System level invasion

[Timerover51]

Online sources of information available.

Hyperwar on the Internet. http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/

US Army Official History series from the Center for Military History. These are free downloadable PDF files.

http://www.history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/usaww2.html

 

[Piper]

A 2300 spin comes from the Kafer War. Maybe the Alliance or any cooperation is complicated by France/Germany or someone else pushing to use allied forces to liberate their colonial possessions. Essentially trying to use them the same way as the UK tried to use the Allies in WWII. I wonder if someone wants TANSTAAFL back?

It does raise some interesting possibilities. Given the sometimes shaky cooperation between nations (wasn't there some squabble involving the Japanese and a perceived lack of support?) the possibility could exist that some jockeying for position could happen during the reconquest phase.

My source material for 2300 is limited (and all vintage, no Mongoose stuff). Were the events after the timeline in Invasion ever covered?

 

[DonM]

Before this discussion drops completely and has to be locked, I know from discussions with Marc that:

1) numerous fans sent GDW material making Invasion: Earth mesh with High Guard...

2) GDW always rejected it because "Magic happens here" seemed to be involved at some point in most of those submissions.

That being said, there is potentially a middle point between the Imperium ground combat module and Invasion: Earth for folks who really want to explore ground combat.

 

[jec10]

Renegade Legion "Prefect" actually was a fairly useful game/exploration of system invasions in the context of that game universe.

 

[Timerover51]

Before this discussion drops completely and has to be locked, I know from discussions with Marc that:

1) numerous fans sent GDW material making Invasion: Earth mesh with High Guard...

2) GDW always rejected it because "Magic happens here" seemed to be involved at some point in most of those submissions.

That being said, there is potentially a middle point between the Imperium ground combat module and Invasion: Earth for folks who really want to explore ground combat.

I will refrain from any more comments on this thread. They seem to be quite unwelcome.

 

[Kilgs]

My source material for 2300 is limited (and all vintage, no Mongoose stuff). Were the events after the timeline in Invasion ever covered?

In Colin's 2320 which is a rare find but likely to show up again at some point.

Etranger, a 2300 website dedicated to the military, has some great faux-documentary papers on warfare in the 24th century. You can find a number of neat articles about warfare, TOE, training and so on there.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dheb/2300/Admin/Index1.htm

Specifically, on planetary warfare and invading planets there is this piece "written" by the Royal Wellon Military Institute. It takes the approach of being an after-action review of the Kafer War response.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dheb/2300/Articles/RWJSI/JPLec02.htm

One of the better adventures for the game took place during the fight back after the Invasion. It's Op Herkules and is available here:

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dheb/2300/Europe/Germany/Op HERKULES v2.5.pdf\

 

[Piper]

Brilliant!
Many thanks.

I got a 404 error on the Herkules link.

This one seems to work:
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dheb/2300/Europe/Germany/Op HERKULES v2.5.pdf

 

[Kilgs]

It's linked off the Etranger site so you should be able to find it there also.

 

[Orr]

I will refrain from any more comments on this thread. They seem to be quite unwelcome.

I always find you comments welcome and regularly save whatever links, book suggestions, and whatnot you post. What people don't find welcome is the overweening pomposity your comments are always swaddled in. For example, in a recent thread you not only told us that you'd hired a copyright lawyer but you also had to tell us how much their fees were. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who laughed out loud when reading that post.

This pomposity is why many of the responses you receive here and, I strongly suspect, in real life are usually flippant and dismissive. No one likes a boor no matter how knowledgeable they are.

 

[McPerth]

I repeat, if someone on the forum or for a games supplement wants to perform a planetary invasion that is their decision. I have expressed my viewpoint.

And I see it interesting, from logistical POV. I agree it would be (at least) a daunting task to move the troops needed and to supply them.

In any case, I wonder if Overlord or the planned invasion of Japan in 1945 would not have been seen in the same way by WWI generals and supply specialists...

I also see some points that are dependent Traveller version/setting (just some comments about the versions I know the most, leaving 2300AD setting out as it is fully different):

CT: the high danger for low berth makes the transport of troops in cold sleep not being an option, as you'd expect about 8% casualties¹ just in transport, something unacceptable by modern standards².

MT: cold sleep usable to move large quantities of troops, as death or disability due to it is a rare occurrence.

MgT: while is said death in cold slip is not unheard about, I found no hard rules about how to manage its risk.

See that this is not a minor issue, as to move an awake soldier you need 2 dtons of cargo space (I assume double occupancy) and 2000 Cr in life support (1500 in MgT with double occupancy) per fourthnight, in cold sleep you only need 0.5 dton per troop and life support is only 100 Cr per fourthnight.

So, to move a battalion (as CT:LBB4 about 450 people) awake, you need about 900 dton of cargo shipping and about 450000 Cr per week in life support, while to move it in cold sleep you "only" need 225 dton and 22500 Cr in life support.

Note 1: being a military force I assume decent medical staff (skill 2+) and healthy and fit personnel to be transported (end 7+). If not, the percentagewill be higher.

Note 2: in lower TL armies, this was not unheard about ​

As for the main supply needs (at least from the POV of someone not too involed in logistics):

Food: if the planet is habitable, at least some of it can be taken from local sources. OTOH, at those TLs I asume dehidrated food being quite available and relaible, so mainly depending on water availability.

Ammo: this is where things change the most from modern armies, as I expect any such invading forcé to be mostly armed with energy weapons (be them lasers or high energy ones) just for this reason: they don't need ammo as long as you have a power supply, something you'll have if you have your fleet in orbit and performing interface opperations.

Fuel: being mostly hydrogen, it's likely to be available locally (either in the planet, in form of water, or in other sources in the system (probably GG)). If not available, then even blockade may be a problem, as your fleet also needs it.

Medical supplies and spares would be (IMHO) the stuff where the supply will be most alike nowdays, as they will probably not being available in the zone. Even so, 3D printers can alleviate spare needs a little.

 

[Reban]

1 of 2

Okay I'm going to pinch my nose and dive in here. :CoW:

Yes I believe its possible to "invade" a system and yes its a logistical feat only to be attempted by the best prepared.

The way I justify it IMTU is that the process is slow.... there is no lighting war where a fleet suddenly appears overhead, starts an ortillery barrage followed by fighters and drop capsules and by that evening the marines are raising their flag above the ruins.

Lets talk in a general way about the phases of an invasion.

First Phase
The Strategic/Political decisions. It has to be decided why a system needs to be invaded. Whats there that needs to be taken or destroyed? Why are you committing forces? The answer to these questions decides what type of "invasion" you mount. It may just be a Strike against a particular target, or a Raid to go in capture, search or destroy a target, it may be a limited invasion with set objectives to meet before pulling out again or it may be an invasions that moves to occupation and incorporation of a new territory. Each of these "invasions" have progressively bigger logistical footprints.

Second Phase
The Intelligence War. You need to know as much as possible about your objective but you also need to influence the outcome of combat before a shot is ever fired. Infiltrating the Command & Control infrastructure both civilian and military is vital. Propaganda, and psyops also begin now, defeat them in their minds (psionic ops too!) before your fleet arrives and they may just give up without a fight. Sabotage and assassination are also your tools pre-combat.

Third Phase
The Build-Up. You don't send any soldier off to war with just a pack on his back you fill a warehouse with what he'll need for the operations and you put in infrastructure to support a campaign. This means everything from war industry to transportation gets involved in the build-up. Of course you may have to do that in a way to keep your plans secret.

I favor the the simple old style of having a base of operations where you draw together all combat forces and logistics support before sending them down the line of communications to the front. There are many models of logistics management that will all be used by a space based invasion force such as propositioning, just-in-time, and draw down. Having one C-in-C over the base of operations allows him to worry about gathering the forces and logistics together and moving them along the line of communication (its also his job to secure or defend both) while the theater commander concentrates on the combat zone.

Forth Phase
Reconnaissance and strike phase. Now you are ready to fight a war you have to know where in system the enemy is and what he's doing. Sending in covert recon ships is one way of doing this but sending in naval strike groups to attack and eliminate targets should also happen. Degrade the enemy's sensors and communications, blind him in his own system. Strike against his outer defenses. Feint attacks to see how fast his forces react and what they are.

 

[Reban]

2 of 2

Fifth Phase
Naval Operations. On the heels of the recon and strike forces should come the main naval forces to engage and eliminate the enemy's naval forces and defenses. Take out the mobile elements first, the SDBs the capital ships and other forces, then blockade the planets and eliminate the space and ground based defenses to achieve orbital supperiority.

Up to this point our logistics have been relatively simple. Naval units come stocked with all the consumable and combat stores they need to fight and the can fuel at the system gas giants. Once they exhaust their stores or crew or suffer combat damage they can either be rotated out and replaced with new units or resupplied by naval auxiliaries in-system.

Sixth Phase
Orbithead. Now you start dropping marines on planetary targets. I favor picking off the outposts around the system first before going for the mainworld. There are many reasons for this, it hits moral on the mainworld, it bloods troops who will take part in the main invasion, it eliminates the threat of outpost defenders sallying forth on raids and it frees up ships that would have to undertake security duties.

Establishing one or more orbitheads using jump troops should be fast. The objective should be to take port facilities (including highports) through which the C-in-C can funnel non jump follow-up forces.

In Timerover51 speak you are taking the beaches and establishing the Mulberry harbors and taking over existing port facilities.

This is the one phase that needs to happen fast. 24 hours is probably the maximum it should take for a force to take hold and get lighters and landers cycling fresh and heavy troops onto the surface. As well as the ports other "nexuses", as GT puts it, that you need to go after are the enemy C4I infrastructure, the political leaders and the communications (exp mass media) and power generation nodes. By doing this you may cause the enemy combat forces to break-up or at least reduce their effectiveness, you also start controlling the message that the civilian population is getting.

This is where a point of decision comes. Does the opposition fall, continue intact or break up and pull back into a guerrilla/insurgent pattern.

Seventh Phase
Ground Operations. With the orbitheads established you need to pull out your lighter jump troops and hand over to heavier conventional army troops. Their first goal is to find and destroy remaining enemy units and to secure installations that need protecting, power facilities, food production and storage weapons caches and banks and museums.

You're now in a conventional or counter insurgency warfare situation with regular army troops that need sustaining. This is the reason some people believe an invasion is impossible.

This is where we need to resurrect Napoleon for a high tech age. Your forces need to live off the land where ever possible.

1). Bring only Fusion+ powered vehicles and equipment. they are fueled by water. Thus you eliminate the POL requirement. POL is Petrol, Oil, Lubricants that are vital to today's combat vehicles. Most of the time they need POL resupply ever few hours. If you have a hand pump a filter and a tank that holds a years worth of H2O fuel all you need to find is a stream.
2). Ammunition. Drop the brass and even the caseless stuff, for cpr guns use binary liquids and bring it in in tankers and then set up a mobile chemical plant to produce it on world. Plasma and Fusion under systems other than TNE need only raw hydrogen so bring a gas distillation plant with you (you can also get oxygen and other gases if you need environmental systems support). IMTU as the Engineers traditionally provide potable water they now provide H2O and H2 in the same manner. Gauss ammo is small and light compared to the equivalent cpr ammo so you can ship more in.
3). Consumables. We've covered air and water above. MREs to feed the troops takes up small cargo space in the initial assault but sourcing food locally quickly is important it can be supplemented by food coming down the logistics chain from the base of communications.
4). Spare parts. EVERYTHING must be standardized. IMTU standardization of parts and protocols is the raison d'etre for the Imperium. Spare parts should be modular and replacement takes place at unit level. Logistics planning and IT tracking means knowing you'll need a thousand Gizzmo2Bs in the first 48 hours and have them on hand. Using a just in time system to bring parts from the forward or base logistics parks is slower but should only be needed for major repairs and replacements. Finally cannibalism. If parts are standard then on the invaded world there should be sources that will do for replacement parts.
5). People. Casualties need to be taken out along the line of communication and replacements brought in. The chain should go: unit aid station, medical company, divisional hospital, theater hospital, hospital ship in system and then ferry back to the base of communications and either return or dispersal to recuperate. Replacement personnel should come from a forward pool in system. When units become exhausted they can hand over much of their equipment to their replacements so you don't need to ship it in.

Also on standardization IMTU I base all Imperial Military logistics around the 3ton container. You can get so many 0.25ton pallets in it and so many 3ton containers in a 30ton module or a 200ton lighter. I use 5000ton cargo pods to preposition military stores as well. Both military and merchant marine ships are set up to handle all of the above efficiently and interchangeably.

Eight Phase
Occupation. Now you're here for the long haul. Build some bases for garrison troops, supply them from local sources. Draw down some of the heavy combat units and replace them with lighter peackeeping forces. Raise sepoys, local troops that can be paid for their co-operation if not loyalty. Use them to do the ground work and support them with your forces where needed.

Reconstruct a government, probably at first under a military governor. Raise a local police force, and a civil bureaucracy. Don't let the Megacorps in directly, reconstruct local industry and give it contracts to supply your non vital military needs, food, entertainment, non combat consumables like uniforms, etc. Pare back the amount of stuff your logistics chain needs to pump in until it becomes a regular garrison resupply run. Fade back your "invader presence" and work on including your new system in your empire or begin your pull out, but keep you finger on the people in power (in many ways its a return to phase two the intelligence game).

Many of these phases will run in parallel or overlap. Most will take weeks and months to accomplish. Off the top of my head I'd budget a year on average to invade a system. More time for better defended more populace systems less time for less capable defenders or lower population.

The main ideas here is build up logistics beforehand and put in place a layered line of communication that brings forward enough "stuff" to keep operations moving forward. Make your forces as independent of a supply chain as possible by getting them to live off the land, use the tech available in Traveller such as Fusion+ and lifesupport systems to cut the present day logistical chains like POL, ammunition and other classes of parts and consumables. Finally scale your logistics according to your objectives.

Invade a system; yes. Achieve particular objectives in a system that constitute an "invasion"; still a huge challenge.

 

[atpollard]

Also read the DA Pamphlet covering Operation Barbarossa.

So, I went and read some DA Pamphlets (there are a lot to choose from) and the impression that I got was the delay caused by weather, British operations elsewhere and the Balkans Campaign contributed to the German defeat in Russia. A swifter strike, before Russia could prepare and winter could set in, and a greater focus on neutralizing Russian Military assets rather than quickly seizing Russian Economic assets would have given Germany a better chance at victory.

The Traveller Planetary Invasion lesson that I take away is 'strike soon, strike hard at military targets ... and then work on civilian pacification and control of infrastructure'.

 

[Piper]

This is where we need to resurrect Napoleon for a high tech age. Your forces need to live off the land where ever possible.

"In Situ Resource Utilization" is the rhodium-plated term for this.
I can see where some of your needs can be met through specialized assault support vessels: ships that are basically mobile factories.

Some life support consumables can be replenished through cracking water ice. Depending on how you envision your tech working in your particular universe you could make use of 3-D printing (mentioned before) bio-printing or molecular assembly, gathering raw materials within the system and repurposing them to suit your needs.

 

[mike wightman]

And of course the TL15 high population world is just going to let you land troops and combine harvesters

Every time you establish a beachhead a deep site meson gun will obliterate it.

The only way you can assault a high TL high population world is by committing atrocities against the civilian population. The Vilani understood this, the Imperium during the age of Rebellion learned this (the civil war was a fleet vs fleet thing).

 

[BillDowns]

And of course the TL15 high population world is just going to let you land troops and combine harvesters

Every time you establish a beachhead a deep site meson gun will obliterate it.

The only way you can assault a high TL high population world is by committing atrocities against the civilian population. The Vilani understood this, the Imperium during the age of Rebellion learned this (the civil war was a fleet vs fleet thing).

This is where the intelligence gather in Phase 2 comes into play with an assist from your on-spot 007 with "Force 10 from Navarrone". They take out the deep meson sites.

 

[Reban]

And of course the TL15 high population world is just going to let you land troops and combine harvesters

Every time you establish a beachhead a deep site meson gun will obliterate it.

The only way you can assault a high TL high population world is by committing atrocities against the civilian population. The Vilani understood this, the Imperium during the age of Rebellion learned this (the civil war was a fleet vs fleet thing).

Well I did say before you land....

Fifth Phase
Naval Operations. On the heels of the recon and strike forces should come the main naval forces to engage and eliminate the enemy's naval forces and defenses. Take out the mobile elements first, the SDBs the capital ships and other forces, then blockade the planets and eliminate the space and ground based defenses to achieve orbital superiority.

And I didn't say land combine harvesters. Combine harvesters are big and bulky and would take up valuable cargo space. What I'm actually saying is identify the available resources that you can source on planet to support your field formations, hence the analogy to Napoleons Corps which were expected to live off the land as they moved forward to cut down on what would have otherwise been unmanageable logistics chains.

Deep meson sites aren't untouchable by the way. It just takes time to locate and destroy them. As BillDowns notes thats part of the Intelligence phase; locate, infiltrate and destroy, or locate and mark for the invading naval forces to hit with either another meson gun or simply drop a near c rock on it.

Atrocities unfortunately will happen, but of course the label changes if it was the victor that commits them. Read the history of the bombardment before D-day for examples of civilian populations hit in the course of invasion preparations [Edit] See "Bombing of Caen". French civilian casualties during the liberation of Normandy there were 13,000 to 20,000 killed. Current military planning for fighting in megacities also can't see a way past civilian deaths and those are just TL8-9 conurbations compared to the high TL high pop worlds of Traveller.

 

[mike wightman]

So you are going to gather intelligence on every deep meson site?

So this world has no counter intelligence forces either.

A TL15 high pop world can have how many meson guns? One hundred, one thousand? Which will only fire on you after you have fired on them?

Any fleet coming within range of planetary meson guns is going to lose a lot of ships very quickly

As to landing combine harvesters - it was a bit flippant but no world is just going to neatly package resources for an invader to come and take.

Turn it round.

You are the ruler of a high pop TL15 world - how do you defend your world?

 

[Piper]

You are the ruler of a high pop TL15 world - how do you defend your world?

By concentrating most of your naval budget into a fleet, for starters. Fixed planetary defenses are only good for one thing, defending a planet. Spend too much of your budget on them and you risk losing the naval war exposing your worlds to isolation and defeat in detail.

The concept is similar to England's "wooden walls" from the age of sail (if you don't stretch the analogy too far).

... no world is just going to neatly package resources for an invader to come and take.

The resources don't have to come from the target world. They can come from other bodies insystem or from neighboring systems. Either case will lessen the load on your supply train.

Most human wars don't end in the genocidal destruction of the losing side (Yes, there are exceptions). At some point someone is going to start thinking that surrender (especially if terms are offered) looks like a better option that turning your own planet into radioactive slag.

Dissident factions are going to turn up (or may already exist) and can be exploited especially if you've already lost the naval war and your sky is full of enemy ships.

 

[Orc65001]

Genocide

This thread and some light reading (The Posleen War Trilogy by John Ringo) got me interested in an Invasion Earth Scenario.
My gaming group want me to run a mini campaign, using my new copy of T5.
As most of them are familiar with the OTU, I thought to change it up a bit.
So I decided to have present day earth invaded by the Kafer (my group has not read any of the 2300AD material). The Kafer regard humans as "smart barbarians", basically we are the Kafer version of the boogey man. So they want to exterminate us.

I chose the Kafer because of their psychology, their lack of medical technology and knowledge (no bio-weapons) and their relative obscurity (for my games group at least).

I'm thinking the initial attack will be nuclear, targeting major population centres and major military installations.

In theory such an attack will eliminate roughly 50 percent of the global population immediately, in some countries the percentage will be higher or lower, here.

That's a lot of nukes, not sure how many, so I need to work out the invasion fleet size. Then work out the fallout and nuclear winter effects. Then I need to work out how long before the Kafer land ground forces and proceed to exterminate the rest of humanity.

The characters will be survivors of the inital strikes and form the nucleus of a resistance cell.
Over time I expect the characters to figure out the Kafer technology, allowing humanity to venture into the galaxy and take the fight to the Kafer worlds.

I realise this thread is mainly focused upon the OTU setting. But I thought this might be an interesting idea, (despite being a standard sci-fi trope).
Any thoughts?