Was Silent War hot or cold war?

Yeah, just because the government formally surrenders doesn't mean the people necessarily will.

Especially if the infrastructure to fight is still available.

One quote attributed to Isoroku Yamamoto is:
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

The idea encapsulated in this thought is, even lacking a central government to direct it, the people of the United States would fight to defend their homeland and possess a lot of firearms to do so.

They may not be formally trained, but you're looking at a country with more guns than people. If you start to invade, everyone is a potentially combatant. If you tried to occupy, everyone would be a potential insurgent from the invaders perspective.

Yeah, just because the government formally surrenders doesn't mean the people necessarily will.

Especially if the infrastructure to fight is still available.

One quote attributed to Isoroku Yamamoto is:
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

The idea encapsulated in this thought is, even lacking a central government to direct it, the people of the United States would fight to defend their homeland and possess a lot of firearms to do so.

They may not be formally trained, but you're looking at a country with more guns than people. If you start to invade, everyone is a potentially combatant. If you tried to occupy, everyone would be a potential insurgent from the invaders perspective.

There's no evidence that Yamamoto ever wrote that or that the sentiment played a role in Japanese military strategy.

Which isn't to say that insurgencies don't suck - as we've seen in the US's recent conflicts.

I'm aware that there's is no evidence to suggest Yamamoto actually said or wrote it, that's why I said attributed to.

But the idea behind it makes at least some level of sense. Firearms are common in the United States, and any invader would need to have a plan for how to deal with the potential of armed "civilians" resisting any invasion.

It's not just the logistic of let's get an army across the ocean, but how do you fight an "army" composed of potentially millions of people/insurgents.

it is true that Japan basically just wanted the United States to stay out of the war. Ironically bombing Pearl Harbor was the thing that galvanized us to enter the war when we did. Not to say we would have never entered the war, but if Japan hadn't done that things might have gone very differently. Japan might have been able to cause Russian to devote forces to an eastern front, which might have allowed the German forces fighting in eastern Europe to succeed against Russian forces.

Let's also not forget that in the starfinder setting, any source of UPBs can also become firearms, anti-tank weapons, or even an actual tank given a workshop and skilled enough labor (which appear to be ubiquitous).

Invading a modern member of the pact worlds requires destroying so much infrastructure from orbit the planet will likely require massive ecological repair to keep it habitable in the near future. And you aren't just doing that with impunity in a pact worlds level planet. Even after you destroy all space opposition and existing ground to orbit weapons... They'll be building more ground to space weapons, starships in hidden hangars, sending high level mystics up to assault your ships if they ever become 'stationary' enough to get a teleport through, plus whatever other magical defenses they might have.

And then there's the truly ridiculous numbers of troops required to fight a ground war and take and hold territory against an entire planetary population with equal or greater resources than you have available.

Even after you destroy the infrastructure, you'll have to take an area large enough to start up infrastructure of your own while still destroying the natives. You'll probably need to move millions of civilians to the planet to support the millions of troops all during this invasion. All the while you're hoping the enemy doesn't decide to sneak nukes or antimatter weapons into your territory to destroy your infrastructure.

It didn't really work in places with a central authority either. See the bombing campaigns in WW2. None of them made people want to surrender.

They were aimed at crippling the infrastructure that just happened to be in the city, with as much precision as the technology of the time allowed. NOT destroying the city, ALA the mongols coming in with an army and a bunch of torches. In other words, I asked for blasting a city off the face of the earth and your example is targeted bombing in a city. They simply are NOT comparable.

The only time we had city wide destruction the result was a surrender. How much it was the cause was debatable, but in modern times that's the only real example. And there are NO examples of a city being reduced to a crater in the ground and the rest of a unified country still saying "Bring it" unless people were fighting against absolute extermination.

Hurting a city with bombs is an example of being on the wrong spot of camel hump II: you're evil but you're not evil enough to be maximally effective at conquering. /^\_/^\ . if you want to move to the top of hump 2 you need one big smoking crater, NOT blown up factories.

In ancient times, once the invading army was big enough and ruthless enough to burn your town to the ground and salt the earth most everyone else raised the white flag. Look at the mongol empire. Do you think they could have quelled rebellion or run a government that big? The local governments kept the tributes coming because they liked living and would rather squash the occasional peasant rebellion than deal with a mongol army. Were the romans going to run around the woods keeping every celtic farm under control? No. You get a friendly clan to do that for you. And make it clear you can either be a friendly clan or a pile of rubble.

You don't need to conquer all of the people all of the time, you just need to conquer enough of the people so that they finish doing the job for you.

They were aimed at crippling the infrastructure that just happened to be in the city, with as much precision as the technology of the time allowed. NOT destroying the city, ALA the mongols coming in with an army and a bunch of torches. In other words, I asked for blasting a city off the face of the earth and your example is targeted bombing in a city. They simply are NOT comparable.

The only time we had city wide destruction the result was a surrender. How much it was the cause was debatable, but in modern times that's the only real example. And there are NO examples of a city being reduced to a crater in the ground and the rest of a unified country still saying "Bring it" unless people were fighting against absolute extermination.

Hurting a city with bombs is an example of being on the wrong spot of camel hump II: you're evil but you're not evil enough to be maximally effective at conquering. /^\_/^\ . if you want to move to the top of hump 2 you need one big smoking crater, NOT blown up factories.

In ancient times, once the invading army was big enough and ruthless enough to burn your town to the ground and salt the earth most everyone else raised the white flag. Look at the mongol empire. Do you think they could have quelled rebellion or run a government that big? The local governments kept the tributes coming because they liked living and would rather squash the occasional peasant rebellion than deal with a mongol army. Were the romans going to run around the woods keeping every celtic farm under control? No. You get a friendly clan to do that for you. And make it clear you can either be a friendly clan or a pile of rubble.

You don't need to conquer all of the people all of the time, you just need to conquer enough of the people so that they finish doing the job for you.

The bombing campaigns did also target cities directly, for example Dresden. But I also included the attacks on London with bombers and V weapons. Neither of those resulted in the population wanting to capitulate.

Yes, the Mongols used the tactic of massacres if you resisted to cow others into submission, but that did not work reliably and depends on your enemy knowing this reputation in the first place which was not the case when the silent war started.
And its not that they did not face rebellions in conquered territories either.

The bombing campaigns did also target cities directly, for example Dresden. But I also included the attacks on London with bombers and V weapons. Neither of those resulted in...

The destruction of the entire city. Which is what was stated. Anything else is, for at least the third time. A straw man.

And its not that they did not face rebellions in conquered territories either.

A tactic doesn't need to be perfect to be realistic. Or real. It just needs to work enough of the time to justify its use. Forcing capitulation through the threat of annihilation WORKS. I don't think there's an example of a tactic that's ever been 100% or there wouldn't be so many different ways to conquer people.

I imagine that it was very hot at certain times, but think it was more Veskarium raids on Pact Worlds targets rather than full fleet actions.

I also compress the Starfinder timeline post-Gap to a mere century. So the Silent War was largely quiet with just a few big raids punctuating the tension.

When the Swarm showed up, the Veskarium realized it couldn't hack it and made peace.

Eh, on the one hand, yeah, terror bombing tends not to actually work as a means of demoralization or forcing surrender.

On the other hand, that hasn't stopped anyone from trying it for the last eighty years.

Eh, on the one hand, yeah, terror bombing tends not to actually work as a means of demoralization or forcing surrender.

On the other hand, that hasn't stopped anyone from trying it for the last eighty years.

none of the examples remotely come close to what orbital bombardment would look like. There is a vast difference between there is a one in 300 chance my house and my family will be killed and a 100% chance of your house being leveled and your family dying.

The proposition is being dismissed without being addressed honestly.

FormerFiend wrote:

Eh, on the one hand, yeah, terror bombing tends not to actually work as a means of demoralization or forcing surrender.

On the other hand, that hasn't stopped anyone from trying it for the last eighty years.

none of the examples remotely come close to what orbital bombardment would look like. There is a vast difference between there is a one in 300 chance my house and my family will be killed and a 100% chance of your house being leveled and your family dying.

The proposition is being dismissed without being addressed honestly.

100%?

That alone is rather unlikely and more in line of genocide than terror bombing. It also requires them to have destroyed all anti space installations on the planet which would cost them a huge number of ships to do so.

100%?
So they are destroying every village, small town and city?

No.

Orbital bombardment ability is achieved.

Orbital bombardment ability is either known, or demonstrated on a target.

The invaders say the capitol of Asparagus 5 is next unless they surrender.

There is a 100% chance that if you are in the capitol of Asparagus 5 then you're going to die.

The capitol of Asparagus 5 surrenders

Since the Capitol of Asparagus 5 controls the planet, the planet has effectively surrendered. Yes there will be rebellion. The Asparigans keep it to a dull roar for you. Thats not how the Asparagans are going to phrase it, but that's what they're doing.

The fact is that when you centralize authority and have leadership one of the downsides of that is that the leadership of a country has a habit of making decisions that are best for the leadership and not the country. You can spot this from the smallest villiage where the leader likely has the biggest hut and fanciest hat to the biggest country where the leadership will be in marble palaces. It's required to have a functioning government but it can be exploited.

It's one thing to look at a Risk board and say we don't need that plot of land, quite its quite another thing when that plot of land is you.

When o when will the Carthaginian insurgency against Rome end?