If you want to take a earth-like planet and keep the population in tact, you need a ground force in the hundreds of millions. Don’t underestimate the entrenching capabilities of an entire planets. Orbital strikes will only get you so far, if the enemy has anti-spaceship submarines and man-portable low-orbit missiles (check out the starmoth setting, seriously, do it)
If you don’t care about the population, but want to recover the planet, you could just put up a blockade and a statite parasol and wait a few years, until the perpetual winter and darkness has reduced the population to a few hundred thousand(targeted strikes on energy infrastructure to speed up the process), and then sweep in to mop up the remainder. It’s gonna take some geo engineering to recover something resembling an ecosystem, but that’s manageable given enough time
Depends on your stance on genocide
If you want to take a earth-like planet and keep the population in tact, you need a ground force in the hundreds of millions. Don’t underestimate the entrenching capabilities of an entire planets. Orbital strikes will only get you so far, if the enemy has anti-spaceship submarines and man-portable low-orbit missiles (check out the starmoth setting, seriously, do it)
If you don’t care about the population, but want to recover the planet, you could just put up a blockade and a statite parasol and wait a few years, until the perpetual winter and darkness has reduced the population to a few hundred thousand(targeted strikes on energy infrastructure to speed up the process), and then sweep in to mop up the remainder. It’s gonna take some geo engineering to recover something resembling an ecosystem, but that’s manageable given enough time