Something I haven't seen anyone else mention.
Drop pods aren't remotely stealthy, it'd be virtually impossible to make them so. So make the problem a feature. Consider the massive element of shock and awe this sort of assault would produce. Sonic booms, streaks of fire across the sky, it'd be the stuff of myth and have an exceptional effect on morale, both yours and your enemy's. The arrival behind your lines of well equipped fresh troops alone is a serious problem that will demoralise your forces.
From orbit, you can see the disposition of the enemy, see their emplaced defences and such. 500
If you can place fresh and well equipped troops wherever you want at about three or four minutes notice that gives you a tremendous ability to reshape the battlefield.
Comments here discuss the idea of drop pods being deployed from a permanent military facility in orbit as a rapid-response force, that's one option, but depending on the setting that's not the only platform to launch them from.
In Warhammer 40,000, Drop pods are used extensively to get power armoured shock-troops into the fight, the doctrine displayed there is to arrive in orbit aboard a large dedicated barge and begin raining pods immediately. give no time to react or respond. For comparison (and the original inspiration for the Warhammer example) Starship Troopers in <PERSON>'s book of the same name are fired at the planet in individual pods and collected after the fact in dedicated dropships. Those pods arrive surrounded in chaff, flares and ablative plating from their own pods, making it essentially impossible to pick out the trooper himself with anti-aircraft fire.
In the Halo franchise, the same concept is applied to the rather tellingly named "Orbital Drop Shock Troopers"
In every case I've seen in fiction, Shock and Awe is one of the primary effects and goals of drop pod assaults.
I've never read of a pod that arrived using parachutes as its primary deceleration technique. All of them used retro-rockets, sometimes drogue chutes as well. The goal was to arrive as hard and fast as possible without injuring the passengers. 963