This was an argument from Lieutenant Colonel Akina Hachiman, who was neglecting his duties, in his new paper, Planetary Strongpoint Warfare. In his view, now that Yu Lian's Defense Is Everything had emerged, all tactics and equipment designed for use within an atmosphere might soon be obsolete. Preparations therefore had to be made in advance in the next doctrinal guidance document.
Of course, more importantly, Akina Hachiman had ambitions of his own. Though he had already acknowledged someone as his boss, he still wanted to earn himself a place in the Temple of War. That meant he couldn't settle for being his boss's second author and paperwork grunt.
He'd been writing Planetary Strongpoint Warfare for almost half a year, but many of his hypotheses still lacked supporting evidence.
Now the evidence had arrived, but he couldn't bring himself to feel happy about it.
If the Blue Star Commonwealth and the Empire went to war again, the latter could only play the role of conqueror. That meant the Empire couldn't carry out extermination-level orbital bombardments against inhabited planets. As a result, every planet could become a battleground for control of the surface, and his paper might prove useful on any of them.
...Well, it seemed he'd taken another step toward his grand ambition of earning a place in the Temple of War! And yet he still couldn't feel happy about it.
With these conflicting emotions, Akina Hachiman quickly typed three or four hundred words with one hand. Then another technical officer came to report new developments.
After suffering a fierce aerial assault, the Imperial forces had indeed been thrown into confusion for a while. If they had been soldiers from another country, or even troops from an Imperial vassal state or a feudal lord's personal guard, they might well have fled