That's culture-dependent. It only works with enemies who had not been seriously hurt in a long time. Also, it was not Manny and Co.'s intent -- they really wanted to minimize civilian casualties.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

I'm going to go in a slightly different direction here, and consider some more mundane space military tactics that are nevertheless quite creative (IMHO):

How about, for example, launching a missile from an aircraft to strike a satellite?

Or how about a network of communication satellites that can provide accurate and precise position information to military forces, including ships at sea, planes in the air, tank targeting systems, and missile guidance systems?

These both seem pretty creative to me

I like thunder rods better--or space-based lasers.

Having just seen this thread for the first time, those books were the first thing I thought of. Glad that I'm not the only one to have read them. Not known physics of course, but still.. kudos for using cities and planets as weapons

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

"Ignorance convinces" -- slang's dad

Now that I think about it, Bliss Waggoner in They Shall Have Stars was also a great tactician, as well as a great strategist.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.