet, you don't destroy the planet. Yeah, you could force them to surrender by dropping enough nukes to create twenty godzilla's. And then you made the planet useless, great resource management.
3) Massive surface area: Good point, but we can take photographs from space with a resolution of one meter, and those are not even spy satellites. Surely a fleet would have much better sensors, capable of recognising a human being, or a human being with guns. And they'd have a much larger field of view (this wouldn't work on tropical worlds or heavely forested onces)
4) "it doesn't matter if you're 500 guys with rifles when there is a giant battleship parked next to the island" The entire "island hopping" campaign in the Pacific was literally that and Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of WW2.
While bombing surely has its place, it needs to be used to destroy important infrastructure like dams, factories, bridges, canals,... and the invasion force should be landed on small, key area's. It is very much like a siege of a castle, you can utterly destroy it and then it won't be of any use ever again or you can try to wait it out, hoping no relief force shows up, or you can try to storm it. By taking farmland you can starve them out, by taking important trade choke points you can starve them out. It doesn't matter how you turn it, unless you are willing to destroy the planet, you need to invade or need to have an insane amount of patience.
Agreed. I get the impression that this was mostly a rant against the Starship Troopers movie, where they make All The Mistakes and play it off as heroism.
To paraphrase the starship troopers book, you can nuke a planet till it glows but now no one has the planet so the only way to take a planet is to kick the other guy off it and that's why you have the MI. Do you want to know more?
""it doesn't matter if you're 500 guys with rifles when there is a giant battleship parked next to the island" The entire "island hopping" campaign in the Pacific was literally that and Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of WW2."
The difference here being that WW2 battleships couldn't just destroy all japanese installations from the sea, and a huge battleship next to the planet would have it a tad easier.
And as soon as they could drop nukes they did that to avoid having to try to conquer "traditionally" any more islands.
"If you want the planet, you don't destroy the planet. Yeah, you could force them to surrender by dropping enough nukes to create twenty godzilla's. And then you made the planet useless, great resource management."
No need for nukes. nukes are expensive, and you need to deal with weird consequences of their usage. You are already holding orbit. Couple of tungsten rods is all you will need. Don't need to even fire them. Just drop them. Untill some sort of planetary energy shield becomes a thing there will be no countermeasure to that. And when the rod actually impacts the ground the force it will deliver will be greater than most of nukes. And you don't even need proper fleet to mantain that threat over the planet - you could just scatter a network of satelites with rods all around the planet, and govern it from orbit. Someone try to take one down? Drop a rod on next city. Bonus points if your satelites come equipped with point defence to actually fend off missiles coming from the planet.
You have destroyed couple of bigger cities, rest shat their pants over concept of doom they cannot stop and surrender. No radiation, no resources that are actually lost. No need for invasion.
@@MehrumesDagon but see, that is exactly the point. You don't need to "destroy a few big cities" that is exactly what we did. Germany got hit with everything we had. We dropped napalm bombs on cities where many buildings were made from wood in japan. They didn't surrender because of it. Yes, you can drop asteriods. And yes, they can do more damage than nukes. It could work. And what then? Will they surrender? No. Unless you show zero mercy and the population realises you are perfectly fine with wiping them out they won't surrender. And if you do that, the entire universe would jump on you. Because you just wiped out billions of creatures only to try to make them surrender. In the end. The best thing, both for the people on the ground and for your own pr, it is better to launch an invasion alongside tactical bombardment.
And the battleships... I'd like to see a battleship from space trying to destroy a bunker complex embedded in a mountainrange. Exactly the same as a bunkercomplex on an island threathend by bombers and battleships, the only diffrence is scale.
@@hmswarspite1064 well for the rest of the universe to turn on you, they would need to know about it.
issue with germany is that the bombings were not the kind that would deliver the point on "impending doom and you can do nothing about it"
japan got hit with two nukes and they did surrender - because it did deliver the point.
as for drilling through mountain bunkers - well it would highly depend on tech available tothat battleship.
that being said in the meantime I've started debating the topic with a friend,and he raised a very interesting point in here.
point of "why do you need to conquer that planet in the first place", resources available planetside for our current knowledge are laughtable compared to the rest of the solar system. So if they were posing threat to your operations you can just glass the planet and you won't loose anything of value.
and the answer to that question would pretty much dictate what's feasible and what is not feasible :)
I recommend you read a few books such as On Combat and On Killing, or at least watch Lindybeige’s video on the effectiveness of bombardment. People don’t surrender to bombardment. People surrender to infantry. They do it more easily after being broken by bombardment, but the infantry has to physically reach them first.
Yeah, because here on earth we have so many historical examples where parking a big battleship next to a small island caused the people holding the island to just surrender. Or all those cases where the mere threat of bombing cities caused people to surrender. Really, if military history teaches one thing, its that bombing cities doesn't work and that expecting people to surrender just because you have superior firepower aimed at them is hopelessly naive.
But lets assume for a second that it would, there are a few problems with planetary bombardments. First, once you start with that, you can start wondering if perhaps you are the bad guy. Assuming that your military force isn't part of some absurdly fascist regime, people might have a problem with their government dropping rocks from orbit on civilian targets. Furthermore, assuming that you are bombing them with rocks, you aren't just dropping precision munitions on a city, you are essentially nuking cities. Indiscriminate murder.
Second, assuming for a moment that you are indeed a fascist government that doesnt care about murdering civilians, say you nuke the shit out of a planet, you potentially trigger a nuclear winter, you destroy every bit of valuable infrastructure, you essentially reduce the worth of the planet you are trying to capture. A garden planet is worthless if you cause mass extinctions following a drastic climate shift due to orbital bombardment.
Third, say your threat works and you indeed capture the planet without much of a fight. Then what? A garrison force? Whats to stop the locals from starting an insurgency? More orbital bombardments? Drop nukes on your own garrison. Its not that difficult to make it nearly impossible to hold a place with just a garrison. The insurgency will force the garrison to come out and chase them or else just suffer constant attrition. Which means that the attacker needs to massively ramp up its presence in order to retain control. Again, plenty of real world examples where a technologically superior force with access to overwhelming firepower got their ass handed to them by technologically inferior insurgents.
Ultimately planetary invasions will never happen. Not even small ones with garrison forces. The logistical nightmare of supporting planetary garrisons would bankrupt any invading force. And make the whole endeavor economically unattractive from the start.
Not even planetary but even nation wars to conquer other nation turns out to be unattractive in modern times. The thing about being the conqueror is that you have to bear almost all the cost especially in rebuilding if you want your conquered zone to be productive.
It's much easier to wage a 'trade war' than an actual war.
I'd guess, invasions are only feasible if the attackers are technologically way ahead of the defender and they are only interested in some resources. So in a darker - no-win for the Navii - Avatar Scenario, where you just want to get rid of the natives and don't care if the planet is doomed, since you could never live there without an environment suit anyways.
So: Nuke the most "dangerous" places (break the defenders) and build up your mining camps.
@Michiel van der Sijs """Ultimately planetary invasions will never happen. Not even small ones with garrison forces. The logistical nightmare of supporting planetary garrisons would bankrupt any invading force. And make the whole endeavor economically unattractive from the start."""
I mean, ultimately the exact same thing would've been said about cross-continental invasions a millennia ago, but lo and behold, we've had dozens since then. Obviously the no modern nation would be able to bankroll the invasion of another planet, but in the future we might be looking at multi-planet economies with the sorts of radically powerful technologies and industries needed to do it.
@SecondSein, I feel you're assuming the *only* reason to go to war and invade somewhere is to extract a net profit from a conquered territory via a colonial administration, but we've seen historically that's simply not the case. Rampant Ideology, Perceived threats, Religious disputes, People just being massive fuckwits. There are plenty of reasons to go and butcher other people from halfway across the galaxy.
I agree with everything except your conclusion, conquest of a planet rich in Resources or Commerce can prove quite profitable for a spacefaring Empire as it wishes to gain a monopoly on trade routes and markets over their rivals, most of history here on Earth provides a good example of this and depending on the planet’s population size and cooperation with locals it probably wouldn’t be nearly as expensive as you think, even so the cost of an occupation force would likely be offset by the potential wealth brought into the State. After all it wasn’t military expansion which bankrupted Rome and the other great Empires of history
@@ummdustry5718 well, your other points can be solved with orbital bombardments as usually those points are perceived by the user to be solvable with force.
You could argue that there are regulations in place to stop orbital bombardment. There might, but who knows, the ones who make space laws might think that orbital bombardment is acceptable as long as it is within acceptable parameters and that it bring disputes to a swift end instead of dragging it out with a planetary invasion.
*Objection*
There is one concept that is quite neglected in most sci-fi: planetary weapons. It is much easier and cheaper to construct and maintain surface weapons that can shoot on anything that gets near the planet or attempts to bombard the surface. Even in historical context, coastal artillery was quite common form of defense against approaching enemy fleet.
There are few shots in the video where it actually makes sense to launch the ground invasion. The Klendathu invasion was a catastrophic failure, but it shows that you cannot just hover above the planet and shoot on any place that has trees and houses still standing. The ground force on Klendathu was quite successful at destroying the Plasma Bugs, so there is still some potential for (at least limited) ground strikes in case the ships or air force are not able to strike those objectives, or would suffer high losses in attempt to do so.
The battle of Hoth is another example of the threat the planetary ion cannons can be. Any populated planet with much larger garrison than of the Rebel Alliance on Hoth would be able to set up much greater defense network across the planet. The Galactic Empire had to land armored vehicles to break through the Rebel's defenses, disable their shield, and allow for borbandment of the Echo base from space. The Empire still could afford to deploy the fleet and blockade the planet, because despite the fact the Rebels could disable any ship on orbit, they likely couldn't exploit it and destroy the Imperial star destroyers, because they were missing necessary means, such as bombers, capital ships, and other surface-to-space weapons.
If the planetary cannons were part of the game, any invasion would be much more difficult to handle. Both sides would have to decide what their approach is going to be, but there will always be high losses, whether it be ships destroyed while bombarding the planet, or whole ground divisions wiped out. As I noted, ground invasions would still make sense in striking critical objectives, such as the planetary cannons, to secure the space around the planet and allow for the fleet to deploy and bombard however it desires. The defenders, on the other hand, would have to decide whether they would activate their weapons and expose their position, making them easier to target by the next invasion wave.
A planet is also pretty much the largest possible platform for placing weapons, so the fleet would have to be quite large to challenge a planet that has completely turtled up.
In defense of the Battle of Hoth:
The empire just needed to bombard the rebel base, not the entire planet.
They could not bombard them due to plot device Shield Generator.
They could not starve them out because Vader wanted results (movie time limit) and the rebels used a surface to space ion cannon to create gaps to escape through with their transports.
They needed to stop the rebels from escaping AND lower the shield to bombard them from space, so their launch a ground assault.
The Empire is known for bombarding planets to bring them under it's thumb. They also could have send in commandos and blown it up that way. But the movie demonstrates how the empire can control a population it garrisons.
Also, Vader would be hesitant to bombard Hoth anyway because he wants Luke alive. Bombing the rebel base could mean killing the whole reason he is there in the first place.
Fairly certain he didn’t want to starve out his son.
@@Daedric16 Unless the Rebels are complete madmen they'd surrender at some point
@spacedock as Sun Tzu says, it is better to take the enemy whole and intact. So that you can utilize what it is your capturing. So to that end, launching invasions to do the same thing as your bombing would, and force the enemy to surrender but without dealing as much damage to the infrastructure that the bombing would, as a method would be possibly/probably more efficient. Using an invasion force to convince the enemy to surrender would be more ideal then deleting whole cities of usable resources including manpower.
Yes apparently he hasn't read Sun Tzu. Lol
This is entirely nonsensical. The same, “too big to conquer,” argument could be made for large nations, but as an example the Mongolian Empire took and held most of Asia. This puts that entire argument to bed instantly. Secondly, the orbital superiority argument fails for the same reason mere air superiority never wins a fight. To take and hold territory requires having an actual presence there. Mass bombing Britain never worked for Germany for these reasons and that’s before we even get into how you don’t want to obliterate territory you might want to exploit. This entire argument relies on utter ignorance of military precedent or strategy.
Completely different balance of power and population scale
What you don't account for is gravity. The ships in orbit don't need to throw nuclear warheads at the planet. Rocks do the same job, but cheaper. If you throw enough of them, you can sterilize the planet by reducing it to a ball of liquid magma. No bunker can keep the defenders safe from that. At that point, the spirit of resistance, strength of arms and logistics of a long siege and guerrilla warfare become irrelevant. When your options are surrender or magma, it's not a tough choice.
I wrote a roleplaying game, Dust Bowl Galaxy, which describes results and operations of interstellar warfare, but it's mostly about space exploration. Spacedock nailed this one.
@@Roxfall I think you forget that we have real world examples of similar things happening and time is an issue. WW2 American basically had infinite resources in comparison to Japan, and probably Germany for that matter.
You also have to think about the purpose of your conquest. Are you trying to subjugate the population? Do you want to keep the planet intact for future use?
Some other considerations: Are you afraid of how the political situation will change if you bombard civilian areas? Is there an equivalent of the Geneva Convention which bans it? If you start doing it, are you ok with the other guy deciding its fine to do to you?
Yeah, and from my perspective extensively bombing the planet would be impractical since you'll need to rebuild it again and you would lose part of whatever the planet output has and would guarantee to turn its entire population against you. Moreover, you'll need an army to some degree and not just a marine which was attached to the Ships as the population would not pacify by itself.
@@tadoshka5170 that depends on the physical form of an attacker / invader. when they cant use our stuff, the have to destroy it anyways to use the planet.
And to what extend they need the planet for... just mining resources ? - kill all population. Slaves? - now you have to subjugate the population..
The moment I saw the title, I knew this was going to be like when the Templin Institute tried to debunk why the idea of a mega-corp government wouldn't work. Five to fifteen minutes of the speaker making a statement that only shows HUGE gaps in their knowledge. With Templin, it was a dubious understanding of economics as well as the history and organization of the East Indian Trading Company. Here... we have the assumption that everyone is making logical, rational decisions in an activity where emotional extremes run hot and people let patriotism and nationalism take over.
While yes, space warfare would likely see a much greater emphasis on smaller units of elite SPESS MAHRINES performing surgical attacks and commando raids, the idea that ground armies designed for large scale engagements would become obsolete is inaccurate and shows the speaker suffers from the "sci-fi writers have no sense of scale" problem. If you have an empire that spans multiple planets, then raising an invasion force of a billion soldiers is not a huge problem if each of those planets has the same number of people as modern day Earth.
I have not read the Expanse series but from what I picked up second-hand, that sounds like a bad example. Mars is still in the process of being terraformed (which limits the amount of habitable space available on Mars) while Earth still has the lion's share of the Solar System's population. And if the author built the Expanse universe to be like the last age of colonialism, Earth has virtually all of the manufacturing assets of note as well (meaning they can drown the other planets in ships as well as bodies if they desire.) The example you gave sounds more like a commentary on propaganda that ignores reality (commentary that's still quite relevant these days) then on the impracticality of planetary invasions in general.
And as others have noted, your statement doesn't take into account things like planetary defenses (such as missile silos and giant rail guns for destroying enemy ships in orbit) or that there might be planet-side assets that the invader does not want to destroy. OR maybe the invader only wants to destroy military assets and deploys ground forces because orbital bombardments may be too imprecise? For example, what if the Evil Galactic Empire (TM) decides to put a hospital for maimed children next to their biggest garrison on the planet? If you hit the garrison from orbit, you might destroy the hospital. Which regardless of your moral compass would be something the Empire's propagandists will RUN with and use to whip up the rest of the Empire's people into a frenzy.
I agree.
This video makes a few assumptions, but the one I want to focus on is people's willingness to bombard non-combatants. The nastiest potential example of this is retaking one of your own worlds which has been occupied. Imagine two governments at war in space, early on one of them loses control of a border system and is forced to retreat their military. The colonized planets surrender, and an occupying force lands. Later in the war, momentum has shifted and they retake control of this system, and force the enemy space navy out. But the occupying forces are still present. And bombing them out of existence would require bombing your own citizens, which presents a bit of a problem. Similarly, when fighting an enemy, presumably you're not looking to wipe out their people entirely but just topple or push back their government. One of the biggest reasons for our existing rules of warfare is reducing civilian casualties, and just bombing cities into dust seems to ignore that point. This is definitely an interesting line of discussion/thought, but perhaps not quite as cut and dry as you present it here. Would love to see more properties explore this kind of thing more though.
World history is against your assertion of "If you have a Battleship parked of an island, you don't need to invade." Guess you never read WWII pacific history.
ugh, all of his examples worked against his argument!
you could have just put history.
Except there is a large difference between threatening an entrenched military force and threatening a planet with typically a much larger percentage of civilian population. Additionally, there is a large difference between the US which was trying to accelerate a victory by rapidly island hopping until they were in flight range of bombing Tokyo as well as cutting off shipments of oil from Indonesia, thus they decided to invade instead of blockading and starving them out. As opposed to any presumed space navy which would find it far faster to sit back and bomb a planet to oblivion rather than try to invade and occupy it. Additionally everyone here seems to forget that in this analogy, the US was trying to work its way towards the Japanese mainland. If a nation had ships in orbit, they practically have free range to threaten wherever they want.
@@FoxDren You mean like sieges, which I believe have been a fairly effective tactic used over the last couple of thousand years?
@@Modolvr not comparable, a besieged location usually isn't self sustaining.
Apparently Spacedock guy has no clue about holding ground. Reminds me of technophiles in the 1920s arguing that infantry will not exist in future wars because "no human can fight a tank or aeroplane". Or the barmy Murican philosophy of "body counts win wars".
To go with the silly island vs. battleship analogy: it doesn't matter how much it outguns them if nobody can land to actually take control of the island.
until the island runs out of supplies and starves. I think the analogy holds if its a civilian world but if you need to take military worlds to get within striking distance of the civilian ones then yeah you have to do quite a siege to make a military outpost surrender.
@@viperstriker4728Except it´s self sufficient while your also can´t really deploy your full arsenal against civilian areas whiteout diplomatic backlash and also can cause far more resistance. Besides this ignores like the last 20 years of asymmetrical warfare against occupation where you don´t have clear enemies. You basically require the support of the local population when you want anything more from a place than raw resources which are pretty abundant and just expensive to get up from planets.
From how i would see this it would just pretty much never make sense while also i heard Issac arthure argue the kinda obvious case Planets are far more armed and able to withstand damage because of the enormous mass in relation to some fleet. Just seems when i think about it that they are pretty much fortresses you kinda ether have to bomb done over a very long time or acutely storm and somehow get massive amounts of troops on the planet.
Which all seems enormously costly and would just be done for greater strategic reasons like that planets similar to earth are pretty good for projecting power over a solar system to have control over the surrounding area or as a critical refuel station.
@@kingoliever1 Depends on which scifi, star wars worlds mostly have one climate so many of them can't be self sustaining. And when you consider the complex trade that must exist in any sci fi to support their tech, you might have planet of food but run out of fuel if that is your major import.
It can go either way easily depending on which scifi. But most scifi don't care about armor, only shields matter and if you targeting an unshielded planet with shielded ships it will suck, just ask the UNSC.
I completely agree with your 3rd point, any siege tactic is going to cost more then the planet is worth unless it has some major strategic value.
@@viperstriker4728 I was more talking about harder Scyfy like the Expanse and a Planet also can stock up more then a fleet and has 1.000.000 the mass.
@@kingoliever1 The expanse isn't a great example given that it is basically earth and mars. A better example for your point is mass effect. Lots of planetary invasions by enemies that literally are ships. And because they can't effectively wipe out a planet with bombardment like other scifi they deploy ground troops.
You see, something you might be overlooking is that in certain situations, bombardment is either Impossible or not viable. If you want to capture this planet then why destroy it's infrastructure, and if the planet has some way to resist that bombardment then you need to land troops to disable shield generators or anti-orbital weaponry. Also, what about the point where the Planet itself does not house the central government of whatever nation, sure you can get the planet to surrender, but what if the troops from that larger nation still fight on and attack your occupation forces.
Hoth had a giant shield stopping the bombardment. Dune actually has a reason for this since bombardment was stopped by treaties and had structured warfare. With the common people just wanting to survive
This is how planetary invasion is handled in Honor Harrington. Space-based warships are so much more overwhelmingly powerful vs ground units that planetary control is determined entirely in space.
If u like HH...check out her 'lol sis' Kris Longknife
"The enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand!"
If it is a deadman's switch, do you want to disable the hand?
While invading and taking an entire planet from space might be infeasible, it's funny that you showed the ground battle on Hoth, which is a PERFECT example of a feasible ground action: the Imperials aren't trying to take a whole planet, but they ARE trying to take (or destroy) a smaller area (the base) ON that planet.
Well, here's the thing. Any substantial body is far more resistant to orbital bombardment than most people assume. Sure, you can theoretically sterilize the surface. But with hydroponics, nuclear and geothermal power, deep underground tunnel networks and infrastructure, etc., its not entirely unreasonable in a sci-fi setting to have the planet break before the garrison does. Depending on the capabilities of the tech in the setting, you could even have them capable of blasting ships out of the sky.
We even have a very light version of this IRL, with Cheyenne mountain and other nuke-hardened command bunkers.
Cheyenne Mountain???
*Stargate theme intensifies.
If the enemy is so deep underground that orbital bombardment can't touch them, they can't touch anything on the surface either. So you can just collapse the entrances and set down your own facilities while leaving a minor garrison behind. Repeat step 1 any time they try and poke their heads out.
@@thepsion5 I mean sure but the enemy will know that, and make an intricate system of tunnels. What you thought was an entrance was actually a decoy and now your bases are being nuked from within, your water poisoned or the ground underneath collapse on you.
What Im saying is that a competent army could have really good odds in the wait for reinforcements. Plus, what if most of the planet already lives underground? We are assuming a habitable planet but invasions could happen in places that are so well built against asteroid hits and radiarion that they are immune to bombardment.
@@robertoguzman6556 The intricate system of tunnels would be collapsed by a very brief bombardment, and you can't build new ones without alerting seismometers and ground-penetrating radar.
It's like a castle siege - very easy to lock people in, and very hard for the defenders to do meaningful damage to the attacking force.
Also ground based railguns would be difficult to detect and a serious threat to orbiting vessels. The assumption that the attacking fleet could bombard with impunity just because they overwhelmed space defenses is utterly ridiculous.
I've been going through your backlog and I gotta say I really like it, but here I think I have to disagree. One reason even in the far future I think you'll still see traditional armies in the future would still be for much of the reasons we use them today. You would still need to land troops to take and hold positions on the planet for either strategic or political purposes, that would never really go away. Potentially made even more important if an enemy decides that turning a whole planet into a veritable fortress and staging point, as any civilization capable of making starships would surely make some form of land to space based weapons platforms meant to defend against such attacks as well. From massive gun platforms, surface to space missiles, air bases for fighter craft capable of going from planetside to space for local defense. If even a regular planet had even a fraction of these defenses you'd have to land forces down to remove the threat to your fleet in the area otherwise said enemy forces will continue to harass your fleet until dealt with.
I think the best way to represent it that I actually got to play out was Star Wars: Empire at War. You had to first take the space around a planet before you could begin an invasion and even then you really only needed to remove the opposing forces to take the planet, not the whole damn planet. It also had the strangely to true to reality basis that most naval engagements will probably be next to some kind of identifiable mass that would be of some kind of importance as engagements out in the open would be rare and mostly by accident.
Just my 2 cents.
You should study Iwo Jima. You should also study any land war ever fought. WWII is a great example. If you are an interstellar species, you can presumably bring a lot of troops to the fight.
"You can just bombard it". I have two words for you: Iwo Jima
"imagine invading a country when you could just nuke it" - see, this doesn't sound sensible; and neither does premise of this video
You DO know that there's a difference between a country and a planet? Let me guess... american?
"This channel doesn't have any content" aaah, yes. Supidest comments are always from people who have never done anything themselves.
Rumblefin The point he’s making is that if you want to capture territory then utterly destroying it is a bad way to achieve that goal.
@@WardancerHB It's almost like the majority of people present on RUclips aren't here to make content or something. He's being a bit of an ass about it, but John C. M.'s point is still valid despite the differences of scale. Sometimes threatening massive destruction would be the way to go, but if you give a shit about civilian casualties or the infrastructure of your target remaining intact it doesn't work.
@@WardancerHB You do know there's a difference between capturing territory with infrastructure and resources intact and just blowing it up? Let me guess....disingenuous arse?
"Brings up his channel which doesn't have any content" aaah, yes. "Supidest" comments are always from people who think RUclips videos are the only thing people can do.
@@nicholasavasthi9879 Yeah, but invading planets for territory is simply not gonna happen in sci-fi space settings for a reason: Space is ridiculously big, it has virtually unlimited territory and resources.
As the video pointed out, planetary invasions are not logical at all.
You can, however, have wars over literally any other reason (religious, ideological, diplomatic, xenocidal crusades...)
wasn't it kind of explained in Star wars, that during the battle of Hoth they had a massive planetary shield preventing the bombardment of the actual base? so the empire had to land elsewhere on the planet and invade from the ground?
Ya I guess he didn't see that one lol
Admittedly, ground invasions are usually there to make things more interesting. However, I don't think it's as unlikely as your think. Use the ships to blast major population centers and military strongholds. Then invade and mop up. The conceit is that those starships in orbit are usually depicted as having incredibly powerful sensors. The kind that can find a resistance hiding in a hill.
The fault in the plan isn't that the planet is too big for men to take, the fault is that a near peer planet with have giant anti-spaceship cannons to nuke your invasion fleet. It will likely have orbital defenses and system monitor ships. Such an invasion would be incredibly costly to attempt against a near peer foe with no guarantee of success. Unless the planet you want to invade has significant tech and industry disadvantage, this would be a total war of attrition.
In all the sci-fi media I have consumed, I have never understood planetary invasions to have the goal of completely eradicating those living on it (except for extermination-centric series, like Starship Troopers or Warhammer 40k)
I had always assumed that the goal of the planetary invasions was to take and control population centers, like capital cities or large industrial sectors. You know, actions that would prevent a possibly self-sufficient society from being able to simply out-last a siege, but also without massive amounts of damage to infrastructure. For most sci-fi, constructing (or in this case, re-building) entire cities is still presented as a massive undertaking that can take years or decades, and a massive amount of imported goods and labor.
There is one major concept of war that is prevalent in ALL humanity's wars. As in: 100% of all wars fought actually STRONGLY held this as a principle. Throughout time. Throughout the planet.
War IS NEVER about killing.
War is about making your enemy do what you want them to. It is purposeful, controlled, violence. The idea of "hur dur just die" is 100% not how humanity actually thinks. We may be psychotic, but we're not THAT psychotic. We capture Prisoners of War, enemy cities, enemy armies- not because we necessarily want them outside of wartime, but because they are bargaining chips to force a surrender. There are ZERO examples of wars exclusively about eradication; that includes genocidal empires such as WW2 Germany and Japan: they STILL very deeply cared about capturing key pieces to force a surrender.
All these scifi stuck on this inanely stupid prospect of "hur dur all war is genocide" is telling that our species is not ready to join the stars... Because that is INSANELY childish.
War is not genocide.
War can include genocide, but that is NOT what war is. War is pure and simple: make the enemy do what your government wants them to do. If that goal is to end their war then you've just described 50% of ALL war goals throughout ALL of human history.
Guerrilla, schorched earth and terror tactics developed in the scenario of a big invincible opponent where you win by making the enemy victory unsustainable.
Sometimes you can't just nuke a enemy into submission. A dedicated ground force could help by projecting a military presence or controlling a specific area in a way a ship simply can't do, and for cheap.
Its interesting you picked the Battle of Hoth, where there actually was a reason for them not to just bombard the rebel base, in that Vader was interested in taking specific captives alive. If you need to capture a specific person or location unharmed, thats where the marines become relevant.
General Vears also reported that the Rebel Base had a shield that could withstand an orbital bombardment.
There are countless reasons available that make planetary invasions plausible, e.g.
a treaty might prevent the invaders from building warships,
the invaders might not be willing to use weapons of mass destruction,
the invaders are interested in the infrastructure and workforce of a planet not its raw resources, so destroying it would be counter productive,
the goal of the invasion might be to liberate the population from an occupation force.
There are of course countless examples where planetary invasions don't make sense and are just used for the spectacle, but I wouldn't rule them out in general.
Interestingly, in the Starship Troopers novel the mobile infantry was usually employed as a smash and run force. Drop _individually_ from orbit with enough firepower and numbers to make a fearsome show of force, secure an LZ for extraction than cause as much havoc as you can before the situation becomes untenable then pull out. The goal is to strike a specific instillation that is not particularly viable as an orbital bombardment target or to break the public will to fight of your enemy.
But....... don't forget: if you are in orbit you are a very visible and predictable target for any ground to orbit weapons. You will want to take them out before parking your fleet a few hundred km up. So, you have a small force of ground troops inserted at known GtO emplacements to take out the biggest threat (ship launches are very visible and fairly easily countered unlike hyper-sonic missiles and even less energy weapons) similar to special forces and cruse missiles taking out AAA and AA-missile batteries today. You then use orbital bombardment to take out major command and control centers, weapons production facilities, and financial centers. Then ground troops with the twin mission of tending to those who surrender and making others wish they had.
That last bit is vital! You _must_ send the message that resistance is death and compliance is compassion and fairly comfortable life.
Unless they want to capture the resources, intel, or important personnel
Or unless it’s amazingly small amounts of effective ground fighters can be launched to space.
TheGahta unless the story acknowledges that and uses ground invasions minimally
resources will never be a reason to invade planets, you don't
need life to exist to get them.
@@TheGahta Planets would likely have much of the industry. Perhaps not on the planet but in orbit but i still imagine most intelligent species would tend to have their industrial capacity around where they actually live. Maybe not for military industry but certainly for consumer products. Humans like nature and I imagine Aliens would also prefer the environment they evolved in to space. So factories would either be on the planet proper or on and around orbital rings/space elevators.
You´d also find most scientific installations on planets. Nevermind anything of cultural or political significance. There would be a lot of reasons to take a planet.
@@old_kasr1155 Not resources but certainly industry.
@@XMysticHerox Neither resources nor industry is a reason to invade a planet. You would need more than a planet's worth of resources, manpower, and industry in order to overcome the defender's advantage. If you have that, then what do you need from the planet?
The main reason to deal with a planet is to take them out of the war. Once you defeat their fleet, once you control the space around their planet (and you would need to do all this in order to land an invasion force), then they are done. You can tell them to surrender, order them to surrender or else you'll bombard their planet, or just leave a small force to keep up the blockade while your main fleet moves on to more pressing objectives. There is no reason to send an army planetside. Objectives can be accomplished by special forces infiltration, but no D-Day style offensives.
The Japanese fought tooth and nail to defend every worthless rock in the Pacific. But when the US dropped two nukes on their Home Island, they surrendered. The amount of destruction and the futility of resistance even moved those fanatics.
People are not zealots. They don't want to die for your thought experiment. Unless they are facing a war of extermination, the planet will surrender when it's not worth it to keep fighting. And when the enemy has total space superiority over a planet (which they would need in order to land an invasion force), and it is not a war of extermination, then that is when it is no longer worth it to keep fighting.
I would argue a planetary bombardment is a planetary invasion. And much like you stated, if you bomb a target into submission then it will submit. Which will allow you to land troops on the planet, and if some resist (as they will inevitably do) then you can fight them - you're not fighting the planet, just isolated countries or cities.
You should check out this wacky police action called Vietnam ;)
A few points:
1. Planetary Bombardment may not be possible. If the goal is to take land or resources, any Bombardment that would eliminate a sufficiently dug in enemy may well also damage the planet or resources beyond repair, making an air/ground campaign the only option.
2. Siege and blockade is a viable option, but is very time consuming, and there are numerous reasons one may not have the time to wait out the enemy. Additional, the planet may be self sufficient, making Siege completely ineffective.
Well, i suppose it depends on the planets population, if there is just some cities, it's probably possible to invade it, it would be like invading a small country. Despite that you make a lot of good points.