Technology and Warfare in Traveller

[Renaissance Man]

I haven't actually played in the Traveller universe since I was a kid, but I've been reading through the T4 rules and biding my time for T5, thinking about campaigns, adventures etc.

And I noticed that there are still a lot of Imperium-era tanks, artillery, and atmospheric fighters in the vehicle supplements.

This got me thinking... is there any mission for these types of vehicles in the Third Imperium?

Seems to me that most wars would begin and end in space. If an invading force were to prevail in space combat and eliminate a defender's fleet and system defences, they would, for all intents and purposes have won the "conventional" war. They would control the orbital space of system assets, and be able to destroy masses of troops, vehicles or military infrastructure from orbit with impunity. "Mission Accomplished," as one might say...

Tanks, grav-tanks and artillery pieces without an orbital reach would be almost always useless. So why are they there?

Now, that's not to say there's no need for an Army in Traveller, but planetside warfare would almost always have the characteristics of insurgency/counterinsurgency or "police action." The fact of a ground op itself automatically assumes that the invading force has control of space. An invading force would never hazard a beach head without this control, since drop ships would be vulnerable to attack, wasting precious manpower. Whether they're bots or real flesh and blood, shipping thousands or even millions of troops across space lanes is prohibitively expensive.

That means that the greatest threat to an invading force on the ground would be a highly self-sufficient guerrilla force with a rhizomic organizational and communications structure, capable of melting into the local population.

This has a dramatic effect on the dominant mission of the Imperial Army. How many troops would they use? How would they be trained? What would there tactics be? How long would the average engagement last?

Does anybody with a better knowledge of Traveller have some background on this?

 

[boomslang]

Does anybody with a better knowledge of Traveller have some background on this?

It's not really addressed in the Traveller background, but I agree with your basic analysis; as technology becomes capable of greater and more-efficient destruction, open warfare gives way to irregular, small unit conflicts, and "battlefield" ceases to be a meaningful concept...

 

[R_Chance]

The reason for conventional forces is to limit the damage, to apply force surgically, rather than just destroying cities / land masses indiscriminately. War is not just about how much you can destroy, it is about control. Somehow, I don't think orbital bombardment would be all that surgical, whatever the navy might say. Then to, if you are willing to use mass orbital destruction, your opponent will probably retaliate in kind. It's why we have never fought a nuclear war (between 2 opponents with nuclear weapons -- Mutually Assurred Destruction) -- what's the point?

Only reasons of extreme ideology or desperation would drive any sane nation to simply destroy their opponent even if the opportunity presented itself (no possibility of retaliation) without pressing reason.

I'm sure there are targets that would be just wiped from orbit in military campaigns in the Traveller universe, but I'm also sure their are targets worth fighting over on the ground. In any event, I imagine conventional military forces would disperse (under seas etc.) to avoid presenting too tempting a target and use the speed / flexibility afforded by gravitic vehicle technology to assemble for battle. As for unconventional warfare -- if your conqueror is willing to obliterate targets from orbit if you have conventional forces, why not do it if the opposition is "unconventional" ?

 

[BigBadRon]

To take an example from modern warfare: an airforce might be able to bomb an area flat, but you need ground forces to actually control that area.

The same will be true with orbital bombardment. All it can do is destroy a target, it can't seize that target, or make use of it.

 

[Renaissance Man]

The reason for conventional forces is to limit the damage, to apply force surgically, rather than just destroying cities / land masses indiscriminately. War is not just about how much you can destroy, it is about control. Somehow, I don't think orbital bombardment would be all that surgical, whatever the navy might say. Then to, if you are willing to use mass orbital destruction, your opponent will probably retaliate in kind. It's why we have never fought a nuclear war (between 2 opponents with nuclear weapons -- Mutually Assurred Destruction) -- what's the point?

I agree that it would be unusual to obliterate an obstinate opponent from space, and not merely for fear of escalating the war to the level of M.A.D. Wars are almost never ideological phenomenon - they are "diplomacy by other means" or more accurately investment opportunities. Even the crusades were mainly about controlling lucrative overland trade routes... religion was just a way to get the average Joe excited about getting killed.

You go to war because you think you can get something out of it - more resources, more subjects/citizens, control of a space lane, technology, prestige etc. Obliterating a population from space runs counter to these goals.

But here's the thing: an empire exists ultimately because resistance carries penalties. If you have hundreds of vassal worlds and one of them decides not to pay taxes or follow orders, you have to make an example, or you have an even bigger problem. The Imperium has to appear to pose a credible threat to vassal worlds in order to maintain itself. That credibility has an inevitable body count.

This is why most wars would come down to space. Once you control a system, you really, REALLY have them by the balls. Orbital bombardment would be extremely precise. If you can hit a fast-moving 20dt fighter at a distance of 100,000 km with a laser turret, you sure as hell can vaporize a grav tank moving on the ground at a fraction of that distance with the same laser. Atmosphere would take out some of the punch, but you get the idea. The very fact of space combat in Traveller assumes technology that makes orbital assault extremely precise.

Anyway, you can bring a world to its knees without firing a shot from orbit merely by blockading access to needed resources. Or you can destroy infrastructure and food production facilities and then hold the population hostage with your own shipments of supplies. Many carrots, many sticks, without dropping in a single soldier.

As for unconventional warfare -- if your conqueror is willing to obliterate targets from orbit if you have conventional forces, why not do it if the opposition is "unconventional" ?

Same reason you wouldn't want to take out the whole planet. You can't easily differentiate a hostile from a non-combatant, even on the ground (look at Vietnam or Iraq), so you'd have to pull a My Lai or Fallujah in order to accomplish your goals from orbit. It'd be almost indistinguishable from total war/scorched earth.

My point is, once you win in space, your military problems end, and your political problems begin. Problems that battledress just can't solve.

 

[Renaissance Man]

To take an example from modern warfare: an airforce might be able to bomb an area flat, but you need ground forces to actually control that area.

Yeah, but control it from whom? The local population. And if they're going to have a problem with you, it's not going to be grav tanks and troops. It's going to be general strikes, demonstrations, starport blockades, bombings, midnight assassinations, criminal gangs and general barbarism.

The mission of the Imperial Army in maintaining control under these conditions means setting up your own puppet government, your "activists" and "counter-demonstrators," your own kick-squads, your own gangs and your own barbarians. Psy-ops. Information warfare.

Once you control orbit, this is the only kind of war left to fight.

 

[jec10]

The canon answer is partly in the game Invasion: Earth and that is that according to the mechanics of that game you simply can't take out that much of an enemy army from orbit in any reasonable timeframe. Who knows if that is a realistic representation or not, but canon it is.

In the game you deploy your orbital bombardment force into hexes of choice to launch strikes. But you simply don't have enough ships to blanket a planet the size of Terra and take out all the huge Solomani ground force - noting also that you need to keep a good portion of your fleet ready to meet those pesky SDBs that emerge from the ocean to strike at you, and the other SDBs that zoom in from deep space out of the eliptical plane, and from hiding in the gas giant. Another portion of your fleet is needed to engage planetary defence weapons (deep site mesons, aerospace missiles, etc). If time was not an issue I'm sure you could eventually reduce these problems and pick off the defending ground armies, but when is time not an issue in war?

For the defender the idea is definitely dispersion and not gathering a juicy target. Also keeping a force in being (SDBs especially) rather than launching an all-or-nothing counter-attack.

 

[BigBadRon]

Yeah, but control it from whom? The local population. And if they're going to have a problem with you, it's not going to be grav tanks and troops. It's going to be general strikes, demonstrations, starport blockades, bombings, midnight assassinations, criminal gangs and general barbarism.

The mission of the Imperial Army in maintaining control under these conditions means setting up your own puppet government, your "activists" and "counter-demonstrators," your own kick-squads, your own gangs and your own barbarians. Psy-ops. Information warfare.

Once you control orbit, this is the only kind of war left to fight.

Yes, that was my point exactly.

You can't take over a planet by reducing the whole place to a radioactive ball of lava. You need ground troops to make sure you have control, and keep control.

It doesn't matter who the enemy are; local military or resistance fighters - they still need to be dealt with, and ground troops are the only way to do that. Who else is going to guard your new puppet government's headquarters? Who else is going to deal with resistance cells and terrorist groups, after your information sources have found them?

Even if they aren't in uniform, your people on the ground are still ground forces.

 

[Renaissance Man]

Hmmm. Food for thought. Clearly it makes sense that destroying a large conventional military force from orbit would take significant time even with a large fleet. And I like the idea of hidden space-based reserves that pose an abiding threat to an invading force.

On the ground, it is unlikely that the victor could transfer enough troops to occupy a planet with equivalent tech level and a large population without orbital backup. So I'm starting to see a symmetry of force I hadn't recognized before.

Losing the battle for space is still a terrible blow for a planet. It comes with the threat of fire from the sky. And blockade becomes a far more indispensable option. But within the context of a protracted interstellar war, "conventional" ground war forces begin to have a mission again.

Thanks. Illuminating post, Jec 10.

 

[Renaissance Man]

It doesn't matter who the enemy are; local military or resistance fighters - they still need to be dealt with, and ground troops are the only way to do that. Who else is going to guard your new puppet government's headquarters? Who else is going to deal with resistance cells and terrorist groups, after your information sources have found them?

Yes, I agree, there would be men in uniform. You would need a lot of them. I'm starting to see the light.

Jec 10 noted that an entire planet would be too "target rich" for even a large fleet to secure from orbit in one swoop. Conventional forces could hold out for long periods by having underwater and underground staging points. And masses of troops even more, by hiding themselves in buildings, and ultimately, among the population at large if they have the training and the inclination.

I still think the possibility of orbital bombardment would dramatically reduce the size of the engagements, and eventually, the character of the engagements. And heavy ground assault vehicles and mobile artillery would have a limited mission. And the mission of the Imperial Army would be heavily skewed toward insurgency/counterinsurgency ops.

But it's obvious now that there are several variables in a ground conflict that I haven't considered.

 

[sablewyvern]

There is another situation that calls for more conventional ground operations -- local disputes on balkanised worlds, in situations were the warring parties have aerospace parity. From there, we can extrapolate a need for conventional Imperial ground forces, should they be required to engage in peacemaking or peacekeeping duties that preclude them from using orbital strikes indiscriminantly.

 

[Renaissance Man]

There is another situation that calls for more conventional ground operations -- local disputes on balkanised worlds, in situations were the warring parties have aerospace parity. From there, we can extrapolate a need for conventional Imperial ground forces, should they be required to engage in peacemaking or peacekeeping duties that preclude them from using orbital strikes indiscriminantly.

Yowch! Can you imagine? Terrestrial demilitarized zones and demilitarized Lagrange points... would make Kosovo look like Kansas.

 

[jappel]

It might be worth your while to pick up a copy of the old LBB 4, Mercenary, in some format*. Mercenary (as well as the supplement "76 Patrons") contains a number of sample mercenary missions which may give you a better idea of the author's view of the Imperium was.

It's also worth remembering a couple of things. First, that Traveller and the OTU were largely designed in the 70s and 80s with science fiction from the 50s through the 70s as inspiration. The hyper-miniaturization of electronics had only just really begun, and things like smart munitions were barely out of the concept stage, much less widely deployed and utilized.

The other is that the flyboys have over-estimated the effects of aerial bombardment since WWI. This is not to say aerial bombardment is in-effectual - it's definitely a necessary component of any successful strategy. But after-the-fact surveys on the ground often find that absent obvious total destruction, the damage done was a lot less than estimated. I expect the same will hold true of ortillery, when that day comes.

* I see LBB 4 for sale pretty frequently on E-bay; there's also the print CT reprint books and the CT CDROM, both available from www.farfuture.net.

 

[Major B]

Renaissance Man, I think you are drawing an incomplete conclusion from a valid point.

The firepower a fleet can bring to bear on a planet is enormous but it still does not obviate the need for troops on the ground.

The military definition of seize and secure are illustrative: Seize means to occupy physically and control an area. Secure means to deny the area to the enemy. The first deductive point from the diffence in the two definitions is that you don't have to stand on it to secure it (whatever 'it' is) but you do have to stand on it to seize it. The second deductive point is that you could secure it by destroying it yourself, therefore denying it to the enemy. Better check to make sure that's what the boss really meant, but you see the difference.

If all you want to do is deny a system to the enemy you can launch a fleet there, destroy his fleet in system, then stand by to destroy any fleet he decides to send later. However, when the cost of maintaining that fleet there becomes prohibitive you have to decide whether you want to give the system back to the enemy intact. Either way, ground forces were unnecessary.

But there are more strategic situations than those you postulated. In the case of a system that stops paying taxes, a blockade should bring them back in line and show the Emperor's resolve. There should be no need for ground forces other than the marines that accompany the fleet.

What about in a full-scale conflict like a Frontier War where fleet campaigns take them through numerous systems? There will be good reasons to land sizable forces and control planetary surfaces (or at least large portions of the surface) such as seizing facilities for fleet repair and replenishment. There will also be reasons that don't make logical military sense but are done for symbolic purposes - seizing centers of government or culture. I don't think there were sound military reasons to seize Terra from the Solomani but it was an action with great symbolic importance. And before you disparage symbolic missions, remember why the Soviets fought so hard against the 6th Army in Stalingrad.

I agree with your analysis that counterinsurgency is the most likely form of combat the ground forces will see but not all worlds will provide the population base and/or the terrain to allow an insurgency. Also, the Marines and Army will still need the spearheads to establish a lodgment and bring in the follow-on forces because bombardment will often not be the best approach.

Someone told me once that, when the only thing in your toolbox is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails. My point is that the Imperial tooldbox needs a full set of tools.

 

[Renaissance Man]

Someone told me once that, when the only thing in your toolbox is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails. My point is that the Imperial tooldbox needs a full set of tools.

Thanks for the perspective, Major. BTW I like the courier new - shake it up a bit

 

[JKH1232]

Someone told me once that, when the only thing in your toolbox is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails. My point is that the Imperial tooldbox needs a full set of tools.

As a side note, take a look at GURPS Traveller's discussion of the First Imperium. For them, every problem *was* a hammer. Send in the fleet, threaten the plce with bombardment if they don't comply. If they're obstinate, slag the place.

Ulitmately, the problem is: do I want to kill every last thing on the planet and ruin it for settlement for the foreseeable future. If you don't care, like the Vilani, you can slag. If not, well... send in the marines.

 

[whartung]

Using oribital bombardment solely is simply a "Kosovo" vs "Iraq" campaign. The detail was that there WERE ground troups in Kosovo, they just weren't American ground troops.

One of the great innovations in Iraq is the concept of, essentially, standby ground attack craft with precision munitions. And we're not just talking helicopters or strike aircraft, but B-1 bombers.

Today we have the capability to deploy heavy bombers without a defined sortie, but rather simply flying, essentially, Ground CAP (Combat Air Patrol). We can put a heavy bomber in the air flying around in circles waiting for some grunts on the ground to call it in, and all of a sudden you have a precision guided 2000lb iron bomb dropping through someones window. "Surgical" placement of that much firepower, and quickly, is amazingly powerful.

We've all heard stories about how a tornado runs through a neighborhood and obliterates a select house, but leaves the rest standing, that's essentially the kind of capability we have today. And the ground troops have it practically on demand, almost any place in theater.

But the detail is that you can't know who's window to put the bomb through without boots on the ground kicking in doors.

Ortillery in theory has that same capability. But just because you control the skies doesn't mean you control the situation. As much as we flattened Germany, they were still building factories and other facilities for war material, and they were building them under ground, making them harder to kill, and more importantly, harder to locate. They didn't stop until the tanks came rolling in.

Once you start bringing in troops, you need vehicles that can actually take a hit to protect those troops and to bring firepower on scene for instant feedback within the situation. Troops are soft targets. Battle Dressed troops are soft targets against similarly equipped opposition. They're blasting away at each other with FGMP's for a reason.

And the US Army and Marines, along with the Russians, can tell you what trouble indiginous forces, even light forces, can bring to the table, especially in urban conditions.

So, no, you can't take a world from space. You can embargo a world, but that only works for certain goods, and special circumstances. An embargo on anything earthlike would be folly, there's simply to many resources here locally.

We've learned that the technology, no matter HOW good, is not all powerful. There are always ways around it.

 

[jec10]

Troops are soft targets. Battle Dressed troops are soft targets against similarly equipped opposition. They're blasting away at each other with FGMP's for a reason.

All excellent points. Although for the above, battle dress troops are also easy targets for anyone with a decent autocannon (in fact easier targets than with an FGMP, because the autocannon gets autofire hit bonuses under every variant of Traveller), so its not just similarly equipped opposition that you'd need heavy support for.

 

[Renaissance Man]

Yeah, my issue isn't that ground troops aren't a necessary component of Imperium ops. It's that ortillery changes the character of the wars they will tend to fight, skewing them towards "low-intensity" counter-insurgency ops, often with a political dimension. For Army and Marine characters, that means the military experience is much less operationally (and ethically) clear-cut than I might otherwise have imagined. Especially if they happen to be on the losing side of the space war.

And it's probably obvious that the Iraqi theatre has influenced my analysis of 3I warfare. The asymmetry of force between the US military and the insurgents seems like a good RL analogy for the asymmetry of force experienced by an invaded planet with battle-cruisers in orbit. Especially when I think about whartung's comment about Ground CAP.

 

[jappel]

And for another alternative for taking out battle-dress troops, search the archives of the Ship's Locker forum for LOSAT. From Tod's post about that system and the discussion that followed, I whipped up a man-portable tac missle easily capable of taking out BD - in fact, it had a decent shot of taking out the Imperial grav APC laid out in the back of Striker.

No guidance to speak of, but dirt cheap.