Best/Worst military forces in Science Fiction

[RogueIce]

3. Stargate: We've got guns and they've got sticks. lets give up without firing a shot (We do this everytime encounter hostile alien).

Maybe they're just trying to avoid bloodbaths with all those natives? Given they make it back to the SGC more often than not, I'd say it's not as bad as you seem to think.

Of course, actual examples would help rather than vague generalities forcing us all to try and remember specific episodes where it happened and the varied outcomes (from simply escaping to eventually winning them over to the SGC's side, the latter of which would be a lot more difficult if they'd killed a bunch of the natives earlier).

[PeZook]

Repeating yourself doesn't change anything. S:AAB is full of stupidity and failure and incompetence all operational and strategic levels, but you're too lazy to even look. You'd rather just repeat a dramatic conceit and look smug.

I'm not arguing with your conclusion. Your reasoning is just crap.

It would suck if I was calling them particularly incompetent, but I'm not: I'm saying they don't deserve to be placed amongst the three best fictional militatries of all time - and a huge doctrinal flaw is enough to disqualify them from that.

Now if they managed to wreck everybody's shit despite doing that, it would be okay, like your Zion example - they use stompy robots, but these stompy robots stomp on everybody's faces just fine. The Wild Cards, on the other hand, are constantly in situations where they're almost killed on the ground - doing missions that aren't particularly important, compared to what they could do while, you know, flying their fighters?

For example, right at the start of the series, they're sent to secure a major ore mining facility...which is a perfect situation where using them as grunts is horribly stupid. Even if the misison didn't go horribly wrong, which it did, they'd spend their time sitting on the facility as a security force instead of shooting down Chig space assets with their fighters.

Later on they go behind enemy lines to recover downed pilots, crawl Chig tunnels, go to assassinate Chig officers...every time it's a mission of mediocre importance to the overall war effort that could be accomplished better by actual infantry supported by fighters flown by the trained space pilots.

Just about the only time it made sense was on Guadalcanal the contested planet where their fighters were destroyed on the ground (which was in and of itself an example of incompetence, though maybe not a systemic and doctrinal one, because they didn't maintain any sort of CAP).

[Zinegata]

Wait, Gundam militaries have been considered for the "best" in this thread? Seriously?

Judging an entire military by one conceit is ALSO pretty funny. That's like saying Zeon is militarily incompetent because they use INEFFICIENT BIPEDAL ROBOTS and ignoring their conquest of 90% of the Earth's surface.

Oh, yes. Apparently they have. Okay, time for a long-winded rant on why Zeon should actually rank pretty near the bottom of the barrel as opposed to the top...



----
The Principality of Zeon has a few things going for it. To its credit, it managed to last as long as it did (One Year) against a massively numerically superior foe (the Earth Federation).

Zeon basically destroyed the entire Federation Space fleet in the opening week of the war (despite being outnumbered at least 10:1 overall), and they did conquer a good chunk of the Earth.

[It wasn't 90% of the Earth though, since they only really conquered North America, Russia / Central Asia, and Africa. And even then control was very tenous at best with huge tracts of land left ungarrisoned]

However, this was mitigated by the fact that much of its early war success was due to its technological and doctrinal superiority. In the Gundam world, due to the magic of Minovsky science, giant bipedal robots (Mobile Suits) are in fact the best weapon for fighting wars.

It is very similar to the Axis powers using the tank to conduct lightning attacks against the Allies early in World War 2... except the Allied side in Gundam didn't even have their own tanks (much less a doctrine on how to employ them).

Unfortunately, the comparison with the Axis powers doesn't stop there. Because Zeon unfortunately ended up being possessed by an insane ideology not much different from Nazism (to the point their defacto leader - Giren Zabi - even reinvented a "Master Race" Theory) with consequences just as genocidal.

In fact, "killing half the human race" was not an "achievement" of the Zeon military. It was instead a monumental atrocity wherein Zeon troops essentially used nuclear weapons and chemical weapons against helpless civilian populations.

Not only is this a pretty pathetic display of supposed military prowess, but it also made Zeon unquestionably the villain of the series, despite the relative moral ambiguity of the Federation (which is depicted as an apathetic regime, but at least they don't gas you for dissenting!).

As a result, in-universe the Principality rapidly lost its support from all neutral parties (Side 6 and the Lunar Cities), who would eventually ally with the Federation... making Zeon's enormous numerical inferiority even worse. Not to mention it pushed millions of survivors into becoming fanatically committed to defeating Zeon, whereas a negotiated settlement might have been possible.

Finally, as soon as the Federation gets its own Mobile Suits the weaknesses of the Zeon military quickly come into play, and it wasn't merely limited to numerical inferiority. These include:

- Massive inter-service rivalry between different factions loyal to different leaders in the Zeon heirarchy, which was highly feudal in nature and it made the IJN and IJA's failure to communicate seem trivial in comparison. In one notable instance (the Battle of Solomon), one third of the Zeon armada was essentially annihilated because factional politics prevented the Space Attack Force from being reinforced.
- Lack of discipline and professionalism among many senior officers. In at least two instances officers of the rank of Colonel attempted to use nuclear weapons in violation of the Antartic Treaty. Neither were punished.
- A rudderless R&D program that resulted in the development of large numbers of one-shot prototypes that had little strategic effect. It's like Hitler's vengeance program that went up to the V-50.

To their credit, individual Zeon soldiers and pilots fought bravely and well until the end. But overall the Zeon military paralleled the catastrophically bad way Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany handled the war at anything above the tactical level.

====

That being said, while Zeon's incompetence really precludes it from being a "best" military, I've always liked Gundam for at least attempting to closely parallel how real militaries work - especially ones built on feudal dictatorial orders.

Unfortunately, more recent Gundam works tend to glorify Zeon's actions like how Japan pretends the Rape of Nanking never happened. Heck, the current lead writer of Gundam Unicorn is a known ultranationalist with these exact views.

[Stark]

I'm not going to touch most of that because it's too terrible, but Zeon was always doomed to lose. That's why they tried to destroy Jaburo and their first targets were industry and resources. Nevertheless, they inflicted massive casualties, conquered most of the world in a few months, and orchestrated massive landing operations and space attacks with success.

Indeed, most of the Federation's first-gen mobile suits were no better than Zeon suits; Zeon had just run out of quality pilots, because they were so massively outnumbered and doomed to lose from day one. By the time of the battle of Soloman the war was over and Zeon had lost; that doesn't change their earlier successes or the reasons for them - technical and doctrinal superiority over their (much more powerful) enemy. By contrast, most scifi militaries struggle to win when THEY'RE the superior force, as in the S:AAB example where chig fighters are so laughably inferior to human fighters that the fact any battle could be lost is hilarious.

[Connor MacLeod]

Wait, Gundam militaries have been considered for the "best" in this thread? Seriously?

Judging an entire military by one conceit is ALSO pretty funny. That's like saying Zeon is militarily incompetent because they use INEFFICIENT BIPEDAL ROBOTS and ignoring their conquest of 90% of the Earth's surface.

Oh, yes. Apparently they have. Okay, time for a long-winded rant on why Zeon should actually rank pretty near the bottom of the barrel as opposed to the top...

I think Stark was using Zeon more as an example of 'analyzing militaries should be a bit more complicated than looking at one thing or a few things and ignoring everything else' because there's a shit-ton of factors, circumstnaces, etc that can be involved. What exactly is wrong with that notion? I mean if we use the logic 'good = like modern militaries' then no sci fi military force is ever going to be good enough because they all suck compared to RL to varying degrees depending on how you look at it.

[Stark]

Zeon certainly failed and had poor leaders, even if that only became obvious once they were on the back foot. However, bad guys always lose. Does that mean they're all 'bad militiaries' and it's only worth discussing good guys? They won battle after battle against their enemies, organsied and carried out huge operations, held the initiative and dominated the earth sphere for most of the war, and were defeated by inevitable maths.

[Zinegata]

I think Stark was using Zeon more as an example of 'analyzing militaries should be a bit more complicated than looking at one thing or a few things and ignoring everything else' because there's a shit-ton of factors, circumstnaces, etc that can be involved.

Yeah, but my point is to show that despite their apparent military prowess (Killed half of humanity! Won battle after battle!) they actually didn't do that well. My point is to show why they are appallingly bad beyond a few simple factors.

Their early war victories was based almost soley on the fact that they held a technological edge, which is again more like Panzers running roughshod over armies without tanks at all. Their enormous body count wasn't particularly impressive either, as it was accomplished by mass-murdering unresisting civilians. Which, as I already mentioned, also had enormously negative political effects that resulted in their enemies deciding to "fight to the finish" as opposed to reaching a reasonable peace settlement.

Finally, I'm going to have to note that Stark is making the wrong claim that Zeon was inevitably going to lose due to the "math", the Federation actually won the final offensives of the war with relatively even forces compared to Zeon.

This was actually surprising for us when we did the number crunching (back in the days of the Gundam Project, or shortly after). But it turned out the total Federation Mobile Suit headcount hovered at around 400 at most. Of these, only a tiny number were the high-powered "Gundams" (just one or two really), with the majority being the stock RGM-79 (of which 288 were produced).

In contrast, Zeon had produced at least 165 "Gelgoog" class Mobile Suits (which are supposedly equal to the Gundam in performance level), several hundred "Rick Dom" class Mobile Suits (roughly equal to the RGM-79), and hundreds more of the older Zaku II models. On top of all this, they have the aforementioned one-shot secret weapons - such as the Big Zam.

Thus, while the Federation had considerably more ships (about a 3:1 advantage, but it drops after a third of the fleet is wiped out by Zeon's giant space cannon) and more conventional weapons (i.e. Ball-class support pod), Zeon still outnumbered the Federation's Mobile Suit forces by a considerable margin and they had better machines too. And while much has been made about the poor training of the Gelgoog pilots, well over a third of the Gelgoogs were actually manned by Zeon's special Ace Pilot Corps (a unit analogous to the Red Baron's unit in World War 1, consisting of only the most elite pilots).

Hence why I pointed out the crippling problems of the Zeon military, particularly its interservice rivalries. A third of the Zeon space fleet was wiped out at the "Battle of Solomon" because of factional infighting; wherein the other 2/3rds of the Zeon navy essentiall refused to help out. The next and final major battle, the "Battle of A Bao A Qu", was capped off with one of the Zeon family members (Kishira Zabi) committing regicide on her older brother while in the middle of the battle which they had been initially winning. After the regicide, the forces were thrown into confusion and the Federation won decisively.

What exactly is wrong with that notion? I mean if we use the logic 'good = like modern militaries' then no sci fi military force is ever going to be good enough because they all suck compared to RL to varying degrees depending on how you look at it.

The thing about Zeon is that it was actually meant to reflect the real-world Axis militaries. Not merely "by chance". It was done by choice. The original series was in large part a commentary against the dangers and hypocrisy of extremist ideologies, particularly like that of Nazism or Imperial Japan.

On top of that, Gundam has a very large line of model kits, which very closely follow the model kit line of real-world tanks. They feature Mobile Suits shown within the show, plus additional variants not shown within the show (i.e. specialised Desert-combat variants of the Zaku II). Included in these models are detailed design histories, a lot of which also reflects the way the Axis fought the war - which is to have several different competing companies building essentially the same thing, none of which have spare parts which are compatible with each other.

So while Zeon may have been fated to lose (as the "bad guys") they certainly didn't do themselves any favors by the way they fought the war - which was actually pretty poorly. And the writers of the series (and the model kit makers) actually went to great lengths to depict them as having made the exact same mistakes as the Axis.

[Stark]

So your criteria for being a good military isn't 'wins battles' or 'controls ground'. What is it, then? Final victory? What about a military that loses all the time but wins because of diplomatic and political success? If the war had reached a negotiated peace (almost certainly with Zeon retreating from Earth), would this have been a better, or worse, result?

It's pretty bizarre to me that you talk more about your own 'research' and author's intent more than Zeon's actions or successes and failures. I guess you missed the part where by the battle of Solomon Zeon's suits were qualitatively far superior, but they no longer had quality pilots. Why is that? Obviously, because their population was low and they didn't have the ability to replace losses the way the enemy could. Just like how it didn't really matter how many Salamis they blew up, because the huge factories in Jaburo were churning them out faster than Zeon could build, and the entire Earth landing operation was arguably to seize the resources they needed to even the production scales, and they were kicked off Earth by relatively conventional forces that simply outnumbered them.

The saddest part about this - for a person who constantly bangs on about WW2 parallels - is that this is the biggest WW2 parallel of all. Once Operation British missed Jaburo (or arguably when Zeon agreed to stop using nuclear weapons), they were doomed unless the Federation surrendered, and this has nothing to do with 'fate'. That doesn't change any of their successes after this point, or that they successfully invaded Earth, generally shown to be the end-goal of most alien militaries. One could almost say JUST LIKE IMPERIAL JAPAN.

Maybe you should make a Gundam thread to share all your fascinating research!

[Coyote]

As for Stargate SG-1, they could have at minimum gotten motorcycles and ATVs down there with little to no difficulty. Even the modest payload boost and mobility would have been a huge help...

Eh, sorry for the sudden break-in.

[Zinegata]

So your criteria for being a good military isn't 'wins battles' or 'controls ground'. What is it, then? Final victory? What about a military that loses all the time but wins because of diplomatic and political success?

Showing actual signs of being a professonal military, as opposed to a slave of the rival feuding factions more at par with Middle Age politics?

It's pretty bizarre to me that you talk more about your own 'research' and author's intent more than Zeon's actions or successes and failures.

Obviously, because it's to demonstrate you don't know jack shit and to embarass you.

However, given that I've done a lot of actual research on the subject I thought it was a nice opportunity to shoot down a lot of myths that have been perpetuated by the Zeon fanboys. Which is really what I'm trying to do instead of your stupid implications.

I guess you missed the part where by the battle of Solomon Zeon's suits were qualitatively far superior, but they no longer had quality pilots. Why is that? Obviously, because their population was low and they didn't have the ability to replace losses the way the enemy could.

That's actually false. Zeon's civilian population was never directly attacked. They had at least 2 billion people at the start of the war, and they ended still with 2 billion people.

Manpower was clearly never the issue. And like I already mentioned, they had a cadre of at least 50 Ace Pilots still left over.

The problem seems to be more of the fact that they had a chaotic logistics system (multiple companies making multipe types of machines doing the same thing), which extended to pilot training. Factionalism also came into play - for instance the Zeon Home Guard (Giren Zabi's) habitually got the best gear despite having the least experienced pilots.

Just like how it didn't really matter how many Salamis they blew up, because the huge factories in Jaburo were churning them out faster than Zeon could build,

Certainly, Jaburo's massive production capabilities are impressive - it rebuilds the entire EF fleet in under a year! If the war had gone on for two, three, or four years the EF would have certainly won.

That doesn't change the fact that the EF won in one year with relatively even Space Forces however. Again: 400 odd Mobile Suits for the EF space forces. Zeon had 165 Gelgoogs, several hundred Rick Dom, and hundreds of Zaku IIs. A pretty even fight.

and the entire Earth landing operation was arguably to seize the resources they needed to even the production scales, and they were kicked off Earth by relatively conventional forces that simply outnumbered them.

Actually, Zeon lost Odessa largely because the officer in charge (Ma Qube) was relying on one of the Federation armies (4th Army I think) to not attack; as the commander of the 4th Army was a traitor in his pay. Once the traitor was exposed, the 4th Army attacked through an undefended portion of the Zeon defense line, at which point Ma Qube was a sore loser and tried to nuke the Federation forces.

Otherwise Zeon was actually holding off the swarms of EF tanks pretty well.

The saddest part about this - for a person who constantly bangs on about WW2 parallels - is that this is the biggest WW2 parallel of all. Once Operation British missed Jaburo (or arguably when Zeon agreed to stop using nuclear weapons), they were doomed unless the Federation surrendered, and this has nothing to do with 'fate'. That doesn't change any of their successes after this point, or that they successfully invaded Earth, generally shown to be the end-goal of most alien militaries. One could almost say JUST LIKE IMPERIAL JAPAN.

How so? The Federation did in fact nearly surrender after the early battles. And even at the end of the war the Federation gave very generous peace terms - Zeon still retained its independence (albeit as a Federation puppet) in name and there were no sanctions against the Zeon populace.

There is plenty of evidence to show that the Federation's will to keep fighting was pretty tenous, and being able to defeat the Federation's space offensive (Star One) could have been enough of a bloody nose to force the Federation back on the peace table.

Thus, while it may have been impossible for Zeon to "win" the war by not taking out Jaburo, it was certainly could have come out of the war with better terms than they got.

Maybe you should make a Gundam thread to share all your fascinating research!

Probably, but I dunno if people would actually be interested in actually discussing things. If it's just you in the thread, you'll just apply your usual brand of "Hurr durr I cannot lose!" bullshit that you're doing now.

[Stark]

Now now, don't get childish. If you want to brag about your misunderstandings, that's fine, but we're off topic. If we treat winning as what counts, then S:AAB is 'good', because they won. The Federation Starfleet is 'good', because they win. It's still stupid to take a single element (ie, 'SAAB uses pilots as special forces hurf durf' and 'Starfleet has families on their ships oh dear') and simply write off the entire organisation. If what counts is results, they get good results, regardless of their 'poor' decisions or characteristics. People need to look at things deeper than that, which is why Zeon is an easy example of guys who literally succeeded in invading the world, despite being the underdog, run by flamboyant morons, spent more money on a hundred different uniform patterns than anything else, etc.

And dude, even if someone accepted your numbers, 400 vs 165+200+400 isn't even.

[Zinegata]

Now now, don't get childish. If you want to brag about your misunderstandings, that's fine, but we're off topic. If we treat winning as what counts, then S:AAB is 'good', because they won. The Federation Starfleet is 'good', because they win. It's still stupid to take a single element (ie, 'SAAB uses pilots as special forces hurf durf' and 'Starfleet has families on their ships oh dear') and simply write off the entire organisation. If what counts is results, they get good results, regardless of their 'poor' decisions or characteristics. People need to look at things deeper than that, which is why Zeon is an easy example of guys who literally succeeded in invading the world, despite being the underdog, run by flamboyant morons, spent more money on a hundred different uniform patterns than anything else, etc.

First of all, I never defined "victory" as what defines a good military. What I did define as a "good" military is one that acts in a professional manner and not as an extension of Medieval rivalries.

Which, despite Zeon's successes, is precisely what they are. It's an archaic military system that runs around patronage and factional infighting. Just because its soldiers fought well enough (thanks to their superior equipment) doesn't mean the military is actually good.

Zeon succeeded not because they had a good military. They succeeded because they had superior tech. As soon as the tech advantage evaporated, they got crushed when a draw or even partial win was doable.

And dude, even if someone accepted your numbers, 400 vs 165+200+400 isn't even.

And how are you not being a moronic simpleton trying to avoid another "Concession Accepted!" again?

Did you seriously miss the fact that in the previous post I said that while Zeon had more and better Mobile Suits (plus one-shot prototypes), the Federation nonetheless had more conventional weapons. Hence the space war war fought on mostly "even" terms - Zeon had more MS, but Feds had more regular stuff. Do I really have to repeat the whole explanation every time?

Despite these relative even odds (and Zeon tipping it by wiping out 1/3 of the Federation Fleet), Zeon got crushed. Main reason? Factional infighting - committing regicide in the middle of a battle is pretty dumb.

Wait, never mind, you're a moronic simpleton who can't be relied upon to have a discussion. You're just trying to cherry-pick to avoid another "COncession Accepted!". Why should I bother with you again?

[Stark]

That's right, that's why Connor (and some other guys) were talking about how you need to know what defines 'good' before you can pick who is 'good'. People in this thread are declaring groups bad just because they don't like something about the way they do things, like SAAB and the Federation, and I don't think that's very meaningful out of context. If you're not contributing to that discussion, then sorry for the misunderstanding, and lets hope Connor comes back.

Again: 400 odd Mobile Suits for the EF space forces. Zeon had 165 Gelgoogs, several hundred Rick Dom, and hundreds of Zaku IIs. A pretty even fight.

Pardon? Take a deep breath.

[Zinegata]

That's right, that's why Connor (and some other guys) were talking about how you need to know what defines 'good' before you can pick who is 'good'. People in this thread are declaring groups bad just because they don't like something about the way they do things, like SAAB and the Federation, and I don't think that's very meaningful out of context. If you're not contributing to that discussion, then sorry for the misunderstanding, and lets hope Connor comes back.

Sorry, but the thread is called "Best / Worst Military". It is not "What's the criteria for Best / Worst Military" only. And if you hadn't noticed my point was to provide a much more comprehensive analysis of why Zeon is not deserving of the title of "Best" military - which threads both points: Zeon sucks as a military because it was a factional infighting mess more akin to a feudal system; and by extension it demonstrates that the criteria for a good miliary should be that it is one that is a cohesive and professional organization.

Otherwise, one might think that the ability to commit mass genocide ("victory") is your primary criteria for having the "best" military.

So why don't yo stop pretending to be a forum cop who has monopoly on what should or should not be in the thread? I'm pretty sure if Connor finds something interesting, he'll comment on it.

Pardon? Take a deep breath.

Okay, it seems you really are that fucking retarded. Let's keep reposting the whole thing instead of the one-sentence repeat, shall we? Because it's pretty clear that you're not interested in discussion, just point-scoring by picking out comments out of context.

Finally, I'm going to have to note that Stark is making the wrong claim that Zeon was inevitably going to lose due to the "math", the Federation actually won the final offensives of the war with relatively even forces compared to Zeon.

This was actually surprising for us when we did the number crunching (back in the days of the Gundam Project, or shortly after). But it turned out the total Federation Mobile Suit headcount hovered at around 400 at most. Of these, only a tiny number were the high-powered "Gundams" (just one or two really), with the majority being the stock RGM-79 (of which 288 were produced).

In contrast, Zeon had produced at least 165 "Gelgoog" class Mobile Suits (which are supposedly equal to the Gundam in performance level), several hundred "Rick Dom" class Mobile Suits (roughly equal to the RGM-79), and hundreds more of the older Zaku II models. On top of all this, they have the aforementioned one-shot secret weapons - such as the Big Zam.

Thus, while the Federation had considerably more ships (about a 3:1 advantage, but it drops after a third of the fleet is wiped out by Zeon's giant space cannon) and more conventional weapons (i.e. Ball-class support pod), Zeon still outnumbered the Federation's Mobile Suit forces by a considerable margin and they had better machines too. And while much has been made about the poor training of the Gelgoog pilots, well over a third of the Gelgoogs were actually manned by Zeon's special Ace Pilot Corps (a unit analogous to the Red Baron's unit in World War 1, consisting of only the most elite pilots).

So really, stop pretending this is anything but you wanting to start another retard fight.

[Stark]

Sure, there's a broader discussion, but people rightly think you can't do one without having clear ideas about the other. If you don't think Zeon is a good example, what is? I've asked what your criteria would be already, and you can be as professional as you want and lose all the time, so I'm not sure how broadly applicable that is. Nobody asked you to leave the thread, I'm just curious if you're interested in participating in that discussion. Connor's already expressed that he's interested in looking at scifi militaries in a broader way. Would you consider the guys in Starship Troopers a 'good' military, because they have a solid structure and rigid organisation? Since the military is generally controlled by civilian authority, and politics is by nature factionalist and often personal, just how high does infighting need to be to not count against a military force?

And yeah, I read your earlier posts, but you said 'small number vs large number, pretty even'. Given the type of bombardment battles they were, you're right to put emphasis on the heavier elements like warships, so I don't think it makes much sense to simply compare MS numbers. The Federation's far superior industry really isn't in question, since its the number one reason they won.

[The Yosemite Bear]

how about the enclave?

lets build a super secret base and try and kill off all of humaity for the good old USA.

[Stark]

But they had technical advantages and lost anyway, and going by Fallout 3 had internal pressures and conflicts of their own.

[Zinegata]

Sure, there's a broader discussion, but people rightly think you can't do one without having clear ideas about the other. If you don't think Zeon is a good example, what is?

Ok, I'm getting our failure to communicate.

My intent wasn't to provide a rock-solid criteria applicable to all situations. That's why I only mentioned later that I personally view professionalism as one of the key elements of a military.

Instead, my intent was to show how to do a detailed look at a military organization in order to determine whether it's good or bad. As you said, focusing on just one aspect is silly. And in this regard, Zeon's a great case study because there is huge amount of material available.

You've got the animated series. You've got various source books. You've got the model kit profiles. That's a lot more than SAAB which is mainly just the TV series.

And in Zeon's case what's repeatedly shown in most materials is that its military is barely working due to its crippling factional infighting issues. It may seem like a simplistic reason, but if you look at the source materials it actually affects all levels of the Zeon military - from command decisions to weapon procurement policies.

That Zeon lost a "even" fight with the Federation in Star One was not meant to be the only example of Zeon factional problems. It is but one example out of many.

I've asked what your criteria would be already, and you can be as professional as you want and lose all the time

...

Would you consider the guys in Starship Troopers a 'good' military, because they have a solid structure and rigid organisation? Since the military is generally controlled by civilian authority, and politics is by nature factionalist and often personal, just how high does infighting need to be to not count against a military force?

Military organizations are complex entities, and you can't simply have a sliding scale between "independent action" and "rigid discipline". The reality is that a rigidly disciplined military may nonetheless have outlets to allow for individual initiative and creative thought.

At the tactical level for instance, the WW2 German army generally excelled at this by remaining a highly disciplined and professional force while at the same time allowing for individual initiative.


My problem with Zeon is that it lacks professionalism and discipline at too many levels for it to be considered a decent military. They barely functioned as a real military at all.

How would you react if you found out a US Army Colonel (not even a General) had the authority to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan based on a whim without consulting his superiors? That's insane and doesn't happen in real life, but in Zeon's case we had two Colonel who tried to pull this exact same trick and never got punished; and other officers pull of stunts that are just as insubordinate.

Hence, I would say that the a military must demonstrate a certain level of professionalism and discipline. You can't have your Colonels firing nuclear weapons on a whim. The military would barely function if that were the case - and that's exactly what happened to Zeon.

[Note: Do also realize that while I say that Zeon is a bad military, it doesn't mean that their enemies - the Federation - was a good military. The EF has huge problems of its own with its own discipline problems]

That being said, being a "functioning" military (of which the Starship Troopers Federation is) doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea either. It's at the extreme scale of "High discipline, forget about common sense!" that's little better than the typical Warhammer 40K Imperial Guard unit.

[Simon_Jester]

Book Starship Troopers is actually pretty effective- well equipped, capable of conquering planets and achieving national objectives. Their officer corps is disciplined, trained, but seem able to think for themselves tactically and strategically even if you have objections to their political system. Their one big weakness is lack of combined arms; all they have are these extensively trained, expensively equipped MI, plus of course fleet support. Then again, that seems to work for them.

Movie Starship Troopers is a whole nother ball of wax. They're probably pretty low on the scale, because of the massive unnecessary casualties they suffer and the tactical inflexibility promoted by the "shut up and follow orders" mindset.

[Stark]

Yeah, I tried to avoid turning it around with 'lol EF sux too' because that's meaningless. What Jester says about the mobile infantry is good stuff; their force is appropriate for their enemies, they win, the aren't wearing 10000 different cuts of cape and stabbing each other, etc. I'd probably mark them down for their enemies being so inferior, but I've never read the book.

I'm trying to think of an example of a military that is good in itself, but is prevented from achieving its objectives due to interference from politics or policy as a counterpoint to the Zeon example. I guess Stargate might count, since they're military but are constrained from some military activities by US policy. But that leads to the question of what we're assessing; the military organisation itself (ie, 'is SG1 good if you transplant it elsewhere') or the entire decision-making apparatus (ie, 'would the SG1 US be effective in a different situation'). Sometimes policy and military are closely linked (as in Zeon and Starship Troopers) and sometimes they're reasonably separate. I guess you could argue that at a high enough strategic level, military policy is driven by the policy of the leadership, so unless its a dictatorship it'll be influenced by political factors. Even Kycilia's assassination of Gihren was driven by his murder of their father for political reasons, after all.

[Zinegata]

The issue with Zeon is that the politics goes up and down the line, to the point that the political and military leadership can't be seperated. That's why I compared it to a Medieval Feudal system - where else can you find a Colonel (Ma Kube) end up in his position only because he sends nice antiques to his commander (Kishira)? And where else can you find such factionalized infighting to the point that Ma Kube denies other commanders much-needed resupply because they don't report to Kishira?

A military must be professional and act seperately of political concerns - the Mobile Infantry in this regard is at least superior in this regard because they aren't actively trying to shoot each other in the name of their favorite Sky Marshal. The problem with the movie version is that the troops have been lobotomized to achieve this.

On the "acting well despite a stupid government" front, the Lond Bell didn't do too badly despite the bone-headedness of its political leadership.

[Coyote]

OK, having read a bit more...

Is is fair to denigrate the performance or procedures of a sci-fi military because of "real-world" decisions made by directors, writers, or producers behind the filming? Star Trek and Space: Above and Beyond both send bridge crew or fighter pilots into ground combat situations because the shows don't have enough financial backing to actually hire a horde of Marines or other away-teamers to do the ground work.

Or, the "victory" angle: because the Federation in Star Trek is the "good guys", you can relax and assume they'll win by writer fiat with their fragile, family-packed ships with warp core reactors made of reinforced tissue paper against dedicated military combat vessels like the Klingons. Whereas we all know in reality if a research ship with a couple cannons strapped to it were to encounter a real Ticonderoga cruiser, the research ship would become an artificial reef quickly.

Face it, a lot of would-be competent troops are nerfed for dramatic reasons. They can be nerfed by equipment shortages (SG-1 with ATVs would chew up the average Gou'a'ould patrol) or by procedural incompetency (Star Trek sending bridge crew as groundpounders)... and so on. But since nearly each one of these militaries, no matter how many flaws are built into them by the writers, tends to overcome their carefully-staged foes, then giving honors by "battles won" is pointless.

My vote for "realistically portrayed" and "wins against challenging and competent enemies" as well as "exhibits few writer's fiat flaws for drama" would be Hammer's Slammers.

[PeZook]

In S:AAB it would be easily fixed by simply upping the importance of their groundpounder missions. It's hardly fair to blame a dramatically shorthanded USMC sending in pilots on a mission that ABSOLUTELY HAS TO BE DONE LIKE RIGHT NOW, or shot down over enemy territorry etc...but securing an ore mine? Assassinating a cruel enemy officer? Crawling some Chig tunnels?

That's why Guadalcanal Unnamed Contested Planet actually worked (caught on the ground with their pants down, fleet had to withdraw sorry guys you're on your own), while alot of those other situations didn't.

[Connor MacLeod]

Sorry, but the thread is called "Best / Worst Military". It is not "What's the criteria for Best / Worst Military" only. And if you hadn't noticed my point was to provide a much more comprehensive analysis of why Zeon is not deserving of the title of "Best" military - which threads both points: Zeon sucks as a military because it was a factional infighting mess more akin to a feudal system; and by extension it demonstrates that the criteria for a good miliary should be that it is one that is a cohesive and professional organization.

Otherwise, one might think that the ability to commit mass genocide ("victory") is your primary criteria for having the "best" military.

So why don't yo stop pretending to be a forum cop who has monopoly on what should or should not be in the thread? I'm pretty sure if Connor finds something interesting, he'll comment on it.

I just did. I bolded it. Did youjust say that you can discuss/decide what is the best and worst military in sci fi without criteria? How exactly does that work? If this is simply meant to be an 'opinion' thread then argument is completely pointless because everyone's opinion is equally valid. Which then begs the question of.. why you're arguing in this thread.

Re the Zeon stuff: did you need to respond to my point with a 'yeah but' response? Because that was like, totally unrelated to what I was saying. If you have some stuff to contribute to the thread that's fine, but its a complete red herring as far as anything I said went. As far as my 'personal opinion' on that goes, however, I find it hard to believe you can be 'comprehensive' in a single post. Or thread. Or series of threads. you may have noticed I've tried that with 40K, and I would say so far 40K is kicking my ass in the 'comprehensive' department.

*****

So lets lay out what *I* think, for whatever that is worth: If one is serious about analyzing a military, you have to look at a whole bunch of things and not just a few things. Military stuff in real life is incredibly complex (and getting moreso all the time) Technology, tactics and strategy, logistics, political, cultural, economic factors. The whole shebang. It's all related. You have to also look at those factors both in context of the universe itself, as well as in any 'real life' context - doing just one or the other alone won't provide as much as looking at both together. And at the same time you can't just compare everything to the RL military either (Wouldn't work comparing it to Dune, for example, unless you're just trying to say DUNE SUCKS RAR AMERICA FUCK YEAH or something. Assuming you use the American Military as your benchmark.) And you look at it over both a short and long term, because militaries are not set in stone and they do change over time (at least, ideally they do.)

And that's just ONE level of complexity. Multiply that over scores, or even hundreds of possible sci fi 'militaries' and.. it gets fucking complicated. And even THEN its not enough, because not all universes will neccesarily be compared the same way: different sorts of governments, different cultures, different objectives, etc. Do we rate a military that slaughtered all its enemies ot the last man/woman/child as being better than one who simply settles for 'defeating' them without neccesarily slaughtering shit tons of people? (Attrition vs maneuver warfare in a RL context.) Does the military that spends the most money to get the fanciest toys, biggest bombs, and create the hugest fleets rank better than one that doesn't go all out, but tailors its military capabilities to what it actually needs (regardless of whether or not it matches their potential capabilities.) Is it better to have a highly competent human army, or a low competence droid army (say, like the Trade Federation battle droid army?) I could probably go on endlessly.

Short version of the above: shit be complex, its better not to try to simplify it. Good/bad gets decided by a checklist measuring various criteria on a case by case basis, tailored to each example.

[Zinegata]

Short version of the above: shit be complex, its better not to try to simplify it. Good/bad gets decided by a checklist measuring various criteria on a case by case basis, tailored to each example.

Of course I'm gonna answer you with "Yes, but...". I agree with what you're saying but my primary interest isn't the criteria of what makes a good military - it's whether or not Zeon qualifies. I merely attempted to tangentially address the point of "don't judge a military by a few factors" by showing a lot of factors that shows Zeon to be more akin to a Medieval Feudal system.

Why should I respond to you more than just "Yes, I agree" when I already agree? I'm really talking more to Stark (and addressing his mistaken assumptions about Zeon's "successes") in the first place.

I did warn folks it's a long rant about what a bad military Zeon actually is.

Now, if you want to ask me about what makes a good military, like I said - having a certain level of discipline and professionalim is necessary. Without it, it's not even a functioning military.