"We're under-equipped for fighting sandworms. Captain, I trust you will help solve this problem, with the aid of my soldiers?"
Two soldiers will spend time training in EVA combat with the rifles.
Two soldiers will assist the engineers by carrying their heavy supplies from storage.
Commander Frederick XVII will monitor both groups, making suggestions on improving their training or lending a hand for carrying particularly heavy objects.
Commander Frederick has taken the ground forces down to base, presumably to train Alpha squad for combat in these new environments. I have found that our weaponry, well more impressive than any non C-class regulated units is quite lacking. I have ordered the engineers to draw up plans for heaver weapons, particularity one of the vehicle based. Also if we are going to explore this wasteland we will need to mobility. To that end I have ordered the engineers to try to make a land based transport.
two engineers will work on heavy weapons.
two engineers will work on a rover of some sort for transport.
If I can use that ship (my question seems to be some what unanswered) I will fly over the affected area in a scouting mission. If no ship that I will help the military training in the EVO suits, assuming that I know anymore than they if I don't know more than I guess I will train with them.
Being interplanetary soldiers, the two recruits training in EVA combat quickly adapt to the new environment, and they even manage to change most of their tactics into low-grav spinoffs. At the end of the day, they fight as well on this planet as they did on Earth.
The supplies are heavy and cumbersome, and the people carrying them all feel their backs before noon, but under the strict command of Commander Frederick XVII, they don't dare to complain. At the end of the day, one of the soldiers drops a full 50 litres of water on his foot. Luckily, his steel-tipped shoes prevented all mayor damage, even though he will feel the bruises for a few days.
The engineers fiddle around for a bit, and even though explosives are not available, they mange to make a prototype heavy energy beam. Using a concentrated beam of ultraviolet light, they manage to melt trough a metal plate at a hundred meters distance - however, the batteries will have to be reloaded at the station every 5 shots.
Even though one of the engineers has a bit of garage experience, a decent rover is very hard to make - today, they did only the engine.
The ship is a sattelite, but anyway, you can use it to scan from great heights. A surface scan shows nothing but sand, but once you go sub-surface, you notice a strangely regular signature near the epicentre of the attacks. What is weird is that it doesn't seem to move in any way, so it can't be a living creature.