Best/Worst military forces in Science Fiction

[lord Martiya]

I think a competent military would be the one of the Race from Turtledove's Worldwar series, at least for the standards of science fiction: well rounded, well trained, using combined arms and it's always sent to conquer a planet with much more than supposedly needed to both still win in case someone stronger than the natives beated them to the prize and partly offset the logistical nightmare created by the lack of FTL capability. Sure, they failed to take over Earth in the end, but that came because of a combination that a thousand times what you need to conquer 12th century Earth is inadequate against the combined armies of WWII Earth (much more numerous than their troops and whose equipment was powerful and advanced enough to do damage and primitive enough to escape their counters), their inability to adapt as fast as humans, the horribly cold weather (for them), the needs of the incoming colonists preventing indiscriminate use of nukes (that and a lucky shot destroying a majority of their nukes) and the strange effect of ginger, and they still conquered half of the planet (the one tolerably hot).

[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.

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 :P

Halo: Reach the game and the novels don't contradict each other, those are two entirely different teams. Additionally see the picture of SMG I posted, clear has an iron sight.

Also it is official canon for instance, that neither the Arbitor nor the Master Chief know how to change the batteries of the Covenant small arms, meaning that just because the games for mechanic reasons show one thing doesn't mean there isn't a more comprehensive explanation.

Also see my above point, we were *never* in any situation where the writers would *need* to write/mention artillery for nay of the book or video game engagements, it just isn't the focus of the books. The Spartan's and ONI in general are the focus, artillery is a pitched battle/bunker buster kind of thing.

For example we know the Wraith tanks are functionally artillery, we also see them used as such in various video game trailers. Therefore we can presume the UNSC has them as well, but just never used them onscreen by coincidence.

Remeber it *makes no sense* for the UNSC to *Not* have artillery, therefore it is easier to believe that it was merely not shown on screen; due to coincidence of the writing.

[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)

Yes, at least a Bradley will.[/qute]
I seriously doubt that. The Bradley is 3.2 metres wide with a height of almost 3 metres when the inner diameter of the Gate is what? 4 meters, maybe 4 and a half?

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).

Yeah. Lowering a 23 ton vehicle down a 26-story shaft. Every time. Most likely nose-down. The SGC simply isn't built for vehicle access. A custom-designed facility that's laid out for that, sure, there's no reason something like the Wiesel or similar couldn't be used, but not the SGC as depicted in the show.

[Alkaloid]

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?

Honestly, the thing that bugged me most about Stargate was that they never, ever, used the 20 odd armed guys on alert to do anything but stand in the gate room, regardless of what was going down on the other side of the gate. The two parter where they have to go off world to extract an SG team that's taken casualties and instead of just sending through the guys constantly on standby, they authorise 3 SG teams to go.
SG team members, they do other stuff, they are scientists and researchers and senior officers, so you have to go and get them, get them armed and equipped, and then send them through the gate, and all the time Bill and George of the US Air Force and their 20 buddies are standing there, already armed and ready to go in the damn gate room. It's not like these guys don't know what the gate is or anything, its just they're not allowed to go through for not obvious reasons.

[Batman]

No, but they're not trained for offworld missions, they're not carrying anything in equipment except for their ready ammunition (whatever that may be for what is essentially a glorified door guard), they're not trained nor outfitted to do much besides call in an alert and open fire if they're told to/there's obvious hostiles coming through the Gate. People going through the Gate need to be able to deal with the Gate closing on them for a considerable time, not to mention interact with the natives. SG teams are trained for that. The Gate guards are not. I can't think of a single instance where the measly adition in firepower offered by the Gate guards would have made a difference in a mission. Heavily armed reinforcements, hell yes, but not those poor sods whose only advantage is they're already in the Gate room.

[Batman]

The worst military force I've ever seen in sci-fi is the Empire from Star Wars. Let's take the events from the early part of The Empire Strikes Back.
First, the admiral doesn't want to track down a lead, and gets overruled by Vader. They didn't seem to have a good process to tell false alarms from real leads, and based it entirely on the commander's gut feeling.

You're welcome to provide one. All they knew was there was apparently a settlement, nothing more.

Their intelligence methodology is systematically broken. In A New Hope, we saw that torture and murder is considered acceptable, despite the fact that it doesn't actually give reliable results. When they did get an answer out of Princess Leia, it was disinformation!

Because that never happened in any other SciFi (or real life, for that matter). '4 Lights' anybody? How about EA during the Clark regime?

This is likely why they couldn't find the rebel base for so long. What other intelligence failures do they have? Their counter-intelligence is similarly poor, given the state of the rebellion's intel.

As evidenced by-you saying so. The state of the Rebellion's intel also being them being led into a deathly trap in TOTJ.

They also have a problem with correction and retention of officers. In ESB, we witness.... two officers be summarily executed for their errors. Dead men don't learn lessons! And, indeed, such behavior is probably part of why so many Imperial officers defect to the rebellion.

And we absolutely see no such thing in other televised SciFi-oh wait, we do, in none other than Trek itself, where murdereizing your superior officer is not only an admissible but expected part of both the Mirror Universe and TNG Klingon path of promotion.

Speaking of errors, again ESB, the admiral makes a tactical error meaning to "catch them by surprise"... but it did nothing of the sort, giving the rebels plenty of time to escape. Is this a tactic he just made up from his gut again? Shouldn't there be a book, and shouldn't going by-the-book be generally effective?

Speaking of going by-the-book, what was it Kirk (the Federation's hero captain, at that) did in TWOK that damn near got his ship shot out from under him? Oh, that's right-ignore it. Yeah, that worked out so well.

Having written procedures updated based on real world experience is how you build institutional knowledge and get a reliable force. The SW military apparently doesn't do it.

The Trek side doesn't seem to be any better about it either. At least Wars has ground armour and support weapons.

We also have gross strategic errors. Going for bigger and bigger weapons, single points of failure

And if this is about the exhaust shaft you're full of it. As has been pointed out a million times before this would never have happened without Luke and it wouldn't have happened with Luke if any serious TIE Fighter screen would have been up.

in physical forces as well as doctrine are the norm. When the Death Star failed, they decided to double-down, and, predictably, failed again.

How, pray tell, did the Death Star fail? Yeah, it got blown up, but it nevertheless managed to blow up Alderaan first. And I fail to see how anybody without the benefit of hindsight would know they'd fail with the second Death Star.

Their general strategy was to get more and more brutal as the rebellion grew. Instead of bringing real loyalty, this would just turn more people against them, as Princess Leia pointed out to Governor Tarkin.

Which is why this has never worked in the real world. Oh wait.

Their whole regime is grossly dysfunctional, including their terrible military. When they win, it is solely through luck and brute force - this isn't sustainable in the long run, as we see when they fall at the end of the trilogy.

Massively more dysfunctional regimes have persisted for decades in the real world and you have yet to show a single instance of the Wars Empire military being the worst (instead of less then optimal, something I would agree to).

[Blayne]

Uuuum, the Star Trek and B5 examples for torture don`t compare; they weren=`t torture for information, but were an effort at brainwashing. The Cardassians were a totalitarian state and that episode was to emphasize their Big Brother tendencies. And for Sheridan they wanted to get him to make a public confession and retraction of his statements, something akin to Chinese and Soviet show trials.

[Batman]

Conceeded, as the use of torture for interrogation doesn't essentially say beans about the quality of a nation's military.

[Ford Prefect]

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.

To begin with, the games are the primary and by far the most important source in the franchise, and second of all the lack of or possession of iron sights on the MA5B is less relevant than the fact that they are using a cartridge which is literally centuries old: 7.62mm M118.

[Losonti Tokash]

Fall of Reach and Halo: Reach agree so much on the chronology of the battle that in the novel, the PoA isn't capable of atmospheric flight and is in the outer system with Cortana aboard at the start of the battle. At the end of Halo: Reach, the PoA launches from the planet's surface just barely escaping the battle (and not having participated directly at all) after Cortana is delivered to the ship for the first time.

[Ford Prefect]

The correct way to approach a destroyed bridge is to just drive into the void and die.

[Zwinmar]

As far SG-1; in addition to the LAV's/Bradley/et al they could use, they could have conceivably, provided of course that they had an access point large enough, drop an artillery piece down the shaft and sent that through the gate.

However, my biggest contention with it is that their door guards are just standing out in the open not behind sandbags at the very least, never mind that over the run of the show they had plenty of time to put in reinforced pill boxes.

[weemadando]

Babylon 5 suffers from serious chain of command issues, which are systemic to most "military" stories regardless of genre as you must involve the central characters in plot development. So, every plot relevant detail, no matter how minor will involve them.

Take for instance The Gathering (which I just watched again) where they need to go to the XO of Babylon 5 (and would have gone to the CO if he was available on the bridge) in order to launch some maintenance drones to investigate a possible atmosphere leak. There is no reason at all for a decision like this to go above the level of "section maintenance supervisor" or similar, but we need it to go to the bridge to avoid having to introduce more characters to the plot.

[weemadando]

The correct way to approach a destroyed bridge is to just drive into the void and die.

So, let's look at this.

No combat air patrol/air superiority = let's roll in with slow, vulnerable tilt rotors with zero capacity to defend themselves or ground forces against enemy air cover.

Massive open plain to cross to engage = let's use unarmoured patrol vehicles to get there.

You know the location of the enemy LZ that you are sending your main force against, but you haven't tried to smash their beachhead with artillery/bombing/EVERYTHING why?

That's pretty fucking bad.

[Irbis]

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.

One - lasguns can and will kill Space Marine, given enough hits. But the point about .50 cal - sorry, that would be squad support weapon, and they already employ much harder kicking weapons in that role (autocannons, lascannons, heavy bolters, multilasers). All of these require two man teams and are capable of killing a Marine much easier than .50, and besides, melta/plasmaguns also carried by IG have literally zero problems killing one. There's no need to replace lasgun, same reasons why real would militaries use M16 instead of M249 as main armament.

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.

I'm sorry, no. No no no. Babylon 5 is almost as atrocious as Trek in this regard, it only has tighter writing, less technobabble, and superficial "realism" trappings. Would you take this background story in RL novel seriously?

This cheeky, bold Yemeni navy captain took a look from the bridge of his battered coast guard boat at approaching USS Nimitz, American supercarrier. Fortunately, he had bright idea - he tied a handful of hand grenades to navigation buoys. With smile, he watched them explode, rending great holes in the hull and sending supercarrier to the bottom.

I'm sorry, Sheridan's whole career is only possible given staggering levels of incompetence by virtually everyone else, especially that civil war business, where his alliance to a species more hated on Earth than Al Quaeda is today in USA somehow wasn't spun into crippling propaganda defeat.

But then again, this is the show where main antagonists (Shadows) are more incompetent than Admiral Ozzel on crack, alien species wear questions as hats, people treat guys speaking things that look outright ridiculous today (Technomages) seriously, and all. Why anyone in Babylon universe bothers with shooting pretty lasers when automated ships armed only with jump engines would quickly defeat every B5 universe navy, by either killing ships with jump points or killing fleets with 2 jump point collisions is beyond me. It's like US navy of WW2 vintage using nuclear bombs not to bomb, but merely to move their ships around somehow

[Stark]

That's pretty much the worst analogy possible. Ps ships have been disabled in battle by floating mines and the nukes were clearly not 'hand grenades' against a ship that should have been over the horizon.

Most amusingly, this response doesn't actually involve the Narn or the Centauri. :v

[weemadando]

Also, let's not forget the whole major plot arc about how monumentally stupid and dysfunctionalthe warrior caste were leading to them listing power on the Grey Council...

[weemadando]

...losing power for those who can't read autocorrect....

[OmegaChief]

Halo: Reach the game and the novels don't contradict each other, those are two entirely different teams. Additionally see the picture of SMG I posted, clear has an iron sight.

Only, y'know, as Los pointed out, they do contradict one hell of a lot, or did you not read the same book as the rest of us?

Also worth noting the fact that one gun (A different gun from the one everyone was talking about I might add) has an iron sight does not mean that every other gun in the armour must have one, especially those that are explicity depicted as not having any, which was the entire point of that argument.

Also it is official canon for instance, that neither the Arbitor nor the Master Chief know how to change the batteries of the Covenant small arms, meaning that just because the games for mechanic reasons show one thing doesn't mean there isn't a more comprehensive explanation.

So it can be offical canon for one thing, but not another because... uh you say so? Or think it would sound stupid? Sorry Blayne, you're not the one who gets to cherry pick examples to decide what's canon in this instance.

Remeber it *makes no sense* for the UNSC to *Not* have artillery, therefore it is easier to believe that it was merely not shown on screen; due to coincidence of the writing.

But as you yourself say, we never see it, hear it refered to (Even not in passing) anywhere in canon. So what? We're supposed to belive in something we have no evidence for because otherwise it makes a faction we like look totally stupid?

Yea, I don't think we can do that Blayne.

[Metahive]

Why is bloodlust of chasing down teddy bears into the woods more important than guarding their post?

If it were just bloodlust, but the actual failure here was in not verifying that the officer relaying the "victory" message was legit. Curious, because on the DS-I they remembered that part and asked for an ID when Han tried to relay another phony message. Must have been a general breakdown in discipline since then.

[Blayne]

The warrior cast was *good* at fighting wars though, the Humans in B5 universe are just exceptionally stubborn as races go, as lampshaded by Londo "any other race would have surrendered [to despair] already." They trashed all of our defencive fleets and broke through every perimeter, they lost the Black Star because they had a cowboy captain who felt like shooting fish in a barrel and got cocky. Like a less lucky Hans Rudel (Stuka pilot ace dude?).

Presumably any nuke that gets close enough to a warship will do serious damage from the gamma rays alone, the inverse square law just means its a really short range even when enhanced for vacuum.

Also the "humans hate the minbari" statement is an absurd comparison and astounding incorrect; the Humans don't hate the minbari as a whole, that's just xenophobic fringe elements. The Humans treat the Minbai nearly exactly the same way the Soviet Union felt about Post-WWII Germany; except imagine a Post-WWII Germany that still had the Nazi's and the Werhmacht and Greater Germany though gave/up lost everything else with no occupations zones.

The B5 Humans fear the Minbari, and even worse we have no fucking clue WHY they "surrendered" at the Battle of the Line (in unverse) so we're even more paranoid and freaked out. That's why it *works* because the Minbari helping the separatists means the High Command is scared shitless to send men to fight them if they don't have to.

[Lupercal]

I never liked the Ewoks/Rebel combine defeating the Empire ground troops at Endor. You know that shit would never happen in 40k.

[Ahriman238]

I agree about the dirtbikes but I generally thought the SGC was a decent showing of military competence. In fact, they did set up a runway on another planet and reassemble an F-302 on the other side once.

Is the Race seriously on this list as a contender for a GOOD army? And nobody has called that out yet? The same Race that only ever wins anything because they have 21st century level military technology and are clueless about tactics and have no idea how to adapt to the simplest of changing or unexpected circumstances?

[Blayne]

I disagree, while there's a bit of a problem regarding show don't tell we never actually "see" the race have trouble adapting to new circumstances beyond a few isolated acts of egregious complacency. The Chicago Pocket and uninspiring drives on various countries capitals and industrial centers; where they simply stop once nuked or mustarded stop pull back and try a different capital; ignoring Japan. Strategically iffy yes, gross acts of incompetance no.

The squad and tank tactics generally seem fairly sound, American style squad tactics, portable squad level radios (the Germans only ever had this to the battalion level, the Americans the platoon level?), modern air tactics (two plane patrols? instead of the Japanese three?); its very hard to see them actually act "incompetantly" they seem to fight very well in nearly all circumstances except when the odds are heavily against them like in Siberia or Chinese cities.

The only thing on the tactical level that comes to mind is their tank drives usually being unsupported into obvious traps, and half the time that's due to ginger or because snipers got their commanders.

[Batman]

I agree about the dirtbikes but I generally thought the SGC was a decent showing of military competence. In fact, they did set up a runway on another planet and reassemble an F-302 on the other side once.

And other than the dirtbikes, it wasn't (and the Goa'uld apparently suffer from the same mental blind spot-they're fine with starships or strafing the surface with Death Gliders, but you go through a Gate-you walk.)
My main point was the SGC was never in a position to make serious use of armoured vehicles due to acessibility (or more accurately, lack thereof) and size restrictions issues.