hongi wrote:The Domination in 1998 face off against nuke-friendly America in the year 1998. At the exact moment the final war on Earth is taking place, everyone in the Domination is transported over to the TBO-verse in exactly the same position in terms of land and geography. For example, a Draka citizen in Africa is still in Africa, a Draka spy in California is still in TBO California.
The same goes for TBOers. The TBO Chinese have all been transported to the Draka-China and the same for all Draka-held territories. The Draka still have the virus in their possession, but no TBO person is infected yet (not enough time). I haven't read the book where the Draka and the Alliance fight it out, but I'm assuming that it was a conventional war scenario along with the superweapons. So when the replacement happens, all ships and missiles and planes that were about to drop weapons find themselves over TBO America or other allied nations. TBO America goes WTF we're getting invaded and we have war.
I hope uou'll excuse this bit of thread necromancy but I only just found this thread (by accident as it happens) and I thought some "author's input" might be helpful.
A few bits of background; I've never read the Draka series so I'm going more or less by what's been said here. Also, the level of technology that's being described as part of the Draka simply isn't practical, To put this into context, S.M. Stirling knows absolutely nothing about military technology, how it works or how it is developed. Or, to be more precise, he knows nothing beyond what's printed in the lowest tier of public magazines and he gets almost all of that wrong. That's not a guess; I've discussed these issues directly with him and his standard of knowledge is abysmal. His arguing technique is simply to make "facts" up and then demand you prove him wrong. In contrast, I've been working in the defense industry for 34 years and have been involved in a lot of these programs from the inside. The aircraft, weapons etc in TBO up to High Frontier all really existed even if some of them never went into production. So in this situation, we're dealing with a military practicality on one side (TBO is what the US could have had if it had made different decisions) against wild-eyed delusional nonsense. Having got that out of the way,......
Your first scenario isn't going to happen. The U.S. military forces in the TBOverse are not some sort of "super-military". They are, instead, a military force that is optimized for strategic warfare - it's a direct lineal descendent of the U.S. force structure that was evolved in the 1950s. Now that has plusses and minuses (TBO isn't an attempt to propose a perfect or ideal situation, it's an attempt to explore what the consequences of certain strategic and tactical decisions are likely to be). One of the consequences of that series of decisions, flow of development if you like, is that the U.S. forces in TBO simply don't do tactical warfare. The thought of fighting a war without using nuclear weapons simply wouldn't occur to them. If attacked they'll go straight for their enemy's heart and brain and do so with overwhelming force.
So really your second scenario is "the one". Here, there is no doubt what would happen, it would be a U.S. walkover, a strategic victory so massive that the Draka would join the ranks of the dodo and dinosaurs (and Germans) as "extinct". The reason is quite simple and one that shows just how little Stirling understands about modern military technology. It's that computer thing and the problem is electronic warfare. This depends upon having very fast, very agile, very easily reprogrammable computers. Hard-wired non-reprogammable systems are just useless deadweight. This is what would happen. On the outset of war, all the U.S. Units would shift to what are called War Only Operating Modes (WARMs) for short. These are combinations of frequency sequences, jitter and twitter ratings and all sorts of other things that are never, ever used in peacetime. Without knowledge of those system parameters, they can't be jammed. The threat library, the listing of those parameters, is software controlled in TBO, hardware in Draka. So, the threat libraries can't be modified by the and the WARMS can't be identified or countered . That means the TBO bombers have perfect situational awareness, there's nothing the Draka can do about it. Now, this is the catch; TBO can intercept Draka radars, isolate their operating modes and reprogram their jammers to counter them. This can be done in real time (the present techno-story, RotV describes this being done). BUT, the hard-wired Draka systems can't shift around to evade the jamming, they;d have to be software-controlled to do that. So the Draka would be completely blind.
So we have a fully-sighted air force on one side facing a completely blinded opponent. Almost nothing else matters, the TBO strategic recon aircraft (really strategic level wild weasels) would have a field day, they'd have no effective opposition while they ranged over enemy destroying the defenses and clearing the way in for the heavy bombers following them. Within a few hours, the Draka would be extinct.
As to any counterblow, I don't know what the Draka use for their strategic nuclear delivery system. Bombers or ICBMs? It doesn't really matter, the ECM issue really decides it. If the Draka use bombers, they'll be running in blind and defenseless against a defense system that is operating at full efficiency and with complete situational awareness. The NORAD fighters and missiles would handle it. ICBMs would be even easier, they are much more vulnerable than bombers, they come in on fixed tracks and would be shot down like clay pigeons (it's that easy; if the missiles are MRVs or MIRVed, the NORAD misileers would just shoot down the busses before they started to release their warheads. That's it, over. Now, we have to put the world back together after the Draka screwed everything up.
Your third scenario is probably equally one-sided. The Draka orbit-to-earth weapons don't matter, the finest weapons in the world are useless when the targeting systems have been destroyed. Also, remember, TBO systems are all manned, if something goes wrong, there are humans on the spot to deal with them. The Draka computers are a disastrous weakness again, they allow the TBO forces to both jam the Draka systems into oblivion and to protect their own systems from Draka jamming.
Genetically engineered chimps and super-men (Boy is that revealing about Stirling's mentality). I can just envisage the conversation in the war room now
General McPeak Seer, we've received word that 250,000 genetically engineered chimpanzees supported by 100,000 enhanced humans are advancing.
The Seer Where are they General?"
General McPeak Ground Zero!
As for the rest of the Draka space stuff, blind and defenseless, it would just be hunted down and destroyed. The colony on Mars? Its defenses jammed then nuked then the population centers cracked open with nukes. The Draka who aren't fried, blasted or irradiated suffocate.
Space weapons and nukes allowed.
Who wins?[/quote]
Where do you shoot it - at liftoff or at discharge point?