SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread II

[Siege]

USMC emergency evacuation doctrines call for enough landers to be present at all times to lift all troops from the surface to their carriers in 30 minutes flat (2 round trips). It helps that every interface craft the Marines use is capable of reaching orbit under its own power, and that Marine Corps troop ships can deploy swarms of automated carryalls to pick up heavy equipment such as tanks.

Troops are also never abandoned: "leave no man behind" still rings true in the 35th century.

[Shroom Man 777]

JOHN BAYLOR WE WON'T LEAVE YOU BEHIND!

[Simon_Jester]

Frankly I think all of y'all are being terribly inflexible. You're treating planets like something you have to cling to because it's real hard to get on or off them, when that's really not the case. Sovereignty doctrine is for the USSF to establish a foothold in orbit large enough that it allows the USMC to land; the Marines can then operate under theater shields just fine even if total orbital supremacy hasn't been achieved. And if through some unforeseen circumstances the USSF is forced out, as happened on Majella, the Marines simply pack up and leave with them. The task force can then either decide to high-tail it or wait for reinforcements.

Landing and moving troops about might seem like a challenge in our time, but with the preposterous amounts of energy we've got to throw at problems why bother leaving the troops in a tight spot? They can just lift up and reinsert at a more advantageous position, either directly or at a later time. If your troops end up in a "heroic last stand" type of scenario, you've made a big-ass mistake somewhere: no matter where you are on a planet, space is always just a handful of kilometers away, and you really should be making the most of that fact.

I have no objection to this kind of strategy. At some point we'd tend to abandon that constraint, but only when we reach a point where the orbitals are secure enough that we can afford to have more men on the ground than we can withdraw in an hour or two.

USMC emergency evacuation doctrines call for enough landers to be present at all times to lift all troops from the surface to their carriers in 30 minutes flat (2 round trips). It helps that every interface craft the Marines use is capable of reaching orbit under its own power, and that Marine Corps troop ships can deploy swarms of automated carryalls to pick up heavy equipment such as tanks.

It also helps that your Marines, unlike some people I could name, we don't have ten thousand ton War Behemoths wandering around on the ground and being nigh-impossible to spacelift...

Takes pains to ensure" is not the same as "assumes it will have." Granted the Imperial Army is unusually independent of space support, but without it it runs into the very real danger that its own superheavies will be targeted by orbital weapons too powerful for even a Titan to handle. That's what I would expect Imperial doctrine to call on the Navy to do: to make sure that at a bare minimum the enemy does not gain total space supremacy over the planet for any extended period of time. If this happens, the Army forces on the planet cannot survive indefinitely, and are liable to suffer badly asymmetric losses to enemy orbital bombardment.

Taking pains isn't enough. You haven't fought a war of annihiliation before, whereas the Imperium has in the past fought over a rock for a year over. In a meat grinder situation, the Navy cannot be relied upon for support all the time.

Obviously, if the naval support is gone, the game is quite up. But it's not like we wouldn't support our Titans with plenty of infantry.

...I think we're talking past each other.

Any extended planetary combat is going to involve space combat, and you cannot count on space supremacy, or even space superiority, at all times during the engagement. That much is just common sense. My point, though, is that I think the doctrinal path that leads to increased emphasis on land-based superheavies or on increased naval fire support is just that: a difference, a valid split where it's not a case of one side being able to say "I'm right, you're stupid."

Clearly the Imperial Navy doesn't assume it can fight a ground campaign indefinitely without naval support or at least naval forces running interference with the enemy's naval support. Clearly the Umerian security forces don't assume the ground troops will be able to call on orbital fire support at a moment's notice any time they wish. Either position would be ridiculous.

There has to be some degree of combined arms. that requires both that the Army be able to rely on the Navy to at least maintain a presence in the vicinity so that they can't be isolated and destroyed, and that the Navy be able to rely on the Army to take care of ground opposition on its own without needing routine support from space.

If available, orbital bombardment would always be the preferred means for dealing with land-based superheavies, because it offers the best way of solving the problem at minimal risk to one's own forces. If not available, then the job either goes to opposing superheavies, or to massed armored units from other forces in an engagement reminiscent of Ogre

Conversely, the more naval-oriented powers' first goal would be to break an Imperial blockade to make the task of dealing with superheavies more straightforward- or, in some cases (such as Umeria), if the necessary mass is present, try to engage them by sheer mass of smaller ground units.

The Imperium dosen't walk away quietly. Likely we will detonate our stock of plasma/bio/nuclear weapons, leaving the ground so irradiated/contaminated that the land will take ages to recover.

Detonation of plasma explosives might shatter the crust in the local area come to think of it.

Uhm... OK?

It works well enough against the occasional Gargant we find ourselves dealing with... granted that we're more tactics-savvy than the orks, which helps a lot.

Who gives a shit about orcs? The Imperium would have glassed/blown the planet to bits.

In fact, I was just talking to Shady and decided; Janus will be glassed after the colony is evacuated and the crust so broken to bits it will never again be resettled with its tectonic plates in complete disarray. I could try destroying the planet outright, but Steve would scream.

Uhm... OK?

I mean yes in theory there's always "render the planet uninhabitable" as an option. But I would argue that there is something to be said for the ability to at least engage an enemy without reducing the planet to ruins. I mean you go on at great length about the Imperial Army; what's the point of even having an army if every combat ends in the planet being destroyed anyway?

So while I appreciate the GRIMDARK-ery of "We do not fight our enemies, we PULVERIZE them, so thoroughly that no life can survive where they once dwelt!" it strikes me as little more than an opportunity for you to sneer for the sake of sneering.

We have a similar concept with our frigates (ha, you say, mere minimicroparasite warships that do not realize their pitiful status!), which are designed for atmospheric fire support even though their main antiship weapons don't work well in air. Also with our strike cruisers (HA!, you say, so puny!), but with more specialized space-to-ground and air-to ground weapons.

What are you talking about? These ships were designed specifically to go into the atmosphere. So specialised there are only 9 of them (100pts each). The only other ships that can go land on solid ground are 75pt corvettes.

...I fail to see how this is a criticism. All I said is that I, too, have specialized ship classes that are designed to enter atmosphere and support ground troops. That seems a perfectly reasonable thing for me to say in response to you talking about how you have specialized ship classes that are designed to enter atmosphere and support ground troops.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

USMC emergency evacuation doctrines call for enough landers to be present at all times to lift all troops from the surface to their carriers in 30 minutes flat (2 round trips). It helps that every interface craft the Marines use is capable of reaching orbit under its own power, and that Marine Corps troop ships can deploy swarms of automated carryalls to pick up heavy equipment such as tanks.

Troops are also never abandoned: "leave no man behind" still rings true in the 35th century.

You are kidding right? 30mins? Over how large an area? It takes over an hour as it is to empty a cargo ship in this day and age, and I will be surprised that you can organise such huge army of forklifters etc. to pack and load equipment onto a ship and not run into bottlenecks. You troops have to establish a vanguard, load heavy equipment on a vessel, wait for ships to come between the planet and the ship, empty the cargo on their vessels, come back down etc. All this practically requires an hour over. This isn't even the issue of enough ships.

The only possibility for an under 1 hour loading and offloading is only if you are using your super marines, and not the bog standard marine.

...I think we're talking past each other.

Quite frankly we are never going to agree with each other, and I can't bothered to accept your points because I made my decision to stick to mine ages ago.

[Simon_Jester]

Re: Siege's plan.

If they had sufficient space transportable vehicles, I could see it; it's the equivalent of calling for a mass helicopter pickup and slinging the vehicles underneath the heavy-lift models. That could go fairly quickly. They'd probably have to abandon masses of equipment on the way and it makes a very ambitous statement about what their surface-to-space cargo helicopter equivalents are capable of... but I can imagine it working as long as all the hardware is vacuum compatible and you have enough shuttles.

The gear can be blown in place, and if the core of their units is all on space-transportable vehicles (or power armored foot troops), then they could probably be up and moving very quickly. It's only if they have large spaceborne cargo ships that need big landing areas and port infrastructure that there's a problem. Otherwise, this is just heli-mobility IN SPACE!

...I think we're talking past each other.

Quite frankly we are never going to agree with each other, and I can't bothered to accept your points because I made my decision to stick to mine ages ago.

Ah. I see. Well then I'll go talk to someone who notices what other people are saying instead.

[K. A. Pital]

I'm not quite sure I follow what you're saying about the lack of solidarity.

I really expected them to meddle. They seemed the type to meddle. No matter though, i'll go engage in a punch up with the Pfhor once i've suitably suppressed my revolutionaries.

The Commune is currently more busy making allies than making enemies. If there's a situation that may require attention, we might interfere... but not in the usual way.

For example, we can engage in planetwide kidnapping, if we think workers on planet X are "red" and require our immediate help. That might spark a conflict, but we wouldn't try to start one directly.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Ah. I see. Well then I'll go talk to someone who notices what other people are saying instead.

What do you want to do? Spend all day and night arguing about the extreme ends of tactics we chose to adopt? Surely we have better things to do?

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

And now to resolve some older business regarding Nick Angle and the Santo Domingo Rogues Gallery:

You need a rogue Anglian MI6 Double-0 by the name of B.F. Skinner, who runs a black market convenience store on that planet of yours.

-snip pic of Timothy Dalton-

If we're going to have Timothy Dalton as a rogue Anglian 00 selling guns in Santo Domingo de Trujillo, then we need Robert Davi as the drug lord who runs the city. Behold:



REAL NAME: Sanchez, Acastus
KNOWN ALIASES: N/A
GENDER: Male
DOB: (month, day, and exact year unknown)
BIOGRAPHY: Drug lord, arms dealer, and smuggler of mixed (half-Byzantine, half-Solarian) origins. Runs various criminal operations out of Santo Domingo de Trujillo and its surroundings. Known collaborator with the Dawn Church, who receive weapons from him and help distribute his drugs. Has the majority of the Santo Domingo de Trujillo police in his pocket. Has recently hired Leeroy Jenkins Gibbs's rogue USMC unit to bolster his own private army. Sworn enemy of B.F. Skinner.

You dare to malign the names of TEAM GIBBS?!

*readies Black Hole Generator and targets Shinn's civilization*

....okay, I'm just joking. It's funny. Well, unless you malign Abby or Ducky. Then it shall be WAR.

I wouldn't dare mess with Abby or Ducky; they're the only ones I actually like. However, I still want to introduce a Ducky-like character; I guess I'll have to take the rest of my inspiration from David McCallum's other famous role, then.



REAL NAME: Kuric, Elijah Nicholas
KNOWN ALIASES: Goose
GENDER: Male
DOB: (month, day, and exact year unknown)
BIOGRAPHY: Semi-retired doctor formerly from New Anglia. Served as a starfighter pilot with the New Anglian Royal Navy and graduated with honors from the TOP SHEP program while on exchange with the Shepistani Navy. Known polymath, with a particular affinity for music, literature, anthropology, advanced physics, gymnastics, unarmed combat, and marksmanship. Rumored to have been involved with New Anglian external intelligence. Currently runs a free clinic out of B.F. Skinner's "convenience" store. One of many people on Mikhail Tripper's lengthy list of enemies.

Even though I'm introducing a Ducky pastiche, he's going to be untouchable. Douchenozzle DiNozzo is definitely going to die, though, and I won't hesitate to kill off Gibbs if the story calls for it. I haven't come up with good gag names for Caitlin Todd, Timothy McGee, Ziva David, or Jenny Shepard yet, but they'll still appear as members of Gibbs' mercs; since I also like McGee and Ziva, I might consider sparing them, but Kate and Jenny are still going to die. And of course, Abby won't be appearing at all, even though I had already come up with a truly awful gag name for her that involves an Italian word for ham. I wonder if Ducky Goose's TOP SHEP instructors were named "Viper" and "Jester" and if he had wingmen named "Maverick" and "Iceman"...

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm. Agent Bragga looks a bit more... multicolored now. Possibly an effect of the hair growth stimulant?

In any case, he is now ideally suited for missions in the eastern sectors of Bragulan space, or in such human nations as Tianguo and the Holy Empire of Haruhi!

Also... curse that bastard Gryznk!

[Siege]

You are kidding right? 30mins?

Nope. And yep.

Over how large an area?

Arbitrarily large.

It takes over an hour as it is to empty a cargo ship in this day and age, and I will be surprised that you can organise such huge army of forklifters etc. to pack and load equipment onto a ship and not run into bottlenecks.

Why would I need to empty a cargo ship? Most supplies are kept in orbit -- no need to waste energy moving them from the troopships to a planetary collection facility and then from that facility to the troops in the field if you can also cut out the middleman and deliver them straight to the people who need them. The dirtside dumps that do exist are inside the large dropships which bring the stuff down from orbit to begin with. They can land just behind the lines, and take off and leave if they need to (or move with the troops, keeping supply lines nice and short). The same is incidentally true for things like headquarters -- all mobile, all capable of independent spacelift.

Apart from that, every single unit of soldiers is mechanized, and IFVs on suspensor skirts can reach outrageous speeds at altitudes we'd associate more with helicopter gunships; they can make it to an evac zone in no time at all. Only the very largest of tanks (the Terminator) and artillery platforms are threaded, and we've got the aforementioned automated carryalls for them. The carryalls also handle any containerized equipment that might be stored outside of ships on the ground, and things like barracks and other standardized structures. Any troops in the field who are for some unfathomable reason unable to get to their IFVs will be lifted out by Goshawks.

Once on the troopships in orbit, the IFVs debus with their onboard troops, or in case of smaller interface craft troops can just walk off, and the dropship is ready for another 15-minute run. The whole thing is organized by the resident fleetmind for maximum efficiency, and in 30 minutes the only thing left on the ground will be assorted piles of random junk like MREs, empty rifle cartridges, or boxes of OrGazmo that the carryalls couldn't be bothered to collect. So there'll be some assorted bits and pieces left, sure, but nothing of value, and nothing a society like the Sovereignty can't easily afford to replace.

The only possibility for an under 1 hour loading and offloading is only if you are using your super marines, and not the bog standard marine.

Not really.

Incidentally, at first I wanted my IFVs to all be able to just travel up, up and away to their dropships under their own anti-gravitic power, but I thought that would be slightly too much. So instead I've settled for option number two: the USMC just brings a ridiculous amount of ground/orbit interface equipment with it wherever it goes, for mega maximum hypermobility. Keep in mind that these guys love their nodal warfare doctrine: they don't fight steamroller-style like the Imperium or the Bragulans, they win by being vastly more agile than their usual opponent, allowing them to hit where it hurts worst and to be long gone by the time the enemy begins to react. Getting inside your OODA loop and staying there, I believe would be the technical term.

[KlavoHunter]

lol, shroomception.

[Simon_Jester]

Siege, I suspect that in practice a certain amount of useful supplies would get left behind or combat-lossed (destroyed to prevent capture) during a rapid evacuation; if nothing else, any surviving enemy forces will probably manage to inflict casualties on the aerospace transport units that are responsible for picking up the troops. But that's just "things aren't perfect in war," not a fundamental problem with the doctrine.


For the Umerians, the elite strike and interventions units fight more or less that way- extremely high ground mobility, and enough spacemobility that they could hope to duplicate the kind of rapid evacuations and relocations that are routine for the Sovereignty. We'd probably cross a few more wires and wind up having to write off a bit more gear, but those units are intended for fast, hard-hitting warfare over planetary-scale engagements.

The Assault and Line forces at the lower end are more static: they have to do the whole "load stuff onto cargo ships" routine. You normally only see Assault and Line units in planetary defense roles, or as second and subsequent waves of an offensive after Intervention has cleared and secured a large landing zone.

[Simon_Jester]

Just posted the first part of a lengthy post covering the Council's take on recent events, and the strategic realities they face.

Also, a tip of the hat to Dr. Susan Islington Warren-Marshall, Second for Ecology...

[MKSheppard]

seige's idea of "evacuate in 30 minutes or less" and leave only random discarded MRE boxes behind.

[Beowulf]

seige's idea of "evacuate in 30 minutes or less" and leave only random discarded MRE boxes behind.

I don't think any current military unit larger than a company would be able to evac a location in 30 minutes or less, simply due to the amount of planning necessary to make sure people don't get left behind, or mixed together with other units, and fail to get accounted for with their own unit.

--
On ship
"Where's Pvt. Kowalski?"

"Uh...? I thought he was with you."

"I thought he was with you!"

On planet

"Uh, guys? Where'd you go while I was crapping?"

[Simon_Jester]

To Beo: yeah. Basically you'd need a god doing the evac planning, capable of handling both the big picture and the little picture, and being able to keep track of "oh man Pvt. Kowalski is off taking a dump, send a reserve rescue spacecopter to pick him up ASAP!"

Since Siege's entire society is run by AIs whose capabilities are limited only by processing power... I can believe that he could pull it off, at least to a very high level of reliability, with the number of troops getting left behind being low enough that no one would consider them unreasonable losses to suffer during a retreat.

seige's idea of "evacuate in 30 minutes or less" and leave only random discarded MRE boxes behind.

If you had enough SPACE CHINOOKS you'd stand a pretty fair chance of doing it, I think. It's no more lunatic than your forty-foot walking gun platforms.

Theoretically nothing gets left behind. In practice, some pretty useful shit probably gets left behind, but given sufficient ability to coordinate the spacelift (which Siege has done a pretty freaking good job of writing his people as having), and given that the troop dispositions are set up with an eye to doing this at all times (which means avoiding having too many units bunched up in too small an area to evacuate them from)... I can buy his people being able to get all the troops and most of the equipment off the planet. They may be in relative disarray in orbit, some guys may end up on the wrong troopship. Nothing goes perfect.

But I don't see why it can't work, at least in a universe where we accept that things like Byzantine Titans and Bragulans who use vacuum tubes for fire control computers are viable concepts.

If Siege wants his guys to get part of their relatively high point value from being SUPER SPACEPHIBIOUSMOBILE HOOAH MARINES, I don't mind.

[CmdrWilkens]

USMC emergency evacuation doctrines call for enough landers to be present at all times to lift all troops from the surface to their carriers in 30 minutes flat (2 round trips). It helps that every interface craft the Marines use is capable of reaching orbit under its own power, and that Marine Corps troop ships can deploy swarms of automated carryalls to pick up heavy equipment such as tanks.

Troops are also never abandoned: "leave no man behind" still rings true in the 35th century.

What happens if the enemy targets your landers?


Anyway let me say this moving an assault force is about a hell of a lot more than just move "x troops" and "Y guns" between points A and B. Even discarding the turnaround time and the need to actually account for everything before loading, after loading, before unloading, and after unloading you are GOING to miss stuff. I won't even go in to the idea of having enough heavy lift capacity to move 50% of available forces at any one time as a minimum...the level of commitment to "tail" in such an organizational concept would mean that the "teeth" would comprise an almost vanishingly small percentage of available manpower. Today we can move maybe 10-15% of a large unit's assets at a time with a support establishment roughly 6 to 7 times the size of the combat establishment...upping that ratio won't be linear in its increase but you'd be moving to a supporting establishment comprising 10 to 12 times the size of the combat establishment and the more you go down that route the more you spend a lot of money on folks who never engage in the primary mission.

Is it doable? Sure...but it means that there is a LOT of tail which can be targeted and percentage chunks will diminish operational capacity much faster as a consequence. A smart enemy on seeing your combat organization would never waste an artillery shell on your combat troops while they busily smash your lifters and wait for somebody to panic when you can no longer fulfill your operational doctrine of being able to emergency evac.

[Simon_Jester]

What happens if the enemy targets your landers?

This is why I, for one, suspect that the Sovvies' doctrine for rapid mobility translates, under combat conditions, to "unless the conditions are shitty enough that we'd be screwed anyway, we can get nearly all of the men and most of vehicles out in that timespan, and combat-loss the rest."

That probably does equate to a high tooth-to-tail ratio, though this being the Sovereignty, a fair chunk of the tail will be robotic.

It's an extreme capability, but compared to stuff like giving everyone in the country the ability to download their personality and upload it into new bodies when they get killed (Tianguo), or to freaking 40k Titans... I don't think it's that unreasonable. Especially if it's treated as part of the reason their "kit multiplier" is so good: much of the Sovvies' kit is actually the transport equipment it takes to move their forces that easily, with their actual gear being fairly unremarkable by First Galaxy standards.

Is it doable? Sure...but it means that there is a LOT of tail which can be targeted and percentage chunks will diminish operational capacity much faster as a consequence. A smart enemy on seeing your combat organization would never waste an artillery shell on your combat troops while they busily smash your lifters and wait for somebody to panic when you can no longer fulfill your operational doctrine of being able to emergency evac.

Definitely a viable option; much depends on the Sovvies' ability to do SEAD in the opening phase of an offensive.

[Shroom Man 777]

Before the Sovies land troops in the first place, they'd be bombarding and SEADing the place from orbit intensely. If the enemy was so concentrated and fixed that a landing force would be shot down, the Sovies probably wouldn't land troops in the first place. They'd probably just execute Bragulan Directive from orbit.

[MKSheppard]

...the moment a Shepistani nukes someplace....that place.....is now forever shepistan thanks to the radionuclides

BUILD A VICTORY MOSQUE MUSHROOM CLOUD

"Wherever a place is reduced to an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland, that is the true essence of Shepistan! That is the soil of the Shepistani motherland! That is Shepistan's sacred ground!"
---Simon Jester

[Simon_Jester]

[that was an excerpt from what I was about to say]:

A Shepistani occupation zone? What could be more natural?

Wherever a place is reduced to an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland, that is the true essence of Shepistan! That is the soil of the Shepistani motherland! That is Shepistan's sacred ground! That is the consummation of the Shepistani people's hopes and dreams, fears and ambitions!

Who better to rule over a self-illuminating hellscape than Sheppoes?

Seriously, go for it. The people and the landscape deserve each other.

[/joke]

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Before the Sovies land troops in the first place, they'd be bombarding and SEADing the place from orbit intensely. If the enemy was so concentrated and fixed that a landing force would be shot down, the Sovies probably wouldn't land troops in the first place. They'd probably just execute Bragulan Directive from orbit.

In this day and age, it's fairly possible to take a railgun and just train it by line of sight/visual targeting and just shoot. Anti-Air weapons need not be missile based.

[Shroom Man 777]

PUPPERS! Awww!

[Simon_Jester]

"Commence Project Puppy."

You know, Dr. O'Connell is so glad he got that line. Or he ought to be.

[RogueIce]

I won't even go in to the idea of having enough heavy lift capacity to move 50% of available forces at any one time as a minimum...

More like 60% or so, if we're talking just the amount of landers and such. After all, you have to account for some going down for maintainence (moreso if your orbit-to-ground lift is also being used for routine resupply as well as all the airmobile activities) and such. And, of course, as Simon points out, enemies who know USMC doctrine will likely target landers, not just to disrupt evac procedures but also as a means to disrupt supply lines (fewer landing ships to land supplies, and as a bonus the supplies themselves are gone).

Space cargo trucks may not be as 'effecient' but I'm wagering they're cheaper to produce than orbit-capable craft. And likely far easier to repair if the enemy only does partial damage. Plus, if a landing ship gets damaged enough for a mobility kill, it'll likely crash and take the supplies with it. A ground truck getting mobility killed (might) still have the supplies intact. Sure it helps the enemy if all the defending USMC troops die and they help themselves, but if the USMC holds out they can then take the supplies off it later. Always a good thing.

And do you have at least 60% lift capacity for every single Marine unit? If yes, that's...a lot of resources pumped into landers. If not, large operations in one area will tend to absorb a lot of overall lift capacity, limiting your options elsewhere.

In fairness, of course, a lot of these problems probably are not totally insurmontable for 'low level' operations. I think it's only really gets more problematic the larger scale your operations go. A single-city landing may not be too bad; a full planetary-scale invasion, on the other hand, would be rather taxing on your '30 Minute Evac' doctrine.

It's an extreme capability, but compared to stuff like giving everyone in the country the ability to download their personality and upload it into new bodies when they get killed (Tianguo), or to freaking 40k Titans... I don't think it's that unreasonable. Especially if it's treated as part of the reason their "kit multiplier" is so good: much of the Sovvies' kit is actually the transport equipment it takes to move their forces that easily, with their actual gear being fairly unremarkable by First Galaxy standards.

A fair enough point, though it helps to point these things out. Plus, there should be some limits to what one can do. I mean, in a Player vs Siege War (if such should happen) the Player might feel a little cheesed if they plan a space counterattack on some Sovereignty invasion but Siege can just lift 'em all out with minimal losses in 30 minutes.

So, for my money, I think this works good as an 'ideal' sort of scenario, and/or for smaller scale operations, rather than a general rule that can just scale to whatever levels any invasion takes place at, without real difficulty of some sort (foul ups in attempting an evac; not having enough lift available to meet the 30 minute timeline without leaving not-insignificant forces/equipment behind; a large commitment of lift to one operation reducing the USMC's lift capacities elsewhere; etc.)

And, of course, it's good to have these sorts of general discussions anyway, to help others who may not be so savvy in writing up good story posts that may involve the topics and situations under discussion, regardless of whether the player currently in question should need the info himself.