Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

Because even if your sure you can win, them hitting you with there club back hurts.

Honestly I am going to make a controversial take here, but that really is the foundation of civilization at the end of the day.... its a gentleman's agreement that if you don't try to hit me with a club and take my stuff, I wont hit you with my club and take your stuff...

Backed up by other people with bigger scarier clubs behind us.

Ultimately, all civilizational structure derives from ad baculum. Many people like to dispute this until the men with guns show up.

All of our civil institutions, legislative bodies, international agreements, and so on, are created to prevent the need to resort to force, but it always exists as a final option.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2024 at 2:04:35 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

It could be just my ASD, but when it comes to civilization, it drives me up the freaking wall that people can't seem to decide whether they mean it or if it's just lip service and everyone secretly wants to act like a caveman.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's because not even remotely enough time has gone by for evolution to catch up with the emergence of civilization in terms of behavior.

Yes, that's basically true. Human civilization has advanced far too quickly for evolution to catch up. It's said that every city is two weeks away from anarchy if the electricity goes out or the food stops coming in.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Heh, I wouldn't be surprised if aliens had a "like herding cats" figure of speech but with humans.

x5 There's also the fact that civilization and "civility" are not as closely linked as people think. The Roman Empire is a good example. They were the most advanced and prosperous civilizations of their time and region, yet it was built on subjugation and warfare, not to mention bloodsport being a big part of their entertainment.

Edited by Kaiseror on Feb 26th 2024 at 1:22:16 PM

Now I'm envisioning a space opera future in which "Earthling" becomes the equivalent of "Florida Man" in the Galactic News Network broadcasts.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's the basis of a lot of Earth Is Space Australia stuff really. Aliens being dumbfounded and surprised at the reports of the insane things humanity gets up to.

Thanks to all of you, I just remembered this. How would y'all rate the invasion tactics used the by the aliens from The Twilight Zone? ;)

In "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," the aliens were going to Take Over the World by tricking everybody into becoming paranoid killing machines (and smugly patting themselves on the back while they were at it). And in "To Serve Man," at first it looked like the aliens wanted to help us, but then it turned out they actually wanted to eat us.

As for me, it makes me say this: "Yeah, nice goin', Twilight Zone aliens. You just created the Imperium of Man."

I like to keep my audience riveted.

Civilizations don't work like games where they have eternal beliefs, cultures, etc. Germany hasn't been a fascist empire for 2000+ years, but it only took a few decades to turn it into a genodical empire starting unwinnable wars. A civilization far more developed than ours can still fall into forms of cults we can't even conceive today.

Given that a pandemic happened not a few years ago and we mostly turned out fine, i think it's obviously not true. Humans are social animals. it's basically the ONE reason we ever became what we are today: because above all, we're actually quite good at organizing.

I know this is kind of thinly stretched but technically The Expanse features inter-species warfare and it's like... there's no parity at all. Not only the Protomolecule makers, but the Goths as well are absurdly far beyond our own capacity and also absolutely wiped out the Protomolecule makers.

I don't think this makes a lot of sense when you consider that yes, the romans were absolutely civilized for their time. History is more a scale of awful to less-bad.

Edited by devak on Feb 26th 2024 at 9:02:53 PM

The only reason we survive the Goths is because they are so alien they don't even know they're fighting us. They think the Gatebuilders came back at first, and then start adjusting as soon as they realize they didn't.

My friend, crossing interstellar space is hard. It's way harder than crossing the Atlantic, or subjugating the Visigoths, or whatever. It may even be impossible. Any civilization attempting it will have to coordinate its activities on a planet-wide scale, and that implies a degree of maturity — or at least cohesion — that goes beyond anything humans have ever known.

Sure, we can postulate Starfish Aliens who do it for different reasons, but then you have to decide why they'd invade other people's planets using battle fleets like it's the Normandy beachhead.

This is yet another place where the Hitchhiker's Guide quote is super relevant.

Umm, no, we didn't lose electricity or food supply in our cities. The pandemic lockdowns were not a mass starvation event.

As for The Expanse, I'm talking about the early season(s) when it it's Belters vs. Martians vs. Earthlings or whatever. Not when the wacky fun time alien parade shows up.

99% of the time, writers who depict planetary invasions want to reproduce war tropes In Space, ignoring all scientific realism. This is fine, as long as we don't maintain a pretense that, "No really, this is totally plausible."

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2024 at 3:12:42 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

We are already coordinating a number of things on a planetary scale and i don't see any of that maturity. It's just that the calculus has changed.

Even then, i think you are thinking too small. A civilization may require global coordination, but if you can send a fleet interstellar you can also build colonies, and so i think there's no need for a grand unified power. It would just be like our own world -factional, fractional- it's just the powers are bigger. A future nation with a quadrillion dollar military budget could do quite a bit.

Pick any storm with major flooding and see the people trying to help each other survive.

I don't buy this "civilization is a thin veneer over anarchy" BS. Yes, in a desperate situation the calculus that underpins our civilization will change, but it'll take about 50 minutes before people start to realize the implications and start a new civilization that takes into account the lack of electricity. Humans are adaptable, and again, we are really good at organizing. It's why the prepper fantasy is so laughable, the entire neighborhood will just show up to loot the place. there's strength in numbers, there's always been strength in numbers, and history has shown endlessly that whoever can organize the biggest numbers is absolutely the winner.

It's also why every post-apocalyptic show has magic to make the technology stop working because in reality, we can get power back online pretty quickly and get going.

Edited by devak on Feb 26th 2024 at 9:19:56 PM

Leaving aside the social breakdown argument as unproductive, colonization efforts within a given solar system do not involve interstellar travel by definition, and so don't fall under what I said. It would take hundreds of years for colonies to develop to the point where they might even need military forces, never mind contemplate fighting interplanetary war with them.

Heck, even The Expanse realizes that it needs magic propulsion tech to allow space war to happen. The Martian Union is not going to show up in Earth orbit with an invasion fleet no matter how desperately we want it to.

War on Earth happening over stuff going on in space is all too plausible. War happening between planets is not, unless it involves things like diverting asteroids or launching long-range missiles.

Edit: Let me stipulate that the homeworld sending forces to a colony to whip it into line is quite plausible, assuming said colony hasn't matured to the point of building its own military. But it's not what we're discussing here. For reference, see The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2024 at 4:59:21 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Your missunderstanding the point, it isn't so much that every single person is out there for themself.... its that it just takes one man with a gun to subjugate many men without guns by force.

That is why the bigger scarier guns at the top of the pyramid are important, because if they don't exist.... some one that is less agreed upon by the masses will take the top slot for themself.

That's how you get dictatorships....

I have no idea what the connection is with my post. Monopoly of violence is what states *ARE*

I'm not talking about colonies though.

I simply do not share your optimism that interstellar war will never happen. Nothing in the history of everything suggest war simply won't be a thing. History is full of people making incredibly obvious mistakes that were incredibly stupid and self-destructive that nobody in their right mind would do.

Like by your logic the nazis would never have attacked both the USSR and the USA while also fighting a war in europe and Imperial Japan would never have attacked Pearl Harbor because all of this was incredibly stupid, self-defeating, and obviously a terrible idea.

So as a bare minimum: Interstellar war will absolutely happen. Interstellar planetary invasion will absolutely happen. It's a sucker's bet to think otherwise.

Interplanetary war — within a solar system — could happen, although it would be self-defeating. Admittedly, that's never stopped anyone, but it won't look like in The Expanse or Star Wars unless we develop magic propulsion technology.

Sending a missile from Earth to Mars, or vice versa, would take six to nine months minimum with current technology, and at least several weeks with even the best form of nuclear propulsion we can currently imagine.

We've discussed this more times than I can count. Warfare wouldn't look like what it is today, with artillery, fighters, and tanks. It would be more like in the Age of Sail, with shiploads of soldiers taking weeks or months to get anywhere. At least they probably wouldn't starve to death or die of scurvy on the way, but they'd be sitting ducks for counterfire.

There is zero chance of the Martian Union or the Belters or whoever invading Earth. ZERO. I will stake any bet on it.

Some possible scenarios:

• A colony misbehaves so Earth sends troop ships to restore order.
• Someone tries to throw an asteroid at someone else.
• There are territorial or resource disputes on solar system bodies that draw Earth nations into a conflict.

You might see someone hijacking someone else's operation or blowing up satellites, but not fleets of ships flying around going pew pew at each other.

---

Interstellar warfare, without FTL Travel, is all but impossible. With absolute certainty we will never have invasion fleets. At absolute best (worst?) we could have scenarios like RKKVs, solar lasers, nanobot swarms, bioweapons, etc. Basically stuff that you launch from a long, long distance and then follow up decades or centuries later.

If you send a fleet of ships to invade a planet in another solar system, you'd better hope that the grandchildren of the soldiers still want to fight. It's that kind of scale problem.

With FTL maybe, but that's a separate matter.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 27th 2024 at 2:58:32 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Do we know how well nanobot swarms handle space weather? Things like solar wind, X-rays and extreme UV radiation.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

No because there very theroetical.

Though personaly I would imagine it depends on how your controlling them, nanobot swarms are already going to be loosing countless members just from operation any way, so I cant imagine any decentralized control system isn't going to acount for that.... which means the members that get nuked from cosmic rays are not really an diffrent then the members who eroded away in normal operation.

Centralized contol is going to be exactly as vulnerable as whatever computer your using.

To be clear, these "nanobot swarms" wouldn't be flung across the galaxy like that. They'd ride in capsules that handle power, propulsion, navigation, and radiation shielding. Once they land on a target world, they release their payload, which is some kind of Von Neumann-style self-replicating machinery that begins to convert the local resources into more of itself.

It would definitely need some kind of local control system, preferably with adaptive AI to adjust to conditions. Its makers would set global parameters for "what this planet needs to look like", and the robots would self-organize to achieve that goal.

Literal swarms of nanobots are one form these self-replicators could take, but I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek. You could use larger robots, or even bioengineered viruses or bacteria for the same task. Indeed, the difference between nanobots and synthetic microorganisms is largely aesthetic.

This is only one of several possible realistic interstellar "invasion" scenarios, and it has a lot of risks associated with it, but it fits all of the criteria we're looking for. It's fire-and-forget, doesn't require putting millions of soldiers on ships, and if it works your colonization fleets arrive to planets neatly tailored for them.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 28th 2024 at 8:50:57 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Well the modified organism is kind of how the Protomolecule works.

As for nanobots, it also depends on whether or not they're actively capable of replicating themselves on a mass scale past a generation or two. Cause if I recall, unlimited self-replication is how we get grey goo scenarios.

Yes, they'd need some kind of self-destruct mechanism once they achieve their maximization goal, but that's part of the engineering. I assume that any civilization that's smart enough to make such a thing will properly test it and make sure it works as intended.

Careless/Stupid Aliens are a fairly common space opera trope, of course, and plenty of works have gotten mileage out of depicting what happens when these would-be empires make dumb mistakes that allow the plucky protagonists to preempt their perilous plans. That's completely fine. Just don't expect me to jump out of my chair and give them tongue-baths for aggressive realism.

Edited to add: The panspermia hypothesis suggests that organic precursor molecules may be brought from planet to planet via comets or asteroids that are ejected during collisions. In that sense, life itself may be a naturally occurring Grey Goo scenario, just one that operates over billions of years and never turns off.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 28th 2024 at 10:13:56 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

For what it's worth, i think a true grey-goo scenario is extremely unlikely. The problem with nano-sized objects is that they are incredibly vulnerable. After all human beings are full of nanomachines and they are not exactly very tough nanomachines. Even though we could probably build better nanomachines, it's still difficult to envision a truly jack-of-all-trades one. Catalysts tend to be fairly specific, radiation wavelengths would be a thing to consider for your machines. Machines built from a small collection of atoms would be very vulnerable to atom-distrupting events.

You can't really just pick whatever random material is available and turn them into nanomachines. Carbon is versatile and can make many connections. But nanotechnology isn't magic, you couldn't just make a nanobot entirely out of oxygen atoms. And even if you could, the reactivity of such a machine would be through the roof, it would be ripped apart even by a seemingly inert atmosphere.

Energy is also an issue because when you are the size of a (big) molecule, some radiation will simply be too big to harvest, and some radiation will be too energetic. Temperature will shake your robot apart. Generally speaking something that works well at room temperature does not tend to work well at 1500C.

All of which is a lot of words to say that quantum mechanics has moved on and isn't just magic. The laws of physics still apply, and chemistry and thermodynamics still have an opinion here.

I always figured that there was probably also the issue of building copies of copies of copies. After a few generations nanites would probably not be as capable of building something as dedicated as the original version.

I figure you would want to have nanobots that have tasks like destroying faulty nanobots. Not even in a grey goo sense, but as a basic "they're supposed to be forming carbon chains but they got hit by a neutron and now they're just doing nothing" type malfunction. In fact, i would argue a nanoswarm would start getting increasingly complex as its size grows. Even if each nanobot is universal, you would need increasing numbers of nanobots doing management tasks. Communication is limited by power, and these nanobots wouldn't have much of that. So you'd need nanobots relaying information for example.

All in all, i would expect it to behave very much like biology. Specialization is a powerful tool. In that sense, i would also argue that basically the pinnacle of life would be a nano-swarm, a perfect fusion of biological and mechanical principles.