Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

Ah yes, the classic alien weakness: bullets. You're screwed now, mate. Earth has a lot of guns.

@Fighteer: Five years is plenty, as the F-35 has been streamlined for quite some time. It’s not 2012 anymore. Not to mention, this is a LITERAL extinction level event. No one is going to be hassling about red tape .

We’d have more issues trying to find and train qualified pilots than actually building the things we need to fight the Aliens.

But as for the question, our first priority would be to hardened communication infrastructure because satellites would be the first thing we’d lose to the BLA aliens.

We’d basically give every defense contractor a blank check for the first two years of massive Research and Development, while using the first two years to massive produce whatever we use currently from tanks, artillery, bullets, rifles, body etc. then the most promising projects would then be mass produced over the final three years as much as possible.

There would undoubtedly be a draft. We’d likely have to build several new bases just for the sheer amount of infantry training we’d need. Nationalize construction companies wholesale if you have too.

Have you seen or heard of Don't Look Up? I have severe problems with that film, but unfortunately it doesn't stray too far afield about the degree of infighting and politicking that would be happening if there were a real impending extraterrestrial disaster.

A draft would be useless against aliens, by the way. If it gets to the point of ground-level attrition warfare, they already done fucked up. I may have said a few things about this in the past.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 16th 2024 at 2:26:31 PM

Ground level warfare would be a necessity though. If you’re here to conquer a planet you’re obviously not here to just glass the place and move on. Otherwise they would’ve flung rocks or incinerated the place with plasma cannons or a myriad other ways to conduct a Guilt-Free Extermination War.

Otherwise the defenders on the ground are going to just be like “surrender to you? You can just float around and fuck off up there!”.

A space fleet has limited resources compared to a planet. Eventually they’ll run out of rods to drop on cities or bases. The defenders can just build more elsewhere to find ways to fight back.

Basically space war is like trying to take over Afghanistan with just aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean. Conquest just ain’t happening without boots on the ground or destroying the very thing you came to claim, a working biosphere and/or newly conquered subjects.

The Battle Los Angeles Aliens use a ton of infantry, so I’d say a draft would be necessary.

I'd imagine if invading aliens wanted Earth's biosphere intact but wanted humanity gone, an outright invasion would probably be unnecessary. Just unleash a superplague and wait for it to kill us off, maybe send in strike teams afterwards to mop up survivors. If they don't want to exterminate humanity, attacking our military instalation first with either attack craft or precise orbital strikes would be a good opening move.

Predators we could probably take. Their technology while advanced is also not super complicated and we know bullets can hurt them. Plus they want a hunting ground so keeping Earth in tact is important so they're not gonna bomb us from Earth.

I don't know.

Depending on their tech levels it would be like the Conquistadors reaching the Americas, if they had assault rifles, tanks and attack helicopters.

Resisting an Alien invasion would require well thought reasons for why the Insufficiently Advanced Alien species isn't capable of downright conquering Earth.

It would either be like the Race in World War that didn't expect the planet to be that developed.

The Scrin in Command and Conquer that didn't expect a living population and had the equivalent of a security force.

The theory on Battle: Los Angeles that the alies are Invading Refugees that have access to jury rigged gear and third rate weapons.

Or the Votans in defiance that were expecting to reach an uninhibited planet and didn't have a proper invasion fleet.

I cannot imagine the aliens smart enough to send an invasion fleet across interstellar distances yet dumb enough to commit their ground troops to die by the millions in close-quarters combat. This is Darwin Awards levels of stupidity, which should have been filtered out by now in would-be conquerors. Maybe we're their first and they haven't figured all of this stuff out yet...

After thinking about the earlier question for a bit, the "five years" figure bothered me more and more. Who are these hypothetical aliens who send an exploratory force and have a full-scale invasion fleet sitting out near our heliopause waiting to dive in on command? Five years is barely enough time to get here from the nearest star at 0.9c. It would take the information that long just to get back there.

I guess they could have FTL, but then we're utterly screwed and might as well get used to our new alien overlords.

I had this exact problem with Battleship. We send a signal to Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away. The alien invasion force (scouting force?) gets here twenty years later. There are three possible explanations:

1. They have some kind of wormhole-style FTL, so that the instant the signal reaches their solar system they can pop a fleet over here. Again, we should be goners in this case.
2. They intercept our signal at some intermediate location, then have a scouting force poised to jump on it at a sizable fraction of the speed of light. There are no stars directly between us and Gliese, so that would be a pretty lucky coincidence.
3. They are already on their way here and our signal merely acts as a beacon to a place they were going to attack anyway.

Very few science fiction authors really understand the scale of the universe and how long it takes to get anywhere.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 16th 2024 at 10:51:38 AM

To be fair, just because a civilization got a good "space program" which is advanced enough to conquer the wast distances of space, it doesn't mean they got a good "military" as well.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Apr 16th 2024 at 5:19:58 PM

Why would they attack a planet with eight billion people on it, then? A civilization that routinely invades other inhabited worlds would presumably have figured out the whole "military" thing.

I absolutely, categorically reject the Stupid Aliens hypothesis, wherein they simply haven't thought of these fundamental concepts. If I can think of these things, they can think of these things. If I had a colonization fleet with no soldiers and I stumbled upon an inhabited world, my first thought would not be, "Better send my hairdressers and telephone cleaners into a frontal assault."

Now, we could have a situation like in Ender's Game or Starship Troopers wherein the aliens' psychology doesn't recognize individuals as sapient, so they Zerg Rush their enemies with drones or whatever. That's not unreasonable. They could use robots or biological agents as well.

That's what I would do if I were in charge of an interplanetary invasion, at least: use self-replicating robots or engineered diseases. Surely there's someone at least as smart as I am running the show for the aliens. Or maybe I'd dial them up and ask if we could be friends. (Backstabbing later is optional.)

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 16th 2024 at 11:32:51 AM

I don't think an alien species coming to Earth would know the number of people living on it or anything about it, not to mention not understanding any of our languages either, so they would be stuck in a massive WMG-session trying to understand what on Earth everything we humans have made even does or what we even are.

Not because they are "stupid" or anything but due to mankind being just too alien for them to comprehend.

It's easy to forget and overlook due to fiction, but the odds of aliens understanding the meaning in any of our languages (or any languages beside their own) is extremely slim to none.

Even if they can plug into our Internet, they would still not be any wiser from browsing around on it since it's in a language-tower none of them would understand.

That's also assuming the aliens even came across any other civilizations in space before coming across Earth.

And for why they would go down on Earth despite having no good military may be due to operating like ancient civilizations on Earth once did, which had no organized military force whatsoever beyond a group of ordinary citizens ready to take up their own arms when the situation called for it.

Which would make the "invasion force" a "colonization crew" in this case.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Apr 16th 2024 at 6:01:49 PM

I'd say a bigger hurdle would be figuring out how to even parse that data.

It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine in Mass Effect fics when first contact has the involved parties exchange audiovisual data their computers magically already have all the requisite codecs to process with.

Or the aliens might be fleeing from something else.

Mind you, what I really want to know is how to take over planets with a much smaller population than Earth. My setting is just at the beginning of planetary colonization, and the two or three key settings are planets with less than 1000 humans on each.

I don't think there's much fighting to be done, then. That few people are likely settled fairly centrally around the initial landing site.

And even if they aren't, you just land a continent away. It's their world, they say? How exactly are they planning to enforce that with so much ground to defend with so little? It's like the equivalent of a single Russian platoon trying to hold onto the entirety of Siberia. Simply not happening.

Edited by amitakartok on Apr 17th 2024 at 10:11:13 AM

I mean even if you can parse the data, and understand the language... I am not sure how usefull the internet would be.

It's kind of a culture all of its own.

Like we have actual human beings who cant tell what on the internet is real, what is fake news, what is a joke, what is sarcasam.... Ones that share a language and a culture.

This gets even worse when it's a person from one culture trying to browse the sites of another culture.

How the fuck is an actual alien that grew up in an alien society suposed to be able to tell then.

Edited by Imca on Apr 17th 2024 at 8:26:47 PM

Come on, people. Our cities are visible from space. We have thousands of satellites. Our atmosphere is filled with industrial pollutants and we broadcast in EM frequencies like crazy. They don't have to decode our signals to count them. Sure, they may not take a census survey, but, "Gee, I didn't know you was here," won't fly as an excuse.

I stipulate that the "mindless" sort of invasion could happen, where the attackers are programmed drones, self-replicating robots, nanobot swarms, or the like. This is actually a lot more likely than a civilization loading up warships with millions of soldiers and sending them a hundred light years away.

I get it. We want an invasion scenario where we can win by shooting our fancy guns at the aliens. It's good for our morale, since otherwise we have to face the idea that a properly equipped attack force would obliterate us.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 17th 2024 at 8:33:29 AM

This has borne out in history too. Spanish and Portuguese explorers over 500 years ago were able to make vast voyages around the world leading to the Age of Exploration.

Spanish and Portuguese military endeavors were less successful. It took more than a century for the Spanish conquest of the Americas to establish itself from the Andes to Mexico and even that wasn’t complete or without failure or hiccup. Spanish attempts at conquering the desert southwest of what is now the US didn’t really happen until the 1700’s. More than 200 years after the beginning of the Columbian Exchange.

And at its height, the Spanish Empire stretching from the Arkansas River in Colorado to nearly the tip of South America plus the Spanish Main in the Caribbean and the mainland of Spain in Europe was a second or third rate military power compared to the British and French of the 1700’s/1800’s.

They were better voyagers and explorers than imperialists.

The same could happen with space.

No, Tom, it really can't. It took a few weeks to cross the Atlantic. Months if you were really slow, and Columbus' crew didn't single-handedly invade the Americas.

Without FTL, the shortest crossing time is at least in the realm of decades. This is not a thing that you can "whoopsie" into. "We took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and accidentally landed on Earth. Since we're here, might as well take the place over with twelve people and a space dog."

In point of fact, the Americas are a perfect illustration of my main point. Europeans didn't "invade" at all; they unleashed a bioweapon by accident. By the time it did its work, the continent was depopulated by more than 90 percent and had no ability to resist.

The aliens should send an unsanitized telephone first.

Well, the Conquistadors did invade, but they set out with an actual invasion fleet, and had vastly superior technology to boot.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 17th 2024 at 8:39:39 AM

Columbus didn’t conquer the New World, a century plus of conquistador expeditions after that did.

And it certainly scales with space. The vastness of the ocean was once seen as an impassable barrier.

If space travel more advanced than we have today ever takes off, the vastness of space being inaccessible could easily be overcome.

If there’s no such thing as FTL travel, then so-ace war is either never going to happen at all via Ungovernable Galaxy as every expedition to build on a new world essentially becomes de facto independent or the scale means wars are there to find a replacement biosphere for a species, not vassals or thralls.

Edit:

And I’m well aware of the introduction of old world diseases to the new world. Columbus didn’t introduce those to the New World per se but subsequent expeditions certainly did on a much wider scale than the island of Hispaniola.

The “superior technology” argument fails that many of early conquests of the new world boiled down to having nowhere near enough horses or cannon and instead pitting armies of other tribes against the big rulers of the region. Cortes didn’t conquer the Aztecs with his 250 men, the 60,000 Mayans and others he gathered up were more of a factor. Weapons like the cannon were instrumental in securing more allies, not winning everything.

Even then it didn’t always work. La Noche Triste was proof of that.

Edited by MajorTom on Apr 17th 2024 at 5:48:59 AM

Well, thank you for agreeing with me at last. This is exactly what I'm saying: without FTL, space empires are all but impossible, and thus invasion fleets will not happen.

With FTL, interstellar supply lines become feasible and the logistics of planetary invasion change. If we humans today face an opponent with FTL capabilities who decides to take Earth for themselves, we're screwed. No "noble resistance".

At least, if they don't come prepared to deal with us, they deserve to lose.

Edit: In response to your edit, "suborning the locals" is one of the viable ideas listed on How to Invade an Alien Planet. Heck, given current ideological divisions on Earth, all these aliens would have to do would be to encourage a faction of humans to decide their governments are illegitimate, then arm them with fancy weapons.

Infect us with a horrific disease, then come with the "cure". Pretend to be a deity and get all the religious people to worship you. Gift us technology with horrible side-effects. Send in the body-snatchers. Generate millions of fake "UFO sightings" to discredit the watchers so nobody will believe it when the real ones show up.

There are so many ways that don't involve infantry meat-grinders.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 17th 2024 at 9:01:27 AM

In the sense of going to the other side of the galaxy to fight yes you are correct. War won’t happen because the potential other side is too far away.

It’s like asking Julius Caesar to make war on Ancient China. Even if he was aware of the place and people within it, it’s too far away to even be a concern, much less a desire or want.

Because it would take months to years to march an army from anywhere in the Mediterranean region to the borders of ancient China. One way march, not there and back.

Same effect in space. If FTL is impossible then any space war is going to be like the wars of the ancient world. Against local rivals and powers, rarely if ever beyond that.

Put in perspective, space war in an STL setting between a civilization in the Alpha Centauri star cluster and Earth is more or less plausible. One based on Earth and the other at Deneb over 1000 light years away, not worth considering a war. It’s plausible that space travel in such a setting might advance enough that detection and communication with each place might happen, possibly even voyages to there. (Long term but nonetheless) But any sense of formal war is not happening.

The other end of the galaxy is right out.

Edited by MajorTom on Apr 17th 2024 at 9:18:52 AM

It'll be even harder than ancient wars because, while the Greeks may not have had computers and jet aircraft, they had air. And water. And could, in most cases, forage off the land.

Without FTL, I just don't see any value in sending millions of soldiers to another solar system. If you really hate your neighbors that much, kill them from a distance. Heck, ancient humans understood that they could win sieges by catapulting diseased animals over the walls or setting fire to the crops.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 17th 2024 at 1:26:54 PM

That's how Seccom waged most wars in the world of Lancer. If Nearlight Drives couldn't get you there fast enough, then just fire a big ol fuckoff shotgun blast at them. That's what Piston-1 was, a KKV to be fired and forgot about at the Aunic Ascendancy. It's still going to this day even though the designers are long since dead.

To a lesser extent, it's also how 1stCom beat Karrakis. When their fleets were in a stalemate, the Union fleet took some shots at the Karrakan homeworld. Part of the Karrakan fleet moved to intercept the shots and that let the Union fleet focus down the slower ships.