History Main / MilitariesAreUseless

* In ''Manga/DemonSlayerKimetsuNoYaiba'', the titular Corps' strenght definitely does not find itself in their numbers, which are in the hundreds, but only in the 9 elite superior members, the Hashira, the additional 4 main characters and 2 reliable side-characters; only those exact 15 individuals get things done in killing demons stronger than {{Mook}} territory, anyone else in the front lines is part of the RedShirtArmy, two of the more brutally honest Hashira: Sanemi and Obanai, outright state the Corps are full of useless slayers, they are only rebutted by the Hashira who vouch for the main characters, who just happened to show promising results after mere months in the force; the official supporting positions, however, like Kakushi the clean-up and transport brigade, and the physicians are useful at helping the main combatants.

* Played largely straight in ''Anime/AldnoahZero.'' Outside of our main characters, the greater United Earth military is incompetent to the point of hilarity when they face Martian Kataphrakts. Most of the time, UE Kataphrakts just stand in one place [[ShootingSuperman shooting uselessly]] at their enemies and not even bothering to use even the most basic of evasive or flanking maneuvers.[[labelnote:*]]One particularly facepalming example is in episode 4 when an Earth soldier facing a Martian with a LaserBlade runs out of ammo. Instead of retreating or at least putting some distance between them, he ''stays still'' and allows the Martian a free kill![[/labelnote]] The story tries to justify this by claiming that everyone is a NewMeat to the war thanks to [[CataclysmBackstory Heaven's Fall]] killing off so many veterans.

* The Mushroom Kingdom's 'army' in ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' is pretty much beyond useless, consisting of a bunch of Toad guards who usually get incapacitated four minutes (maybe seconds?) after Bowser/the BigBad and their forces arrive and show as much knowledge of tactics as a rock. In the remakes of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' the entire 'defence' for each of the world's kings is '''one''' Toad guard who charges LeeroyJenkins style at '''one''' Koopaling and immediately gets knocked out on contact. And that's the proactive ones. The others just run away scared the minute trouble shows up.

** Downplayed in ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriors'', at least as long as they have a skilled commander/warrior/mage in their midst. Still the Hylian Captain is infamous for his cries of help over even the most simple foes.

* The volunteer army in VideoGame/SinAndPunishment that was organized to fight the Ruffians are apparently so supremely bad at their job that the LaResistance movement that Saki belongs to was put together just to take ''both'' of them out. The game then starts with the resistance movement getting ''completely wiped out'' down to three people.

--->'''Saltzpyre:''' The garrison has been slaughtered! Doesn't anyone in this town put up a fight!?

->''"What the hell is the matter with you people?'' You've caused more damage than that goddamn thing did!"

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife''

* ''Dead Rising'' has a ZigZagged example.
** The Special Forces in [[VideoGame/DeadRising the first game]] are an aversion. They are competent as expected for a special forces unit, they send in a company sized force, supported by Blackhawk helicopters to clear the area which they did it efficiently. Unfortunately they also happen to be there to [[LeaveNoWWitnesses cover]] up the incident rather than rescue all survivors. [[spoiler:And they also happen to be responsible for razing Carlito and Isabella's hometown after a failed experiment involving genetically-engineered wasps.]]

* Commented on in ''VideoGame/{{Solatorobo}}'', where one character asks what the hell the army was doing when {{Kaiju}} were attacking his city.

** Nobody expected the [[BodyguardingABadass Royal Guards]] to stand up against [[MadGod Nightmare Moon]], but even with warning of a potential attack and being fully mobilized and ready, they are subdued by the changeling army in about ten minutes. Contrast the six main characters, who, without [[VillainBeatingArtifact the Elements of Harmony]] or formal training, and being ''caught off guard'', take down hundreds before finally [[ZergRush being grossly outnumbered]] and surrendering. While it's largly PlayedForLaughs, they can't even handle [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking recovering Princess Celestia's pet bird]]. In the Season 4 premiere, where Princesses Celestia and Luna go missing, Princess Twilight Sparkle instructs the Guards to continue the search, only for Twilight and friends to find them themselves. In ''To Where And Back Again'' they were absolutely incapable of preventing Queen Chrysalis's changelings from invading and replacing every single key member of Equestria's government, despite it literally being the exact same tactic she used last time. In the Season 8 finale they finally succeeded at something, and it was capturing a now-powerless ''child'' who had already been defeated. [[SarcasmMode Someone give them a gold star]]. Even their captain Shining Armor, despite being an allegedly powerful good leader, spends every major threat incapacitated and whose finest hour is ''throwing his exhausted-to-the-point-of-collapse wife at the threat so she could deal with it instead''. It's very telling that Queen Chrysalis recognized that taking him out would render the country defenseless, to the point that she ''didn't even bother having a plan to deal with the guards''. One wonders exactly [[ExpectationLowerer how bad]] Zephyr Breeze must have been at his job to not only get reprimanded, but actually fired from this organization...

*** Doom 3's expansion pack, ''Resurrection of Evil'', has the same situation happening again, with twice as many marines. Apparently, they didn't learn from the previous incident.

* The soldiers sent to contain the Black Mesa incident in ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' are pretty tough, and individually competent. However, they hardly stand a chance against the invading Xen aliens, especially when they start showing up in larger numbers and with stronger units, and their directive to kill all Black Mesa personnel makes them an active hinderance to Gordon and his colleagues, who actually have a plan to stop the invasion.

* The army in ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'' decides for some reason to send two ten-man-teams to clear out the ENTIRE zombie infested Fortune City... which has tens of thousands of zombies. [[SarcasmMode Surprisingly]], they fail. They immediately decide that the 'new' zombies can't possibly be beaten (even though they're only on par with normal, unarmed, stupid humans at best), again, all because those two squads with no air, armor, or artillery support at all failed, and proceed to just firebomb Fortune City rather than send in a properly equipped force. What's especially egregious about the example is they are members of the Anti-Zombie Unit (AZU) who make such glaring mistakes; even the regular army who wasn't properly trained to fight zombies making these decisions would be bad, but ''a group of professionals whose specific job is to fight zombies'' acting like this is jaw-dropping.
** The soldiers in [[VideoGame/DeadRising the first game]] were far more competent, sending a whole company sized force, supported by Blackhawks, to clear the area. Which they did efficiently. Too bad [[ArmiesAreEvil they were also evil]], and trying to kill all the survivors to [[LeaveNoWitnesses cover up]] the government's involvement.

* In both ''Film/EscapeFromNewYork'' and ''Film/EscapeFromLA'', the special forces of the United States are completely incapable of recovering either the President or the MacGuffin stolen by the President's daughter, forcing them to send BoxedCrook Snake Pliskin in to do the job. This is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in L.A.:

* ''Webcomic/{{TREVOR}}'': Played with:

* In ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'', the US military folded almost immediately with the [[spoiler: Thanagarian invasion]], after offering only token resistance. It was implied, though not clearly stated, that the aliens' advanced technology disrupted human electronics and weapons, leaving it to the superheroes to save the day. Otherwise, they normally don’t have issues fighting aliens, as ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'' has shown in dealing with Darkseid’s forces.

* In ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'', the US military folded almost immediately with the [[spoiler: Thanagarian invasion]], after offering only token resistance. It was implied, though not clearly stated, that the aliens' advanced technology disrupted human electronics and weapons, leaving it to the superheroes to save the day.

* In the comedic yet still excessively violent ''War of the Worlds'' pastiche ''Film/MarsAttacks'', when brain-headed Martians arrive to attack the Earth for either fun or an unexplained reason, naturally the U.S. Army attacks them with every strategy there is: air strikes, tanks, armed soldiers on the ground shooting at them. The Martians however have a technological advantage and their spaceships can deflect whatever's thrown at them, including nuclear weapons, rendering all human technology a NoSell. The humans still refuse to accept defeat and keep looking for an effective means of killing the Martians. They only manage to turn the tables when they learn that [[spoiler:the Martian's brains explode when they are forced to listen to bad country-western music.]]

* WesternAnimation/TaleSpin: Downplayed. The Cape Suzette cliff gunners are generally able to keep out Don Karnage without any help from the protagonist, but once in a while the air pirates manage to get past them with some super weapon or trickery. The city's fighter squadrons are also brave and competent, but inevitably fail to stop anyone who gets past the Cliff guns due to overwhelming odds, leaving it to Baloo to save the day.

* While the soldiers of ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' are pretty tough and individually competent, the guy who gave them orders is probably very, very dumb. The lab accident engineered an inter-dimensional alien invasion? Let's kill the security guards to prevent them from doing their job! A particular scientist seems pretty good at killing loads of aliens for us? Let's devote all our resources to taking him down! Now because of all this mess we have [[LeaveNoWitnesses plenty of witnesses to kill]]? Let's shoot them on sight instead of gathering them (and ''then'' shooting them)! And now our soldiers are being overwhelmed by the aliens that just keep coming? Let's send ''other'' soldiers to kill these soldiers! In the end, they evacuate and just nuke the complex to end the resonance cascade, leaving [[PlayerCharacter Freeman]] alone to go to the alien dimension and stop the invasion.

** The Wonderbolts have a similarly bad track record. Nobody expect them to stand a chance against Tirek, but getting defeated by flying straight into a water tower that is nonchalantly held in their flight path by [[FanNickname Spikezilla]] certainly doesn't win them any points, and failing to save a ''single falling pony'' as well as ultimately needing to be rescued themselves after the attempt is just ''sad''. Later episodes have apparently rolled with this, at least [[PlayedForLaughs acknowledging it for laughs]], such as having Spitfire do [[Series/SaturdayNightLive Matt Foley's]] (an abrasive loud-mouthed oaf who is ''terrible'' at his job) "Living in a van down by the river" bit nearly word-for-word.

** Ironically, the order to surrender to the German forces took a bit of time to pass down the commando lines, so around the German/Danish border, some Danish Army units temporary attempted to resist the invasion. When the order to cease resistance finally got through, the Danish losses were about 16 fallen soldiers, while the Germans could count around ''203'' casualties. So, in the short time it happened, the Danes did indeed put up one hell of a fight.

* The U.S. Armed Forces in the ''Film/TransformersFilmSeries'' are frequently getting steamrolled by Decepticon invasions and every film in the series makes it out that the human military would have easily lost to the Decepticons within days had it not been for Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and the Autobots. Later films [[SubvertedTrope subvert]] it by having the human militaries make good progress on hunting down Decepticons.

** In the second movie, the U.S. Army has upgraded their technology and help clear most of the Decepticon mooks in the battle back in Egypt, taking out Devastator and have enough firepower to suppress even Megatron. However, they are still no match for The Fallen, whose telekinetic powers can wipe out even the best infantry units of the American military such as their missile defense systems, tanks and Air Force fighter jets. Jet Optimus has to take down the Fallen for the climax.

* The U.S. Armed Forces in the ''Film/TransformersFilmSeries'' are frequently getting steamrolled by Decepticon invasions and every film in the series makes it out that the human military would have easily lost to the Decepticons within days had it not been for Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and the Autobots. Later films subvert it by having the human militaries make good progress on hunting down Decepticons.

In some shows, when a country is attacked by some enemy ([[AliensAndMonsters alien, monster]], {{evil overlord}}), their armed forces, which are probably made specifically to defend said country, show themselves rather bad at defending it: they use HollywoodTactics instead of more efficient and logical ones, with a particular reliance on the FiveRoundsRapid, [[ArmiesAreEvil do evil stuff]] that just [[EvilWillFail undermine]] their side for no reason, and refuse to cooperate with TheHero.

* The Afghan military was militarily defeate when the Taliban increased their attacks on them alongside the police and the National Directorate of Security in early 2021 after President Donald Trump and the Taliban signed the Doha Agreement. Most soldiers/officers chose to leave the battlefield due to lack of supplies, "persuasion" from village/tribal elders to leave instead of facing the Taliban head on and corruption/incompetence from military/political leaders. Those who resisted either joined with various anti-Taliban militia forces with others who left the Afghan National Police (And other law enforcement units) and the NDS after Kabul was captured by the Taliban or were allowed to leave Afghanistan alongside NATO forces.

* The ''Franchise/{{Doom}}'' series is known the downplay this trope.

* The ''Doom'' series is known the downplay this trope.

[[folder:WebComics]]

** Private Young and Private Shelley don’t accomplish anything when fighting [[spoiler: Trevor]] except ''maybe'' [[CollateralDamage accidentally]] kill Dr. [[spoiler: Clay]], and [[spoiler: themselves]] killed about 30 seconds later, although it’s {{Justified}} given that it’s only two of them against ''[[spoiler: [[ImplacableMan Trevor]]]]''.

* In ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'', two police offers learn that the military is too far away to respond in time to the Chitauri invasion in New York City (the most we see is a single squad of soldiers around a Humvee firing blindly into the air). We otherwise see regular people cleave through their troops and vehicles pretty easily (two of the Avengers are [[BadassNormal a spy with pistols and a guy with a bow and]] [[TrickArrow trick arrows]], and one of them briefly pilots a lightly-armed VTOL that succeeds in shooting down many Chitauri aircraft). There's some TruthInTelevision here: there's no military presence close to New York City, and the NYPD are probably better equipped than the local National Guard. Also, Cap correctly notes the Chitauri are being led by [[ItsAllAboutMe an egomaniac]] who is thinking about vengeance, not thinking tactically. It should be noted that Cap's plan in the fighting is essentially; "Hold the enemy here until the military arrives to end it." He is ''counting'' on this trope being averted, until the World Council panics and tries to write off the whole city. This is averted in a deleted scene when the military finally arrives and they start picking off the Chitauri soldiers one by one.
* No military shows up in ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'' besides the [[SuspiciouslySmallArmy Wakandan]] [[HollywoodTactics one]], without even a HandWave as to why (note that one of their members is literally an American Air Force officer and the heroes had advance warning). It's implied that [[ObstructiveBureaucrat Defense Secretary Ross]] [[RevengeBeforeReason wouldn't have sent men to help the Avengers]] even had they asked, but that still doesn't explain why [[WeAllLiveInAmerica NO ONE]] else would have, since the planet was at stake. Rwanda and Ethiopia both border Wakanda and have reasonably modern militaries who are perpetually on high alert (given both countries' border conflicts) and have conducted blitzkrieg offensives before, and there's also a U.S. base in nearby Djibouti with a large number of drones that were conducting operations against al-Qaeda at the time the film takes place (a single USAF craft has enough firepower to level the entire Outrider force). Given that War Machine, Bucky, and Falcon alone [[BoringButPractical killed more aliens than the rest of the heroes combined]] ([[spoiler:prior to Thor's arrival]]) using only small arms and a handful of bombs, even a small unit from a modern army (e.g. a company) would have wiped Thanos's army out effortlessly. For ''Film/AvengersEndgame'', you could at least FanWank it and say that half of the Earth being wiped out caused the collapse of any real world military forces above the local level.

* ''Literature/TheWaroftheWorlds'' features this, but too a far lesser extent than the film versions. The British military is able to score some hits on the tripods, but we only see a grand total for 3 or 4 get taken out by conventional arms in the book. This is due to the inaccuracy of the weaponry in use at the time, as the field guns in late 19th century militaries wouldn't be able to hit the fast-moving tripods without getting lucky, and would be vaporized as soon as they were sighted by the Martians. Within just 50 years of the novel's publication, military technology had advanced so much that the film adaptations had to give the Martians [[AppliedPhlebotinum Phlebotinum Shields]] just to keep them from being demolished by Earth's armies. [[FridgeHorror It's kind of worrying to think that the tripods -the scariest weapons H.G. Wells could envision at the time- became obsolete to real life weapons in less than a century.]]

* ''Warhammer VideoGame/TheEndTimesVermintide'' has the State Troops of Ubersreik (stated to consist of twelve units of halberdiers, eight units of crossbowmen, and three engineer units to fire and maintain the town's cannon batteries) being overwhelmed by the Skaven within hours. You come across a lot of their corpses, but never any living help - or dead Skaven for that matter. It's not fair to regard them too badly for losing, as they were swarmed by tens of thousands of enemies tunneling into the city itself, but they come off very poorly compared to the protagonists. Repelling the invasion is entirely in the hands of the [[BadassCrew the Ubersreik Five]], who [[OneManArmy succeed]]. Later, despite having months to rebuild its defenses and the Skaven Clan Fester having incurred quintuple-digit casualties against the U5, the city then falls almost immediately when they're absent.