Armageddon???? - Part Eighty One Up

[K. A. Pital]

I like the fact that the demons are becoming serious about warfare and intent on using their best possible WMD without restraint.

That adds some drama to a war that would be horribly lopsided otherwise.

[Shroom Man 777]

Satan-san wuvs baka Belial!

^______^


It really was kawaii. Poor Orcs, though. And I think Wong's suggestion, that Satan would claim that he was utterly unharmed by the air strike, is awesome.

Satan: SNAAAAKE! IT'S NOT OVER YET!

And, fuck yeah.

SKY-VOLCANO!

I'm glad I contributed that much!

[Edward Yee]

I think Satan was caught off guard. There's so much treachery and back-stabbing in Dis that Belial's "tears" absolutely bewildered Satan.

This is the first time that he believes anyone's been truly loyal to him? Daaamn.

[JBG]

"Of course, the TSR.2 doesn't hold a candle to the F-12B (production version of the Lockheed YF-12) or the B-70 Valkyrie, but it'll probably take considerably more time, money, and effort to get the USAF superplanes back in the air."

If it was at all possible I am sure Stuart, et al, would love to see Valkyrie in service in numbers.

Not likely at all though. One B-70 survives of two built and it is the first, bare bones, lets just get the bloody thing flying article. The second, closer to production/operational standard article was destroyed after a mid air collision with an F-104 chaser aircraft. The pictures of that aircraft going down are enough to bring a tear to one's eye. But mach 3 aircraft are very expensive to research, develop, manufacture and operate. You'd be better off accepting mach 2 performance and seeing how many B-58s can be brought back into service out of AMARC, if any.

From memory the F-12B was an interceptor only, being based on the single seat precursor to the Blackbird?

JN1 is right to lament the small numbers of Buccaneers. A superb low level strike aircraft.

"If Heaven does not hurry up and jump in soon it will find a fully mobilised humanity (just imagine how many soldiers that would be!) ready to fight and defeat whatever they can throw at us."

How long is it since the message? 3 or so months? A lot of early recruits will be at least through basic. And over that time training facilities would have expanded apace, accelerating the rate of increase of trained, regular troops. As industry gears up ammo, spares and POL issues will diminish with the focus moving to new production and the equipping of new formations.

Sooner or later but hopefully not that much later reserves will have to be built up for operations against Yahweh. The flow of mechanised troops to hell must have a limit lest we be caught with our armoured punch elsewhere - ie I don't think Yahweh will restrict operations to "hell as a battlefield".

Mr Wong, your speculation about the massive hydra is at least partly answered! Some exceedingly tricky animal husbandry/mad scientist work.

[K. A. Pital]

Please, that's ridiculous

We're dealing with a war with a significantly inferior enemy. That's "sticks and stones" like enemy.

Stuart loves modern military tech, but I feel his initial approach (take out the old stuff) is rather correct.

There's ab-so-lutely no need to waste huge amounts of money to produce unnecessary hyper-expensive weapons. I expect that for the duration of war, the funds will be diverted to the most simple, but robust and powerful weapons, primitive but cheap.

Face it, things like F-22 are a total waste in the Hell War. The Valkyrie, the F-12B and so on are worthless and complete waste of money now. Unless you just find them in exploitable condition, but no building from scratch!

Hell, the radar-countermeasures, EWS, and other things are totally not needed here. The best strategy of the world would be to adopt the cheapest possible production design for simple bombers (the B-52s, Tu-95 and even more primitive ones) would work. Just to be able to deliver more fire power for less money.

There's limited use in supersonic drones, since they can pass over Hell quickly and have great range, but nothing beyond that. All advanced technologies designed for combatting modern airforce are wrthless and a huge waste of money in the Hell War.

Only great range and great firepower matters in Hell. Stealth and speeds, complex ECM, countermeasures - are totally not worth it.

[Sea Skimmer]

Thing is, we know we can beat hell, not a question about it, and since heaven can’t be incomparably stronger, so we pretty much know we can beat them too. But then what? The human just doubled (roughly) its land mass and saw its population utterly exploded upward. Many of those 90 billion extra people know how to use and make modern weapons, and the world anti demon alliance wont last forever. That means fighting to secure the peace and draw up a new world order in the aftermath of victory is going to be messy, a mess that’s makes the post WW2 period and cold war look like a joke.

In that postwar environment the US and other top nations WILL need high end weapons, and they have to already know it, Stuarts already been hinting a lot at all the postwar problems people are projecting in story. That means while all emphasis right now has to be on producing high firepower weapons, everyone also needs to lay the groundwork for development and production of high tech stuff.

[K. A. Pital]

Many of those 90 billion extra people know how to use and make modern weapons

They lack any sort of infrastructure to do so.

Whereas the war with a Pangae-sized continent would seem to last long enough to unify humans of Earth at the very least under a World Government (especially useful to coordinate military action against Hell and Heaven), same like I think an extra-terrestial war (long) would do.

[Darth Yoshi]

And there's still the matter of Heaven to deal with. Currently, there is only one known portal to Heaven, and the demons still control their end of it. There's plenty of time to work out all the details, but of course laying the groundwork for addressing them now is the smart choice.

[K. A. Pital]

It's just a question of priorities. I find it hard to believe than when money from the entire world is required to make huge stockpiles of usual war weapons, someone would intensify projects that were axed 40 years ago due to costs, and that was in peacetime.

Here is the question of priority spending. Of course near war's end, as usual, humans may start thinking about high-tech weapons and usual quarred, but not during a total war with Hell.

If someone says humans are dusting off unreasonable high tech weapons for this war from the very start, I'd laugh.

[PainRack]

Yes...... Shakes are over.......... Thank you Stu!

[Stuart Mackey]

Turin... ITALY? How is that a significant target?

Lingotto car factory, owned by Fiat, I believe it produced some aircraft and tanks for fascist Italy.

I would have though that Hell would want to keep that one going in that case

[Darth Wong]

Personally, I think we should save it for Yahweh; as Darth Wong stated, that guy is just watching human and demon forces decimate each other.

The human forces aren't being 'decimated'. In fact the human losses are trivial. Meanwhile there is massive mobilisation; huge numbers of troops being trained, more troops gaining combat experience, all available factories being switched over to war production, new planes and tanks being built, new weapons being designed from scratch...

In fact earth is much better prepared in almost every way to fight Heaven now than when The Message first came. The only possible exception is the drain on munitions stockpiles, which will likely be highly temporary as more and more factories complete their change-over.

That's assuming they can actually open portals into Heaven. The sole existing one is only man-sized, which is a rather severe tactical limitation. If Heaven has WMD on par with those available to Hell, and humanity's only means of striking back is through a man-sized portal, that's really not good. Not to belabour the point, but they need the ability to open more portals.

[Bayonet]

Turin... ITALY? How is that a significant target?

Belial may have some good intel, here.

Situated on a broad, fertile plain east of the Alps, Turin is one of Italy’s most important industrial and communications centres. It is a major road and rail junction and has an international airport. Preeminent in Italy’s automotive industry, Turin has long been associated with Fiat, which is headquartered there, and is home to Fiat and Lancia plants that produce much of the country’s output of automobiles. In the late 20th century, however, as the automobile industry declined, the city looked to diversify its economy, and tourism and the manufacture of high-technology products have become increasingly significant. Airplane, ball-bearing, rubber, and paper industries are also important, as are tanning and leatherworking, and typography and lithography. There are metallurgical, chemical, plastics, and electrotechnical industries. Chocolate and wines (especially vermouth) are notable products.

Somebody please teach me how to dress my links!

Or perhaps Belial's intel is a bit stale. "The Royal Armory houses an extensive array of arms, including examples from the 16th and 17th centuries." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Palace_of_Turin

[Pelranius]

A man sized (or more accurately demon sized) portal from Hell to Heaven could still prove useful in some ways, such as sending in small UAVs armed with tactical nukes or sarin.

Additionally, if Yahweh wants fight Earth, he'll eventually have to open up a large portal to send his army in, especially if he wants to hold territory. Given what we've seen of his personality, he likes to be ostentatious and somehow I don't think just bombarding our cities will be satisfying enough for him.

[Zim]

A man sized (or more accurately demon sized) portal from Hell to Heaven could still prove useful in some ways, such as sending in small UAVs armed with tactical nukes or sarin.

I think that all depends on what Uriel is capable of.

[Darth Wong]

A man sized (or more accurately demon sized) portal from Hell to Heaven could still prove useful in some ways, such as sending in small UAVs armed with tactical nukes or sarin.

Since when can a UAV with a tactical nuke fly through a man-sized portal? Do you have any idea how large a Predator UAV is? And why couldn't Yahweh simply block off his side with granite rocks?

Additionally, if Yahweh wants fight Earth, he'll eventually have to open up a large portal to send his army in, especially if he wants to hold territory. Given what we've seen of his personality, he likes to be ostentatious and somehow I don't think just bombarding our cities will be satisfying enough for him.

What if he or his generals are smart enough to figure out that Satan's giant hellmouth was a huge mistake?

[Dracofrost]

Well, assuming Yahweh plays it smart, it then comes down to how much more difficult it is to open a portal to Heaven than one to Hell, since we're apparently getting close to opening one to begin naval operations in hell; assuming the difficulty in opening such a portal is comparable, we should be able to open something akin to the Giant Iraqi Hellmouth leading into Heaven without too much difficulty. Then again, it might require someone on the other side already in Heaven to send the signal, or something, and I imagine that could end up rather problematic.

[Guardsman Bass]

I wonder if the Baldricks might be a help on that. Presumably if you could get a group of them involved in creating the portals to defect, they may have some intel on what it takes to open a portal into Heaven. I think it merely said that the portal to Heaven in Hell was the last one they left open, implying that they had more at one time.

[Sea Skimmer]

Since when can a UAV with a tactical nuke fly through a man-sized portal? Do you have any idea how large a Predator UAV is? And why couldn't Yahweh simply block off his side with granite rocks?

Why would anyone expend a Predator? He did say a small UAV, the US already happens to have several different small UAVs intended for delivering nuclear warheads…. cruise missiles. AGM-86 ALCM and AGM-129 ACM are both a couple feet wide and fully operational in the inventory with W-80 nuclear warheads, a dial a yield warhead able to produce both tactical and strategic blasts. The vast majority of standoff missiles in the world will fit through a gap of only a few feet anyway.

A wall of rocks could be dealt with absurdly easily. Smash through the portal with a simple steel battering ram to make a small space cavity the wall. Then pack that space with conventional explosives. Heck we could probably skip the battering ram and just send through a 2,000lb aircraft bomb on an improvised rocket sled.

The main limitation of that portal I see is simply that we cant drive large vehicles through it. That means we can’t mount an invasion through it, though raiding would be possible if we can seize control of the far side and start brining through equipment in pieces.

[Shroom Man 777]

Can a periscope be stuck through a portal to allow a man on "our end" to see what's going on in "their end"? I mean, since we can't see what's on the other side, obviously light can't go through a portal... would that be any different with an optical instrument?

[Starglider]

Bear in mind that the heaven portal can probably be closed quite easily by the angels if the hell end looks like it's going to be overrun.

Can a periscope be stuck through a portal to allow a man on "our end" to see what's going on in "their end"?

A conventional optical one, no. A cabled electronic one, possibly, depending on whether a cable can span a portal without snapping (that still isn't completely clear, but the existence of pipelines through the hellgate portal suggests that it is possible).

[Darth Wong]

Why would anyone expend a Predator? He did say a small UAV, the US already happens to have several different small UAVs intended for delivering nuclear warheads…. cruise missiles. AGM-86 ALCM and AGM-129 ACM are both a couple feet wide and fully operational in the inventory with W-80 nuclear warheads, a dial a yield warhead able to produce both tactical and strategic blasts. The vast majority of standoff missiles in the world will fit through a gap of only a few feet anyway.

How can you tell it where to go? You have no idea what's on the other side, and no maps.

A wall of rocks could be dealt with absurdly easily. Smash through the portal with a simple steel battering ram to make a small space cavity the wall. Then pack that space with conventional explosives. Heck we could probably skip the battering ram and just send through a 2,000lb aircraft bomb on an improvised rocket sled.

I did think of setting off explosives just on the other side of the portal, but doesn't that risk closing the portal?

The main limitation of that portal I see is simply that we cant drive large vehicles through it. That means we can’t mount an invasion through it, though raiding would be possible if we can seize control of the far side and start brining through equipment in pieces.

Part of the problem with opening portals in Heaven is the fact that we seem to need contacts on the other side in order to do this, and nobody's been allowed into Heaven for a thousand years. Worse yet, everyone on the other side is ideologically pure, unlike Hell where the denizens are not there by choice.

Hopefully, Hell's naga can help in this regard.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I wonder if we could simply just out-bastard Yahweh by offering a replica of the Ark of the Covenant to him in homage as a proposal to negotiate--with a nuclear bomb inside of it.

Not likely, but it would be as good as the scene in Stargate.

[Starglider]

How can you tell it where to go? You have no idea what's on the other side, and no maps.

It should be fairly straightforward to convert a Tomahawk into a recon UAV, using off-the-shelf comms and sensor gear. It would be expensive and unrecoverable and relatively short ranged, but for a bit of scouting around the portal it could still work. You'd have a job launching it though if the other side is a similarly fortified pit; it'd have to be wheeled through by ground troops then fired off near-vertically. On the plus side the Tomahawk is at least designed to do this; a UAV such as a Predator could be carried through disassembled but would be very difficult to get airborne once there.

I did think of setting off explosives just on the other side of the portal, but doesn't that risk closing the portal?

No. Closing a portal requires a high power, carefully shaped EM pulse, which is why Dr Kuroneko is having so many sleepless nights. Nukes can affect them to a lesser degree (at least, that's what the theory suggests) but that's due to the torrent of X-rays. Conventional explosives shouldn't have any effect.

[Darth Wong]

If Heaven has stationed a bunch of angels around the portal on the other side, primed to blast intruders with lightning or whatever weapons they have, it would be pretty hard to get anything through. So if they barricade it up and we blow up the barricade, it would still be a huge bitch to get anything through there.

Mind you, much depends on the position of the portal on the other side. If it's on a mountaintop in Heaven, then that would be almost ideal for human forces. We could just hurl stuff through, and they'd have a hell of a time stopping it. If, on the other hand, it's in a subterranean pit, then any incursion attempt through the portal would be quite seriously fucked. All they'd have to do is fill up the pit with dirt and rocks, assuming they don't just close the portal.