Covert orbital insertion

After playing odst I kind of jumped onto the whole orbital drop band wagon but after looking at the concept from a strategic point of view I began to realize that there were some serious flaws in the concept as it had been manifested in halo primarily in terms of strategic value. Essentially the odst are like modern paratroopers my understanding being that they are great for landing lots of guys until...you factor in aircraft with vtol capabilities and then their usefulness becomes limited to that of the covert insertion of small spec ops teams behind enemy lines which is not something odsts appear do very well (the covert part). So I'm wondering if there is any way to make a stealthy unpowered re-entry FT vehicle and therefore make the whole odst concept a viable FT mission profile. Possibly a stealthy lifting body that breaks apart so you are left with a guy in a parachute?

Steath in space = no. They'd be trackable by radar and IR on the way down and when I say "trackable" I'm really saying they're neon orange with a big sign saying SHOOT HERE.

Anytime you drop something from orbit, it loses any chance of being covert.

Its about like coating a bull elephant on meth with Radar Absorbant Materials.

Why not near space, not full orbit. Most are looking for things in space, I think the highest jump was 74,000 feet. With pmt tech, you could use a wing suit, or one man flying wing with an optical skin or something appropriately interesting to jump out of a plane. It would be interesting. Assuming PMT tech, you could be even higher than 74,000 feet. It would take incredible guts to do something like this.

I think spy satellites use something called "cold plasma" to limit their infrared signature.

Insulation does nothing to reduce IR signature in space. The heat needs to go somewhere and the only somewhere is into space. This is fundamental and you can't handwave around it without throwing physics out the window.

For the record "stealth" satellites are almost certainly something much more mundane. Like the satellite hides behind a big balloon when it's not collecting imagery.

Detonate a nuke ahead of your drop, you'll blind their sensors.

Of course you'll blind your sensors too, but who cares?


Also, most people get the fundamental aspect of the ODST wrong (Halo nut talking now). It's not covert SpecOps, they're pathfinders and drop head securing force. They drop in, secure the DZ, and the main force comes down in drop ships in much greater force (Pelicans in Halo). In ODST they are pushed into a boarding role as a last-ditch effort (Remember how dire a situation the Humans are), and the mission they're in is basically suicide. It's not standard ops.

No. Physics=law.

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3au.html

should explain about thermal nicely. Read it. Learn it. Love it, because physics is the law damn it!




Anyways, to the OP, "Covert" and "Orbital" don't go together, there's really no reason to try to force it. The best you can do is blind or cloud their sensors to the point that they're expending an inordinate amount of weaponry to hit you, and are missing with most.

Blinding is easy, nukes FUCK.SHIT.UP. If you have orbital superiority and reasonable confidence that you won't get hit in retaliation, then make the skies glow green. No one will be able to see much on Radar, IR, LIDAR, visual (ever again if they're unlucky), etc, and radioactive contamination on the ground will be basically negligible. (it will be down to background rather quickly after the initial pulse) You can fly a spacecraft through a mushroom cloud and not melt I think. Idunno, try it out!

Clouding is possibly even easier, though will reduce effectiveness. Basically, the goal here is the same goal as good old fashioned chaff: put as much shiny hot shit in the sky as possible. This means re-enter with a bunch of decoys, IR spoofers, and radar reflective balloons. Take a gander at what they do in Starship Troopers on the way down. Sorta dated, but basically accurate. If there's enough shit, they'll spend enough of their ammo shooting crap that some of your pathfinders won't explode midair.

Note that I didn't say "will make it to the ground," depending on what they land ON and IN, casualties from a drop can be pretty hairy. I used to RP in FT that my drop troops assumed 33% casualties from a hot drop into an urban combat zone until the time when they get supported by regular forces. Then again, that's with FT ADS where the ADS AI can carve love notes to its AI girlfriend into the sides of drop pods with multi-megajoule lasers. Possibly while having binarysex. (hexsex just isn't the same, not as natural)

In PMT/'MT,' the majority of your casualties are likely to come from the whole "HOT HOT HOT OSHIT FAST FAST FAST SLOW THE FUCK DOWNNNNNNNNNNNN.... IMPACT!" part of the insertion, as opposed to the "well fuck, they have some missiles...." part. At least until the boots are finally on the ground. Then they get shot at after landing in a very obvious way.

Their value is as soldiers deployed on a 'one way trip' into the battlefield.

Think about it, when that pod hits dirt, how do you plan to get back?

Very cost-effective if you expect a lot of casualties and don't plan on bringing the corpses back home unless utterly victorious.

Pelicans are expensive, apparently.

ODSTs are *lightly armed* shock-troop pathfinders for the pelicans, used in clearing the DZ for reinforcements (Scorpion-tanks, whoooo!).

Pathfinding is like being on point, except it's you vs a division. These fellas are usually given the cheapest weapon in the squad, like a shotgun, for a reason.

well for pathfinders I have been using my military's standard combat droids (halo has advanced AI and super duper power armor but no combat droids for the dirty work wtf?) I have found them to be very cost effective in comparison to human soldiers and they have made normal drops pretty uneventful (no nasty death). My manned FT divisions are strictly special forces and are extremely expensive in comparison so they need to be as covert as possible. From the FT scenarios I've seen so far stealth is pretty much nonexistent but for the sake of my men is there at least a way to covertly insert men and supplies from a planet's surface?

Okay so ..you would like to drop to an enemy planet unseen... for great expense and technology we can do this for say an SOE type operation with oh a minimum of operatives. Say one. In some sort of hideously expensive super capsule. it should be noted said capsule will probably consume more technichal capacity and resources than a squadron of battleships and will certainly involve more tech wankery.

From or to to conventionally for a drop force ..not really. The second your *SHIP LIKE OBJECT* arrives things will begin to occur. If your not say willing to spend 300 odd years hitching a ride as a cometary shard youve replaced and sheathed your ship in hopeing your IR holds and your ice sheathe doesnt get mass and or gravitics to look at it ..or some such then useing ooh I dont know some sort of freaking teleporter (which comes with its own delightfull oh jesus ive been jammed and now a troop is monatomic mist) .


You could go with an altered carbon style teleport system with interstellar range and land the base station in a self assembling mist (or have the troops self assemble) or something equally improbable to work or a ducted laser heat pump deep sky mimicing balistic with active mass cancelation but again if something crosses the beam ..and your still gona get something even with thermal super con grids..

Dumping said heat into *atlernate dimension, used as a gravity curve or better still to assist in masking your mass* would be a hoot as would haveing true thermal superconductor and the ability to dump all that heat into a heat sink that ..then explodes or somesuch.

But then even if you do manage to skutter near the planet on a slow cold and mimicy cruise with your drop frigate or whatever and finaly engage a dash drive while bumping out half a thousand decoys a minute, detonationg nukes like rain and firing sandcaster spreads filled with nice little conductive buggers while hitting them with MASER fire ..

You still end up glowing and blinded by plasma when you go for re-entry.

No.

Effectively no unless you just blind the hell out of everything or use teleport. And blinding the hell out of everything just isnt stealthy.

I go with the hell option. FT is about amongst other things the truly unleashed power of the atom, fully operational near direct energy conversion available and the tools to use it.

So yes in theory you could have some sort of drop frigate skutter into oh near planetary space, fire your dudes in one man reentry capsules with some sort of super duper extra dimensional heat sink and thermal super condcutor but then you still get the re entry glow so ..decoys?

or use line gun shells with stasis fields (along with one hopes alot of other line gun shells) to deliver the poor sods to target.

...Or you can just drop your equivlent freaking bolo division backed by severan tens of thousands of gunship sized transatmospheric nasty nasty nasty killy death drones while you turn orbital space into your personal property.

That last one is what I suggest you aim for.

It was speculated that the droid would be 'master-chief'.

Only way to covertly do it is either clandestinely on a charter-ship (!spies) or to spam a bunch of decoys [covering/blinding-fire] alongside one or two dropships (or just spam decoys and watch the paranoid lulz ensue)

How about hiding the delivery vehicle not the troops. This is the idea of having drop pods. You go on a short burn drift in cloaked , slow moving object with metamaterials (light benders), cold plasma shielding (to reduce heat signature) scramblers, then fire the drop pods fast.

The IR signature is till there...ask me why, its my favorite answer to all things off the ground with regards to OMG stealf iss invincible.

But please define "cloaked". Like Klingon Warbird Cloaked? Like inter-dimensional Phase Cloaked, like Harry Potter invisible cloak cloaked?

There is no stealth in space.

Really. None. 100% impossible. It's a waste of time to even try.

I don't believe that. I have read otherwise. Here are two examples that might make it possible. Light bending technology and cold plasma. There are other things which could be added to it. It would depend on what kind of detection technology you used to find a cloak. There is also the shape of the ship make it needlelike. No Romulans, No Star Trek. There are plenty of odd things if you look for them. Pay attention to Clarke's axiom before saying 100%

Cold Plasma

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/te...sma_000724.html

Metamaterials

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/...80811092450.htm