Planetary "airspace" security in Sci-Fi

[biostem]

So I've been working my way through Star Wars: The Clone Wars, (midway through season 6 now), and one thing that stood out to me was just how little of any sort of planetary patrols/security are depicted. Ships routinely make planetfall with no resistance, and even if there is, it is always after they land. Unless a planet/system is actively blockaded, there simply doesn't appear to be any sort of air traffic control or patrols in place to deal with visitors.

I'm just wondering if this is because it would break the flow of the story to have the hero craft being hailed upon entering a system, having to wait for clearance, then having to deal with being turned away. Perhaps it could be some issue of the expense in maintaining such patrols and infrastructure, or maybe it's just not possible to monitor all angles of approach for an entire planet?

Also, while we see planetary defenses in some settings, they don't often come into play - for instance, there have been a few instances where the Separatists in the aforementioned series would land on some random planet and start making demands, after unloading all their droid troops and vehicles - even a small handful of ion cannons like depicted in TESB, would easily deter them, (or at least make said landing very costly).

So what do you guys think? Do you have any insight into this?

[Borgholio]

It may look chaotic to us but remember they have advanced autopilot and sensor systems. It's possible the task of landing on / taking off a planet is just as routine for them as it is for us to enter or exit a highway. Security may be handled in a similar way as well. Cops don't NEED to pull over or search every car that passes through a city...just ones that look or act suspicious.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That's true, especially when you consider the existence of planetary shields (old EU material I know) that can effectively deter whole fleets from landing, so it could well be that anything that is too big to be handled by automated ATC (or should that be STC?) is handled by raising the planet shield.

For comparison, in the X-Wing novels featuring Imperial-held Coruscant, there was significant ATC/STC systems in place coupled with ground based, orbital and Naval defences, plus a double-layered planet shield that was kept up at all times.

[biostem]

That's true, especially when you consider the existence of planetary shields (old EU material I know) that can effectively deter whole fleets from landing, so it could well be that anything that is too big to be handled by automated ATC (or should that be STC?) is handled by raising the planet shield.

For comparison, in the X-Wing novels featuring Imperial-held Coruscant, there was significant ATC/STC systems in place coupled with ground based, orbital and Naval defences, plus a double-layered planet shield that was kept up at all times.

I was just thinking of the last or a previous episode of Rebels, where those Mandalorians intercepted Hera when they entered the system - it struck me as unusual because that is like the first instance of such an occurrence that I can recall...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Honestly I can't comment on either Rebels or The Clone Wars series, having watched neither (beyond the SFDebris reviews of the latter).

[Lord Revan]

I've not seen the whole of Clone Wars either as stated it could that the the normal space/air traffic control is handled by automated systems so that we don't see/notice it unless something goes wrong. the Mandos had a temporary base so it might not had those systems in place thus the patrols.

[Simon_Jester]

We know Lando Calrissian definitely maintains air traffic control around his floating city on Bespin, at least when he's trying to scare off his good old buddy Han without actually calling him on the radio to tell him Darth Vader's waiting for him in Conference Room Three.

[Elheru Aran]

We know Lando Calrissian definitely maintains air traffic control around his floating city on Bespin, at least when he's trying to scare off his good old buddy Han without actually calling him on the radio to tell him Darth Vader's waiting for him in Conference Room Three.

It is almost certain IMO that Calrissian would have had manned ATC given that Cloud City was a frontier post (basically), somewhat of a fly-by-night setup, without the global radar and infrastructure that would have permitted a more extensive automated ATC setup. Ships coming in would have been infrequent enough that they wouldn't have needed round-the-clock droid or computer operated ATC either.

Plus, having men at the posts and armed cloud-cars are one way to see off the occasional marauder. Pirates do exist in the Star Wars universe... or an unscrupulous smuggler willing to strong-arm Calrissian into giving him more Tibanna gas than he paid for... or a Hutt showing up to try and extend him some 'protection'... things like that.

Something to note, in Clone Wars at least-- I haven't watched all the episodes, but most of the flying is done by Jedi or clone-crewed ships. These might be assumed to have automatic permissions to allow them to enter planetary airspace without being overly delayed by being placed into ATC patterns.

[Adam Reynolds]

In the case of Clone Wars, it likely is out of universe an issue of airtime. Episodes are in the 20 minute range, which is actually quite short in terms of what they have the airtime to show. But even going by the films, we see significantly less evidence of this sort of security in the PT era than in the OT era.

On Geonosis, Obi-Wan, then Anakin and Padme, then an entire army of Jedi, then an entire army of Clones are all able to land without being detected until they start doing something that gets them caught. While the Geonsosians did likely at least detect the clone army, they gave no indication of being able to detect the Jedi or any of the others. The ICS book justified this by claiming that it was because of the fact that Geonosis would have a problem with asteroid impacts making it impossible to detect a ship that landed properly(as occured in the film of ESB). Though we see no evidence of this in the film proper.

There is also the fact that the CIS was able to kidnap Palpatine successfully through unknown means given the current canon. Though that at least has the justification that the Chancellor intended for it to happen.

By contrast, even Bespin(an operation too small to be considered by the Empire) appeared to have landing protocols backed up by atmospheric fighter cover. All of the Imperial installations we see(which admittedly is just the two Death Stars) also have fighter cover and reasonable security protocols.

[Simon_Jester]

Geonosis already has a huge, cluttered debris ring orbiting it, and the battle in orbit between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan would have created a huge amount of disruption of the orbital paths of the debris. Because there are lots of rocks now floating around on different orbits, breaking up and crashing into each other, thanks to all those seismic charges Fett threw around. It would be very hard to be sure which objects in Geonosis's sky are ships and which are rocks until more time has passed.

So the way I figure it, that probably helped the protagonists land. Plus, Obi-Wan is flying a designated starfighter explicitly designed for use by Jedi who routinely have to infiltrate large installations single-handedly, so his fighter probably has some electronic countermeasures built in. Likewise, Anakin is a one-of-a-kind ace hotshot pilot... and by the time the Jedi knights arrive in force, the debris from the battle in Geonosis orbit has had hours if not days to spread out and clutter up the planet's sky in a way that could be used for cover by an invading enemy.

[Purple]

Another thing to consider is that the republic was in a period of relative peace before the clone wars and conversely the empire was a product of a galaxy spanning war. It would be very surprising to me if pre war security had not been lax comparative to the kind of stuff people start setting up during and in the immediate aftermath of a war.

[Elheru Aran]

So the way I figure it, that probably helped the protagonists land. Plus, Obi-Wan is flying a designated starfighter explicitly designed for use by Jedi who routinely have to infiltrate large installations single-handedly, so his fighter probably has some electronic countermeasures built in.

Point of contention. I'm not disputing that this happens during the Clone Wars (though usually it's more than just the one Jedi), but before they actually happened, would this necessarily have been within their mission description? Doesn't it seem quite disingenuous for peace-keeping Jedi to carry a military-grade sensor evasion suite within their fighters, which IIRC aren't even armed (OK, Wookieepedia informs me that the Delta-7 has a pair of laser cannons). The Separatists didn't break from the Republic until AOTC and the events of Geonosis-- some of their worlds had already seceded, but it seems that it didn't become a formal movement until Geonosis.

[Lord Revan]

as for the Clone Army how do we know they weren't detected, in the Clone Wars CGI series we've seen you can come out of Hyperspace at a rather low orbit to planet so it's possible that Clone Army simply got into position before the Geonosians were able to react.

[Simon_Jester]

So the way I figure it, that probably helped the protagonists land. Plus, Obi-Wan is flying a designated starfighter explicitly designed for use by Jedi who routinely have to infiltrate large installations single-handedly, so his fighter probably has some electronic countermeasures built in.

Point of contention. I'm not disputing that this happens during the Clone Wars (though usually it's more than just the one Jedi), but before they actually happened, would this necessarily have been within their mission description?

Yes. Because in the Old Republic era, the Jedi are routinely called upon to intervene in wars and planetary conflicts, or to deal with random warlords and intergalactic jerkfaces.

They cannot do that without (for example) access to fast, reliable, discreet personal transport.

Doesn't it seem quite disingenuous for peace-keeping Jedi to carry a military-grade sensor evasion suite within their fighters, which IIRC aren't even armed (OK, Wookieepedia informs me that the Delta-7 has a pair of laser cannons).

I would argue that based on what we see, the Jedi are peacekeepers, in both the "we maintain peace and order" sense and in the "UN peacekeepers have been dispatched to bonk your fool heads together and make you stop killing each other" sense of the word.

We can reasonably suppose that there's a reason that when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan show up aboard the Trade Federation flagship in Episode I, Gunray and friends begin collectively depositing bricks in the seats of their lavishly furnished thrones and plotting overkill methods of assassinating them (gassing the room AND sending dozens of killbots). They don't just go "yawn, two Jedi, what will they do, read injunctions at us?"

It would appear that if you are engaged in a breach of the peace of the galaxy prior to the Clone Wars, Jedi are actually rather frightening.

This in turn suggests that the Jedi are, well, exactly the order of warrior-monks they appear to be: that they are capable of turning up in unexpected places, turning the tide of a war with a deftly timed intervention or sabotage mission, launching a swift decapitation strike against the leadership of an aggressor faction, and the like. They may not do it all the time, but if they didn't have the capability, they wouldn't have a feared and respected reputation prior to the Clone Wars.

Given that the Jedi must be doing some amount of commando operations to get the reputation they actually have, it is reasonable to suppose that their personal equipment (e.g. "Jedi starfighters") is designed accordingly.

Now, the Jedi's mission of maintaining peace has to proceed on the basis that the Jedi are always, always outnumbered, and their personal vehicles will usually be badly outgunned.

While it is not certain that the Jedi would have high-end personal craft (fighters, singleships, call them what you will) equipped with military-grade weapons, defenses, and electronic countermeasures to avoid detection... the Jedi clearly have every reason to procure such craft. And they certainly have plenty of funds and political connections with which to do so.

While it is not certain that Jedi starfighters have an ECM suite or other equipment that would help them avoid detection while trying to infiltrate a fortified world without alerting their space traffic control...

I think it is a plausible explanation, though not the only one, for why Obi-Wan was able to do so.

[Zaune]

You know, this actually came up in the first Star Wars EU books I ever read. (The Corellian Trilogy, to be exact.) According to that book a lot of planets just don't bother to control airspace outside of the vicinity of major spaceports or military installations; given that a teenage boy from a working-class background can canonically own a sub-orbital spaceplane I expect they gave it up as a bad job. In wartime it would be different of course, but even then they'd obviously be concentrating their coverage on high-value targets. And this a society where space travel is pretty routine; they must have so much junk in orbit that nobody bothers to report the occasional fireball as something makes a ballistic reentry.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem with this is that at the ludicrous speeds and accelerations Star Wars flying craft are capable of, relatively common civilian aerospace craft could easily cover hundreds of kilometers in a minute. If your air traffic control isn't tightly integrated across the whole planet, it's largely pointless, unless you can realistically enforce speed limits to ensure that the individual vehicles don't move much faster than real 20th century aircraft.

[Zaune]

True, but I suppose it helps that their manoueverability is equally ludicrous thanks to gravity-manipulation technology, not to mention the fact that collision-avoidance sensors and other flight-assistance technologies are probably even more widespread and effective than today. Not to mention the limits of aerodynamics; how fast could even a relatively aerodynamic ship like an X-wing top out below the tropopause, much less a brick like the YT-1300?

Besides, that particular trilogy does depict a period where the New Republic's economy is still shaky as all hell and the government's nearly bankrupted itself trying to clean up the mess left by a few decades of civil war. Aerospace traffic control is the least of their law-enforcement worries, except in places where some unspaceworthy pile of crap turning into a lawn dart is likely to kill more people than whoever's dumb enough to climb aboard it.

[Sea Skimmer]

You'd have to be pretty crazy not to have strict air traffic controls on this, all the more so with how common interseller banditry seems to be.

Think about how much KE something the size of the Falcon would have if it hit the ground at mach 1. Then mach 10. That's kind of not something you can ignore even if you can have shields to protect really vital stuff.

Be no problem to automate it though, and its probably fair to assume that all civilian craft are at least produced with some kind of automatic collision avoidance system not requiring a network to function. If said system remains operational the life of the ship is another story. This would be a fair way to keep kids from simply smashing into the ground, the high agility of star wars ships would really help here.

[bilateralrope]

True, but I suppose it helps that their manoueverability is equally ludicrous thanks to gravity-manipulation technology, not to mention the fact that collision-avoidance sensors and other flight-assistance technologies are probably even more widespread and effective than today. Not to mention the limits of aerodynamics; how fast could even a relatively aerodynamic ship like an X-wing top out below the tropopause, much less a brick like the YT-1300?

When talking about aerodynamics, is it the shape of the hull or the shape of the shields that matters ?

[Lord Revan]

True, but I suppose it helps that their manoueverability is equally ludicrous thanks to gravity-manipulation technology, not to mention the fact that collision-avoidance sensors and other flight-assistance technologies are probably even more widespread and effective than today. Not to mention the limits of aerodynamics; how fast could even a relatively aerodynamic ship like an X-wing top out below the tropopause, much less a brick like the YT-1300?

When talking about aerodynamics, is it the shape of the hull or the shape of the shields that matters ?

I suppose that depends on how the shields work.

[LastShadow]

True, but I suppose it helps that their manoueverability is equally ludicrous thanks to gravity-manipulation technology, not to mention the fact that collision-avoidance sensors and other flight-assistance technologies are probably even more widespread and effective than today. Not to mention the limits of aerodynamics; how fast could even a relatively aerodynamic ship like an X-wing top out below the tropopause, much less a brick like the YT-1300?

When talking about aerodynamics, is it the shape of the hull or the shape of the shields that matters ?

I suppose that depends on how the shields work.

In Star wars, as seen in Phantom Menace when Anakin gets the shields on the fighter up, shields conform mostly to the shape of the hull, so even if they helped with air resistance, which i dont think they do, they wouldnt really do much to increase the aerodynamics of something like the Falcon.

[Simon_Jester]

It depends on exactly how conformal they are. If the shield surface is even a few inches above the hull surface, it could do a good deal to reduce bad aerodynamics.

Also, while we can tell that the N-1 starfighter's shields are very tightly conformal, that doesn't mean all Star Wars craft have tightly conformal shields. There are reasons to think some ships or craft may have shields a considerable distance away from the hull*

*The biggest one in my mind being the ability of Poe and Finn to shoot out weapon emplacements on the surface of Kylo Ren's flagship. That means either:
1) The First Order's TIE fighter weapons are powerful enough to penetrate capital ship shielding,
2) The flagship's shields weren't even active, or
3) The TIE fighter was firing from physically inside the shield, in which case there must have been a respectable-sized gap between the hull and the shield for Poe to fly through.

[LastShadow]

It depends on exactly how conformal they are. If the shield surface is even a few inches above the hull surface, it could do a good deal to reduce bad aerodynamics.

Also, while we can tell that the N-1 starfighter's shields are very tightly conformal, that doesn't mean all Star Wars craft have tightly conformal shields. There are reasons to think some ships or craft may have shields a considerable distance away from the hull*

*The biggest one in my mind being the ability of Poe and Finn to shoot out weapon emplacements on the surface of Kylo Ren's flagship. That means either:
1) The First Order's TIE fighter weapons are powerful enough to penetrate capital ship shielding,
2) The flagship's shields weren't even active, or
3) The TIE fighter was firing from physically inside the shield, in which case there must have been a respectable-sized gap between the hull and the shield for Poe to fly through.

Its honestly tough to tell from the movies, the books really in a way explained things better than the movies, where honestly, details like that where fairly unimportant to them. And more than half the arguments i would normally make, have been ruined due to the books being totally non-canon now. Also don't get me started on anything in the new movie, 80% of the choices they made for the ships and weapons annoy, confuse and infuriate me and thats a totally different discussion, which should probably be had at some point.

But (making heavy assumptions here) depending on how the shields work, whether sections can be dropped for the ingress/egress of fighters or launching ballistic weapons, its a really hard thing to figure out from whats on screen. Now for Star Trek, its easier to figure out, plenty of on screen back up info for shields, like shuttles can go out it they match shield frequencies, weapons can pass through if on the same frequency, and the way shields are formed around the ship is generally visible.

But for Star Wars there is not really as much of that, though if i remember correctly (which i might not be) in TCW they rolled the Venators in one episode while under fire to deploy the fighters so the ship wouldn't be hit wide open with the shields down, as also shields operate on a sectional ability (shields full forward, even out shields) in ANH. But dropping shield facings to launch ballistic weapons would be silly, especially while that area is being fired at, and unless they can pass through somehow, the ballistic type weapon would detonate on the inside of the shield, unless the shields are like a one way door( easy egress, stopped ingress).

So there could be a gap, Capitol ship shields could operate differently than Fighter shields. There might not be a gap, shields could have been down due to not being in combat, the world may never truly know. until a novel comes along and explains it, but thats the way its been with Star Wars, most of it was explained in novels.

If you go by Novels the Falcon herself has at least shields that are a undescribed distance away from the hull, (i can't remember which book might have been courtship of leia, could have been a different one) but to test the shields, Han and chewie activate them while hovering on repulsorlifts and gently lower the ship until it is supported only on the power of the shields, and she hovers for a couple seconds and then the rear quarter goes out and the ships tail comes crashing down. But again thats from a now legends novel.

[Jub]

In terms of air traffic control, it's likely that most civilian ships would be designed so that a planetary or sector traffic control computer can override their controls and, in doing so, keep the space lanes orderly. Only criminals, smugglers, and rebels would override that system and, in that case, police/military forces could try to intercept.

[LastShadow]

Honestly it varies from universe to universe, it is generally assumed( i know i assume a lot) that there is various air traffic control, In Star Trek you are hailed either upon entering orbit or on approach depending on the society, some have sensor nets at the edges of their territory and they (for the most part) know when you are even in their territory.

In another area like say Firefly, they either need to disguise the ship to enter an area controlled by the alliance, or have legit business, but they can land fairly willy nilly on border planets.

Star Wars has a variety of different options, where places like Tatooine have limited areas of control, you can either land at the spaceport or land out in the boonies under the radar so to speak, but places like Coruscant and rebel bases have good/decent detection networks.

It all really depends on the universe in question, and the level of tech they have, the level of affluence of the area, and the level of basic give a damn, because lets face it, some planets just dont care.