Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

So, as I wal around on my way to work, I like to consider the methods of conquering the planet. So, with tech as it currently stands, I was thinking the best way to wage a war on the whole of planet earth, how it would go strategically etc, and the sort of civilisation and how it would be structured in order to make it "worthwhile".

So far, I have some ideas for a story of how it could work:

Invaders are either a clone race or mostly robotic - they would establish beach-heads across resource rich bodies and low-gravity parts of the solar system - Moons, planetoids, with a main mustering point on Mars. With control over a vast swathe of area and resources, why would they bother targeting humanity at all?

Biomass? Water? Whatever the reason, let's say they do.

Now, how would I run this?

Wipe out orbital infrastructure first - a lot of 1st world militaries rely on satcoms. Yes, they have other means to fall back on, but better to start them off on the back foot.

Secondly, drop pods of expendable soldiers - think Loki mechs from Mass effect, used to pacify large urban areas. Target remote areas first - large population but low infrastructure and poorly co-ordinated militaries.

With orbital superiority, you can also insert high-altitude vehicles into the atmosphere, for either command and control, or for high level missile deployment. Using the various factories and fabricators scattered across the system, you can bring in vast swathes of expendable ground and air drones, bringing perpetual conflict.

As you don't worry too much about this first wave, you can just throw them en mass, interspersed with specialised troops that can use more advanced tactics or heavy ordinance.

This is perhaps getting ahead: an invasion would likely unify the nacent countries. So, prior to even wiping out the satellite infrastructure, you'd have infiltrators or saboteurs breaking down infrastructure, or festering ongoing conflicts.

So, when your initial wave slams into Bogota other nations are embroiled in internal issues and slower to react.

Naturally the US and China would probably the first to commit resources - so knock out things they're reliant on -use orbital insertion to target offshore oil rigs to cause natural disasters that will cause side issues. Strike fighters and interceptors take time to scramble and if you can lock down the orbital sphere, with current hardware it'd be unlikely they'd be able to intercept all of your assaults or be able to co-ordinate without decent coverage.

After the initial shock and awe, you land your more fleshy or reliable genetically engineered and augmented troops to pacify surviving civilians and break down infrastructure where necessary.

Of course, this goes back to the comment of "how many troops" would you need? The majority of our planet isn't armed, or not well trained in military manoeuvres and firearms, even in conflict areas. it takes a lot of training to get people to fight effectively as a team. So you take advantage of this initial wave of confusion to push refugees across borders, disrupting the land-sites you HAVEN'T landed troops into yet.

100 people suddenly fighting their way across London, for example, would cause a HECK of a lot of disruption. They don't necessarily need a solid objective, beyond key infrastructure points, but you would cause so many issues.

Same with most US towns. Although you'd likely find more resistance in those.

You'd leave areas like Ukraine and the Middle East alone, as they won't necessarily be even aware of your attacks, or will likely attribute it to propoganda.

How to achieve this? As I said, you'd need prefabs and factories churning out shiploads of expendable mechs, and possible several thousand troops of grown troops. Siege ships and carriers to allow for atmospheric deployments.

I'd also go about putting a foothold on the moon, for rail-gun artillery for constant long range disruption.

The first world nations would either have to extend their air and land bridges to get troops to you, which makes them vulnerable, or they'd turtle and try to nuke areas, which would further cause issues with nations on the receiving end.

I know we've covered invasions prior, but this is more stratgy versus equipment. I'm starting at a vague point, but you'd have to confirm what level of tech the invaders had (Likely well beyond ours to even GET here) and the numbers needed.

Where would you target first and why, or would you be more subtle?

Were I a space invader, I would ally with some powerful second tier militaries, like Russia and China, and divide the planet with them. With their assistance and a beachhead, the US could be contained, the rest of NATO neutralized, and the rest of the globe isnt that much of a threat.

Were I a space invader I'd go one of three ways.

1. The all-out Zerg Rush full scale assault. Blitzkrieg the planet in an all out mechanized assault. Last one left fighting wins. Practicality Level: High. Casualty Expectations: Very High.

2. Divide and Conquer. Spur a number of wars especially among and between the more powerful militaries of the world. The more devastating the war the more likely I'd try and spark it before my invasion force arrives or deploys. Once they've devastated themselves, move in with the assault force and clean house with what limited resistance remains. Practicality Level: Low, humans are fickle unpredictable creatures. Casualty Expectations: Moderate

3. Apocalypse from the skies. Like #1 it's a full scale all out assault. Unlike #1's strictly blitzkrieg conventional scale, I nuke the fuck out of everyone during the fighting or right before I land leaving the nations of the world in disarray. Some military forces would expect or figure out what I'm doing so a conventional battle after the blanket nuclear bombardment of cities, bases and major population concentrations otherwise is required. Practicality Level: Moderate. Casualty Expectations: High to Very High.

It all depends on the world and what you want from it.

• Yes, a world divided among nation states could have them played off against one another. If the The Quisling nation(s) turns against the invaders, just bomb them from orbit.

• Cities could simply be avoided and then cut off. Cities need power, utilities and goods coming in to survive. Cut off the routes in and out and then promise worse things to come if they don't surrender.

• If it's just the world that's needed, just bomb then from orbit. Unleash a bioweapon that kills the targeted population and then just wait.

I would not try and rely on planetary conflict between the nations ploy at all. Given no large wars have broken out in a long time even with prodding they are still unlikely to happen. The "instability" of the powerful nations is grossly over stated and the likelihood of enough the planet turning on each other to really help an invasion is rather small. An alien race trying to pit humans against other humans is more likely to run afoul of humanities deeply rooted Us vs Them mentality. It could quite easily back fire as more then a few in any given nation would be very uncomfortable doing the dirty work for the aliens. Better to do the dirty work yourself then count on likely unreliable native support at that scale.

Infiltrators, commandoes, and saboteurs though is a good route to go. Small strike teams whose sole purpose is to cause disruption and destruction. Not randomly but goal oriented type destruction such as blowing up power stations, knocking out bridges, mining roads, destroying rail lines, knocking out general communications those sorts of targets. Where possible assassins target leaders and military figures to remove them at the start of the assault.

As far as WMD's go bio weapons are the bottom of the pile. They are too reliant on right conditions for successful deployment and spread. Many are highly dependent on wind conditions at deployment. There is also the risk of uncontrolled mutation occurring leading to unexpected or unintended effects from the agents and risk of the agent infecting your own.

Next is chemical weapons. While suffering some of the same problems as bio weapons they generally possess comparatively rapid effects and lingering effects on the exposed. They come in a far more useful number of varieties. They also can't mutate and can be used in certain forms to more easily target bunkers, caves, and other similar structures where targets might be hiding. They are also more easily made to break down over time into neutral or inactive components in most cases then bio agents.

Top of the pile for pure destructive force are the nukes obviously. Powerful and immediate effects capable of scalable destruction and have the most flexibility in terms of deployment options and can be used against a much wider array of targets then chem or bio weapons.

If you are going for wide scale destruction nukes are the most mass efficient in terms of overall effect and range of targets you can engage with them as well as the number of platforms and conditions they can be used in. Or you could use a lot of conventional ordinance to do the same thing.

Though jumping right into WMD's might cause any number of issues if you want the planets bio sphere to not be too badly damaged using any of the WMD options on a planetary scale would kind of mess that up. If you want infrastructure items of any sort large scale destructive items are also out.

I wouldn't just swat all the satellites on arrival. I would capture them and gather intel from them. Possibly even subvert some of the satellites to work for my side saving me the trouble of using my own supplies to deploy satellites unless I need to. If you are devious you could leave the satellites up there have them feed bad info back initially before removing and possibly replacing them.

Taking the orbitals of modern earth is really seizing the planet by the balls in terms of planetary invasion. While we have the ability to project some limited force into at least the low orbits there is no way we could feasibly defeat a truly advanced alien race capable of crossing interstellar space packed for bear so to speak. Even worse if they are not the stereotypical stupid aliens and bring a large and varied capable military force geared for planetary conquest we would be pretty screwed even if they went the meat grinder route.

Once you are there pick off the key military assets and command centers. Smash the air bases, naval yards, any large gathering of military forces to keep them from forming a coordinated body capable of contesting any sort of landing efforts. This would include targeting nuclear weapon sites preferably with weapons that won't set them off.

Alongside the military leadership smash the civilian leadership at the largest scale short of blasting cities. Then start in on the large civilian infrastructure like most power plants, roads, hydro electric dams etc. You could make life in a modern city today miserable by just cutting off rail and road access alone. Even if they have power and water modern cities are going to be on hard times without modern food networks which are almost entirely run on roads and then rail lines. Take out sea born vessels that are anything bigger then personal individual naval vessels. You would destroy all military surface ships and major shipping that way. Subs might take a bit more time and effort but are not a right now target unless you have an immediate and obvious opportunity to target them and take them out.

As for cities well that depends on what you are there for and what you want to do with the populace. If you want the populace intact you have to convince them they get to live if they surrender and use known siege tactics while keeping to your word and avoiding brutalizing the populace. If I want the civilians dead but want the cities reasonably intact. Say for instance to make it easier to settle my own forces and people in until we get our own tech and infrastructure set up I would find the quickest way to kill as many people in the cities at once as possible. For me that is where the chem weapons come in handy. Use them first on a large exterior scale to kill anyone and anything outside and not in some form of sealed protection. It would get into a lot of buildings as nearly all civilian buildings draw outside air and do not possess filter systems capable of filtering out things like nerve and blood agents.

Follow up with a large scale assault suppressing any protected survivors and pumping agents that will decay over time into the buildings, tunnels, and other spaces followed up by infantry sweeps. Haul the bodies out and dump them into something like dump trucks and burn them on a midden heap. I wouldn't trust bio agents to get the job done they take too long and some buildings can filter out some bio agents from the air plus there is that unpredictability factor involved.

If I want to flatten the city I have two options nukes and conventional munitions. Using something like the shake and bake method used in WWII where initial bombing runs used conventional bombs to break open roofing and buildings exposing the interiors and follow it up with incendiary strikes to set fire to them. The initial bombing also did damage to things like water mains and fire fighting infrastructure. You could even skip the two phase and something like Small Diameter bombs with an incendiary component to penetrate into buildings and set fire to the interiors. Residential sectors would go up like a torch without fire fighters. Use several strikes on large and multi-story buildings to burn as much of it as possible. You would do a lot of extensive damage to the city and if conditions are right could generate a fire storm. You would kill a lot of the populace and do large amounts of damage to the infrastructure.

Now if I didn't give a fuck about the radiation or had relatively clean nukes I would just drop a city buster on the city and watch it burn from a distance. I wouldn't nuke every city just the really big ones. Conventional strikes would suffice for large towns, small cities, and smaller population centers.

If we are there just to cleanse off the native population and don't give a shit because we are going to terraform the planet after we are done I would just nuke them from orbit and watch them die. Any large scale survivor populations get a nuke until at most they can barely form small tribes and use more conventional means to wipe them out at that point.

If I was there to conquer the world I would try and leave some infrastructure intact so I could use it until I could effectively establish enough of my own to take its place and then dismantle the old structure. I would do enough damage to the population to break up the social structures and groups and then further divide them and mix the groups to even further break up unique identities such as nationality and if possible break up the ethnic groups and force them to all mix. If I were a large and vast empire I would not only break up the survivors ethnic and national groups I would ship them off to new places in dilute numbers and push them to assimilate into the new culture. I would make sure they have every chanced to successfully assimilate with the worst cases being shipped off to a remote penal colony totally dependent on outside supplies to survive and wait for them to die off.

Other options come into play depending on what sort of Sci-Fi tech you have on hand. If I have high power precision energy weapons that can flash fry even a tank from orbit you can bet I would be using those to do a lot of work from orbit. There are several sci-fi settings like Halo and Star Wars where large warships with potent energy weapons can glass planet with their energy weapons.

Not entirely. Assuming they're fighting a combined arms ground war and not just simply incinerating the planet and everything on it, you have multiple options against that. Perhaps one of the most effective is simply disperse your forces and disappear only to engage the enemy after the tip of his spear so to speak passes by. Engage in a guerrilla war, a battle of endurance like the Japanese did late in WW 2. Make the aliens realize they can't truly control shit if your guys can just pop out of the woods or from a building or sewers, strike and then vanish again as you try to bring your lumbering forces to bear on a small mobile target. Then arrange defensive situations where you force the enemy into costly and slow battles of attrition geared in your favor as much as is possible. Do things like ambushes, tank pits, explosive traps, and more. When at all possible you strike their logistics most frequently.

Yes there are counters to such tactics but using them all flexibly and in concert with more symmetrical engagements will keep them off balance and give you a shot at whupping their arses. There are no such things as invincible enemies, no unstoppable forces, no immovable objects, everything they'll send down has a weakness you can exploit.

Afraid not tom. Guerilla warfare is very reliant on being able to hide and having weapons you can actually affect the enemy with. As it is for hiding that now is increasingly difficult and in most cases reliant on a local population to hide in and an op for willing to exercise restraint. On the first one they have the advantage in leaps and bounds compared to what capabilities we have now.

If we are lucky they want to exercise restraint towards the populace of the planet. If they don't give a shit there is really no where you can hide or anything we could do about it. If they choose the fuck you option rather then playing the game your pretty fucked. The chances of our ground forces having any sort of equipment capable of engaging such an enemy with any effectiveness in a guerilla warfare role are nearly non-existent. This isn't the kind of enemy you can take pot shots at with an old bolt action gun and expect success.

That is assuming they don't use the most severe form of total warfare and scorch the Earth as they go.

We are not talking a Taliban vs US forces gap this is a Grecian Phalanx oriented army Vs a Division of Abrams backed with artillery and Air support kind of gap. The level of tech available to them is quite large compared to what we can lay hands now.

In fiction, yes, an unbeatable army is horrifying. Or it has to show something thematically.

However, in our modern world, guerilla tactics work brilliantly (The Boers versus the Brits in South Africa; the Afghans versus the Brits [ANY era], The American Revolution, the Vietcong, Iraq etc.)

BUT a lot of this is dependant on a few things:

1) An occupation force holding conventional territorial gains. Yes, no war is won by air power alone, but what if the objective is just disruption or extermination? Territory is needed only for beachheads, potentially. Staging posts, perhaps. But what if your enemy doesn't do that? Doesn't have static holdings, is mobile themselves?

2) A population sympathetic to the guerillas or more afraid of them than the invader; look at Afghanistan.

3) An occupier who has concerns about collateral damage and the willingness to show restraint - admittedly Vietnam is a case against this, but most occupations don't level an entire street of civilian populated houses to get ONE sniper.

I would agree that, if an invader goes by similar doctrine (Like the Aliens in most fiction) to us, whereby they sieze territory and occupy important areas, then you can start to inflict losses. But again, it's dependant on the nature of the force they use: organics, similar to us (Battle for LA style?) then you can probably demoralise and grind them down, slowly.

Cylon style drones and automated units? You'll end up losing, but by increments. Maybe you'll maintain the moral highground for not giving up, but if they can keep fabricating units and deploying them en masse, enacting punishments on the population for your continued resitance... well, humans are unpredictable. We do tend to push back.

The British in Burma did something similar to something mentioned above: forcible relocation of entire tribes and peoples - it breaks up villages, stops that umbrella forming. Very Imperial, but it meant fewer casualties, as guerillas didn't have a village of family and friends to hide amongst, just strangers who they didn't know, or all their comrades were stuck in a resettlement camp somewhere.

That said, your plan against a large, immobile force is effective - especially if said force tends to use static beacheads and FO Bs (Like Iraq and Afghan) - effectively, whilst they may be AWARE of movement and targets in their AO, they may not be able to react as quickly (Again, Iraq and Afghanistan) - so you can disrupt and be harder to hit.

But it's asymetrical - if they can just bring in all supplies by air or orbital drop and don't make use of conventional logistics or the usual Western armed doctrine, then it becomes trickier.

Falling Skies, the resistence seems to survive, despite the conventional militaries being wiped out by the invaders. to really strike a blow, it'd be arguable that the only route would be to take to the sky and hit one of the C&C vessels, or logistic transports.

Again, we're shooting the breeze, because I haven't exactly defined what the enemy IS, but if they have a logistical chain and supply that covers the solar system, in a war of assets, they have a larger deck of cards.

If they have morale and a war weariness, then you could grind their local troops into a state of low-morale and frustration. Cause local commanders to be cautious and stunt a ground invasion. But again, if they can air drop troops or bombard from any point, without a need for ground based artillery, evasion becomes a massive issue.

The next question would be, then, how would you RESIST such an invasion - say you became the John Connor of the world (Or writing a realistic defence option against such a foe...?) Mix and match the two :D

Falling Skies resistance is protected by plot armor as an excuse for their continued existence that and the aliens are not fully leveraging the large differences in tech and other factors for sake of the story.

Guerilla groups can and have been wiped out to a man. Especially when the other side is simply looking to exterminate everything and everyone.

The only chance a modern earth's population would have of surviving against Invaders that can cross the stars is if they want the population to continue to exist for one reason or another.

Unless the invaders are really stupid were pretty screwed in any number of scenarios. We either wind up conquered or a note in a history book as an extinct species.

Definitely. You hope they're like Klingons and insist on hand to hand, or their weaponry has a limitation OR they want our cities intact or SOMETHING.

But as Stephen Hawking said, any race that made the trip, with that level of technology may share a similar mindset to that of European settlers: small-pox in the blankets...

Any insurgency is limited by how much negative PR the opponent is willing to absorb. If they are, like the West and to some extent the Soviet states, squeamish about brutal approaches, then you have leverage - they're worried about their population seeing soldiers die, or have treasure expended. If, however, they are brutal and don't even see your population as worth sparing... yeah, then it's scorched earth time.

And plot armour is one of those things that really grates in stories - introduce a REASON beyond "well, otherwise there wouldn't be a story!"

Even if it means showing the aliens actually paid a pretty price wiping out the military and, whilst they still have an edge, they aren't in total control.

What about Carl Sagan's train of thought that if they made the journey they are advanced enough to survive said journey?

Which actually makes it less likely that they would need anything on Earth for their survival.

At best they are here to talk to us. At worst we're a science experiment, they'll observe a few million for a mass general idea over a long time or observe us like zoo animals. They won't eat us all, because if it is a generation ship it will have gone a few centuries synthesizing food. They'll take a few, study what makes human human, and synthesize that. If it's a FTL ship then replicators aren't far off from cloning people for food.

And finally there is my favorite option for Alien visit. Literature/Roadside Picnic style where the aliens are just so... Alien, they visited, they left, and all we have is their junk.

I imagine one day we wake up and half of Jupiter is missing. All we see is their contrails. I cant believe that a race that advanced would even notice us, let alone bother attacking.

I can. "That pesky native species is in the way of our political/religious/military goals. It is only a planet of primitives and in the big picture no one will miss them." The steps for that sort of rationalization are very small and easily made. And the given scenario was the other guy has a reason that suffices for them to be invading in the first place.

I really doubt being advanced is going to cause another race to leave us alone.

I like to think there a big difference between meeting a alien species through first contact and them outright attacking us.

The Covenant didn't want to talk they just attacked.

Nothing says they can't spot us first decide we are not worth talking to and then wiping us out at a later date.

Or on the flip side first contact is what makes them decide we need to become a memory. Some faux pas or some unknown conditions is met and our fate is sealed.

In the case of the Covenant they were militant religious fanatics.

The almighty help us if the aliens are anything like us. Our track record to date is pretty shoddy in terms of advanced v primitive or less advanced.

Why bother wiping us out if it takes time to get here and we have nothing they need or want?

Ideology drives people to do very insane things. Why fight the Crusades when the city was many hundreds of miles away? Why did the Mongols who ruled over vast swaths of Territory try and make inroads into Europe when they had all they could possibly need?

Just because it might take time to get here doesn't mean they are not going to wipe us out for a reason we have not yet comprehended and is known only to them.

Your point doesnt even really apply to humans (your examples weren't chosen all that well), but why assume they have anything functionally resembling human-style "ideology"? That isnt necessarily very likely.

True, but then it doesn't make for a very interesting "how would you invade a planet" discussion!

Likely as not, they wouldn't bother with earth, they'd just strip mine the outer planets for all the materials they need. Likely some Von Neuman probes or vast clouds of roaming data centres for a singularity based lifeform. It may not even classify us as "life" - trying to remember that great short story about "Meat" - where one alien says to another that "they communicate by flapping their meat at each other".

Alternatively, if they're so large-scale, they may identify us as a form of disease on a galactic scale: hostile to any planetary body it resides upon, liable to cause collateral damage - the purging fire is the only recourse etc.

But if aliens are similar to us, then they may share similar flaws - jealousy, avarice. They may be Star Trek Vulcans who WE end up subjugating...

Yes they do apply to humans considering history is filled with them beyond count. The Mongol hordes weren't conquering territory because they needed to. They weren't pushing into Europe because they needed more. They had not only room for a massive populations but the access to the resources to support it.

That is just one of so many different things I could easily point out that need for something is not the only driver for conquest or violence. It is foolish and frankly dishonest to suggest otherwise. History is filled with people waging war when it is not needed just because their leaders could, to build an empire, and even for any number of ideologies.

Before you make comments on "human ideology" what you have been proposing is the exact same thing. Painting a human notion, ideology, or belief on an alien civilization has the possibility to be anything from passive to warlike. The belief that because they are advanced and/or have come a long distance they won't interest in war,violence, or conquest is disingenuous and uncritical.

Being advanced or traveling far in no way, shape, or form would mean that at all. All they mean is they are advanced came from a long distance.

I think that Utopic ideal comes somewhat from our idealising media of the future (Star Trek etc)

The funny thing is, the longer Trek went on, the more impossible it seemed to maintain a fair and carefree utopia of the Federation. Realities of ambition, ego etc keep creeping in.

The only way to avoid possible conflict is if they are utterly disimillar, in which case we may not even cross paths at all.

An entirely uplifted race, all AI and supercomputers, would probably also have a fundamentally different approach to warfare and conquest as well, if they would even consider it as such: we don't make war upon nature: we farm, mine and irrigate. Animals get displaced. Same could be said of a vast networked intelligence that decides it wants to use our star as a signal booster and these pesky vermin keep chewing the metaphorical cable....

I did notice that in Star Trek. Especially the later episodes and throughout the movies. The one thing that sticks out is the problems with leadership at star command.

I would not even discount a far reaching highly advanced race showing up to earth play a rather complex prank on us for amusement.

When they say they've got your nose.... they really have got your nose. And given it sentience.

I think DS 9 was the crux - excellent series, really showed how warfare works in the setting, gave far more scale to the conflicts. And also showing how the Federation has an idealised view of itself - the border colonies still need to trade, they can't rely on replicators etc.

And now I feel I should go play more ST: Online.

I always found Star Trek's view of higher beings entertaining - Q being basically Loki without too much maliciousness. The various higher races being grades of dickish or uncaring.

Back onto tactics - has anyone else noticed the propensity for Sci Fi to misuse "grades" or ranks, even numbers of soldiers etc. Doctor Who is a bit of a vicitm of this, having Colonels leading ground teams, or Lieutenants ordering Captains around. Or referring to a squad as "Company" or a Platoon of 4 people...

Big budget films usually get it right, but TV shows (I know, limited by budget) seem to never get the terminology right or fail to do due dilligence.