Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

The US uses AGM for pretty much every missile you shoot at the surface form the Air. The Russian designations are at least a bit more interesting and varied.

What would the best thing an army can do against^note to simplify greatly a chemical agent that, like Sarin passes through respirators but like Mustard Gas also reacts with the skin be?

You mean Agent VX?

Or whatever. I'm looking for how an army might deal with such a weapon's deployment by their enemies.

Gas masks will stop agents like VX and Sarin but there is a catch. The filters used have a saturation limit. The amount of chemical in the air plus how long they are exposed determines how long those filters will last before they need replacing. The most dangerous part of nerve agents I the fact they can be absorbed through the skin where even casual contact can be dangerous or even deadly for the exposed depending on concentration. So for generic troops they will have equipment like the MOPP suits.

There are some agents though that choke the filters very quickly namely the so called "Blood Agents" like cyanide based chemical weapons. Those agents are also very rapid killers in very small doses. However those tend to disperse very quickly and break down with exposure in very short time frames.

edited 9th Sep '17 8:04:16 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Most poison gasses are complex organic compounds. If you raise the air temperature enough you should be able to break them down into simplier, less deadly chemicals.

So...firebomb my own position?

Only as absolute last resort. Many airborne poisons rapidly degrade once released. Sarin for example is pretty much a few minutes after it's deployed, it's done. It's meant to be used against unprepared forces and troops who don't have warning to don MOPP gear or equivalent. As such it's 100% ineffective against troops already suited up in full MOPP gear.

edited 10th Sep '17 7:23:35 PM by MajorTom

Mustard Gas and Agent VX are a bitch to remove from the battlefield though.

Mustard is by the far the worst chemical agent to remove from an area. There are still parts of WWI battlefields contaminated with it over a 100 years later. In fact there is a forest in Europe that is so loaded with expended, dud munitions, and chemical weapons used and otherwise going in there is truly taking your life into your own hands.

What is worse the 100 year old muck can still kill or maim. People still dig up breached containers of mustard and it injures them. The old shells leak nasty on a regular basis.

edited 11th Sep '17 1:56:59 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Mustard is pretty much only destructible by fire/incineration. Which is problematic for the battlefields in France seeing as they don't suffer wildfire on a regular basis unlike other parts of the world.

@ Belisaurius

But won't that block the city's entire skyline? See, the city may be fully surrounded, but it is supplied by Belligerent A, whose planes land in the city's airstrips and unloads its supplies. The city isn't so much as surrounded as it borders another country to its south. Think El Paso, Texas.

edited 12th Sep '17 7:16:49 AM by HallowHawk

That's the point. You can drop or raise the nets as you like but aircraft and missiles can't get through unless you do.

There are after all such things as anti-missile nets which I what I think Bel is getting at. They are fairly easy to deploy and are ready cheap items. Though a single hit tends to do them in.

If you had an alien race who worshipped pilots (almost, literally in-fact) where Space Fighter Pilots were seen as the elite of the their society, how would you design their entire space doctrine? Capital ships of nothing but carriers?

We're going as soft as a mattress for this one.

Space knights only their horses are fighters and their lances and swords are gun type weapons of choice and missiles/rockets/ w/e. Make it like a quasi feudal society or one of those societies with a highly placed warrior caste.

Not really a doctrine, but I"ll give it a shot.

Yes, based on the brief shot:

If they worship pilots, then in that case, that means frigates, cruisers, dreadnoughts? Zero. Zip. Nada. No way jose.

If we use Star Wars as an example, they have all types of Fighters from bombers, interceptors, interdictors, etc. Basically, if they're whole combat doctrine is based around pilots, then essentially, that means they care very little about attrition or losses, as attacking a ship head on in a fighter, is 9/10 suicide, under any normal circumstances.

They're pretty much going to have to have at least a 12-16 types of fighters, and basically have a good chunk of them be FTL capable. The carriers would need some type of CIWS just to protect themselves.

You could still have frigates and cruisers and such. Even at the height of the Chivalry stuff in western history, you still needed peasants to hold the pikes.

Actually, I'm kind of envisioning a military force where you have the elite knights with the finest of equipment and a Serious Business approach to space combat, backstopped by a Boring, but Practical professional military force of yeomen and peasants. How well members of these two forces get along could vary wildly.

edited 15th Sep '17 6:12:01 AM by AFP

That's my justification on how mecha ought to be used as weapons in my stories. They're used to replicate cavalry tactics pre-World War I, but socially, the pilots have to be of any rank pre-Major. Combined arms tactics are still a must.

Let's try something really grounded.

You're the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All the three letter agencies, in accordance to NASA, have recieved intelligence that aliens are on their way. Somehow, for sake of hypothetical, it's the EXACT same aliens from Battle Los Angeles, except this time, instead of 30 million soldiers, it's doubled.

That being said, you have approximately 18 months to get the USA, and by proxy the rest of the world ready. Blank check, the POTUS and the rest of NATO confirm the intel.

What do you do IMMEDIATELY as to not only prevent loss of life, BUT, actually fucking win?

18 months. After that, all hell breaks loose. And if you haven't prepared, humanity is doomed.

This is NOT a surprise attack in the least. We're literally waiting for them to arrive.

What do you do?

Well, if they come by way of crashing into the sea (again), we mine the coasts. They'll never see em coming. Conversely, we build low-orbit capable assets both land and sea based to intercept as many craft as we can before they hit the sea. I'm pretty sure their landing craft won't take an SM-3 or THAAD very well.

Additionally, we evacuate the cities before contact with the aliens begins and cordon off any attempt to move from coastal ones via a network of prepared defenses, area denial weapons/assets (minefields, trench lines, tank pits, etc.), and a full mechanized counterattack prepared for when they meet the defenses.

This defense will also be in depth. Should they take the coastal cities, we have prepared lines of defense to fall back to further inland.

Also mind you, if they are the same aliens as in Battle: Los Angeles, we need to be open to the idea of nuclear options. Both orbital and terrestrial, we're not fighting a war on terrorism here, it's us or them, total genocide. (Xenocide?)

You're forgetting infantry. If those defenses fall (and judging by the movie and premise they WILL fall) it'll be the average grunt at the end of the day holding the line.

I'd start a massive conscription program and put all current military personnel through a six-eight week infantry course with refresher training.

Aircraft production would skyrocket and if give Lockheed 3-6 months to iron out any kinks with the F-35 and then build as many of them as physically possible.before the deadline.

Thats a good way to doom us all, dont even give them that.

Just go to Boeing and order a bunch of F-18F, there still in production and don't need any time to work the bugs out.

Why not both?

We're not going to be worried about the F-35's problems when the fate of the human race is on the line.

We'd need every fifth gen aircraft we can get our hands on. Plus I highly doubt even under the most trying of circumstances, that we could mass-produce F-22s again.

Because your still limited by pilots, and it is better to give pilots a plane that works then a plane that doesn't.