Thought experiment. If your super soldier program is public knowledge (ala, like the Spartan program in Halo in the latter years of the Human-Covenant war).

Doesn't that mean that Black Ops/Deniable Ops involving said super soldiers are monumentally more difficult?

This assumes that the op takes place outside of human territory and into other alien factions.

Well, you could also consider using them as a decoy too, particularly for propaganda purposes. Destroy a Covenant carrier with a lucky hit during a space battle? Claim one of your Spartans boarded the ship and sabotaged it against overwhelming odds, escaping without being captured.

Let them take credit for ops pulled by other deniable assets (send in a platoon of Spartan III shock troops to destroy an asset at great cost of life, and claim it was a single Spartan II, for example).

The thing about black/deniable ops is you strip off anything recognizable so if they get caught it is harder to pin it down on just you for sure. Delta is known to exist and we are pretty certain they get used in those sorts of ops.

^ Likewise just because you know it exists doesn't mean you know who's in it or what they are doing now.

But if your team uses Power Armor doesn't it become really fucking clear who did it? Especially if said armor is unique?

Not if every one is dead.

Deadmen tell no tales.

The chances of power armor that is in use for an entire military being truly unique would be rather low. Like most military equipment it will likely be modifiable, have numerous models and variants, various nations will use similar models with modifications here and there if at all, and of course the export market.

You could always add a self destruction mechanism.

But there is absolutely no way it could backfire on you.

You could always dress it up to look like standard issue gear. If it's power armor it's mostly just making sure the external plates are the same.

As for the self destruct command? Set it on a 12 hour timer. If the system doesn't pick any life signs from the user, a security code from the user, or an override from the commanding officer, it'll destroy it'self. Not to the point that the entire thing is gone but that any sensitive gear, data, or identifiers are either unrecognizable or simply useless. Triple redundant, it's unlikely to go off on you at the wrong time. Even in a worse case scenario the armor is just crippled rather than slagged.

That one actualy never does backfire, which is one reason I like its depiction.

Yeah, the Nanosuit bounds with the operator and does everything at its disposal to keep it alive, even if it means turning you into a half man half machine transhuman.

All this talk of black ops super soldiers...

In my setting it didn't work out so well.

edited 8th Feb '16 7:33:36 AM by TairaMai

Because I have been meaning to watch it eventually I have started watching Legends of Galactic Heroes. Now as I noted in the equipment thread it has some interesting takes on various things we have discussed. For this thread Legend of the Galactic Heroes Episode 14 brings up a very key point. Logistics of conquest for your captured worlds.

Now the lead up to this point is this. In order to force an enemy invasion fleet to be stretched thin in logistics the territories to be invaded used their larger fleets to strip as many worlds as possible of mostly food and water goods as well as other useful materials just ahead of the enemy fleet. For the initiated in history of Napoleonic Wars this was a tactic that worked very effectively against Napoleons armies. However there is a caveate. In order for the invaders to maximize their military force and minimize resistance in the rear they are doing their best to avoid harming the populace and supplying them with food and supplies only recently stripped from their worlds. They are doing this in the belief it will allow them to hold onto the worlds and bring them on board their cause as "Liberators from the tyranny of imperial rule".

In the early part of the episode one of the commanders is discussing the basic logistics of supplying 90 days of rations to 50 million people, aid for seeds for crops for hearts and mind efforts, plants(fabricators) for protein and hydroponics, and other goods and projects. The estimated grain for the 90 days of rations alone is over 5 billion tons of grain alone. They estimate the cost for holding these systems and supplying the population will only expand as they advance. Now the plan for that cost of food is a long term solution rather then a short because they want to hold those worlds. On the flip side of it the worlds they are seizing are largely "bread basket" type worlds.

What point this drives home is the cost of conquest in logistics on a large scale. We have mostly discussed the logistics of trying to take a defended and heavily developed world never multiple ones. Interestingly their estimate is pretty accurate. By the lowest estimated consumption rate of grain in the world today from a developed nation that many people would need about 5.4 billion tons of grain for 90 days. That is a lot of supplies and shipping of food stuffs for grain supplies alone.

Which brings us back to the cost of conquest via the varying forms of conquest. If you are seizing a world for what it has on the surface such as a "bread basket world" it requires a lot of consideration. Where if you don't give three shits about the populace and reduce their population by bombardment to make it easier to take it might be more manageable and even a sort of ugly and brutal form of big picture strategic math that affects planetary engagement doctrines to not carrying about collateral and using devastating weapons and strikes against any permissible target. Of course the most efficient is if you just want them dead and glass the planet or effectively end viable self sustaining capability that is a lot easier. Once you no longer care about keeping the world alive you are free to use pretty much any means to end it and move on.

I haven't seen LoGH in forever, did they really use straight-up grain in the episode, or was that just a translation issue?

There's a lot of factors to consider in any sci-fi setting that you haven't addressed that would drastically affect the viability of supplying an entire planet's worth of people with food. Namely, technology.

I wouldn't think we're still using modern farming methods in the age of spaceships and planetary colonies. Food scarcity could very well be a thing of the past depending on how the setting handles food production. Lab-grown meats, autonomous hydroponics, you name it.

The prospect of providing billions of people with food for an extended period of time could even be a completely trivial matter depending on how optimistic you are about that sort of thing. Star Trek's replicator technology comes to mind, with the ability to create food on demand using raw input such as sewage.

Given the context of the conversation and in which it was used I am fairly certain they meant straight up grain as part of the staple supplies. The grain was just a part of the total package. That was also the immediate food rations rather then the long term stuff they mentioned needing on some of the worlds.

I recall even the replicators in Star Trek had at least a fairly hefty by today's standards energy cost to fabricate food and were limited to pre-stored patterns.

It is possible to make food production easier but at the same time you run into transportation issues especially for large bulks of food. You still need a fairly large logistics train to feed people in that scope and scale.

edited 17th Feb '16 9:12:05 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Transportation has its own set of considerations for efficiency as well. You'd probably be shipping rations of some sort, things that are designed to maximize calories per cubic centimeter instead of flavor. If you were to have some sort of food product (soylent green?) that was efficiently packed, you could carry more than enough food in a small group of space ships.

For instance, if your end-product had roughly the same properties of 80% lean ground beef (2500 Calories per kilogram, and let's make the math easy by saying 1000 kilograms per cubic meter), and figured that you had 50 million people who need 2000 Calories per day for 90 days, that would be 3.6 billion kilograms of required foodstuff, which fits into 3.6 million cubic meters.

While that sounds daunting, if you were going off of weight alone you could fit that in less than 30 giant cargo ships (~150k dwt), or about eighty Panamax cargo ships (~50k dwt). Depending on how big spaceships are in a setting, you could carry all that in a single space-cargo ship.

edited 17th Feb '16 10:59:36 PM by nman

That is still a good chunk of logistics needed to load up all the cargo and move it around and distribute it. There really is no way around the logistical tail on this one. Unless you can instantly make food on the spot and deliver it instantly to every single person every day for 90 days until the long term solution kicks in you have to do the logistics tango. You have to provide food, fuel, and escort for your cargo vessels and crew as well, you have to supply any escort vessels so they can ensure no enemies are going to do any supply raids on recently lost territory, and you still need to arrange a ship to orbit delivery network that can distribute the food fast enough and widely enough to supply the world. The scenario in that episode was one world the invasion fleet was facing that on multiple worlds all at once. Those were also fairly low population planets. You start talking multi-billion populations that have had their means of food production gutted before you show up are going to be a much bigger challenge.

There are other problems with high density food like that namely the best way to create it and compact it like that is cut out a significant amount of bulk of food which includes a lot of fiber. You either need to up the bulk per serving by adding fiber back or partly supplement the food with less dense but more fiber bulk food and/or supplements. This can lead to a variety of digestive issues not just constipation but stomach cramps, increases in heart burn and indigestion, acid reflux, and other issues. The other issue is the mental and moral toll on eating that kind of food consistently day in and day out. You can survive on that kind of food for a while doesn't mean it is good for you mentally and physically to do so. Which is part of why even modern militaries, which have some very dense food rations like the "First Strike Ration" which is 8-18 ounces for 2,900 calories of food, still feed troops in the field cooked or partially cooked meals. Not only does it forestall and even prevent digestive and intestinal issues it helps keep moral from dipping. It is easier to make troops subsist on that food for a long time but civvies are a bit more fickle.

You could still do something with a good calorie density and at least include flavor and texture enhancers without sacrificing very much shipping bulk effeciency and even include some fiber to alleviate possible digestive issues and keep a fairly high shipping bulk efficiency. You still have to pack it, ship, and distribute it though which is where the big cost in logistics typically is. The First Strike Rations are a pretty good example. If you or others are curious check them out here Definitely better in terms of shipping then MRE's and are meant to be eaten on the move. Supposedly food like avocados are apparently the next best thing the issue is spoilage there though.

I was using the calorie density of modern meat as an absolute worst-case example. Typical meats have in excess of 60% water, so right away the usage of dehydration means that one kilogram of hypothetical space-rations could have 400 grams of fats and proteins, leaving 600 grams for your roughage, carbohydrates, and other fixings meant to prevent depression - sugars, flavors, pharmaceuticals. And I'm ignoring the idea of a "meal pill" here, just because I don't find those to be terribly hard sci-fi.

You wouldn't have to be creating this food instantly, either, because with ideal shelf life and production, your nation could have been stockpiling this stuff for decades "just in case". It would depend on if the future is rather Utopian like Star Trek, or if we're dealing with something involving less idealism.

Most of the issues with logistics, though, are an issue of automation. To what degree does the technology exist in a setting to provide fast, intelligent, and optimized distribution? Modern logistics are severely limited compared to what the near-future holds, let alone the age of space exploration. I'm talking about chains of ships that flawlessly transfer containers between space cargo ships, orbital distribution ships, regional hovercrafts, and end-point delivery drones. (While the UPS logistics song plays in the background.)

Protecting a few cargo ships shouldn't be much of an issue, either, when compared to the size of the military fleet. Again, it depends on the setting, but there could easily be hundred or thousands of ships traveling between worlds anyway, ready to escort. Assuming that ships aren't considered to be "safe" in Hyperspace to begin with. And that excludes settings that use jump gates, which also reduces the need to escort ships.

And you keep mentioning things being gutted, but how? You're assuming best-case for the withdrawing forces and worst-case for the incoming ones, but in the space age things aren't as simple as torching fields. Preservation and modern distribution methods have come a long way since Napoleon, which mean that you would have to go above and beyond to "gut" the food from a planet. If every farm in the world was burned down, there would still be enormous stores of food in the remainder of the supply chain. They would have to blow up every supermarket, Costco, minimart, freight train, delivery truck, distribution center, and every other facility involved in food infrastructure. And there's also the issue with people having food in their own homes, as well.

And even that relies on the assumption that there is an "infrastructure" to begin with for food production in the future. If everyone in the year 3170 no longer has a refrigerator, but instead has a home hydroponics farm/replicator that provides them with their food, the whole situation goes out the window.

So I just think it's really hard to pin down how hard or easy it would be to deal with this particular aspect of logistics when so much is dependent on the setting itself.

Technology and automation are great but they are a far cry from making big logistics trivial or cheap. Your still looking at doing the logistics tango in all of its head ache inducing glory. The best you can hope for is some form of consistent manageability without Murphy paying your efforts too many visits and even then the cost or effort won't be small.

On the food stuffs those First Strike Rations are some pretty good rounded out food density. They apparently still suffer the low fiber issue though. 90 days for 50 million people is back of the napkin only 750,000 short tons of that food stuff. But like I noted in the other post that is the condensed food stuffs with certain corners cut to maximize weight to calorie ratio. Those supplies though would be good as initial food and then long term storage food as you start to supplement something less nutritionally compacted. The fiber issue though might be pretty simple to solve. Using some back of the napkin estimates you can give the same populace a 90 day supply of fiber supplements that also contain iron, potassium, and calcium for a cost of mass of about 9,000 tons. So in terms of total bulk it might be easier to just say fuck it and ship them with a light weight 90 day supplement supply with initial rations per person until you can set up a long term food supply. That way you keep that nice light mass for total food stuffs without having to add a bunch of less compact food stuffs. It might do the locals some mental and moral good though to start feeding them something less bulk friendly and with more regular food like quality after a couple months of eating those rations and please let me shit pills.

It really boils down how much an invader is willing to expend to keep the populace alive and happy with them. The easy answer would be something like the BP-5 emergency rations. Light weight 2,400 calories dry biscuits. You could in theory live off of them for a while but folks would get pretty cranky eating nothing but that food after a while.

I am thinking a mixed approach may be best to achieve a balance between efficiency of shipping bulk vs keeping the locals ffed and happy. Start off with the emergency supplies because they are really easy to pack in bulk wise. Also because they arejust boxed dry biscuits you are more flexible in how you can deliver them. That way if you have to establish any sort of planet side supply base to support your offloads and distribution efforts you can buy some time for heavier loads and more effective shipping m ethods. Then you move on to rations like the FSR. Still nutrient dense but is actual food instead of water soluble emergency biscuits. Still has some good flexibility in terms of how you can ship them but are best shipped in bulk via pallets. Finally the last stage of shippables is something like you would find in a military field kitchen. It needs the most shipping concerns and could also double as a test of an invaders now in place distribution system for supplies. By the time you are through with that stage a longer term solution should hopefully have been reached or close to implementation

I

My mecha setting has a basic food that lasts long and supplies everything the human body needs called Nutrient Blocks. They are easily packed, stored, and make great rations. Can be flavored almost any way and can be supplied en masse.

It's just that the people hate them because there is just something off about the food, you can still eat it just fine but won't like it when you're done.

How would Nutrient Blocks work for food supply?

MR Es, basically. Good if you need to transport calories and you can live off them in a pinch but nobody likes them.

The problem with MR Es isn't getting them into your system, it is getting out.

Also really good for long term assignments. Ships typically keep them in high supply since it is cheaper ans easier than real food.

The chicken curry flavor protein block is actually quite popular. Only because it is considered the least awful.

edited 18th Feb '16 9:59:55 AM by EchoingSilence

The catch with MRE's is they are only meant to be eaten for about 21 days max before you need to start supplementing the diet with normal food again. You could go longer though.

For the food blocks they are basically dry grain based food stuffs fortified with vitamins, nutrients, protein, and amino acids. They can be eaten directly or dissolved in water and eaten as a gruel or soup. They offer about 2,400 calories per day and are meant more as a short term solution to emergencies. The US makes a civvie "Emergency MRE" that is supposed to be viable for just about everyone including those with religious based dietary restrictions and minimal food allergy issues like lactose intolerance and even includes a food stuff that can be fed to infants. It has a really short shelf life though.

Modern MREs, mind you. He already specified that his setting's "food blocks" provide everything that is needed for long-term use, so I wouldn't go assuming that it shares those limitations.