For a stealth insertion, a plane-like stealth vehicle is the best option. If you want a more... well, "massacre" way, look at Warhammer 40.000's Space Marines (they tend to be iconic in this regard XD). Their drop pods have some propulsion systems to stabilize the pod, some aerodinamic wings to direct the fall, and a lacryma-like shape. And of course, an ablative shield in the base to survive the reentry (kinda like a Soyuz module with battle armor XD). Oh, and they go down en masse, so some pods lost during the insertion won't be a problem. In a more EP way, use tons of decoys. And several teams to ensure that at least one reaches the floor. In fact, if you wanna be so wasteful, use alpha-level forks of everyone, so you only need one drop pod to touch down to have the full group in bussiness XD.

I would also look at something along the lines of Starship Troopers by Heinlein or MDK the game (original PS system) Both of these are more realistic in terms of airborne insertion about the time of 10 AF, unless you're going to be dropping walkers and other forms of mechanized cavalry.

If you really want to do this, you can even launch a small shuttle with infrared chaff and full of sensor decoys right at the target. Have a section of the ship reinforced, say the individual pods, and let the AA countermeasures take the shuttle down. As it breaks up it creates a cloud of infrared and smoky debris basically acting as a giant chaff cover for the pods themselves to deploy and land safely.

If you dont mind at all about being noticed by all the solar system, you can always drop a nuke at 80km of altitude or so to obtain a blackout from radar and radio as described in this document http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA044561&Location=U2&doc=GetTRD... I supose that the altitude will be diferent for diferents planets, and in 10AF there will be much much better optical tracking systems but at least you get all wireless mesh systems offline for a while.....if you are about to make an orbital asault with combat exoskeletons over a militarized base, I dont think you mind about being subtle anymore. And a nuke maybe will give you the edge you need to run over a military base. Then just insert yourself through the blackout zone...across the nuclear debriss right to your target lauching all the chaff and decoys you can using some kind of one use drop capsules. Once in the ground if you want to extract a person, for me at least the better option will be carry some portable healingbats and kidnap the poor fucker, force- intall him/her an emergency farcaster while the rest of the team hold the defenders, and then just kill the target and let it farcast to a secure location....the same proccess could be aplicable to all the team; no physical extraction for anyone, and last but not least as much as possible disasemblers preprogramed to destroy all the remaining corpses and equiment as soon as the team farcast away form the place....or if you dont mind the consecuences at all just nuke the place behind you....again. And last but not least this a very extreme way of inserting yourself into the target zone....probably only allowed for the most important target ever; I dont see Firewall proxies approving this kind of thing weekly XD....at least I hope it! I found that document linked here....its an interesting article about how a modern ICBM works, unfortunatelly its only in spanish http://lapizarradeyuri.blogspot.com.es/2010/04/asi-ataca-un-misil-balist...

I suggest a very hard way for drop, a 3 wave strategy with brute force. All pods are of same size and signature. Waves: 1- pods contain a mix of 50% of explosive scattering pods and automated attack pods 2- 30% attack, 30% ex scatter, 40% syntmorp pod 3- 80% synth, 20% attack Explosive scattering pods: after land fire granades around for about 2 minutes at random intervals, the tipes of granades is based on expected resistence Automated Attack: after landing deploy a rugged 2 weapons sentry with limited AI (no wireles connection for security) Syntmorph pod: contain a syntmorph totally immersed in a gel with same density of the morph (a trick , if bath and occupant are of equal density there is less deceleration shock), it hard crash on surface then open The pod are a god method for stealth insertion, can be put on interception cruise and don't need propulsion, can be covered with radar invisibility metamaterial and are shielded for reentry so good at absorbing damage... the limiting factor is that you can land but can't take off so it's a one way ticket. Obviously this is a resource intensive method for an assault but can be an option for assault something like a Jovian habitat.