Which sci-fi nation could be beaten by modern military?

[Serafina]

So, which Sci-Fi universe would be beaten by modern military?
And against which Sci-Fi universe modern military could put up an equal fight?

To adress some obvious factors:

-No orbital support, simply to keep it interesting - it is pretty obvious that nearly every sci-fi nation could devastate modern armies with orbital bombardment.
To draw an (somewhat arbitrary line): Spaceships that can go close to the ground are allowed. An Acclamator would be ok, but not a Star Destroyer.
Of course, fightercraft are also allowed as long as they can operate inside the atmosphere.

-Scale: The Sci-Fi forces have similar numbers than their opponents. That goes into both directions: E.g. Star Trek would gain a larger land army by that.
Again, this is simply to keep the fight intersting and to prevent steamrolling.

-Opposition: Right now, i would like to address only the US military. Full strenght, no foreign entanglements.
Of course, they can produce/recruit more troops.

-Strategic goal: Conquest. The sci-fi forces have to occupy and keep territory.

And now:
FIGHT

[NecronLord]

That's a bloody hard one. Even the goa'uld, for all their infantry's crappyness, can use their shielded capships to fly around in atmosphere and provide uber-defence.

[Sarevok]

The UNSC. Their ground forces tech is bit better in some ways. But not by much. They will be trading men and vehicles against a first world military at roughly equal parity.

[Xon]

The Posleen.

It took massive plot-induced stupidity for them to just lose to modern earth with some really baddly thought out toys.

[Marcus Aurelius]

The only one I can think of are the Martians as they appeared in the original War of the Worlds by Wells. It's difficult to define what equal numbers would mean, since they have no regular ground troops. Their overall tech is not that great, since they have no magic-tech shields and their armor could be defeated with massed fire by late 19th century artillery.

[Darth Hoth]

With the given criteria, movie Starship Troopers probaby qualifies. Without their orbital capabilities, they should be easy bait for most Second World War armies.

[Shroom Man 777]

Shit, their ships get killed by surface-to-space shit shitted out by shitbugs. I think modern Earth could acquit itself very well against the movie Starship Troopers.

[Atlan]

Harry Turtledove's The Race. Those lizards were fought to a stand still by WWII Earth. Modern armies would pulverize them.

[Thanas]

The Posleen.

It took massive plot-induced stupidity for them to just lose to modern earth with some really baddly thought out toys.

The Posleen could not even succesfully invade Germany without taking heavy losses (and the only reason they won was because the writer had a hardon for the SS and the Alpenfestung II).

So yeah, Posleen it is.

[Rogue 9]

The Federation and their goddamn dune buggies. Even with rough parity in numbers, they have no useful infantry doctrine, no armor support, no artillery, and no heavy weapons. I suppose Peregrine assault fighters might be atmosphere-capable, but I don't know.

Come to think of it, this applies to every other power in Star Trek as well.

[RedImperator]

The Federation and their goddamn dune buggies. Even with rough parity in numbers, they have no useful infantry doctrine, no armor support, no artillery, and no heavy weapons. I suppose Peregrine assault fighters might be atmosphere-capable, but I don't know.

Come to think of it, this applies to every other power in Star Trek as well.

No trigger guards, either.

No, seriously, I think we talked about this once in PST and the idea was kicked around that none of the Alpha/Beta quadrant powers ever seriously expected ground warfare to play a major role in any armed conflict. If nothing else, the idea of the Klingons, Romulans, or Federation fighting the Pacific War IN SPAAAAACE is pretty ludicrous once you realize none of them have anywhere near the transport capacity to invade and occupy a single planet by force, even if there's no space opposition whatsoever. Starfleet's ground forces make no sense as anything but a police force to garrison a planet that's already surrendered (and not even much of that, since it's probably politically impossible for the Federation to forcibly annex inhabited worlds). It's not a surprise they're a disaster as a real army; the NYPD would get its ass kicked by the US Army, too.

[NecronLord]

The Federation and their goddamn dune buggies. Even with rough parity in numbers, they have no useful infantry doctrine, no armor support, no artillery, and no heavy weapons. I suppose Peregrine assault fighters might be atmosphere-capable, but I
don't know.

Come to think of it, this applies to every other power in Star Trek as well.

Klingon Bird of Prey.

[Starglider]

The Federation and their goddamn dune buggies. Even with rough parity in numbers, they have no useful infantry doctrine, no armor support, no artillery, and no heavy weapons. I suppose Peregrine assault fighters might be atmosphere-capable, but I don't know.

The problem with the federation is that their shuttles have reasonable shields; they're probably immune to conventional SAMs, AAMs and AA fire. The only thing that might take them down is nuclear-tipped SAMs, which no one has any more, and even if we reintroduced those, we've seen Federation runabouts take a lot of fire so they might survive a hit. They also have superior sensors that pretty much ignore stealth features on contemporary aircraft. The Federation will quickly gain air superiority and any large armored force will get zapped by shuttle phasers (or the mini photon torpedoes some runabouts carry). However on the ground the Federation are worthless, so they'll have to sacrifice ridiculous numbers of red shirts to take any US held position.

[NecronLord]

No they won't. They'll eliminate US professional military resistance in hours or days. Land some Intrepids, beam everyone in an army base into them, protocol five (strips weapons, seen used against hostiles). Then you stun them and haul them straight out to the POW camp. No US position would survive that; and while we've seen electrical transformers beam them out, the Bounty was able to beam folk right out of the United States Ship Enterprise reactor room; there's no reason to think that the US could configure a reliable jammer.

And that's assuming that the Intrepid class is incapable of firing from a landed position or from atmospheric flight.

[Serafina]

How is Star Trek going to take any cities - and we are talking about New York here, not about a small mountain town?

About transporters: That means nothing. The reactor room obiously has next to no radiaton, so we do not even know there WAS interference (the whole "proton capture" and "disables phaser"-stuff nonwhithstanding).

And even if, how does that invalidate other instances of blocked transporters? And even if we asume that the transporters DO work - who do you want to beam away in a huge city? How are you going to differnetate between soldiers and civilians?

[Starglider]

And even if we asume that the transporters DO work - who do you want to beam away in a huge city? How are you going to differnetate between soldiers and civilians?

You could beam up a few thousand random civillians and demand that the humans surrender or the hostages will be killed and a fresh set beamed up. The Federation aren't likely to use that tactic, but the Romulans or Dominion certainly would.

[NecronLord]

How is Star Trek going to take any cities - and we are talking about New York here, not about a small mountain town?

"Surrender or die." Followed by a photon torpedo into the bay; as all nuclear capacity is removed (surely the first people they'd beam up, followed by putting a phaser into the stores, silos and subs, no retaliation is possible.

Unless you think the US population would fight to the death?

About transporters: That means nothing.

The ability to harmlessly remove mass quantities of personnel with no civillian casualties and indeed, no casualties, means nothing? Never mind that any resistance fighters you capture by this means can be mind-probed at will by Vulcans and Betazeds to reveal all they know; and the UFP is extraordinarily happy to use mind probing.

The reactor room obiously has next to no radiaton, so we do not even know there WAS interference (the whole "proton capture" and "disables phaser"-stuff nonwhithstanding).
And even if, how does that invalidate other instances of blocked transporters?

Evey one but the transformer was using rare (unknown) rocks or advanced technology.

And even if we asume that the transporters DO work - who do you want to beam away in a huge city? How are you going to differnetate between soldiers and civilians?

Who cares? Beam 'em all up and sort them out when the computer says "This guy had a gun" Fuck, build concentration camps, anyone the Betazeds say isn't prepared to take up arms during their post stunning interview can be let out.

[Starglider]

About transporters: That means nothing.

The ability to harmlessly remove mass quantities of personnel with no civillian casualties and indeed, no casualties, means nothing? Never mind that any resistance fighters you capture by this means can be mind-probed at will by Vulcans and Betazeds to reveal all they know; and the UFP is extraordinarily happy to use mind probing.

If collateral damage is an issue you can also beam antimatter charges directly into bunkers, command posts etc. If there is short range jamming, you can simply beam a bigger charge into airspace right over the target. I wasn't considering starship support in my original assessment - without starships, the ability of shuttle transporters to act like very-rapid-response artillery is quite useful. With them, it isn't so relevant.

[lord Martiya]

May I propose the United Earth Sphere Alliance and OZ from Gundam Wing? Granted, they have their cool MS with all their firepower and the psychological effect... And no real tactic in ground combat: the only officer who showed some tactical knowledge was a general Bonaparte who at least had the sense to attack a Gundam with an encirling manouver and keeping his forces away from the Gundam visible weapon, and he used TANKS who were destroyed the second that Gundam showed his hidden weapons.
Coupled with their overconfidence and an infantry so neglected and/or useless to not have appeared in any battle (apart a group of guerrilla fighters after OZ coup), I have the strong sensation that their land mobile suits Leo would attack the tanks, push them back and then fall as the US infantry shoot the ATGs in their backs or bottoms (incidentally, a tactic that would have been effective against the Gundams), while the flying Aries (effectively single-seat attack helicopters armed with an automatic tank cannon and sometimes two anti-MS missiles) would have to deal with the much faster American jets and their missiles and their artillery MS Tragos... Well, they have the habit to send them on the frontline instead of using their heavy guns as long-range support (that's exactly what happened every single time they used them in the artillery variant, both against the Gundams and an enemy mobile suit unit), so I suppose they'll suffer the same fate of the Leo. After that, the rest is just steamrolling the few (if any) tanks and the demoralized infantry with the power of combined arms.

[Lord of the Abyss]

The aliens races in Turtledove's The Road Not Taken would be crushed by a modern miltary, about as easily as they were by a 2039 military. Since they had antigravity and FTL drives - and the rest of their technology was preindustrial black-powder era stuff. Just like in the story, we'd grab their two advantages after the first encounter, and smash them flat wherever we chose.

[And_Atom_JT]

The aliens races in Turtledove's The Road Not Taken would be crushed by a modern miltary, about as easily as they were by a 2039 military. Since they had antigravity and FTL drives - and the rest of their technology was preindustrial black-powder era stuff. Just like in the story, we'd grab their two advantages after the first encounter, and smash them flat wherever we chose.

I loved that story.

Let's see, as for scifi nations that modern Earth militaries could take? Hmmm... I think I see a problem here.

Galactic Empire tactics aren't too different from modern warfare-Armored vehicles supported by infantry and air-support, special operations forces to be dropped behind enemy lines at key targets, anti-armor weapons, etc. More advanced technology but the same military mindset. They have a lot of very big, very powerful machinery and advanced weapons, but all those vehicles makes for nice big targets for missiles and RPGs. Their effectiveness, however, is debatable given the tech edge and materials science advantages the Empire has. I sincerely doubt anything short of nukes will do anything to their troopships, for instance. Also, even if we could match them from a tactical point of view, they have an entire galaxy's worth of resources to use-We have a planet. They can simply crush us with superior numbers even without orbital fire support.

The same goes for the Federation. They have Hoppers, which apparently act like amphibious assault craft/helos to give Starfleet troops more mobility around a theater. Phasers are also sure to be killer weapons, along with photon grenades and personal forcefields. Transporters and their more advanced sensors, and shields of course all would be big factors in any conflict and I think that all of this combined, along with, again, sheer industrial might of the Federation, we'd be toast even if they do fight badly. And they have the luxury of total domination above the planet and the means to analyze our tactics and strategies at their leisure, while we are cut off, boxed in, and badly outnumbered and outclassed in sheer industrial weight.

See the problem? Any star nation we face would have the resources of multiple worlds, whereas we would only have one. Unless they only sent a token force, say the size of a Marine Expeditionary Unit, we are defeated by the sheer weight of numbers every time. And this is assuming that they don't use orbital bombardment.

[Ford Prefect]

May I propose the United Earth Sphere Alliance and OZ from Gundam Wing?

The Alliance, maybe, though they have a large store of nuclear weapons and were perfectly willing to use them, but OZ/Romefeller? No chance. Leos might not be particularly impressive, but shielded Taurus mobile dolls with beam cannons deployed by the hundreds from orbit? This is setting aside the fact that Zechs could probably solo small battlegroups with the Tallgeese. Wing's high end mobile suits are pretty impressive, and given that OZ/Romefeller control the entire world, they can reasonably be expected to control huge forces.

[Darth Wong]

The Federation and their goddamn dune buggies. Even with rough parity in numbers, they have no useful infantry doctrine, no armor support, no artillery, and no heavy weapons. I suppose Peregrine assault fighters might be atmosphere-capable, but I don't know.

The problem with the federation is that their shuttles have reasonable shields; they're probably immune to conventional SAMs, AAMs and AA fire. The only thing that might take them down is nuclear-tipped SAMs, which no one has any more, and even if we reintroduced those, we've seen Federation runabouts take a lot of fire so they might survive a hit. They also have superior sensors that pretty much ignore stealth features on contemporary aircraft. The Federation will quickly gain air superiority and any large armored force will get zapped by shuttle phasers (or the mini photon torpedoes some runabouts carry). However on the ground the Federation are worthless, so they'll have to sacrifice ridiculous numbers of red shirts to take any US held position.

That does, however, beg the question of why "Nor the Battle to the Strong" featured troop transports called "hoppers" which were so flimsy that a man had to stay behind on the ground in order to give them fire support so they could take off safely.

I would suggest that Federation shuttles do not have particularly good shielding, or that perhaps their particular type of shielding doesn't work well (or at all) in atmosphere, which would explain the use of such worthless troop transports.

[Shroom Man 777]

Cheap answer: Signs aliens. Jesus Christ, man that was shit.

[Samuel]

Cheap answer: Signs aliens. Jesus Christ, man that was shit.

Well, obviously any actually beaten by Earth's military count. Even though they had orbital superiority.

Lets just use ones that have the pretext of competancy- everyone else is at least smart enough not to land ground troops naked and without weapons on a planets whose atmosphere is acid.

Come to think of it, is there any aliens who are worse than those in signs?