The Perfect Soldier/Army

[GoldenFalcon]

Ok, long story in a nutshell, I'm writing a novel on an alien race. Don't really want to go into much more detail other than that.

Now that my reason has been stated, what (tactics/weapons/utilities/etc) would constitute a soldier (plus an army) that would make the USMC look like utter idiots? I pretty much know the basics on how to avoid being a redshirt, but I'd like to take a few suggestions from the rest of ya given you all can tell what makes an army suckage. I'm also trying to avoid using fancy technology to compensate for tactic loopholes.

[Montcalm]

For weapons avoid these quantum torpedoes and other trek tech,stick with missiles and lasers or ordinary guns.

[GoldenFalcon]

For weapons avoid these quantum torpedoes and other trek tech,stick with missiles and lasers or ordinary guns.

Ah no worries, I don't plan on having quantum subspace wavelength disruptors in my story.

[RedImperator]

Super soldiers are brain bugs. You could spend five years training and conditioning the perfect soldier, equip him with the best weapons and gadgets money can buy, spend tens of millions of dollars doing this, all to have him die ffive minutes into his first battle from a shell fragment. Special forces units excepted, above a certain level of training and you'll run into the law of diminishing returns--it's not worth the investment for a regular grunt.

[CaptainChewbacca]

If you want "super" shocktroops, have them be evolved from a pack-oriented species. The soldiers are deployed in squads or packs, with each pack being made of brothers who were born and raised together, giving them an eerie amount of teamwork and efficiency.

That's about as good as you can do.

[Seggybop]

I don't think he meant for a description of a single ubersoldier... more like a plan for an entire military with extremely good tactics/equipment.

[Ghost Rider]

I don't think he meant for a description of a single ubersoldier... more like a plan for an entire military with extremely good tactics/equipment.

Still a brain bug.

You can make the soliders into literally supreme warriors with a tactical genius unrivalled and the trillions you have spent can still be destroyed by cheaper hardware.

[Robert Walper]

What about making the troops artificial ones? The armies of Skynet (most noteably the T-800s and T-1000s) always struck me as a deadly potential force. Intelligent, versatile, no fear, difficult to kill, mass produced. My two cents anyhow.

[Aaron]

What about making the troops artificial ones? The armies of Skynet (most noteably the T-800s and T-1000s) always struck me as a deadly potential force. Intelligent, versatile, no fear, difficult to kill, mass produced. My two cents anyhow.

That actually seems to be the future plan for the US military. They are trying to replace as many people as they can with UAV's, robots etc.

[justifier]

Well if its an alien race, the best idea is to look to nature.
1. Natural nightvision, like owls...seven foot tall gun wielding owls.
2. Ablity to smell enemies
3. Ability to go into deep hibernation for decades

[Tom_Aurum]

Shouldn't this be in the fanfics section?

[RedX]

It's not a brainbug to have a more advanced army. In this case, we're not talking about humans spending $$$$$ on a handful of ubersoldiers; we're talking about these alien's basic grunts. To them, they're just normal/moderately elite soldiers; to us, they make the USMC look like fools.

That settled...
(Note that all the below is my opinion only.)
Generally, future combat should be about speed and precision. Why waste rounds against an inferior opponent when you can pick out individual nose hairs from three kilometers and shoot them off while running fifty miles an hour? Individual troopers should be fast, professional troops that move in close-knit teams and react as a whole within milliseconds to any change in the situation. Give them powered armor, near-perfect stealth systems, and overpowering weapons (try really, really fast projectiles and/or high-intensity lasers). Make them so fast they can hit a USMC platoon and kill every member within seconds, then dissapear.

As for tanks, a simple low-slung block of Impenetrable Armor with one really, really big gun should do it. For flavor, toss in energy screens, hover capabilities, and/or (if you're really feeling nasty) near-perfect Point Defense that fries anything that goes over the horizon.

As far as the rest of the army goes, it's all about the orbitals. Note that from space, one can basically see anything and drop rocks on anything. If co-ordination is good enough, you can have individual infantrymen calling down c-fractional kinetic strikes whenever he feels he needs to.

Finally, and I re-iterate, Speed and Shock power are the keys. Hit hard, suddenly, from nowhere and with no warning. Target command areas, rally points, even individual officers. Cut them up, given them nothing to hang on to, then surround them at your leasure and call for surrender or annihilate them as the whim strikes you.

[Sarevok]

What about making the troops artificial ones? The armies of Skynet (most noteably the T-800s and T-1000s) always struck me as a deadly potential force. Intelligent, versatile, no fear, difficult to kill, mass produced. My two cents anyhow.

Robots are good for many things such as a mobile fire support unit. But unless they have very advanced AI they will not be autonomous enough to replace human soldiers.

[Robert Walper]

What about making the troops artificial ones? The armies of Skynet (most noteably the T-800s and T-1000s) always struck me as a deadly potential force. Intelligent, versatile, no fear, difficult to kill, mass produced. My two cents anyhow.

Robots are good for many things such as a mobile fire support unit. But unless they have very advanced AI they will not be autonomous enough to replace human soldiers.

Hence my usage of the term "intelligent".

[GoldenFalcon]

I don't think he meant for a description of a single ubersoldier... more like a plan for an entire military with extremely good tactics/equipment.

Yeah that's it, things in relation to the army and its individual soldiers.

It's not a brainbug to have a more advanced army. In this case, we're not talking about humans spending $$$$$ on a handful of ubersoldiers; we're talking about these alien's basic grunts. To them, they're just normal/moderately elite soldiers; to us, they make the USMC look like fools.

I'm aiming for their normal, basic training to outmatch anything we'd have on Earth. Since they're more advanced, it should be logical to assume that their military would grow with that advancement.

[Knife]

You will have to take a look at not only the threat forces of your universe but the friendly forces too. As well as the economical and industial base and exactly what kind of tech you have on any various types of tech.

There is just too many factors to give you any help at this point. It is always a balencing act, reference the advice you have already gotten, between money and equipment/training.

Some of the factors you want to think on;

type of small arms. Small unit tactics would be WAY different with energy based weapons as opposed to bullets. Also, armor or defensive gear will weigh troops down and tactics would change.

amount of troops or insert/extract methods. How you envision that troops would normally be delievered to a battle field. Everything from troop ships to drop ships to battlefield transports.

What would the troops be expecting to go up against?

[Sea Skimmer]

Still a brain bug.

You can make the soliders into literally supreme warriors with a tactical genius unrivalled and the trillions you have spent can still be destroyed by cheaper hardware.

Indeed, and artillery fire has had a pesky habit of causing about half the casualties an army suffers. No amount of training is going to have any noteworthy effect on the ability of soldiers to drop flat. Large wars you need armies for call for good infantry, not highly trained hand picked commandos.

[SWPIGWANG]

What an good army is build upon is dependent upon the strategic role first, and technology second.

If the goal is simply destruction, the best grunt would probably be an bomb of some sort with propulsion or something...... heh

But sticking with the basic idea of "grunts" for defense and such, there is still alot of leeway.

Alien grunts makes no sense unless we know what the aliens are. Aliens the size of ants or the size of elephants would live in different environments and have completely different requirements for "grunts". After all, human sized units are not good at fighting ants. Aliens that live on gas giants, under ground or neutron starts would obviously not have anything resembling grunts we normally think of. The structure of the aliens would also mean different requirements. For an hivemind with an variety of cheap and disposible creatures at disposal (think: breaking a nail) or an highly individualistic society where it is every alien for themselves would result in completely different force structure.

But really if we are talking about destruction, it is always about bigger bombs with faster and more accurate delievery on the planetside, and lazers or something like that in space or other suitable environments.

Secondly, one can not make an competent army look "stupid" with different tactics and technology as any army is build to counter known threats. It is only if an army can not cope an threat that is reasonablely knowable and counterable can such an army be said to be stupid.

But since this is probably another space opera we are talking about, I'll assume that the aliens are human-like in every sense of the word in lifecycle, size, agility and such, with variation within one magnitude and homogeneous to boot.

Than, what we are looking at is the maximum combat power for minimum sociological cost. (since economics is dependent on the mind behind it) We'll assume that aliens are individualistic with an sense of self preservation so that combat losses would mean something so that efficiency wouldn't look something like a zerg swarm. Note that zerg swarm is terrible efficient in what it is designed to do with the resources it has, but we wouldn't consider it "elite" anyway. If that is the case, than the most probable loop out is to automate everything so the individual would not be at risk. So what we end up with is lots of robots, and no "grunt" to die.

So in the end, "elite grunts" only make sense in an narrow technological, social and physical environment.

[SWPIGWANG]

OMG, I just realized how incoherent that last post was....

I want edit button

[MarkIX]

OMG, I just realized how incoherent that last post was....

I want edit button

Seem fine to me, but you should see some of my posts
Another point is if you are invading Earth why fight the Marines at all, you could just sya to the political leaders "I have big rocks to drop on you if you don't tell the Marines to do what I want" if they didn't a couple of rock later they would be replaced by somebody who would

[Xon]

Finally, and I re-iterate, Speed and Shock power are the keys. Hit hard, suddenly, from nowhere and with no warning. Target command areas, rally points, even individual officers. Cut them up, given them nothing to hang on to, then surround them at your leasure and call for surrender or annihilate them as the whim strikes you.

This is really what you need for a 'super' army.

[Thirdfain]

In the STGOD, my soldiers were all conditioned (like a Sukh doctor from Dune,) with a set of combat-based morals called "New Bushido." It essentially made the soldiers obedient and team-focused, while allowing them a great deal of freedom to think on their feet should teh shit hit the fan- all the while rendering them incapable of being panicked or frightened. A neural command-net linking all of them, giving them excellent communications at the squad level, essentially made them badass soldiers without even mentioning their armament and defenses.

[Ravenwing]

for ahsort of highly evolved type, id say dont go in for a sort of race built like atank casue if its a race used to technology, thry would obviously be a bit more fragile (humans are a point to this one)but give them some sort of battle armour thats enhances them to a level that can become like a tank but also gives speed. but for a more origional edge, a projectile weopen rather than a laser one would enhance, its hard to shield yourself from a barrage of actual bullets rather than just a shielding box that you hiope doesnt break until your done killing everyone.

[Ghost Rider]

The biggest problem with every super solider type...is cheaper hardware will still kill them.

Thirdfain's approach while a bit excessive at least covers the basic need of a well rounded soldier...adding in armor, super rifles that can destroy skyscrapers, etc becomes sci-fi insanity/wankery and a complete disregard of military knowledge

[Sam Or I]

Personally what comes to mind are Spartans.