The Military Thread

They have land vehicles, yes? Big ones? Then they have launch platforms.

What about anti-ship missiles?

I can't remember which model in particular does this, but here's an interesting thing I found out about recently. There's one Russian type of anti-ship missile that has most of the 'swarm' fly as normal at low altitude as per usual, but one of them cruises to a high altitude and provides data for the rest of the group. If that missile is shot down, another climbs to take its' place.

@World Tree discussion:

...I'd go with some sort of incendiary, personally.

A nuke is some kind of incendiary.

Funny thing, live trees aren't particularly flammable. At least not much more so than the average human. Also, they seemed confident that their weapon would destroy the tree.

Now, if the destruction of the tree at any cost, I'd load the shuttle up with explosives and run a kamikaze mission, which I highly doubt the natives could stop. Of course, that's far too expensive of a delivery system to be considered practical, but a new shuttle could be requisitioned and I doubt it normally sees much use outside of when new shipments arive, but still might doom the settlement due to an inability to receive supplies and would get them in real bad with RDA.

...Well if it worked on our world, surely it'll work on another planet, right?

Right?

Glass it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Yep, the P-500 and P-700 missiles do that.

I still say dropping rocks is a better solution.

If nothing else, RDA doesn't have T-hawks or other military grade equipment beyond hand-held firearms (even if some of those hands are on mechs instead of humans ). They do, however, have access to the rest of the star system, and enough of an energy budget to do something with any material found there. Also, the funky magnetic fields might bother guided weapons, but does absolutely fuck-all to stones.

Playing the Anvil Chorus during the bombardment is optional.

Tam: What is this far better alien contact film?

balmung; Trees burn plenty well in range of thermal pulse.

edited 6th May '12 4:47:43 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Independence Day.

Which I loved from the first time I saw it at the cinema.

My complaint is the "let's see what Sidewinders will do against city-sized warships" screwup.

@Cgnale - I assume I'm the combat leadership guy. I've actually seriously considered applying to a PMC if and when I get out of the Army. Are you USAF or what? I couldn't find anything about Giltella Air Force Base on Google.

I thought they used AMRAA Ms first, then Sidewinders, then cannon. And wondered why none of that stuff hit until they realised, oh shit, force fields?

That is because Giltella Airforce Base is from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It is on Cartann. 8-)

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Giltella_Air_Base

(I googled that because I wasn't sure how good my memory was)

edited 6th May '12 7:08:13 PM by TamH70

I kinda figured it was something like that.

Yeah, you're the leadership guy. I'm former AF myself. And yeah, Giltella was thieved from Star Wars to be used in a militant Pokémon region for an RP that I'm part of. (Don't judge me)

And for the tree, yes, I've always advocated that a KKV is the best option. Anti-ship missiles, while packing a considerable punch, would require far too many to be feasible. And those suckers are huge as fuck.

To be fair, JDAM and other GPS-guided munitions might not have been feasible in ID 4. After all, they were mucking up our satellite systems. Also, we didn't even have most of the JDAM options we do today. True, you could've just loaded them up with slick-bodied Mk.82/84s and just cluster-bombed, but then you have to figure that unless you're loading them on big, slow, cumbersome bomber platforms, most fighters can carry two Mk.84s or 4 Mk.82s. Granted, they'd have more kill-power per munition item than ATA missiles, but, well... We all know they goofed. Besides, the Pentagon pulled support once they heard about Area51.

And I seem to have killed the thread by mentioning Pokémon.

edited 6th May '12 8:52:07 PM by Cganale

Actually, now that I think of it, the shuttle wouldn't have had to even dive bomb it, although it certainly would have been cool. It could have just flown above it and then turned vertical (I'm almost positive it can do that). From a few miles up, it'll hit like a damn cluster bomb.

As for ethics, the movie intentionally set up the RDA as a Card-Carrying Villain group. Super conductors aren't worth that much of a cost. Now, if it enabled FTL travel, you bet your ass that would be worth wiping out a sapient alien species for.

I don't think anything short of a nuke or critical weak point could have taken out the city ships in Independence Day. At least, not quickly in such a way that wouldn't require the aliens to sit there with their tentacle thumbs up their butts.

I heard somewhere that they're planning a sequel. We can only hope it features the humans in space, having dissected the alien technology, doing battle with another of their moon ships.

edited 6th May '12 10:09:58 PM by Deboss

A MOAB would've at least done catastrophic damage, but we didn't have those back then.

After the thing's shields were down, salvo of B-61/83s down the throat at max yield. Sayonara, motherfucker.

In some engagements, yes. Not anytime they didn't catch the ships out over open ground and away from cities or major sources of water and other vital things. Irradiation bad.

Hit me up if you ever go that route, I've been in talks with Dyncorp about it recently, and I have a pre-approved leave of absence from my Commander if I want to go on a tour.

The humans in Avatar had it coming. Seriously, they couldn't just avoid sites of special significance to the indiginous population? They had a whole motherfucking planet to prospect on but they had to go and contract terminal dickishness.

Quaritch was good at his job from a pure combat perspective, but his approach to the situation was too single-minded. If he had been less keen to fight for fighting's sake he and his people might have lived a lot longer.

He would have made a good senior NCO but as the OC he sucked.

edited 8th May '12 1:50:06 AM by InverurieJones

@Barkey - I'll definitely keep in touch if I decide to go private.

So, anyone here have experience with militaries that aren't US? Also, what is the status of nerds and geeks? And are all officers assholes, always? Why is it forbidden to fraternize?

Tam was in the British Army, I believe circa the Boer War.

I'm a Captain, and I'm an asshole, so maybe all of us are. Seriously, though, officers are human beings like any other so there's obviously a mixed bag. What's your job? Are all people who have that job assholes? Kind of a silly question.

The reason we don't fraternize is because it destroys discipline. How are the soldiers supposed to follow our orders, especially dangerous ones, if we go drinking and carousing with them all the time, or if we play Call of Duty on XBOX 360 with them all day? If you mean sexual fraternization, it's the same reason but even worse. It's kind of hard to treat a female soldier the same as the rest of your boys if you've been fucking her.

There are nerds and geeks in the Army just like anywhere else. The "status" of them depends on the unit and the social circle they happen to be a part of. Every platoon has those guys who sit around talking about their World of Warcraft characters, and they get treated different ways depending on how the leadership feels about that kind of thing. As an officer, playing video games and shit like that is pretty acceptable, but tabletop games are mostly sneered at. Comic books are kind of in the middle ground somewhere. I'm into all three of those, and I freely admit playing video games and reading lots of comic books. I generally don't mention the fact that I have all the Shadowrun 4th Edition rulebooks and have run a multi-month campaign as a GM. If I figure out that other officers are into nerdy shit, then I might tell them and invite them to play. Otherwise I just don't bring it up.

edited 8th May '12 5:08:57 AM by Martello

What about tabletop wargames, such as 40K?