You are now Sky Marshall(Starship Troopers movie verse)

[FaxModem1]

After the failure of Klendathu, you are made Sky Marshall of the Terran Federation. So, how do you beat the bugs?

[TOSDOC]

Wherever possible, orbital bombardment. Preferably until the planet is no more.

All captains and pilots of any space-going carrier vessel are subject to courts martial if they happen to come within 5000 km of each other while under fire.

Neal, you're a goddamned psychic. I'm not paying someone like you to sit there in your lab with an assault rifle shooting at bugs in a cage until you find me a vulnerable spot, and the brain better be fucking afraid when it's surrounded by over a thousand of our troops. Tell me what they're thinking or I'm spraying you with contact cement and using you for flypaper.

Find out Denise Richards' secret formula for pain killers and issue it to the rest of the grunts.

Begin a combined-arms strategy against the bugs. Air support and mechanized warfare are added on a hell-of-a-lot more regular basis to support Mobile Infantry, who are hereby never allowed on a bug planet without perfecting and deploying Heinlein's power armor suits first.

Get rid of the standard issue assault rifles and nuclear hand grenades. Reintroduce such archaic weapons as SAWs, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, nerve gas, and flamethrowers. Issue as many one-shot-one-kill weapons to troops as possible.

The current version of the Mobile Infantry are going back to Close Combat Training to learn how to use these suits and weapons, survive the close-in melee engagements which seems to be the pattern in Bug Warfare, and figure out how to call in an air strike. The instructors' names are James Whitmore, James Arness, Edmund Gwenn, and Joan Weldon.

[Steven Snyder]

As mentioned, the ground forces need a complete tear down and restructuring to something that would actually resemble a functional fighting force. I am not even convinced that organic ground forces are even the best way to go to fighting the bugs. I would rather see some sort of semi/fully autonomous tank vehicle decked out with anti-infantry weapons and a onboard nuclear warhead in case it gets the attentions of a giant swarm of bugs.

That being said...the bugs in the movie don't have any useful air or space assets that I saw. I would think that dropping a few texas-sized rocks on their worlds would resolve the situation quite nicely.

[Rabid]

Not much to add to the above, except this :

- Never try to take a bug planet. Show them the power of the Q-bomb and make them regret the day they thought they could resist to the might of Mankind !
- Ground Troops are hereby declared to be used only for the defense of Federation planets and outposts. All opposition will either be eliminated, integrated and converted or left in peace.
- Increase the Fleet, and train them so that the attack that erased Buenos Aires from the map will never happen again - on any colony of the federation.
- Increase propaganda effort in favor of the war and smartly crush any dissent that would risk the survival of Mankind.
- Set up Laws that decree that all governments officials, including me, and high-ranking military officers, are to be subjected every two weeks to a complete psi-scan/mind reading and medical/genetic analysis to ensure that no one in the chain of command is either A/ a traitor, B/ contaminated by a mindworm, or C/ tainted, mutated, or holding a parasites inside his body.
- Set other colony like Sanctuary (a secret colony whose location is known by only a few, which is used by the Fleet as a, well, you guessed it, sanctuary), and tighten the security about their location.



Oh, and :

- If long lasting peace can't be reached with the Bugs, exterminate them. To the last one.

[Tasoth]

Is book SST allowed?

If just the movie (I have no want to see two or three and I do not know if the graphic novels are admissable) is being used, then you're going to have a hard time glassing planets and killing them all. We know they have most likely performed dedicated bombing campaigns on planets and, if Rico's comment about fleet glassing planets is true, they have unleashed hell on planetary surfaces. And the Bugs survive these events.

So how would I combat the Arachnid Menace? Long range intrasystem patrol vessels. They don't have to be massively huge, just big enough to take down meteors and egg clusters. This most likely won't guarantee one hundred percent success on stopping things from making planetfall, but you use your MI/PDF to clean up anything that touches down.

R&D would immediately be put into producing long lasting nerve toxins and viruses to insert into bug planets and allow time to depopulate them. It would most likely be a cocktail of various agents to try and prevent immune individuals from squeaking by. It most likely won't be perfect, but it'll work.

Additionally, slipping something to make female Arachnids sterile would be immensely useful. This could further increase the likelihood of extermination as with no females laying fertile eggs, their numbers can't bounce back.

[Srelex]

Given that I now live in a parody universe and even then it seems that the Federation there is quite eager for the war to continue, I merely encourage more emphasis on mixed showers.

[HMS Sophia]

With the book it suddenly becomes easier
Nova bombs, orbital delivery of sinking gasses, and R&D work on underground comms and mapping systems (better than specials. Or at least more defined maps).

Without the book, start training my training officers something about teaching combined arms and squad level tactics better than mob and swarm.
Also, build more peewee nukes.

If I can use the CGI tv series, it becomes interesting. Light armour operations backed up by marauders and power suited troops would make for interesting tactics, and neodogs with lasers in their heads are fucking awesome...

[Batman]

What are my actual directives as Sky Marshal? Am I actually supposed to try and win the war? Or am I simply tasked with keeping it going? Sorry, but when armchair generals with no military background on the internet can spot that the way they're going about this war is abysmally stupid, you can't help but wonder if maybe they're doing it on purpose.

[Rabid]

In the book, they are really trying to win, for all I know.

In the film, though, I seem to gather from Words of God (Paul Verhoeven) that the Federation only really hold because it has enemies to fight - stop the war, and the people will begin to question the necessity as a regime for the Federation to be led by the military for the military. In the third movie, they had to transform the Federation in a Christian theocracy in order to "satisfy" the 'spiritual' thirst of their people - that and because directed fanaticism seems to be a really great weapon...


So, I think the goal isn't so much to "win" the war once and for all, than to keep the enemy at bay, and to keep it alive, somehow, for propaganda purpose, for the Federation to keep a hold on Power.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Then if the emphasis is to prolong the war, I would get my Mobile infantry some better training and weaponry, and have them basically set up massive fortresses on bug planets, that we can "valiantly hold against the tyrannical bug assaults" whilst we "desperately pour resources into our R&D teams, hoping that they can find a final weapon before we're overrun."

Repeat ad naseum. This way we have a collection of excelent "last stands" for propoganda, an excuse for more military spending, and also a convinient way to reduce overpopulation.

[Flagg]

What are my actual directives as Sky Marshal? Am I actually supposed to try and win the war? Or am I simply tasked with keeping it going? Sorry, but when armchair generals with no military background on the internet can spot that the way they're going about this war is abysmally stupid, you can't help but wonder if maybe they're doing it on purpose.

It's pretty clear that they are.

[Ahriman238]

I tell Fleet captains that they have to dodge the large, slow, obvious plasma fire from the surface? Also, the Fleet will engage in nuclear and KEW strikes, rather than just giving a ride to MI and hanging out waiting to be shot down. Would orbital/aerial recon be too much to ask for? Probably. Ideally Fleet will glass the planet, and MI will sweep for survivors. The smallest resistance or enemy contact beyond the abilities of a squad will be met with fresh Rods from God.

I will introduce combined arms, artillery and mechanized infantry. They're suppose to be Mobile Infantry, which generally does not mean that they either fly in a shuttle or walk. Power Armor like the book would be nice, but I'd settle for an armored box with wheels that could get men from point A to point B while being proof against the staple-remover bug's jaws.

I will continue the war, we just had tens of thousands die in an unprovoked attack and then our retalitory strike got eaten up. Literally. The war is a diaster I inheirit from my predessor. Still, I see no choice but to proceed.

I will order the creation of defense satellites and an advanced early warning system to prevent more attacks via thrown rocks. Defense in depth is your friend.

In defiance of Heinlein's "everybody is a frontline soldier" spiel, I will create a competent Engineering Corps that will devise fortifications and terrain obstacles to make the Bug's lives a living hell.

Since I now live in a brutal military dictatorship, as one of the ruling military dictators, I may as well try and use my influence to improve the lives of people not directly involved in the war effort.

[Simon_Jester]

I think Heinlein meant that the engineers were trained as riflemen to the point where they could do that job- realistically, this means the engineers are being expended too easily in light of their specialist training and equipment.

It certainly doesn't mean there aren't any trained combat engineers in the Heinlein MI.

[Tasoth]

Something I forgot to put in my post: I'd put iron sights on the damned moritas.

Yeah, you heard me, they lack iron sights. I noticed that the last time I watched the movie.

[eyl]

I think Heinlein meant that the engineers were trained as riflemen to the point where they could do that job- realistically, this means the engineers are being expended too easily in light of their specialist training and equipment.

It certainly doesn't mean there aren't any trained combat engineers in the Heinlein MI.

In the last battle of the book, Rico encounters combat engineers and reflects that in a pinch, "they can fight - perhaps not well, but bravely" (not an exact quote, I don't have the book before me). The "not well" part implies that the engineers are dedicated engineers, and not trained to an equal level as MI in combat (the whole "everyone fights" thing in the book is a cheat - if you look cloesly, it's actually "everyone fights, except for those who don't, who we won't count")

[Agent Fisher]

It's actually, everyone in the MI fights. Including cooks and suit maintainers. But not everyone outside the MI fights.

[Skgoa]

The feeling I got from the movie was that the way the MI worked was that it was never meant to be an effective military. Military service is more a right of passage, so that everyone who wants to be important has to have gone through this experience and will have the "right" views. Do they (i.e. the human leaders) want the war to continue? I don't know, but its pretty clear to me that they started it and aren't all that serious about ending it ASAP.

[Steven Snyder]

The feeling I got from the movie was that the way the MI worked was that it was never meant to be an effective military. Military service is more a right of passage, so that everyone who wants to be important has to have gone through this experience and will have the "right" views. Do they (i.e. the human leaders) want the war to continue? I don't know, but its pretty clear to me that they started it and aren't all that serious about ending it ASAP.

It almost seems that way, their military is horrid...likely I would rate them worse than Star Trek ground forces.

What holds me back from your position is the obvious fear, if you have a military broken to the level as you see in the SST Movie, what would happen if they ever ran into a threat like the Arachnids from the SST Book. I concede it is possible to build a military broken to the levels we see in the movie, you would think that is it probable that someone would have spoken up and said, "Hey guys you know, we may actually need these people to defend us against something sometime."

[Skgoa]

The problem being of course, that "something sometime" is extremely vague. In the SST (movie) 'verse, humanity has no outside threat at all. Well, other than the bugs and they massively underestimated those. So there is actually no argument for doing anything more than putting almost all new recruits* into light infantry and having a couple of ships to transport this infantry. The military has to be just competent enough to make any civil unrest a very suicidal idea.


* And due to the political system there are quite many willing recruits.

[Solauren]

Orbital bombardment of any and all impacted planets. Either in the form of nuclear weapons, or dropped asteroids. Possibly a combination of both. Chemical and Biological weapon assaults afterwards might also be called for.

Start with the systems nearest earth, and work your way out from there.

Keep the soldiers as security onboard systems.

The other measures as noted.

If I need a 'war' to keep things going for the Federation, the Bugs can migrate between planets without ships. "We have no proof the bug menace has been eradicated. Like any other infestation, we must kill everyone, single, last one of them. This means, we must search, every, square, meter, of space".