Best/Worst military forces in Science Fiction

[SpaceMarine93]

With Starship Troopers: Invasion coming out this Summer, I had decided to read through Robert A. Heinlein's original 1959 work to see how Mobile Infantry really worked.

What I got was great: political filibusting aside, the Mobile Infantry in the book, unlike the film, was an elite, effective military force with its jump-jet capable, heavily armed powered armor and superb training, able performing rapid insertions from orbit and launch well-coordinated/planned, devastating blitzkrieg operations against the enemy before retrieval. With these advantages, they were able to hold off the numerically superior technologically-advance Pseudo-Arachnids and eventually turn the tide in their favor by the end of the book.

The contrast between the Mobile Infantry of the book and the film was grating - while Robert A Heinlein used the novel's elite M.I. to postulate how a futuristic effective military force could work, Paul Verhoeven deliberately made the film's M.I. crap to deconstruct the main themes of the novel and military science fiction in general.

This contrast got me thinking: From all the science fiction media over the years, judging by all the sci-fi military forces' training, technology, firepower, speed, strategies/tactics/co-ordination, logistics, and many other aspects, which could we conclude to be the Top 5 best military force to ever be portrayed in Sci-Fi, and which are the Top 5 worst military force in Sci-Fi in comparison?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Worst, oh, there are so very very mega- many.

Best? First nomination- the Galactic Patrol from the Lensman series. All- voulnteer, absolutely dedicated, managed and drove enormous technical change and stayed thoroughly on top of it, stood their ground to the last when they were on the recieving end of the imbalance and worked their way back on top, eventually liberating an entire galaxy and crushing an ancient eldritch evil; their elites are very, very elite indeed, the rank and file superior in skill and motivation to their enemies, and the strange device inscribed on their banner is Law- they will do to the limits of their skill and determination what has to be done, and stop when it has been done- liberators, not conquerors. All in all they are far too good to actually be true.

[Thanas]

I gotta say the B5 militaries all seemed professional and knowing their business.

[Mr Bean]

I gotta say the B5 militaries all seemed professional and knowing their business.

I disagree, the B5 Armies/Navy demonstrated TV show level competence. Against who they were fighting they were competent but sans space-ships they get their asses kicked by a 20th century second rate military on the ground or in a station. The Navy is another story and by the standards of the show highly inconsistent. The ships of the human military were not designed with pure fighting in mind, lots of wasted space, giant weakpoints, weapon placements that look good but have to much overlap and blind spots.

There are VERY few (As in next to none) movie or TV armies that come off looking good. For instance the Neo Battlestar Galatica troops start off looking well but then we get hostage situations where Starbuck goes in dual wielding pistols and manages to shoot a hostage, her Marine backup get themselves killed. Previously we see military pilots who to be fair are pilots but seem to know nothing about escape and evasion. The only thing to be said about them is they hold their guns right and don't shoot each other THAT often.

[madd0ct0r]

Tagon's Toughs in Schlock Mercenary - cocky, with a flexible chain of command but has survived multiple interesting situations (even if most of the crew have been rebuilt from just a head multiple times)

[Thanas]

I gotta say the B5 militaries all seemed professional and knowing their business.

I disagree, the B5 Armies/Navy demonstrated TV show level competence. Against who they were fighting they were competent but sans space-ships they get their asses kicked by a 20th century second rate military on the ground or in a station. The Navy is another story and by the standards of the show highly inconsistent. The ships of the human military were not designed with pure fighting in mind, lots of wasted space, giant weakpoints, weapon placements that look good but have to much overlap and blind spots.

The human military is lagging behind the other. That being said, fighting on the ground of course is a bit hard to talk about considering we hardly see any happening and the most space fighting we see is on areas prohibiting high explosives etc.

As to the other part, I just like how each race had competent military figures. For example, both the Narns and the centauri were concerned about logistics, intelligence and strategic planning. Which we usually never see on TV. So yes, by the standards of TV shows, I think B5 is among the best there is.

[Stark]

Using ST as a standard when they have such dominance is pretty sad. What about more effective forces that fight enemies that are at parity? I mean, Zeon killed half the human race and conquered the world in a few months with massive landing operations despite a tiny resource base. Slightly more impressive than 'nukes vs bugs'.

At least the B5 guys had strategic concerns around their battles; scifi that is just Pokemon with spaceships is not great.

[Blayne]

Yeah Babylon 5 in general felt very real in how it at least dealt with topics relating to warfare; we can at least chalk up and excuse the shoddier infantry combat as being a problem with budget. Mostly, I much preferred the gun designs in the pilot they looked cooler.

The Haloverse if you include the novels has a very good military that comes across as basically the whole world's top 5-8 militaries and intelligence agencies merged and polished. The Covenant ping pongs in effectiveness, sometimes they are really good at fighting and sometimes they fall for simple tricks.

Anyone else annoyed somewhat with Stargate in that they never brought armor or heavier weaponry on any mission? I remember some weird mission where they thought they were rescuing Daniel's wife (from Abydos) and they had some weird thing with a .50 on it that I have never seen ever again anywhere else. The Stargate looks big enough that you could fit a Bradley through it, maybe a attack helo if you disassembled the propellers and put them back on the other side?

No SAMs either, they had the one stinger in season one and never seemed to think of bringing any mobile AA or borrow the russian versions that looks smaller. Heck, looks like you could fit the Uragan, Pion or a Grad through it. Sigh, lost opportunities :(

[The Vortex Empire]

The Haloverse if you include the novels has a very good military that comes across as basically the whole world's top 5-8 militaries and intelligence agencies merged and polished. The Covenant ping pongs in effectiveness, sometimes they are really good at fighting and sometimes they fall for simple tricks.

Halo being the same universe where the humans have their troops drive around in a glorified technical that doesn't even have doors, and issues an assault rifle that doesn't even have iron sights? And is there even any evidence of human use of artillery?

[Blayne]

Books; almost every question asked by people who have never read the books can be answered with "in/read the books".

I only have to read "not even having ironsights" to make it pretty obviously you haven't read the books, or play the second game, or the third, or Reach... Or even the first game if we take it literally enough.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Anyone else annoyed somewhat with Stargate in that they never brought armor or heavier weaponry on any mission? I remember some weird mission where they thought they were rescuing Daniel's wife (from Abydos) and they had some weird thing with a .50 on it that I have never seen ever again anywhere else. The Stargate looks big enough that you could fit a Bradley through it, maybe a attack helo if you disassembled the propellers and put them back on the other side?

No SAMs either, they had the one stinger in season one and never seemed to think of bringing any mobile AA or borrow the russian versions that looks smaller. Heck, looks like you could fit the Uragan, Pion or a Grad through it. Sigh, lost opportunities

They use SAM's in a number of other episodes of SG-1 and Atlantis, "Full Circle" from SG-1 season 6 and "Lost City" from season 7 as well as "The Siege, part 2" from Season 1 of Atlantis.

But yes, given the size of the gate, you could easily fit decent size APC's through. This may have been why the later seasons had them use the Prometheus and Odyssey and Atlantis had the Jumpers.

[Blayne]

Those were like railguns weren't they? Not quite the same thing, they struck me as very short ranged weaponry. Which is silly because with some powerful radar if they bring it through and proper SAMs with 70km range they could've had effective area denial going on.

[The Vortex Empire]

Books; almost every question asked by people who have never read the books can be answered with "in/read the books".

I only have to read "not even having ironsights" to make it pretty obviously you haven't read the books, or play the second game, or the third, or Reach... Or even the first game if we take it literally enough.

I've played every game but ODST and Halo Wars and I've read The Fall of Reach, The Flood, First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx, and Contact Harvest.

In none that I've played or read does the standard MA5B assault rifle have iron sights.

[Blayne]

So if I read "Battle Ready" by Tonny Zionni who was a former head of CENTCOM and throughout the entire book he never states ever aiming down iron sights; I can thus logically conclude that iron sights do not in fact exist?

0_o

Aside from the fact that I *do* recall them saying "iron sights" or at least "aiming down the gun" at some point in time.

[The Vortex Empire]

So if I read "Battle Ready" by Tonny Zionni who was a former head of CENTCOM and throughout the entire book he never states ever aiming down iron sights; I can thus logically conclude that iron sights do not in fact exist?

0_o

Aside from the fact that I *do* recall them saying "iron sights" or at least "aiming down the gun" at some point in time.

How does the Halo canon hierarchy work, out of curiosity? Because you can just look at the image of the gun every time it's ever been depicted. No iron sights. If those depictions don't actually matter then I retract the claim, but that is a very... odd way to do things.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Those were like railguns weren't they? Not quite the same thing, they struck me as very short ranged weaponry. Which is silly because with some powerful radar if they bring it through and proper SAMs with 70km range they could've had effective area denial going on.

They had railguns, yes, but you also see soem of the soldiers (Marines? not sure) firing shoulder-launched SAMs.

[Blayne]

It's very odd to assume Star Trek canonicity applies to all other works in a WYSIWYG sort of way; it's easier to presume that they have ironsights until proven otherwise via a definitive source saying they don't.

As it is, we do see the NPC's aiming down the length, its probably they are just difficult to see or camera assisted.

For example: SMG clearly seems to have an ironsight. Presumably we need to assume the Battlerifle has one when you can't use the camera assisted features.

Secondly, the Warthog make's sense when the Covenant's small arms at least in the books seems to be effective at melting the armor off of it, it's a question of speed vs protection. Not unreasonable considering today we still have that trade off.

The lack of artillery also becomes reasonable when we consider that generally this is handled by orbitral strike craft; or whenever its the human's on the ground the covenant have taken the high ground (space) and would likely plaster any such positions.

We know in Glasslands not only do the Covenant have anti aircraft capability going out into planetary orbit, but heavy AA or tactical AA in general (also in Halo 3), so we can presume the Humans have this as well; in fact we see in a map for Halo 3 and during the campaign the Humans with plenty of AA looking missile launchers, so if you have those you also likely have rocket artillery.

It isn't unreasonable to presume that it is merely coincidence that we never see it, because wars are big with many fronts and we only saw a small part of it. Small strike team insertions and ONI shenanigans, never actual pitched land battles until the "tail end" of one. By which point artillery wouldn't be available anymore.

The humans have also generally used long range missiles to try to strike at the Covenant, but point defences take them out; its possible point defence might even make short work of shells as well.

They had railguns, yes, but you also see soem of the soldiers (Marines? not sure) firing shoulder-launched SAMs.

I'm thinking of like the big stuff on hummers or on the back of trucks, stuff with good coverage.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Given the number of rounds they were able to bring for the railguns (a standard magazine holding 10,000 rounds?), I would imaigne they made a choice for the guns over missiles.

[Blayne]

That doesn't make sense; we have both kinds of weapon systems in real life; munitions has little to do with it, it's about over lapping coverage and effectiveness. AA guns like the Shilka are short ranged and about pouring lead into the sky, missiles are long ranged area denial and more likely to hit individual targets with the individual missiles. (I think, maybe someone more knowledgeable can correct me of their proper use)

Would area denial work? Maybe not, but you would with the limited missiles you have knock a bunch out before they even get within strafing range and maybe force them to fight from lower down within the more effective range of the railguns.

[OmegaChief]

It's very odd to assume Star Trek canonicity applies to all other works in a WYSIWYG sort of way; it's easier to presume that they have ironsights until proven otherwise via a definitive source saying they don't.

I'm pretty sure the offical Halo canon policy is 'Newer over-rides older' which means the battle for Reach depicted in the game is how it happened, not how it happened in the novel. So if the guns don't have Iron Sights in the latest game, they don't have iron sights, it's simple.

Additionally, given the Covvies massives airs uperiority, relying on Orbital/Air support for artillary makes zero sense, you'd think humanity would focus on some ground based artillary to cover this weakness, especially if what you say about the warthog having no armour because the designers realise armour is usless is true

[Eternal_Freedom]

That doesn't make sense; we have both kinds of weapon systems in real life; munitions has little to do with it, it's about over lapping coverage and effectiveness. AA guns like the Shilka are short ranged and about pouring lead into the sky, missiles are long ranged area denial and more likely to hit individual targets with the individual missiles. (I think, maybe someone more knowledgeable can correct me of their proper use)

It doesn't make sense for real world militaries, but when you have only one shot to get supplies to Atlantis, in a short time (a matter of two or three minutes, if that) through a device with a limited size, then the railgun option may have been persuasively better.

[Batman]

I think people are overestimating the size of the Stargate here. Remember the damn thing's cirular while modern armoured vehicles are essentially rectangular so it's not the absolute maximum width of the inner diameter that's important, but will the vehicle silhoute fit), and I doubt you could get so much as a Humvee through that (and let's not forget the damn thing is a double dozen stories down in a hole in the mountain, so how do you get the vehicles to the gate?)
You'd think they'd give them at least a few trikes or quads so they don't have to walk everywhere though.

[Mr Bean]

I think people are overestimating the size of the Stargate here. Remember the damn thing's cirular while modern armoured vehicles are essentially rectangular so it's not the absolute maximum width of the inner diameter that's important, but will the vehicle silhoute fit), and I doubt you could get so much as a Humvee through that (and let's not forget the damn thing is a double dozen stories down in a hole in the mountain, so how do you get the vehicles to the gate?)
You'd think they'd give them at least a few trikes or quads so they don't have to walk everywhere though.

Then you use ATV's and assemble the thing on the other side of the gate. You don't have to drive the thing down there in one piece break it up and transport it in sections.

Further you may not get a Humvee through there but it sure as hell fit a light armored vehicle through.

[Captain Seafort]

I think people are overestimating the size of the Stargate here. Remember the damn thing's cirular while modern armoured vehicles are essentially rectangular so it's not the absolute maximum width of the inner diameter that's important, but will the vehicle silhoute fit)

Yes, at least a Bradley will.

how do you get the vehicles to the gate?)

Lower them down to the gate through the same hole the gate entered through (and through which it was removed when about to blow up).

[khursed]

It's hard to say.

From politic fiction, even though it's not really science fiction, Tom Clancy really puts the nice details and touches of the military.

I've read a lot of military history, and my main problem with Clancy's work, is that the USA always win in way too short of a time, with way too few loses. Not to mention a little too much deus ex machina, but hey, it is fiction.

An army that actually pissed me off, on how obviously good it supposedly was, are the Fremen in Frank Herbert's Dune. I mean it's pretty sad that a bunch of desert rats, who learned how to be mean by being constantly dehydrated, hungry, and probably smelling like an open sewer hole, managed to defeat the "greatest" force in history there, the infamous Sardokar. I will not even touch the last 3 books, I loved that they tried, but military wise, there were so many deus ex machina event in the last book that I'm still not sure exactly what the heck happened.

I must say, I've read all the Horus Heresy books, the Ultramarine with Uriel Ventris exploits, and I do like those space marines. It totally baffles me that they love close combat so much, and how often they seem to get within blade range, otherwise it's pretty believable. They do a very nice work of letting you know just how awesome every part of the imperial army is, well pre-heresy at least, the astarte appear as godlike, and they used to move in forces as huge as a quarter of a million back then.

I'm just a bit underwhelmed at the energy figures, and the actual combat itself, whats the point of using lasgun that can't kill a space marine when there's .50 cal that could probably do more damage? The bolter themselves baffle me a little, why so few rounds? Ok so they fire super heavy .75 cal shells, with funky explosive reactive stuff. But when all is said and done, they almost always end up fighting with their chain swords knee deep in blood. So it does feel like a backward way of fighting.

TV armies are mostly a joke, because they are a bunch of extra redshirt facing the almighty main characters.

So, when I want a good realistic battle, I read my WWII books, and other military history books, because lets be honest, most fiction wars feel too often fake and thrown together without much thoughts. Especially when you have a bunch of heroes that have character shields, and survive mind boggling odds.