Marines go orbital?

[Weaver]

The problem with plastering the landing zone is that a craft re-entering from orbit is going to be vulnerable to SAMs launched from a very wide area, not just immediately around where it's going to land. Another vulnerability is when it's on the ground or near it: it's a HUGE target. Imagine blanketing the landing zone with a barrage of BM-21 rockets from 10 seconds before the Ithacus arrives to 30 seconds after it: you could hardly miss. These weapons would have to be closer, but then, they'd be less easily targetted than SAM sites.

[jcf]

So you've spent several million$ to get a single squad on the ground, now how pray tell
do you support said squad? Or are they expendable?
 

[Doc Yo]

So you've spent several million$ to get a single squad on the ground, now how pray tell
do you support said squad? Or are they expendable?
 

With 40 years progress in electronics and miniaturization, we could certainly equip them with a
man-portable Davey Crockett...

I think the modern version is supposed to be fairly stealthy-but I'd imagine they would be considered
fairly expendable.

Weaver makes some good points, but I think the business of these only being targetable by ABM
assets still applies, and thats not a widely available system. ( Though if the Ithacus were developed
I suspect you'd suddenly see a market, and suppliers from a number of nations... ) I also wonder how maneuverable Ithacus would have been during reentry. Being able to vary a landing site by even ten miles would seriously affect the ability of a defender to blanket the landing site with missiles...

[frank2056]

Weaver,
I was thinking of urban renewal from orbit - crater an area larger than the range of the average AAA of concern. If some of the rocks can serve as either decoys or be guided towards "targets of interest".

John - if the landing area is secured, send in another (or several) Ithacus full of fuel, tanks and other goodies.

Thinking more about this, an Ithacus could be somewhat stealthy - the really visible re-entry portion (with the plasma) can be adjusted to be a few hundred or a thousand km downrange from the landing spot. Most AAA radars will be looking towards the horizon and will have a limited capability of detecting the Ithacus until it is literally right above them. If the area has been softened before hand (or even if an area 10-20km away is softened as a decoy) the Ithacus and its Marines could land "almost" undetected. Except for the thundering roar of the engines and the dust clouds, etc.

[Weaver]

Weaver,
I was thinking of urban renewal from orbit - crater an area larger than the range of the average AAA of concern. If some of the rocks can serve as either decoys or be guided towards "targets of interest".

My point though, is that the range of some of these "AAA of concern" is considerable.  if the opposition have S-300 SAMs, for instance (and they're not exactly uncommon), then they could attack the Ithacus from anywhere up to 100 miles off-track. If you're going to crater an area that big, then it isn't so much an invasion as an (un)natural disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_(missile)

AND nobody's mentioned the enemy air force yet. Even with a decoy landing site and a hovering approach to the real one, it's not going to be hard to find an Ihacus and do terrible things to it before it gets a chance to unload anything.

There's also the eggs-in-one-basket argument: sink a landing craft, and there are plenty more. Even sink an amphibious ship and chances are there will be more survivors than victims and others ships to take it's place. Set off an explosion in an Ithacus's fuel tanks when it's 1000 ft off the ground, however, and all 1200 souls aboard are literally toast.....