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** During the FinalBattle, there actually is a commander alien [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking firing his weapon at the marines]]. Maybe he wasn't even supposed to be on the front lines, but hey, [[BloodKnight there were humans to kill]].
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** During the FinalBattle, there actually is a commander alien [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking firing his weapon at the marines]].marines. Maybe he wasn't even supposed to be on the front lines, but hey, [[BloodKnight there were humans to kill]].
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**Even after they saw that the enemy had airpower, they had no reason to think their own air force wouldn't be able to deal with it. It did seem odd to me that the aliens were able to establish complete air control when the alien aircraft we saw didn't seem particularly formidable unless they had capabilities we never saw. The alien ground forces didn't seem to outclass earth ground forces by that much, there was no reason to think any air power they brought would be any different.
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**I wish they had given him some more rank as well. It takes an average of around fifteen years to make E7 in the Corps, and Nantz is not an out of shape REMF, so he had plenty of time to make higher rank. Nantz is a tough, intelligent Marine who is a good combat leader and proves it throughout the movie, likely has a ton of medals/ribbons, is still lean and in good shape and appears to have a good reputation and is held in high regard (at least judging by the way everyone but Lockett interacts with him). I would have liked to have seen him as at least a Gunnery Sergeant, if not a Master Sergeant or First Sergeant who maybe just got stuck for whatever reason with a smaller group of soldiers than an E8 would normally command. I was in the Army, not the Corps, in the 90s, but Staff Sergeant wasn't a particularly high rank for an NCO. When I was in few NCOs retired from the Army at less than E7, especially really good ones with qualifications like Nantz has.
***Nantz doesn't seem to have a bad reputation in general though. Quite the opposite. The senior NCO doing his outprocessing seems to think highly of him as does the lieutenant, who actually seems a little intimidated by him. One of the Marines in the barracks is talking about how tough Nantz is before one of the others tells him Lockett's brother was killed during one of Nantz's missions. Except for Lockett, who has a personal grudge against Nantz, everyone else seems to be fine with him. Lockett is the cause of the problems for Nantz in the unit.
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Ermey isn't comparable because he was only in around 11 years before he was medically retired, no where near the full 20 for a normal retirement. Less than 100 Gunnery Sergeants in the entire USMC? Where did that number come from?
There are around 200k Marines. No way there are that few Gunnery Sergeants, who often serve at company or lower level. There are 62 Generals in the Corps. That would mean there are almost as many Gunnery Sergeants as General officers.
There are around 200k Marines. No way there are that few Gunnery Sergeants, who often serve at company or lower level. There are 62 Generals in the Corps. That would mean there are almost as many Gunnery Sergeants as General officers.
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There are around 200k Marines. No way there are that few Gunnery Sergeants, who often serve at company or lower level. There are around 62
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Ermey isn't comparable because he was only in around 11 years before he was medically retired, no where near the full 20 for a normal retirement. Less than 100 Gunnery Sergeants in the entire USMC? Where did that number come from?
There are around 200k Marines. No way there are that few Gunnery Sergeants, who often serve at company or lower level. There are 62 Generals in the Corps. That would mean there are almost as many Gunnery Sergeants as General officers.
There are around 200k Marines. No way there are that few Gunnery Sergeants, who often serve at company or lower level. There are 62 Generals in the Corps. That would mean there are almost as many Gunnery Sergeants as General officers.
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Dewicking Not So Different as it is now a disambig.
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*** Also consider water as a fuel in the vacuum of space. It has it's own oxygen mixture and it likely fuels their life support systems. Hell, they were breathing our air. This troper is impressed by the writers' ability to make aliens that are so much NotSoDifferent that they approach the UncannyValley ''on a psychological level.''
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*** Also consider water as a fuel in the vacuum of space. It has it's own oxygen mixture and it likely fuels their life support systems. Hell, they were breathing our air. This troper is impressed by the writers' ability to make aliens that are so much NotSoDifferent not so different that they approach the UncannyValley ''on a psychological level.''
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** [[CowTools Alientech]]. No explanation is given.
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** [[CowTools Alientech]]. No explanation is given.They mention their using the sewer systems to funnel water from inland during one of the news broadcasts.
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** One thing to remember is that while there's lots of water in the solar system, its all water in environments that are hostile. You could get a lot of water from mining comets, but that water will need to be extracted in a vacuum. You would need specialized equipment and have to operate in airless space to extract that water, which is going to be a problem when you have millions of personnel who need to drink and breathe. Getting your population to a sustainable environment where they can reliably breathe is going to be a priority before you can consider mining operations elsewhere.
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*** This has been said a lot but it's never been true. The number of soldiers and military resources kept on American soil dwarfs any modern deployment. And that's without even taking into account secondary branches like the Coast Guard and National Guard that could be activated, or the fact that the number of American civilian gun owners itself constitutes one of the largest military forces in the world, if you cared to count it as such.
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*** The humans don't have 7 billion soldiers, but they have 7 billion ''humans'', and that is a lot of hands that can be turned to industrial activity in a time of war for existential survival. The aliens wouldn't be able to win a war of attrition.
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** It's a big screwup in the screenplay. SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. The big issue is the volume of water they'd have to use to bring about a noticeable reduction in sea level is completely ludicrous for such a short time span. Reducing the average sea level by just 1cm would mean they had consumed over 3,600 cubic kilometers of water. For comparison, the daily '''world''' oil consumption is under 100 million barrels, which works out to be right around 160,000 cubic meters of oil, or 0.00016 cubic km. In other words, the aliens are using ''eight orders of magnitude'' more fuel. That's '''completely''' unbelievable, under any circumstances.
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** It's a big screwup in the screenplay. SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. The big issue is the volume of water they'd have to use to bring about a noticeable reduction in sea level is completely ludicrous for such a short time span. Reducing the average sea level by just 1cm would mean they had consumed over 3,600 cubic kilometers of water. For comparison, the daily '''world''' oil consumption is under 100 million barrels, which works out to be right around 160,000 cubic meters of oil, or 0.00016 cubic km. In other words, the aliens are using ''eight orders of magnitude'' more fuel. That's '''completely''' unbelievable, under any circumstances.
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*** That's not impossible, because we don't know enough about the aliens' technology or infrastructure to know what they're doing with it. For all we know they've been dropping massive numbers of machines and facilities off-shore in the deep ocean and are running unknown machinery that's siphoning off the water for some unknown purpose. There's too many unknowns to say if something is "unbelievable" or not. All we know is that the sea level has noticeably dropped; from that we can only speculate as to what they're doing with it, since we don't see anything in the movie beyond Los Angeles.
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*** One common saying among the infantry is "asshole-eyelid interlocking." Basically, the moment a soldier's cheeks come together, (i.e. sitting down, lying down, etc) their eyes close too. This is ingrained training during Basic and infantry school so that a soldier will get sleep whenever possible. In high-stress situations, the body knows when to get sleep where it can.
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** One of the news clips about the aliens' possible intentions mentions that they're using the sewer systems of the cities they've seized to drain away the municipal water supplies. It could be that the command center was brought into the city underground via the storm drains and major sewage tunnels, only emerging onto the surface when it reached its designated locale.
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** Aliens might be attacking larger cities as a form of psy-op. Or its possible the aliens don't practice mass transit (Up until the 1600s, most people never left their village), and therefore think large cities are the homes to the largest clans/families. Wipe out the largest clans means humans have no obvious leader-group.
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Response - lack of drones question
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** When you look at the progression of the conflict, the initial contacts were strictly massed infantry. Sophisticated equipment didn't appear early on; all we saw were alien grunts with their version of small arms and possibly the occasional alien mortar, all dropped in via those explosively-decelerated drop pods. That's going to be a rough ride, and so if you ''are'' transporting semi-delicate hardware (like drones) that way, you're going to have to protect it. If you're not, then it means that your delicate gear hasn't arrived during your spearhead. Whether they needed time to unpack their drones or had to wait for them to be dropped in, the drones weren't available during the initial phases of combat.
*** Hypothetically, this could have been part of a gambit on the aliens' part; let the defenders think that they're being hit by a low-order force, prompt them to overextend and commit forces without adequate support as they operate under a false sense of security, then bring in air assets to pummel them. If they were to hit with everything all at the beginning - assuming it were possible - then the defenders would have anti-air assets set up at their bases, making those critical assets far more difficult to deal with. Let the defenders think the skies are safe, and let them set themselves up for a curb stomping.
*** Hypothetically, this could have been part of a gambit on the aliens' part; let the defenders think that they're being hit by a low-order force, prompt them to overextend and commit forces without adequate support as they operate under a false sense of security, then bring in air assets to pummel them. If they were to hit with everything all at the beginning - assuming it were possible - then the defenders would have anti-air assets set up at their bases, making those critical assets far more difficult to deal with. Let the defenders think the skies are safe, and let them set themselves up for a curb stomping.
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Details on water
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** Skirting the line toward fridge brilliance, the truth is that there's plenty of liquid water available in our solar system. Enceladus has liquid water, and Europa has - by conservative estimate - twice the liquid volume of Earth's oceans. Either the aliens are smarter than the TV news expert (believable) and have already stripped those sources, or an earlier Troper was spang on the mark: they're seizing Earth to use as a FOB while they harvest it and the other sources in the system before moving on.
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*** Recruits in Basic Training don’t get what civilians would consider a full night’s sleep. Advanced training for Infantry and other Combat Arms allows for even less. This is to acclimate the body to sleep interruption and deprivation, so they’ll suffer fewer ill effects from it. Besides, didn’t anyone ever tell you that the US Military runs on caffeine and tobacco?
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*** Earth does not have 7 billion troops. 2 billion humans are children and another .5 billion are elderly. Many people can't be recruited because they have careers critical to mankind's survival (doctors, farmers, weapons manufacturers, etc) or have mental or physical disabilities. Some of the world's militaries probably would refuse to conscript women. Earth only has around 40 - 50 million military personnel right now. Only a fraction of those are qualified to train new soldiers effectively. We'd be lucky to have half a billion troops in a decade, assuming *none* of our current troops died in the initial invasion.
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*** Earth does not have 7 billion troops. 2 billion humans are children and another .5 billion are elderly. Many people can't be recruited because they have careers critical to mankind's survival (doctors, farmers, weapons manufacturers, etc) or have mental or physical disabilities. Some of the world's militaries probably would refuse to conscript women.women, especially if the woman was a parent and the father had already been conscripted. Earth only has around 40 - 50 million military personnel right now. Only a fraction of those are qualified to train new soldiers effectively. We'd be lucky to have half a billion poorly trained troops in a decade, assuming *none* of our current troops died in the initial invasion.
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earth does not have 7 billion troops...
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**** Earth does not have 7 billion troops. 2 billion humans are children and another .5 billion are elderly. Many people can't be recruited because they have careers critical to mankind's survival (doctors, farmers, weapons manufacturers, etc) or have mental or physical disabilities. Some of the world's militaries probably would refuse to conscript women. Earth only has around 40 - 50 million military personnel right now. Only a fraction of those are qualified to train new soldiers effectively. We'd be lucky to have half a billion troops in a decade, assuming *none* of our current troops died in the initial invasion.
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** Bro Code. Siblings are off limits without appropriate respect being shown and permission being asked.
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** [[CaptainObvious Because there were no aircraft in the air.]] The military didn't seem to be assuming that they had no air force at all, they seemed more to be assuming they could hit the enemy before they could get their aircraft in the air.
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** [[CaptainObvious Because there were no aircraft in the air.]] air. The military didn't seem to be assuming that they had no air force at all, they seemed more to be assuming they could hit the enemy before they could get their aircraft in the air.
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*** Not to mention they were hovering, so those long tendrils were probably what allowed them to do so. It was said somewhere that they could fly really fast.
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*** Plus, the aliens' ground troops in the film are equipped for fast-moving offensive action in unfortified cities, ''not'' long-term defense in place. For all we know, those armor-piercing weapons are the sort of thing they'd normally use to attack dug-in troops and fixed strongholds which ''do'' utilize heavy armor, re-purposed to tackle the humans' hardened vehicles.
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*** This strategic approach is pretty much doomed to failure. The aliens have thirty million troops total. The humans have ''seven billion and growing''. The aliens ''can't'' win a war of attrition, especially if they follow your suggestion of forting up and consolidating their position. They could trade a hundred human lives for one of theirs and still lose in the exchange. Doing so gives the humans time to recover, arm up, mobilize, and gear up for war. WorldWarTwo should have taught us everything we need to know about what happens if you leave one of the most powerful industrial centers on Earth enough time to arm up. The ''only'' reason the US is in any state to be invaded is because of overseas deployments coupled with the fact that the country currently isn't on war footing. Give the United States six months, and the amount of war materiel they'd be able to produce, coupled with the industrial capabilities of other countries like Russia and China and deeper, landlocked countries far from water, and humanity will be able to re-enact the Eastern Front all over the invaders with sheer. The ''only'' hope the aliens have is to hit first, hit hard, and knock out the strongest military-industrial superpower before they can catch their breath and turn that capacity on the aggressors.
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*** This strategic approach is pretty much doomed to failure. The aliens have thirty million troops total. The humans have ''seven billion and growing''. The aliens ''can't'' win a war of attrition, especially if they follow your suggestion of forting up and consolidating their position. They could trade a hundred human lives for one of theirs and still lose in the exchange. Doing so gives the humans time to recover, arm up, mobilize, and gear up for war. WorldWarTwo UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo should have taught us everything we need to know about what happens if you leave one of the most powerful industrial centers on Earth enough time to arm up. The ''only'' reason the US is in any state to be invaded is because of overseas deployments coupled with the fact that the country currently isn't on war footing. Give the United States six months, and the amount of war materiel they'd be able to produce, coupled with the industrial capabilities of other countries like Russia and China and deeper, landlocked countries far from water, and humanity will be able to re-enact the Eastern Front all over the invaders with sheer. The ''only'' hope the aliens have is to hit first, hit hard, and knock out the strongest military-industrial superpower before they can catch their breath and turn that capacity on the aggressors.
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*** Exactly. In the USAF, there are 3 bombers, B-1B Lancer, B-2A Spirit, and B-52H Stratofortress. Of the three, only the B-1 was designed to fly supersonic, and it was reduced to a subsonic design by the time the B-1B first rolled out. The other two are both subsonic, and the B-1B won't outrun one of those Drones which were giving F/A-18E/F Super Hornets (Mach 2 capable) a run for their money. On top of that, we don't have that many bombers in the inventory, and while a contested airspace isn't ideal, it would be better then watching what few bombers you have become scrap metal when your fighters are barely holding their own against the drones which are (atleast said to be) kicking the snot out of them. It would be just like sending B-17s over Germany during WW2 with no escort, and anyone with a passing knowledge of the air war over Europe knows how that went.
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*** Exactly. In the USAF, there are 3 bombers, B-1B Lancer, B-2A Spirit, and B-52H Stratofortress. Of the three, only the B-1 was designed to fly supersonic, and it was reduced to a subsonic design by the time the B-1B first rolled out. The other two are both subsonic, and the B-1B won't outrun one of those Drones which were giving F/A-18E/F Super Hornets (Mach 2 capable) a run for their money. On top of that, we don't have that many bombers in the inventory, and while a contested airspace isn't ideal, it would be better then watching what few bombers you have become scrap metal when your fighters are barely holding their own against the drones which are (atleast said to be) kicking the snot out of them. It would be just like sending B-17s over Germany during WW2 UsefulNotes/WW2 with no escort, and anyone with a passing knowledge of the air war over Europe knows how that went.
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*** E-6 Staff Sgt is the same in the Army and the Marines. An E-5 is called a Sergeant in both as well. The differences in rank are above and below that level (Lance-Corporal vs PFC, and Gunnery-Sergeant Vs. Sergeant First Class). The Air Force *does* call an E-5 a Staff Sergeant, however.
