Worldwar: Throwing the Balance

[lord Martiya]

Edit: Sweden. They had the beginnings of a nuclear program in the 50's and 60's, and took the amount of time needed to build the program on the national debate whether or not to have the program. I could see them deciding that they need nukes in this time line. Now we've got four nuclear powers in Europe.

Make that five: Italy had a nuclear program and activated its first nuclear powerplant in 1963. We never built atomic weapons and the powerplants were closed after a referendum in 1987, but in this timeline we are well before the referendum, we have the Race in orbit and Italy has uranium to build the bomb.

[Simon_Jester]

IIRC, the U.S. was able to take out several of the Races colonization ships with only one nuke when they arrived in 1964, both the conquest and colonization fleets' ships are of comparable durability due to the Lizards standardizing their design and their inability to foresee the need to prepare for space warfare. Now, given the fact that the Lizards never anticipated having to defend their ships, they also do not have any anti-missile capabilities, they would have to rely on ground-based anti-missile batteries, at least until they can weld them onto their ships.

My impression was that the ships themselves had combat capability; remember the combat in orbit during the Race-Reich war in the Colonization novels.

Spartasman, let me just suggest that the plot might need to be in flux a bit; we need to balance reasonable levels of Earth-based space defenses and the plausible capabilities of the Lizard fleet. If they were as well armed as they could be we wouldn't stand a chance, mid-1960s space defenses or not. If they're completely incapable of space warfare, they're going to get hammered before making planetfall. And hammered worse afterwards.

I think we need to discuss this via PM, to address Timothy's concerns (frankly, he knows more about 1960s nuke-happy weapon system proposals than both of us put together) and come up with a viable plot.

[Night_stalker]

The Race is about to find out just how many nuclear missles the earth has! After all once we launch them at their landing ships, they'll know how advanced we truly are!

That said, their counter-missile capabilities are good, and will be even more effective when they have effectively uncontested control of high orbit (Dyna-Soars and space stations notwithstanding, we can't possibly contest high orbit against a fleet of alien starships in 1966. LEO, maybe, but not high orbit).

Given the sheer size of the Lizard fleet, I honestly wouldn't put it past them to manage to stand off attacks launched against them in orbit. Some of their ships would take hits, but they're much larger and better armored than anything we've ever put into space; it's going to take very close range nuclear initiations or a LOT of orbital-velocity shrapnel to destroy each invasion ship, and at a conservative estimate there are 200 to 250 ships to engage.

True, but seeing how both the US and USSR have had a couple decades to plan for this, plus the fact that at the high point of the Cold War, the US had thousands of nukes, and so did the USSR. Their missile defenses may be good, but dealing with thousands of missiles all flying up at the same time may prove to be daunting, to say the least.

[TimothyC]

True, but seeing how both the US and USSR have had a couple decades to plan for this, plus the fact that at the high point of the Cold War, the US had thousands of nukes, and so did the USSR. Their missile defenses may be good, but dealing with thousands of missiles all flying up at the same time may prove to be daunting, to say the least.

You don't get thousands of missiles until the mid to late 1960's as both the US and the USSR start deploying larger and large numbers of large SAMs like NIKE-HERCULES, NIKE-ZEUS, and the S-200, AND large numbers of solid-fuel ICBMs like Minuteman.

[Night_stalker]

I'm sorry, didn't the author himself confirm that the story takes place in the 1960s? Because the second chapter states that pretty clearly.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm sorry, didn't the author himself confirm that the story takes place in the 1960s? Because the second chapter states that pretty clearly.

Yup. He's right. It is at least plausible that the Lizards will run into that kind of extremely heavy SAM defense in the territory of the superpowers, including (possibly) SAMs modified to be able to reach low Earth orbit. Whether they actually will, and how they will cope, is another question.

[TimothyC]

I'm sorry, didn't the author himself confirm that the story takes place in the 1960s? Because the second chapter states that pretty clearly.

It does. It strikes me as a touch funny that the race will be attacking just as we have the ability and the mindset to really make things hairy for them.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, this is why what they actually did (invade as per plan) was a good idea. They didn't conquer the planet, as expected, but at least no one managed to shoot at them meaningfully on the way down.

[Madzcat]

What I think will be really interesting is now instead of there just being a few major areas of conflict, a large chunk of the world is now heavily armed and some of the Race's favorite landing areas are pretty heavily armed and with rather modern stuff. The middle east is going to be just one big armed camp and South America isn't going to be completely defenseless like before.

Also funny now that China is going to be one of their biggest enemies unlike the cake walk they were in the stories.

[Simon_Jester]

A bit iffy. Their first nuclear test was in 1964, and their rocket programs are well behind the US/Soviet curve. Most of their decent weapons at this stage are still Soviet hand-me-downs, too.

As I see it, there are two real threats here. One is the sheer scale on which the Communist government can mobilize infantry, and the Lizards do have the weapons to devastate very large human wave attacks. The other is that Mao will go straight back to guerilla tactics as a preplanned defensive move, but with the advantage of much greater supplies and numbers than he had during the Chinese Civil War. Sort of like what some say happened in Iraq in 2003, with Saddam's government organizing the core of a guerilla movement against US occupation forces in advance, anticipating that their armies would be destroyed in the field.

[Night_stalker]

I'm not very well versed in the Lizard's military capacity, but how well equipped are they to deal with the horror that is napalm?

[lord Martiya]

They never used it, as far I remember. Given they weren't equipped to deal with poison gas because they never used it before (their closest analogue being a little suits for dealing with epidemics, according to Atvar), I'd bet they wouldn't be equipped to deal with napalm and should hope they subjugate somebody who is equipped and can adapt something (like they did when Britons started using mustard gas on them and Germans outdid them with nerve gas).

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, they're no worse equipped to deal with napalm than Vietnam-era militaries; the standard uniform of the era was just cloth, which is no better protection against incendiaries than the Lizards' bare skin. I don't know if even troops in NBC protection suits would be any better off against napalm, since fireproofing isn't normally important in this situation.

They're at danger on the battlefield when people start throwing nukes and gas around, because they don't have the equipment to handle that (though radiation and hazard suits at least exist, so they may be able to make do).

[Scorpion]

Now, given the fact that the Lizards never anticipated having to defend their ships, they also do not have any anti-missile capabilities, they would have to rely on ground-based anti-missile batteries, at least until they can weld them onto their ships.

A Lizard? Improvising? Impossible!

As a sidenote, I found it hard to believe when in the original books, the Lizards had missile interceptor SAMs. You're fighting (or atleast you though you were) medieval knights, what do you need missile interceptors for? Besides, those sams ain't light and getting mass into orbit (and pushing it over several light years!) ain't cheap, and the Race could probably have used that spare mass better for it's original mission...

[spartasman]

well, the Race prepares for EVERYTHING, so their complement of anti-missiles is not completely baseless. Perhaps they thought they would need them to blast asteroids or something. Besides, their anti-missile stocks were only a little above 1000 I think anyway, so it's not like they came loaded for bear.

[MatSci]

I follow this thread with extreme anticipation.

[xt828]

Didn't the Race end up expending most of their anti-missile missiles when the major powers started rocking out the railroad guns? I seem to recall a side-story of I think the Schwerer Gustav, and IIRC most of the powers of the day had the things.

One thing which occurred to me on this topic - the US historically had nuclear-tipped SAMs around this period, and the USSR was well on their way to deploying their own. Surely these developments would have been sped up somewhat, and intercepting Race motherships on approach with nuclear weapons would put a crimp in their invasion.

One downside, though, is that at this point the Soviets are, IIRC, starting to run into the limitations of what their system can do, compared with the West.

[Simon_Jester]

Didn't the Race end up expending most of their anti-missile missiles when the major powers started rocking out the railroad guns? I seem to recall a side-story of I think the Schwerer Gustav, and IIRC most of the powers of the day had the things.

Not the railroad guns, the crude missiles- the German V-weapons and American rockets developed with German aid by a team led by Goddard. We have a scene from the point of view of a Lizard manning their equivalent of a Patriot battery trying to knock down railroad gun shells headed for Lizard ships, though.

Here's my take on this. While the Lizards are running into a vastly more capable aerospace defense network than they faced historically, they have a few advantages of their own. Their ships (and very possibly also their killercraft) can fly above the ceiling of conventional SAMs; see Stuart's references to the capability of the B-70 Valkyrie with respect to Soviet SAM networks and scale up for ships that are perfectly capable of reaching low planetary orbit.

They can base themselves in parts of the globe not covered by superheavy SAM defenses.

They can dominate Earth orbit, even down to LEO, though LEO will remain contested airspace until and unless they manage to knock out all the (limited number of) sites capable of launching LEO-capable satellites- and thus LEO-capable warheads.

Straha has had twenty years to monitor the advance of Earth technology. He knows the humans make massive use of nuclear weapons, that they have plenty of orbital and suborbital rockets, presumably nuclear-tipped, and so on. Moreover, he is one of the most flexible-minded Lizards alive, in relative terms. He will probably have done extensive research into space defenses for the Lizards' ships, and will have spent as much time as possible developing a tactical doctrine for space warfare.

The Lizards are actually fairly competent when they operate within the bounds of doctrine they've had time to work out. It's outside-context problems that are difficult for them, such as guerilla warfare... and I suspect that they know how to fight an enemy armed with nuclear weapons, because they developed those weapons and presumably used them in their own past. There are probably manuals on the subject, I'd expect, even if the assets to exploit the manuals are not immediately available.

[xt828]

Didn't the Race end up expending most of their anti-missile missiles when the major powers started rocking out the railroad guns? I seem to recall a side-story of I think the Schwerer Gustav, and IIRC most of the powers of the day had the things.

Not the railroad guns, the crude missiles- the German V-weapons and American rockets developed with German aid by a team led by Goddard. We have a scene from the point of view of a Lizard manning their equivalent of a Patriot battery trying to knock down railroad gun shells headed for Lizard ships, though.

Ah, I knew I remembered a railroad gun and a flurry of anti-missile missiles, but I forgot about the actual missiles later. The Lizard pilot had a few stories of him trying to track down rocket launching sites, didn't he?

Straha has had twenty years to monitor the advance of Earth technology. He knows the humans make massive use of nuclear weapons, that they have plenty of orbital and suborbital rockets, presumably nuclear-tipped, and so on. Moreover, he is one of the most flexible-minded Lizards alive, in relative terms. He will probably have done extensive research into space defenses for the Lizards' ships, and will have spent as much time as possible developing a tactical doctrine for space warfare.

The Lizards are actually fairly competent when they operate within the bounds of doctrine they've had time to work out. It's outside-context problems that are difficult for them, such as guerilla warfare... and I suspect that they know how to fight an enemy armed with nuclear weapons, because they developed those weapons and presumably used them in their own past. There are probably manuals on the subject, I'd expect, even if the assets to exploit the manuals are not immediately available.

IIRC, when the Lizards first rocked up and realised that the Tosevites were on the cusp on nuclear weaponry, they noted that they would rather nuke the planet than invade. Straha was a strong proponent of this, while Atvar was terrified at the prospect of the colonisation fleet turning up to find a glass ball, and at the likelihood of being regarded and remembered as a failure for not conquering the planet. Over the course of the war and the subsequent Cold War-esque situation, the invasion fleet Lizards learned to accomodate human-paced change and themselves adapt, to the point that there was substantial culture shock between them and the colonisation fleet. Now, the Fleetlord of the colonisation fleet was another by-the-numbers type, but Atvar has sent for instructions from the Emperor himself, which means that those orders will overrule anything the two Fleetlords or their subordinates suggest. I also seem to recall Atvar having some conflicts with the second Fleetlord because both were of equal rank, and thus couldn't overrule each other, but due to experience each interpreted the situation differently.

Straha was the most adaptive of the invasion fleet's Shiplords, for sure, but IIRC he skirted around the edges of what was accepted for behaviour in Lizard society. If his long exposure to humanity has changed him even a little towards what the invasion fleet were like when the colonisation fleet arrived in the books, then I think there's a real danger that many if not most of his suggestions would be written off as being hasty or unnatural or dangerous, and unlike in the situation in the books, it's only his crew who think like him, rather than a whole fleet. He runs a real rick of being seen by the other Lizards as quite insane. I seem to recall that he was also quite opposed to the experiment in bringing humans aboard, so it's not too likely that he'd have an example human to show off to explain his thought.

I also recall Lizard doctrine being remarkably rigid, due to being largely theoretical in nature. I'm sure that the Lizards note on many occasions that their homeworld united quite early on in their development and as such they didn't experience conflicts with weaponry much more advanced than that of the empires of antiquity. I remember them talking at one point about Lizard scientists developing cars to the point of hydrogen engines prior to making them widely available, which strongly suggests that their world was already united at that point - which suggests that they never experienced armoured warfare. Neither of the two races they already conquered were much more advanced than they expected us to be, either. This would suggest that all their modern military doctrine was developed by think-tank types, and given the Lizard tendency towards looking for a single correct solution rather than for contingencies, backups and alternatives, and the rather catastrophic failure of the invasion, I think that their military thinkers also lean towards single solutions to problems. Couple that with their tendency against innovation, and I think that they could quickly find that most of their engagements fall outside what is allowed-for in their doctrines.

[edit] I should point out here that I haven't read the books in question for about five years, and never got around to reading the last one. I really can't stomach reading them again, though, so I'm just going on memory here.

[spartasman]

The Race united in the Atomic Age, not in their antiquity. That is why they have tanks and fighters, because they developed them to fight each other. They do not improvise or come up with unnecessary technology, every weapon they use to invade would have been used on home 100,000 years ago, or to conquer the Rabotevs and Hallessi. The only exception is space travel, which is itself stunted by their understanding that they cannot go beyond light-speed (in the book, and later on in this story, WE will).

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the Race has two mommies.

[Simon_Jester]

Cute.

Spartasman, I think it might be a good idea to explore a slightly alternate take on the Race, one that makes them a bit less inflexible and, well, dumb than they were written in Turtledove.

The problem is that Turtledove was writing his antagonists as being dumb enough that with modern technology and control of space they could lose, or at least be fought to a standstill, against WWII powers. But an antagonist that dumb wouldn't stand a chance against the vastly more powerful nuclear-equipped powers of the 1960s. So I think we need to give the Lizards at least a glimmer of ability to react intelligently when someone points nuclear missiles at them.

Thus, Straha suggests something like:

"Fleetlord, I've spent the last decade digging through the archives, and we have the following descriptions of hypothetical space based weapon systems from the Great War of Unification in which the 7th Emperor Hiss-pok contemplated launching orbital weapon platforms to aid in the suppression of the heretical followers of the Not-Emperor Pok-hiss. This might be a good time to use them, or we might never make planetfall"

[spartasman]

Well, that's what Straha is there for, to be a catalyst for innovation and strategic thinking. The Race was never completely inept, their intelligence chief, Drefsab, did a pretty good job up until he was killed by Otto Skorzeny, and Atvar himself was not too bad when it came to new situations.

Having the fleet completely unable to defend itself is not going to go, obviously. Bu then you have to figure on how far Atvar is willing to follow Straha on his recommendations.

[Simon_Jester]

Given choice between "nuclear annihilation" and "listen to Straha," Atvar would... seriously consider listening to Straha.

[Night_stalker]

Yeah, but once the ground forces casulties start piling up will he reconsider other methods? Last I checked, the USSR had about 2.8-5.3 million men in the Red Army during the height of the Cold War (estimated), that is without resorting to a draft. Add in NATO's total strength of about 35 divisions, which gives the USSR about 525,000 extra troops. That is a daunting number to deal with, so other possibilities might have to be considered.

[Scorpion]

Yeah, but once the ground forces casulties start piling up will he reconsider other methods? Last I checked, the USSR had about 2.8-5.3 million men in the Red Army during the height of the Cold War (estimated), that is without resorting to a draft. Add in NATO's total strength of about 35 divisions, which gives the USSR about 525,000 extra troops. That is a daunting number to deal with, so other possibilities might have to be considered.

Not to mention that in 1966, everyone and their mother in Africa (and to a lesser extent in Southeast Asia) have a Kalashnikov in their hands. Taking Sub-saharan Africa wont be as easy as in World War.