Super Soldiers. How effective are they?

I've noticed a high number of Super-Soldier in speculative fictions and just wondering, is investing so much resource in SS practical in military standpoint? I mean, whenever I watch/read those kind of works, I can't help but thinking "Why don't they just train average soldiers more and instead spend those budget to update their equipments and whatnots?" SS are also seemed to be prone to psychological damage that might come back and bite the developers in the ass.

Which kinds of Super-Soldier are we talking about? Spartans or SEAL Team Six?

They are effective in small groups doing important tasks, but become useless for large battles.

edited 8th Jul '11 5:27:23 PM by TheDeadMansLife

Um, it's impossible to answer without some idea of the variables. What's the cost versus effectiveness?

Just think of knights versus conscripted peasants. But then add in pikemen or archers. But then go with mounted archers.

Or consider a siege. Is a castle worthwhile? Maybe.

Are we talking Captain America? Or more realistic like the soldiers from Metal Gear Solid 4? There's a big difference.

Oh, oh, my bad, everyone. Well, I was thinking about someone like River Tam or Master Chief.

Is he? I'm not familiar with both series. I heard a lot about the latter but never got to actually play it.

edited 8th Jul '11 5:47:00 PM by dRoy

Captain america got super-strength and skill. the soldiers in MGS 4 are directly connected via neural link to each other, allowing them to react as a unit moreso than if they didn't have the link. it stifles their emotions and pain, and they can communicate through the link. Its not a gamebreaker, a well trained group without the system can still defeat novice link-users, but it is a big boost in ability.

I see. So does military, at least American one, have any super soldier development project?

Like the versions you see in works of fiction? No.

Are they researching ways to enhance soldiers? Sure.

If super soldiers were real they would likely be utilized as Special Forces or Crisis Reaction Units. Most super soldier programs in fiction are often resource and cost intensive. Add in the training and maintencne of your soldirs and the price goes up.

The reason Super-Soldier is a common trope is that it allows you to justify having The Hero mow down dozens of mooks with little effort.

What a shocker.

Not really, that sort of thing happens even without the Super Soldier advantage. I think the appeal is slightly different, with the concept of a man who excels in all kinds of virtues.

Or for when the Super Soldier is the villain, some way to demonstrate the perils of superiority.

It's the more common handwave. I mean, we've got Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke for a reason.

The reason they just don't train regular troops more is because the attrition rate is so high.

Air Force Pararescue has something like a 97 percent drop out rate, and lots of its members get injured staying in the shape that they do and training the way that they do. Having people with a much more robust skeletal structure would be a marked advantage, especially if they are born in a test tube or something and don't have families to worry about.

Ah, so Super Soldiers ARE practical.

^ Just not in a war of attrition. Remember, when the enemy has near-limitless manpower and resources at his call, your Super Soldiers better be close to a dime a dozen. If they cost too much, you won't have enough to stem the tide since losing one is an unacceptable casualty rate. (And in wars of attrition you will be suffering casualties at all levels and types of personnel.)

There are many instances where training a thousand lesser soldiers and suffering 400 casualties is of greater effectiveness than training one hundred super soldiers and losing ten. (One of the simplest is simple land grab. The survivors of the thousand can capture a much wider area once the enemy is defeated and can implement a stronger defense than a few guys who can defeat entire squads.)

Remember, the Inverse Ninja Law falls apart beyond 25 combatants.

edited 8th Jul '11 7:39:29 PM by MajorTom

The optimum formula is a combination like what we have now. Normal line soldiers supported by surgical strikes from highly trained special operations deathmachines. That formula works fine for us.

I think the "are super soldiers good" question depends on the society they come from. Having done super soldiers twice, from two different societies, I'd say it matters a huge deal. On the one hand, I had a relatively comparable-to-real-life society with Steampunk tech using only a hand-full of them (less genetic engineering, more Power Armor, though) and making a big difference. That's mostly because of attitudes and psychological implications of the time (the knight analogy was very good, in this case).

Compare to the other time I did it, where it was from a post-scarcity (sort of; it's hard to explain) economy fighting wars across hundreds of planets at a time, and they ended up being a dime a dozen, and really, just another part of the Lensman Arms Race. Eventually they replaced vanilla marines entirely, and it moved on up to bigger and better things.

Ultimately, their effectiveness is based on how much you have at your disposal. If you're making Einstein cry and turning energy into mass (*cough*), well, they wouldn't so much be effective as they'd be the standard infantry. If you're a Halo-type society, well, then you'll get a Halo-style program, and maybe a few dozen at best. It's not a great question to generalize...

edited 8th Jul '11 8:10:21 PM by USAF713

It depends. Im going to use master chief and the spartans as an example. As you find out in the novels, if they are in a small strike team then they can do massive damage and be extremely effective. Tactically they are very effective. However in a large scale battle where strategy may be more important and both sides are pretty much just fighting each other to whittle the other side down, they become less effective.

They are still crazy killing machines but they will likely be targeted making them more akin to a tank. Think of Lord of the Rings. In a massive battle like the orc assault on helms deep, the heros are great fighters and manage to kill many orcs themselves and be generally effective however they couldn't of held the keep themselves.

If a supersoldier died in a large scale battle then it likely wouldn't be cost effective.

Regarding real super soldiers, aren't there some pretty extreme examples of performance enhancing drugs and “optimized” sleep schedules?

I'd argue that at the technology level you'd need to be to implement Halo-style Super Soldiers, your warfare has progressed to the point where even modified humans can't keep up. Physically-permissible super-soldiers are utterly ineffective against, say, nanomachine clouds.

It would really highly depend on the setting.

In real life there are some performance enhancing drugs and chemicals but they have a list of side effects as long as I am tall. Especially when used in conjunction with each other. Tinkering with your natural bio-chemistry is very risky business and puts you in danger of developing nasty conditions.

The closest we have gotten to Super Soldier style programs are the assortment of elite and special forces units through out history.

This includes various attempts at bredding programs, generational military traditions ( In my Opinion one of the more successful methods), and using deleberately stringent selection process to find the toughest individuals out of a batch.

There were also efforts like the British Lists of Martial Races to utilize natural military traditions and talents of a variety of locals of various regions for their military body.

If anything you need to take a look at anything medical and bio enhancing that DARPA backs to see what they want to try and do. Genetic manipulation is still on the list for things they want to be able to do.

edited 9th Jul '11 3:38:49 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I know this has been discussed already but how practical are these super soldiers? Imean we may not have SPARTANS, Storm Troopers, The Patriots and Ultramarines anytime soon but if they did exist, how practical would they be? Or what issues need to be addressed?

If they're used correctly; very effective.