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Starhawk said:
Oh and to El-Phil as far as urban warfare goes if modern US and British level forces are any indication a decently trained army would do rather well without taking all that many losses in comparison to those they inflict on their enemies. And air power HELPS win wars it doesn't win them all by it's self as Clinton proved by randomly attacking various countries during his administration with missiles and fighters lol...now assuming that a soldier of the future will have even more advanced body armor then what we have to day odds are it would be a rather interesting ground battle lol
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Why a ground battle? You still haven't explained this. You've got constant total surveillance of the planet, you can project power to any point very quickly. Why drag several thousand men through space to a planet at a fairly high cost when they provide no big leverage?
Yes body armour will probably get better. So will the weapons, there is no unstoppable weapon or unbeatable defence (or not for long anyway. ABM shields and alike could have been developed earlier but were banned.)
Urban warfare against civilians mixed in with insurgents is bloody, I think the couple of thousand dead US soldiers would agree. And that's one part of one country, luckily the far north (Kurds) and south (British knowing what their doing and not shooting eveybody) are fairly quiet.
It also comes down to why you want to conqueror said colony I think. Again why? Realisticaly any space yard/refueling base(if such things ever exist)/etc will be orbital to avoid wasting fuel on going in/out of the planets gravity well. If it's a levy of materials you want, diplomats backed by the big guns of the fleet do it better.
Various scenarios :
1. Conventional millitary force: Take 'em out from space
2. Insurgents in citys: Going to be messy using troops and it wouldn't work anyway. The only way to win anyway is a political solution, no country has ever put down an insurrection with out popular support. So offer the population a good deal, isolate the extremists and sit safe in your orbital base losing no people. If the entire population is up in arms against you, you can't bring enought troops to supress a planet. If it's only a small minority then the planet's security forces can take care of it.
3. Hidden conventional force: Wait for them to move, then blast 'em from space. Assuming your ground penetrating radars, IR, etc equipped UAVs can't sniff out their hiding places.
A root my question is: What unique ability do grunts bring that you can't do better with unmanned equipment? I just can't see the reason to massively enlarge your fleet with troop ships, extra logistics, more food, oxy, etc for minimal gain of capability. What's the big advantage?