Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

Because most wars in history haven’t been genocidal apocalypses so too is the thought that interplanetary or interstellar war would be similar.

It’s only the alien invasion stories where the goal is kill all humans that this question arises. Even then it can be dealt with that they want an intact biosphere or they technologically cannot engage in super mega fun death lasers or Von Neumann probes or summat.

Most wars in history involve just one planet. I haven't heard of any that involve interstellar logistics. If you have, let me know.

I cannot think of a planetary invasion scenario (the conquering kind, not the 'exterminate the natives' kind) that doesn't require FTL to condense the distances to something that we would find comprehensible. Otherwise you have to explain why the grandchildren of the people who got on the ships still care about the war.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 5th 2024 at 10:20:02 AM

If people can extend their lives to centuries, it absolutely becomes possible for people to still care about the invasion after centuries.

i agree the standard sci fi invasion is bad because it usually misses the scale, but also nobody ever sets up an actual siege. If you were an alien species coming to take earth, you could literally just set up on Mercury, assemble the biggest army in the galaxy and invade earth without having to drag a planet's worth of resource through the void.

Sailing for long amounts of time to invade some place you've never been is pretty par for the course; continuing a war that's been going on since before you were born is pretty par for the course in history. I don't see why that specifically would prevent people from doing this.

The only thing that the complexity of interstellar logistics is going to do is make it rare, but basically all of human history suggests people will absolutely try. Invading nations on the other side of the planet is also really hard but that never stopped anyone. If the military capability exists, at some point inevitably it will be used.

Scale is absolutely a valid counterargument to the idea that someone will necessarily invade someone else in another solar system. I mean, if we go out infinitely far, anything is possible, but that argument can very easily approach absurdity. The logical extension of the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis is that the universe might spontaneously evolve planet-sized custard people, but that's meaningless for any reasonable discussion.

Without FTL, planetary invasion — of the battle fleet with troop carriers and space fighters variety — across interstellar distances between two civilizations with rough technological parity is almost certainly impossible. Not just impractical or unlikely, impossible, and no civilization rational enough to organize such an effort in the first place would consider attempting it.

If the attacker is vastly superior to the defender, then we enter a different scenario in which resistance becomes futile. The target planet might as well be an ant colony trying to fight off the Viking Pest Control exterminator. This is by far the most likely scenario: the probability that we just happen to be at the same developmental level as another spacefaring civilization within a hundred light-year radius is on the level of planet-sized custard people.

I cannot think of any Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion scenario that doesn't depend on the aliens being fantastically stupid to the point of wondering how they evolved interstellar travel in the first place.

Now, if expansionist human societies want to invade each other in a far-future scenario, that's a different matter, although we still have the FTL problem to deal with.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 5th 2024 at 11:41:39 AM

Could the FTL problem be resolved if the aliens in questions were robots, designed to only go active when finding a civilization (or in this case when coming into contact with radio waves which would serve as a marker for advanced civilization), long after their makers have gone extinct or if the aliens are pure energy beings that just keep existing as long they have access to space radiation?

Robots would have a reason, sort of, to invade and energy beings might end up invading by pure accident upon getting snatched up by one of our satellites and transmitted straight down to our planet, forcing them to try and find a way off our physical rock in order to get back into space, no matter how many fleshy beings gets hurt in the process.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Apr 5th 2024 at 5:51:39 PM

Of course all those warfare possibilities feature a common thread.

They are decidedly NOT ruled by RKV’s, biological weapons, Von Neumann probes, gray goo scenarios or any other weapon of mass annihilation/extinction.

For space warfare to exist at all, such possibilities must either not exist or be prevented from use for one reason or another. Can be technological or economic infeasibility at using such weapons, could be a treaty or political arrangement that forbids its use, could just come straight down to simple human reasons e.g. “we don’t want to do it that way”.

If historical warfare followed the logic of RKV proponents, historical warfare would’ve turned every war into a Holocaust level genocide centuries ago. Or alternatively the Cold War would’ve gone nuclear long before the Tet Offensive or the Six Day War. Either way we wouldn’t be where we are as civilization.

Y'know, I wouldn't automatically assume that a WMD will always automatically succeed at causing mass destruction. Gray goo may be fried by radiation/counter-nanomachines. Vaccines may defeat biological weapons. RKKV might be intercepted by wormholes or miss their target because a bit was off in the launch computer.

Robotic invaders are indeed one of the more plausible scenarios for space warfare, as they don't need life support or psychological care and can easily build more of themselves given access to resources.

One of the possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox is known as the Berserker hypothesis, after Fred Saberhagen's novels. It postulates that an advanced civilization may send out robotic probes that systematically exterminate intelligent life on other planets, presumably so that it can move into said planets later without facing resistance. It could also be enacting a Dark Forest scenario: protecting itself from attack by attacking first.

The reason WMDs may (should) rule interstellar warfare is precisely the difficulty of getting invasion fleets to a destination. Earth makes it relatively easy to send your troops from here to there. Give them some supplies and they can walk. In the worst case, they have to float for a few weeks. For bonus points, it used to be a great way to dispose of excess people that you couldn't feed yourself.

Space is a much less forgiving medium of transport. Heck, even today it costs a minimum of $50 million a head to put people in orbit. Those economics may come down over time, but they are still prohibitive for the millions of troops you'd need to invade a planet across interstellar distances. Let's say we get it down to $10 million per soldier on a one-way trip to Proxima Centauri — a long-shot. To move a million troops would cost $10 trillion. Who's going to foot the bill? Who would volunteer to go?

Anyway, history proves my point far better than you'd think. Our most effective warfare tools, besides nuclear and chemical weapons, have been biological ones (of the accidental variety). The Americas were depopulated by smallpox long before Europeans tried to "move in" at scale, and Europe also had a massive technological advantage.

World War I and II were fought at rough technological parity. If you turn a planetary invasion into a war of attrition when your supply lines are twenty light-years long, you've already lost. It's not about willpower or "people will find reasons to be dicks". It's about economics and logistics, which are the most important parts of warfare.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 5th 2024 at 1:15:08 PM

So why is it assumed that space war will not only always ramp up to weapons of mass annihilation but that they’ll be employed as the opening volley? No diplomatic crises, no naval blockades, no expeditionary missions, no invasions, no defense against the previous.

Just push the button and start the clock.

Edit:

Edited by MajorTom on Apr 5th 2024 at 10:04:53 AM

Because some people love the idea of mass death scenarios due to presuming they'd be on the winning end.

With this talk of logistics, I had an amusing mental image for my previously mentioned post-mass-death setting: fleet shows up over a colony and demands them to submit. They don't - and the fleet is just awkwardly floating there because they don't actually have the logistical means to back that threat up with an invasion, nor the will to commit an atrocity by bombing civilians from orbit.

The only thing they can really do is a blockade to sweat the locals out.

Maybe that's the motive for some people. For myself, a Dark Forest or Reapers scenario is one of the scarier ones because it means we're just hanging out here, blissfully unaware of the Sword of Damocles that's bearing down on us from the heavens.

The reason alien invasion stories are so compelling is that authors can come up with ways we could win, no matter how unrealistic. It's unwarranted optimism.

Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu is indeed rare in alien invasion stories.

^^ By the same token nobody’s going to want to read a book or watch a movie where the humans or aliens being invaded just get stomped on hopelessly.

It would fall to the Eight Deadly Words before the 20 minute mark.

Yes, and our own article concedes that. Again, I have to reiterate something I've said quite a few times in this thread: what is realistic and what makes for good storytelling are often at odds. If you want to write about aliens being stupid so we can beat them, great. Have at it. Don't let my critiques stop you. But I won't stop giving realism checks if the conversation warrants them.

ETA: I would offer Half-Life 2 as an example of an alien invasion that both makes sense in context with the setting and gives a reasonable explanation for why we're able to fight back. Of course, it needs Space Magic to justify that setting — in this case, portal technology.

Space Magic fixes all sorts of plot holes.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 5th 2024 at 6:00:25 AM

I'd argue that scenarios like World War, where the Race was expecting to fight people using horses, swords and arrows as their best weaponry or Battle Los Angeles where the extended material explains that the invading alies are Invading Refugees that lost a war on their home planet and are invading with whatever they have left, are justifications for Insufficiently Advanced Alien.

The Race is culturally stagnant and extremely conservative to the point that innovation happens are very slow pace, to the point that 600 years for them would result in just minor upgrades. The B:LA Aliens are using leftovers and jury rigged weapons, instead of what they could have.

The Combine in HL 2 is a curious example.

They did curb stomp earth in 7 hours and if they invaded again, they'd do it in 7 minutes, but humans cracked the local portal technology and they didn't, which is why they are again interested on Earth.

Regarding scenarios with aliens invading with scraps of their tech at the time, there is also a question how pragmatic they are willing to be with it as well.

Do they cling onto it despite the increasing amount of holes their warships are getting the longer it lasts and the rapidly decreasing amount of ammo they can't replace in their weapons? Turning their little invasion into a war of wills?

Or do they get desperate/creative and starts repairing their planetary invasion vehicles (the things they go planet-side with) with whatever they can land their appendages on in order to make it last longer, eventually resulting in airborne ships being patched up with car-shell parts, their armors repaired with whatever fit the purpose to the point they strap on salvaged bicycle helmets as joint-protection or turning vending machines into automatic turrets combined with their tech and placing them in bottlenecks where they can lure in the humans and shovel them down? Pick up humanity's weapons and start using them since they are actually more efficient at killing humans than their own are?

The success of an army does depend on how crafty it can be when the situation calls for it.

And in case they encounter an space-armada, they might not even understand our communication-systems at all, even when being hailed to respond, which might prompt them to approach for the sake of getting onboard the ships to understand the situation better, and then it becomes combat inside the ships rather than outside them, which comes with its own dilemma of "do we blow one of our own ships up with its crew or not?"

Edited by Trainbarrel on Apr 5th 2024 at 7:31:58 PM

I personally headcanon that the reason why the Combine could be fought back against at all was because the actual invasion forces were withdrawn to be deployed elsewhere once the planet was mostly pacified. This left only a fairly small (by Combine standards) garrison that could suppress the occasional civilian militia on their own, but not a full-scale planet-wide uprising; in the latter scenario, their role is delaying action for The Cavalry coming through the Citadel portals to bring the big guns - essentially the equivalent of the National Guard being called in to crack down on a riot too big for the local SWAT units to handle.

Edited by amitakartok on Apr 6th 2024 at 1:00:27 PM

This is pretty much confirmed in episode 2.

Closing the portal and cutting off earth from the combine is the whole goal to give the resistance a chance to fight.

The combine on earth is akin to a small garrison for peace keeping, and it uses local resources as most soldiers are converted humans, instead of aliens.

We can infer from the narrative that the Combine doesn't really give a damn about Earth per se. It is implied to have hundreds, if not thousands of subject planets. It only starts to care once the resistance wins a few major victories. The idea that a subjugated planet could successfully throw off its rule must be intolerable. That's why HL2E2 makes such a big deal out of the "superportal": if it is successfully opened, Earth will get hammered down hard enough to make the Seven-Hour War look like a surprise birthday party.

The other factor is a more space-opera one: the Combine wants the portal technology that the Black Mesa scientists developed because it's superior to the Combine's, at least for short-range travel.

My headcanon is that the Combine suffers from a kind of Creative Sterility that means it can only develop new technologies and ideas from assimilating other civilizations.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 6th 2024 at 10:35:37 AM

Are there any low tier Aliens in fiction that we could fight off, with our conventional weapons? Like actually, not because plot has to have us win?

Does Ender's Game count? We beat the first alien invasion partly through luck and partly because their psychology doesn't grasp the idea that humans are individuals who would prefer not to be killed. The second time we encounter them, it's on our terms, because we reverse-engineered their technology. Also, they figure out our psychology in the meantime and feel bad enough about it that they accept that they deserve to die in punishment.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 16th 2024 at 1:25:50 PM

I’d say the Aliens in Battle: Los Angeles we’d could put a damn decent fight. Especially since a lot of the newer munitions we have today are light years ahead of what was known in 2011.

I totally forgot about them!

That makes me wonder, based on what we saw, if you gave us a five year head start (let’s assume there was an initial small invasion that failed just so everyone believes they’re coming beyond a shadow of a doubt), what would you do for humanity to prep for those aliens?

Do you prioritize building more Gen 4++ fighters, expedited the NGAD/F-35 fighters? Both?

Draft?

Orbital defense?

How much modern military materiel could we make if extinction was on the line AND the possibility we could actually win was there?

I'd stage as many nuclear weapons as I could in low Earth orbit. We have to assume that they aren't the stupid variety of alien, and that if they conquer the skies they win. There's not enough time to go through the military procurement system to build a new fighter. Heck, five years is barely enough time to commission a new type of pencil.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 16th 2024 at 1:52:25 PM

Tactical Fox 88

Does the aliens in "Signs" count into this discussion/question?

Regardless of their rather alarming weakness to a very common element here on Earth, they seemed rather vulnerable to common weapons as well, since they seemed to lack projectile weaponry themselves and could be beaten with mere sturdy sticks once people got out from the initial shock of "ALIENS ARE REAL!?"

So guns and knives used against them would work as well.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Apr 16th 2024 at 7:54:22 PM