[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] grey101 You do know that the dropships carry vehicles right? Not to mention 9,000 troops [b]rushing[/b] an area that isn't prepared will be more than enough to overrun it which is what happened. The amount of troops doesn't matter since it was clearly established in The Fall of Reach/Fist Strike that they were not prepared for the attack. How would the dropships be whittled down when they didn't even know [b]exactly[/b] where they were going? It wouldn't take them "hours" to get to their destinations since it was brought up that the dropships go mach 3-5 (i forgot where maybe a pedia or novel). You can't say "always" and then say 9 out of 10. The UNSC was not prepared to be overwhelmed hence why they were. 314 ships is more than enough to take out 150 UNSC ships since that is more than the 3:1 ratio. The SMACs are a flawed concept because the UNSC never has enough ships to protect them. Which is why the covenant could just rush them or send out hundreds of dropships (they did both) to take them out. You would need to have enough SMACs to cover the entire planet and then have a sizable fleet to protect them for the defense to be "absolute". Even then once a number of ships go down a SMAc will be left unguarded,destroyed, which will leave a breach in the perimeter and the defense will fail. You can't count each SMAC as "3 ships" because they have a range and if you are outside that range you can just avoid it. Which is what the sniper ship was doing when it took one (or a few) out. Which would leave another area uncovered even though the amount of SMACS at reach was pathetic and should be your arguing point. Majority of your points are "what ifs" and "it should have been" just because you don't see the way the battle went as correct doesn't mean it wasn't. I don't see the point of arguing it any way since the covenant could keep sending waves to attack the planet (which they did). meaning even if reach survived another wave it would have been overrun by the third one.[/quote] Even so, these are military bases (I'm sure I don't need to describe what that entails) that had at least an hour to get to full combat readiness (remember the Covenant were detected at like 5:30 AM or around then...they only weakened defenses enough to start heading down toward the planet at like 6:30 AM), and seeing as how the UNSC has been at war for 25+ years by that point and the Covenant could find any planet at any time, they were always on some semblance of full combat alert. It's never said [i]how[/i] many dropships there were, only hundreds, 999 is the max one can have with "hundreds" of dropships...and each Phantom/Spirit can carry about 15-30 troops at a time. Even if they did have the max amount of troops, they would be assaulting military bases that had time to prepare. You don't have to know where the dropships are going, it's not exactly something that can be hidden, they'd know where the dropships themselves are. Even at supersonic speeds, it still takes a while to get anywhere, it would not have taken about five minutes like it did in the book. I don't dispute that the three locations getting the brunt of the attack were running on borrowed time, but the fact that they were instantaneously overrun and overwhelmed in seconds is not portraying the UNSC realistically, even from an in universe standard. Except that they didn't have 314 ships because before the battle even really began the Fleet of Particular Justice lost [i][b]half[/b][/i] the fleet due to a barrage of fire from the UNSC fleet, the SMACs, and the fleet blundering into a minefield. The number of ships was roughly 150 useable military craft on both sides. Ships have a "range" too, though it's not really a range at all as the SMAC and MAC round keep going pretty much indefinitely until they run into something, but anyways, the strength of SMACs is equal all by itself to three UNSC ships when/if pitted against the Covenant. It's easier for a ship to be able to slip in through the "gaps", but that does not automatically equate to a loss, the other SMACs and/or UNSC ships can still fire into the open pathway on any ships attempting to get through, one or more going down doesn't mean they can waltz right in unharmed...it just makes it easier. The way that Nylund set up the battle in TFoR, the UNSC would be walking away with another Pyrrhic victory, Reach would still be lost whenever the next batch of Covenant showed up, but there would have been minimal (in comparison) loss of life and experimental technologies as the planet would have had time for massive evacuations.