Posleen vs TBO

[Darth Hoth]

Blah blah blah Q blah, &c, &c . . .

TBO Earth is inserted into the Posleenverse at the appropriate time; by 2000, the Posleen launch their attack from the Ringo/Kratman series (a few years earlier than in their timeline, as Q wants a nice and even number for the year of invasion). The TBO humans get the same amount of help (and sabotage) from the Galactics that Posleenverse Earth did, and the same time to prepare for the onslaught. How does the conflict unfold, and what is its eventual outcome?

[MKSheppard]

The TBO humans get the same amount of help (and sabotage) from the Galactics that Posleenverse Earth did, and the same time to prepare for the onslaught. How does the conflict unfold, and what is its eventual outcome?

Because the TBO humans are not total idiots in love with wank, the Posleen are crushed easily. Instead of applying that magic unobtanium armor to power armor, they'll produce it in slabs for M-70s (M-1 analogues), and as 1mm thick sheets to armor vital areas on their B-70s.

[Vehrec]

The TBO humans get the same amount of help (and sabotage) from the Galactics that Posleenverse Earth did, and the same time to prepare for the onslaught. How does the conflict unfold, and what is its eventual outcome?

Because the TBO humans are not total idiots in love with wank, the Posleen are crushed easily. Instead of applying that magic unobtanium armor to power armor, they'll produce it in slabs for M-70s (M-1 analogues), and as 1mm thick sheets to armor vital areas on their B-70s.

What about the Russians, Caliphate and Japanese/Chinese empire? Do they each go their own way? I agree that 'in love with wank' is a good way to describe those books, having read a few of them and wondering about a lot of things.

Does a B-70 fly high and fast enough to evade the auto-targeting weapons on all those Posleen vehicles and ships? Maybe evade is the wrong word, but would they even prioritize it as a threat if they were on the ground?

[Samuel]

The TBO humans get the same amount of help (and sabotage) from the Galactics that Posleenverse Earth did, and the same time to prepare for the onslaught. How does the conflict unfold, and what is its eventual outcome?

Because the TBO humans are not total idiots in love with wank, the Posleen are crushed easily. Instead of applying that magic unobtanium armor to power armor, they'll produce it in slabs for M-70s (M-1 analogues), and as 1mm thick sheets to armor vital areas on their B-70s.

What about the Russians, Caliphate and Japanese/Chinese empire? Do they each go their own way? I agree that 'in love with wank' is a good way to describe those books, having read a few of them and wondering about a lot of things.

Does a B-70 fly high and fast enough to evade the auto-targeting weapons on all those Posleen vehicles and ships? Maybe evade is the wrong word, but would they even prioritize it as a threat if they were on the ground?

The Posleen don't have anti-air craft weapons! They used massed gun fire to bring down planes. If you fly high enough all you have to worry about are the landers.

There are so many ways TBO could do better. They could ring the planet with asteroids so that when the Posleen pop out they annihlate, they could use nuclear mines, they could actually stockpile resources, they could use chemical weapons, etc.

It will be a cake walk. The Posleen don't have the concepts of supply lines, combat engineers, combined arms, siege warfare, professional troopers... they don't start with any of these!

They use brain-dead "normals" with the smartest able to do patrolling in mass infantry waves and fight for loot. Against an enemy who has no computation with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, they will be slaughtered.

Yes, they are immune- to galactic poisons However, the food sources they need aren't.

[Samuel]

As for the other empires, presumably it works out where the galactics help each one. Of course, if their secret services aren't brain dead, they will be able to crush any attempted sabotage.

[Mr Bean]

The Posleen don't have anti-air craft weapons! They used massed gun fire to bring down planes. If you fly high enough all you have to worry about are the landers. .

Note Samuel these landers are able to engage ICBM's with a great deal of accuracy, more to the point because of Writer brainbug actively trying to dodge simply gets more weapon systems fired at you.

So saying, gee just fly higher does not work against Posleen, they are stated as easily being able to engage targets in LEO via the landers and even the saucers will attempt to engage under a certain height. Simply flying higher is not going to cut it against C speed weapons.

That said there are plenty of other more reasonable strategy as why TBO could shred the Posleen, Fly higher is not one of them

[Samuel]

The Posleen don't have anti-air craft weapons! They used massed gun fire to bring down planes. If you fly high enough all you have to worry about are the landers. .

Note Samuel these landers are able to engage ICBM's with a great deal of accuracy, more to the point because of Writer brainbug actively trying to dodge simply gets more weapon systems fired at you.

So saying, gee just fly higher does not work against Posleen, they are stated as easily being able to engage targets in LEO via the landers and even the saucers will attempt to engage under a certain height. Simply flying higher is not going to cut it against C speed weapons.

That said there are plenty of other more reasonable strategy as why TBO could shred the Posleen, Fly higher is not one of them

I'm pretty sure they bring and keep down the landers (didn't read the whole series- just the first 4 books). They do have air-superiority craft, but they only bring them out after 5 years of combat.

Does anyone get their anti-missle system? It only hits ICBMs on the boost phase, not the incoming one.

[Count Chocula]

Posleen anti-air systems accurately target and destroy anything not on a ballistic trajectory, ie boost-phase ICBMs and anything in flight. IIRC, in A Hymn Before Battle, a recce flight of F-22Es, on a low-level, supersonic run, were engaged and only one ship made it. The satellites orbiting Earth on ballistic paths were deliberately targeted before the landing. The ballistic loophole was the main reason that Bun-Bun and the other SheVa anti-lander tanks were effective.

[Count Chocula]

Ghetto edit: again IIRC, C-Decs, Lampreys, God King chariots, and Posleen personal weapons were all used to engage aerial targets.

[Beowulf]

Hate to break it to you, but every God-King's saucer is a capable AAW platform. If it's non ballistic, the AI will classify it as a threat, and attempt to bring it down. Most of the weaponry carried on God-King's saucers have an effective range equal to that of their sensors. (1mm, 3mm railguns, and Hypervelocity Missiles (C-fractional)).

Remember that the primary objective of the Galactics is the narrow win of the human race over the Posleen. Thus, all the Galactic supplied materials will end up in shortage status significantly sooner than in the original story. They'll depend less on fucking over the humans through human sabotage, and do more fucking over through supply shortages. M-70 tanks? Sure, but you'll only have enough armor for 5, and then they'll run out.

[Mr Bean]

I'm pretty sure they bring and keep down the landers (didn't read the whole series- just the first 4 books). They do have air-superiority craft, but they only bring them out after 5 years of combat.

Does anyone get their anti-missle system? It only hits ICBMs on the boost phase, not the incoming one.

The landers engage the targets from the ground. One of the points of that book was that the Posleen had grounded all their landers to begin the consolidation stage of the parts of the planet they controlled. What was left in orbit was a token force. The books are specific(Hell's fair) that over a thousand ICBM's from widely scattered points around the US and off-shore sub-launched nuclear weapons. Result? Less than twenty reach the target despite the fact the landers could only engage during the boost phase

FYI per the books their targeting is automated anything not recognized is engaged by the kinetic and heavy laser systems on God King Saucers AND the weapon systems on the Landers. Hell's Fair is specific that God King saucers run on automatic and will fire on targets moving that fast.

As I said before Writers Brain bug, he wanted air power to be non-existent so he gives them uber anti-air weaponry that runs on auto and won't engage non-moving weapons.

[Mr Bean]

Note I don't think TBO verse would have issues with planting nuclear landmines near suspected landing sites

[Samuel]

Note I don't think TBO verse would have issues with planting nuclear landmines near suspected landing sites

I was more of the opinion that you have nuclear mines laid out on a grid in flat locations (possible landing sites) and you have them radio detonated or proximity detonated. Disguise them to look like telephone poles and you are set

Seriously, the Posleen have no brains when it comes to booby traps. And if you annihilate the first wave, no one exists to pass on info to the second. Rinse, repeat and reset.

Shep can state what the technical specs would need to be.

[Vehrec]

Or you could try using nuclear artillery shells in abundance. Get a nice big gun for delivery and a little anti-matter for a first stage, and you'll have clean efficient fusion explosions going off every minute or so. Hell, you might be able to create a shell that can be given to a tank. Now wouldn't that be fun.

[Ender]

IIRC, there is a rant in one of the books about countries losing vast territory because their weak liberal leaders won't use nukes. I doubt that will be a problem for TBO.

[Samuel]

IIRC, there is a rant in one of the books about countries losing vast territory because their weak liberal leaders won't use nukes. I doubt that will be a problem for TBO.

That would be the US. Because everyone knows that liberals are Un-American! God, I hate the books political slant. Especially Watch on the Rhine.

On the bright side, Shep is in his happy place.

[Sea Skimmer]

Or you could try using nuclear artillery shells in abundance. Get a nice big gun for delivery and a little anti-matter for a first stage, and you'll have clean efficient fusion explosions going off every minute or so. Hell, you might be able to create a shell that can be given to a tank. Now wouldn't that be fun.

Big gun? Nuclear shells as small as 105mm are possible, essentially any tank built by a western nation or Russia since the mid 1960s could be armed with nuclear weapons. Indeed even some WW2 tanks could be, like the Sherman howitzer variant or the Maus. Course this is hardly required since we'd have far more artillery peices the nuclear shells already.

TBO probably never went and produced this small a caliber of nuke for the same reason it didn’t happen in real life, 105mm artillery doesn’t have enough range to be useful in a nuclear role and such shells are highly expensive, but 152-155mm and 8 inch nuclear shells would exist in abundance. Such shells could yield 40kt in the 1960s; we could probably do better today. Anti matter makes no sense at all, such absurdity would not occur in TBO, and as I recall in the books the yield of the anti matter weapons is just pathetically low. Like 10kt or something else easily reached with even the most basic fission bomb.

What’s more the US could also potentially use MLRS rockets and Lance missiles in the nuclear role, they follow ballistic flight paths and the latter already has a 100kt warhead. Much heavier ballistic rockets hauling even multi megaton warheads are also perfectly feasible.

[Junghalli]

Anti matter makes no sense at all, such absurdity would not occur in TBO, and as I recall in the books the yield of the anti matter weapons is just pathetically low. Like 10kt or something else easily reached with even the most basic fission bomb.

You could theoretically make a much smaller nuclear warhead by using a tiny quantity of antimatter to ignite the reaction. I read a paper on it once, but I don't have the link right now, sorry (it was in a thread on SB, and their search function is disabled).

Whether it would be worth it to develop in this scenario is an open question.

[consequences]

IIRC, there is a rant in one of the books about countries losing vast territory because their weak liberal leaders won't use nukes. I doubt that will be a problem for TBO.

That would be one of the Kratman collaborations, or possibly WtDD. And the kratman co-write are utter shite that doesn't bother to try to stay consistent with the other books.

I'll also note that China threw a couple thousand warheads at the Posleen and it didn't do them a damned bit of good.

Authorial fiat to let America-Fuck-Yeah! crush the alien hordes, and more recently the Mudjahadeen revolution taking over Detroit after a plague(don't ask) is pretty much all he does these days.

[TheMuffinKing]

Regular artillery f's the Posleen up pretty well. Use of potentially expensive nuclear rounds should be focused more on engaging ships, although it would make shorter work of destroying the large formations Posleen are so fond of. I'm torn on the subject now that I think about it.

[MKSheppard]

So saying, gee just fly higher does not work against Posleen

Yet, you know, their anti-aircraft platforms can easily engage aerodynamic manouvering targets, but can't engage ballistic targets. Yeah, that makes complete sense.

Remember that the primary objective of the Galactics is the narrow win of the human race over the Posleen. Thus, all the Galactic supplied materials will end up in shortage status significantly sooner than in the original story. They'll depend less on fucking over the humans through human sabotage, and do more fucking over through supply shortages. M-70 tanks? Sure, but you'll only have enough armor for 5, and then they'll run out.

That would be an interesting thing to write about.

*The SEER shows up on a Galactic planet on a visit, and then goes back home*

"Mister president; here is my report on the productive capability of a single Galactic planet, and rough estimates on the amount of wanktobtanium armor that is used in a single Galactic warship. Next to that are the estimated requirements Lima says they'll need to replace the frontal armor modules on 2,500 M-70 tanks."

"Seer, these figures don't match."

"Indeed, mister president, indeed."

"They're fucking with us."

"Yessir."

[MKSheppard]

In fact, one of the big problems in producing the Power Armor, was that the people who made the armor, literally had to create the armor on the molecular level, with nothing but their minds.

Now, creating simple slabs of armor is a hell of a lot easier than visualizing a complex powered armor suit. The Seer would know this, and when the inevitable delays occur, pointed questions would be asked.

[MKSheppard]

Your typical US Army division consists of 8-11 Manuver battalions, and 3-4 Field Arty battalions, plus support units. Now, a hypothetical MRLS Division would probably have two manuver battalions as security elements, et cetera. That leaves 13 MRLS battalions in the unit; each MRLS Battalion has 29 M270 launchers. That's 377 M270 launchers in my Hypothetical MRLS Division. Each launcher carries 12 MRLS rockets. That's 4,524 MRLS rockets from a single MRLS Division.

Oh, did I also mention that I was going to use multiple MRLS divisions to pound Posleen landing zones?

Assuming 65% of the rockets from a single MRLS division are intercepted, we're still going to have 2,940 MRLS rockets impact the target zone. Let us look at the effects of this.

The M77 submunition used in the MRLS system is a shaped charge submunition which can penetrate up to 100 mm of RHA. The steel casing of the M77 also produces fragments which kill or wound to a radius of 4m from detonation. A total spill of all 12 rocketsin a MRLS launcher will pretty much wipe out a grid square (1000 x 1000m).

Looking at a map of Virginia...Culpeper, Rapahannock, Fauqier, and Prince William Counties (Where the majority of the Posleen landings appear to have been in Gust Front) if you drew a circle around them, it would form a circle 70~ kilometers in diameter, with a total area of 219.8 square kilometers. Since 65% of all rockets are being intercepted (a SWAG), we're only assured of 128~ square kilometers of destruction per MRLS Division.

(I'm lowballing this, a different method of calculation gave me 245 sq km).

Luckily I did say that we were going to use multiple MRLS divisions.

Sure, it sucks for the people stuck in that place, but hell, we managed to get people to install bombs in their houses so they can commit suicide when the posleen knock on the door, we'll be able to eradicate four counties in Virgina with MRLS spills with little if any political backlash.

And since this is the initial Posleen landings in 2004, well, the Posleen will have not evolved the following tactics:

1.) Breaking up their battalion equivalents for assaults with spacing in between.
2.) Using houses/structures as cover from artillery

So the slaughter by MRLS will be terrible; God King saucers are open topped; and are killed easily by .50 BMG rounds, so even if we discount the fact that the KE of a .50 BMG round and the HEAT effect of a M77 submunition are different kinds of energy, the God King Saucers are still going to have their inhabitants shredded, and they will have the crap knocked out of them; 100mm RHA penetration is nothing to sneeze at.

So that means the majority of the Posleen in those four counties will have been decapicated by our MRLS mega-spill.

Oh did I mention that I'm following up with a second mega-spill in 20~ minutes as soon as my MRLS divisions reload? And with large parts of the Posleen ADA network suppressed, killed, or writhing in chaos, the second salvo will have even more missiles arrive, and the carnage will be awesome.

[TheMuffinKing]

What about protection from lander, B-dec, and C-dec bombardment? Its been a while since I've read the books, but don't the posleen engage ground targets with these from air and orbit?

[Xon]

What about protection from lander, B-dec, and C-dec bombardment? Its been a while since I've read the books, but don't the posleen engage ground targets with these from air and orbit?

Nope, they only attacked air/space targets which where powered or shooting at them. The Landers only ever attacked ground targets which where attacking them.