MI practicality

[jamsy42]

Having a Mobile Infantry style army doesn't make much sense in my opinion. It would be extremely difficult to dispense enough troops in this manner to take control of a planet, or even just it's main population centres. Possible they could exist as some sort of elite force to soften and harass the enemy before an assault but as a government's sole ground force it is impractical. They would be far too vulnerable and difficult to support to make them practical but truthfully ground combat in a futuristic-setting isn't really practical in itself because you would need millions of soldiers so i reality you would either sterilize the planet with neutron bombs and then colonize the planet or blackmail the planet.

[adam_grif]

Modern armies have already adopted the best parts of the mobile infantry, i.e. air mobility, an all-volunteer force. The rest of it is science fictiony crap like god tier powered armor that "can take a battalion of tanks". Really Heinlein? The idea that you can just drop one man per square kilometer and expect to hold a planet is almost juvenile, but then again Heinlein didn't really have any idea what the future of war would really hold (i.e. pre-Vietnam). That said, it's a bit more excusable in the context of the Bug war, where the goal is extermination of the other side, but when you make the Bugs-Communism connection it starts sending uncomfortable messages about the Zeitgeist of 1950's and 1960's American attitude towards what was acceptable in conflicts.

[Temujin]

It's been a while since I read the book, but IIRC the MI was meant to be a kind of special force; less like Navy Seals and more like Army Rangers. They seemed to be used for hit and run raids, search and rescue, and as a tip of the spear force for major operations. I don't recall them actually serving in any capacity like regular infantry, more like a highly mobile lightly armored cavalry. An AFV in slightly larger than human form with the mobility roughly equivalent of a helicopter, with nukes. In this respect they weren't entirely ludicrous with there high mobility and level of firepower, that is as long as they avoid a stand up fight. Much like Soviet Spetsnaz during a WWIII scenario, they would still probably be expected to suffer horrendous casualties.

One of the biggest problems is their means of insertion. Against an enemy with spaceflight capacity, there should be absolutely no way to simply pull into orbit and deposit the MI. Even without ships in system, ground based, not to mention orbital defenses, should be plastering the ship(s) as soon as they're within range. Even if its only a small base on the planet, emplacements could easily be located at different points on the planet, as well as in orbit, to cover any avenue of approach.

[Darth Hoth]

Having a Mobile Infantry style army doesn't make much sense in my opinion. It would be extremely difficult to dispense enough troops in this manner to take control of a planet, or even just it's main population centres. Possible they could exist as some sort of elite force to soften and harass the enemy before an assault but as a government's sole ground force it is impractical. They would be far too vulnerable and difficult to support to make them practical but truthfully ground combat in a futuristic-setting isn't really practical in itself because you would need millions of soldiers so i reality you would either sterilize the planet with neutron bombs and then colonize the planet or blackmail the planet.

What if you want some flexibility between the "leave it alone" and "total destruction" alternatives? Politicians tend to like it when their options are not binary. We did not disband the conventional armies after the advent of nuclear weapons. A ground force makes perfect sense for selective application of force, and (foremost) for actually taking/holding territory where you for whatever reason prefer conquest to annihilation. This is actually stated in the book, by the way.

The specifics of the actual MI from the books can of course be discussed. My impression was that Heinlein extrapolated freely from current trends of ground combat (the importance of mobility and concentration of force, the fewer soldiers per area of battlefield due to improved communications, weapons ranges and so on, &c.).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Practicality against what? Who are the enemy supposed to be, and how do the MI fit into the overall military system of their own side? How honest was Henlein with his own internal continuity?

If the book is to be taken at face value, the MI were the pre- existing army, designed, trained and equipped for the normal wars of the Terran Federation, and when the Pseudo-Arachnid threat manifested itself, they simply went to war with what they had.

I'm unconvinced the concept of a 'stand up fight' even applies, or can apply. Someone offers the MI a stand up fight, they get nuked. There should be, and can be, no stand up fights on offer. Support weapons on both sides make mass armies very little short of suicidal.

A tank squadron against MI would indeed be an extremely one sided fight- at very best mutual vapourisation, even at similar tech levels, at worst they fail to find a target and either carve out large proportions of their own habitat, or don't last that long as the MI get a bead on them long before they localise the fast, cover- using, agile powered infantry.

Consider how to survive on the NBC battlefield, when any one of half a million things including breathing, moving, and simply being there, can be fatal. Grant as a political necessity that there have to be people there- to make sure the enemy are all really dead, if nothing else.

(NB, we're talking about nineteen- fifties level mechatronics here. It would be a drone's job now. I know that, that much is extremely obvious in fact. The world is moving in a different direction from the one Henlein envisioned- and I'm not convinced this direction leads into space at all, with anything other than robot probes. That's another argument to have later.)

There's no point sending squishies- unarmoured infantry. They're cheap, but they're very easily killed. Militia, maybe, if there's no choice. Not as an offensive weapon. You need to protect the people you send down. What form is that protection going to take?

Tanks, maybe- assault armour might be the way to go. Mobility, reliability, protection against vengeful survivors with explosive things- still going to need screening infantry, still going to need search, rescue and retrieval that mean somebody is going to have to get out of the tank.

NBC suit? Shreds too easily. Essential but not enough- there are still going to be avoidable casualties. Especially if someone is shooting back and putting holes in the suit, probably with artillery shrapnel. Armour the suit? Next obvious step. Narrows the window of vulnerability- it'll never close entirely, there's always a bigger gun.

All right, now you have a grunt waddling around in a hundred odd pounds of sheet metal; in terms of strength, that's practical, briefly. It can be done for a time. Endurance, though- people are going to get very tired and very clumsy, very quickly. Not good. They don't move very fast, they are easy to bring effective weapons to bear on, and the window of vulnerability just opened wider again.

Mechanical assistance? right, now they're bouncing around all over the place, and they can carry even more armour. Virtuous circle- and they can carry bigger guns, too. Proof against anything except a direct hit from a large calibre weapon like a tank gun, a lot more agile than the sort of target that usually gets weapons of that calibre pointed at it- well, we've just reinvented the MI.

Grant the neccessity to put people down on a space age battlefield, and they're going to need all the help they can get. Anything less is just going to get shredded, and MI are probably the lightest force it's practical to deploy.

[Temujin]

I agree that the MI would probably be a very lightweight force, and I really can't imagine anything like traditional infantry on that kind of a battlefield. Unfortunately, I don't believe Heinlein went into any detail on what the other forces were like.

If there actually is a more traditional corresponding infantry to the MI, I would imagine it would at least have to be equipped with a toned down version of the mobile suit just to be able to survive on the battlefield. Even then, I imagine them operating out of Bolo style IFVs, and leaving their protection only when the mission dictates it.

[Sarevok]

In the future where wars fought between planets something like the Mobile Infantry concept makes sense. You can not transport huge armies from planet to planet under hostile attack. Ground forces are also vulnerable to space based weapons and whichever side gains total space superiority can waste any ground army no matter how big with ease. Yet you still need boots on the ground so to speak for various reasons from time to time. For such missions an armored, extremely mobile infantry packing a lot of offensive punch using nuclear weapons would be able to get the job done.

[Shroom Man 777]

When you're dealing with space colonies, populations might also not be that huge and they might be stuck in domed outposts or whatever. So in the future, COIN operations may look a whole lot different from what we've got today. It's not like Starfleet's gonna find Space Iraqs or Space Vietnams in Space. COIN may not be as manpower intensive as it is today.

[Sarevok]

When you're dealing with space colonies, populations might also not be that huge and they might be stuck in domed outposts or whatever. So in the future, COIN operations may look a whole lot different from what we've got today. It's not like Starfleet's gonna find Space Iraqs or Space Vietnams in Space. COIN may not be as manpower intensive as it is today.

I dunno about that. Space colonies do not have the limitations of living on a planet. There is no lack of living volume, resources or energy in space. They may reach incredibly large population sizes because they can support it.

[Artemas]

Assuming you have the time for the population to grow that huge. I think Shroom's point was that just because a planet is a colony, doesn't mean that the entire thing is populated. If planet XG156 was colonised only recently, it might only have a population of like 10,000 people, spread over a town and a couple of villages. COIN ops there would obviously not require 150,000 Space Americans to collateral damage the locals to death. Not all colonies are going to be multi-billion person coruscant chinastans, and if the planet is a hellhole (but with UNOBTAINIUM!), then the population might be concentrated in whatever facilities are feasible. Toxic atmospheres and shit (and hurricane-level shitstorms the size of earth) might prevent dudes from staking a claim and chillin in their homestead.

IE, some colonies might resembe Antarctica (and the current population there) than New York.

[Temujin]

In the future where wars fought between planets something like the Mobile Infantry concept makes sense. You can not transport huge armies from planet to planet under hostile attack. Ground forces are also vulnerable to space based weapons and whichever side gains total space superiority can waste any ground army no matter how big with ease. Yet you still need boots on the ground so to speak for various reasons from time to time. For such missions an armored, extremely mobile infantry packing a lot of offensive punch using nuclear weapons would be able to get the job done.

Exactly. Given some of the figures bandied about in the Clonetroopers/Travis threads, even with Star Wars level technology and ship sizes, its just not practical from a logistics point of view. Even if you were using something the equivalent of a B1 Battledroid that could be folded up, you still couldn't easily transport the millions required and infrastructure to support them.

In terms of conquering a reasonably populated planet, if you don't want to completely scorch the planet, you'd have to either use neutron bombs are a pathogen to reduce the population levels and weaken the survivors. Alternatively, you use fear of orbital bombardment (or something else) to keep the population in line.

[Shroom Man 777]

When you're dealing with space colonies, populations might also not be that huge and they might be stuck in domed outposts or whatever. So in the future, COIN operations may look a whole lot different from what we've got today. It's not like Starfleet's gonna find Space Iraqs or Space Vietnams in Space. COIN may not be as manpower intensive as it is today.

I dunno about that. Space colonies do not have the limitations of living on a planet. There is no lack of living volume, resources or energy in space. They may reach incredibly large population sizes because they can support it.

If America colonized Mars, but Russia wanted to invade it, would they send the force they sent to Georgia to deal with the couple-dozen colonists living in the inhospitable Martian environs by dwelling in fragile tiny living spaces composed of habitat pods and dome cities and greenhouses? Or would such an op depend on just a small number of military men, because realistically in the future colonized planet colonies will not be the cliche'd sprawling huge populationed city-worlds in the future and neither will space stations be giant huge constructs at all, but these will actually most realistically be rather quaint affairs with only small numbers of people in habitats of small sizes?

You'd only need small numbers of badass space soldiers, decked out in uniforms borrowed from the Starship Troopers movie, if for example you are only policing planets that are about as populated as the worlds in Firefly - where entire planetary populations are composed of a bunch of mud workers living around a puddle of mud and a styrofoam statue of Adam Baldwin, or a bunch of space hookers in a space brothel that's in a planet in space (space planet!).

[Simon_Jester]

It's been a while since I read the book, but IIRC the MI was meant to be a kind of special force; less like Navy Seals and more like Army Rangers. They seemed to be used for hit and run raids, search and rescue, and as a tip of the spear force for major operations. I don't recall them actually serving in any capacity like regular infantry, more like a highly mobile lightly armored cavalry. An AFV in slightly larger than human form with the mobility roughly equivalent of a helicopter, with nukes. In this respect they weren't entirely ludicrous with there high mobility and level of firepower, that is as long as they avoid a stand up fight.

This. Ignoring the question of insertion (it's a good one, but it doesn't directly touch on what mission the MI are meant to fulfill), the MI are being used as a cross between armored cavalry and air cavalry, with the endurance and survivability of the latter and the mobility of the former.

Look at the raid an MI platoon stages on the Skinny city at the beginning of the novel, as an approach to urban warfare: the emphasis on speed, aggressiveness, and overwhelming firepower to cut through the defenders before they have time to organize a defense line.. I'm not sure, but I suspect that the tactics might bear some comparison to the "thunder runs" through Baghdad staged by 2nd Brigade, 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Now the catch is that the Terran Federation of the novels doesn't seem to have a well developed fighting force other than the MI. We see MI trying to carry out a mission that rightfully belongs to heavy infantry on Planet P later in the novel, where there really ought to be larger numbers of less mobile troops to hold the ground. There's no evidence of armored vehicles heavier than an MI, either, though there's plenty of evidence of naval fire support.

So it may be that other branches of the Terran Federation military have atrophied in favor of the MI: their social structure makes it difficult for them to enact mass recruitment (certainly not conscription, which would be anathema to them), so they have to rely on high per-soldier firepower and mobility (and naval superiority) to do the job as best they can.

Also, what ECR said: the MI are shown to use nukes and may be using gas, and they do so very liberally. I wouldn't be surprised if their enemies do the same. That being the case, the level of environmental protection they carry is necessary for the battlefields their own weapons create.

[Temujin]

Look at the raid an MI platoon stages on the Skinny city at the beginning of the novel, as an approach to urban warfare: the emphasis on speed, aggressiveness, and overwhelming firepower to cut through the defenders before they have time to organize a defense line.. I'm not sure, but I suspect that the tactics might bear some comparison to the "thunder runs" through Baghdad staged by 2nd Brigade, 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

I do remember that battle distinctively, and that's an apt comparison.

Now the catch is that the Terran Federation of the novels doesn't seem to have a well developed fighting force other than the MI. We see MI trying to carry out a mission that rightfully belongs to heavy infantry on Planet P later in the novel, where there really ought to be larger numbers of less mobile troops to hold the ground. There's no evidence of armored vehicles heavier than an MI, either, though there's plenty of evidence of naval fire support.

So it may be that other branches of the Terran Federation military have atrophied in favor of the MI: their social structure makes it difficult for them to enact mass recruitment (certainly not conscription, which would be anathema to them), so they have to rely on high per-soldier firepower and mobility (and naval superiority) to do the job as best they can.

I've wondered about that. Heinlein seemed to focus only on the MI and the naval component only, though I remembered references to other forces later (i.e., the heavy infantry), but couldn't remember anything specific. Though part of my response to the OP was more generalized and not strictly contingent upon the SST universe.

Also, what ECR said: the MI are shown to use nukes and may be using gas, and they do so very liberally. I wouldn't be surprised if their enemies do the same. That being the case, the level of environmental protection they carry is necessary for the battlefields their own weapons create.

True. I've always assumed that even without nukes and gas we'll eventually see soldiers encased from head to foot in body armor, at least in countries that can afford it. The battlefield in general is just to deadly and the civilian population tends to have little tolerance for casualties. The MI just takes that to its logical extreme.

[Sarevok]

If America colonized Mars, but Russia wanted to invade it, would they send the force they sent to Georgia to deal with the couple-dozen colonists living in the inhospitable Martian environs by dwelling in fragile tiny living spaces composed of habitat pods and dome cities and greenhouses? Or would such an op depend on just a small number of military men, because realistically in the future colonized planet colonies will not be the cliche'd sprawling huge populationed city-worlds in the future and neither will space stations be giant huge constructs at all, but these will actually most realistically be rather quaint affairs with only small numbers of people in habitats of small sizes?

You'd only need small numbers of badass space soldiers, decked out in uniforms borrowed from the Starship Troopers movie, if for example you are only policing planets that are about as populated as the worlds in Firefly - where entire planetary populations are composed of a bunch of mud workers living around a puddle of mud and a styrofoam statue of Adam Baldwin, or a bunch of space hookers in a space brothel that's in a planet in space (space planet!).

It depends on what you mean by occupation. For killing evil and ugly xenos small number of Mobile Infantry types jetting around a planet, lobbing nukes and getting out quickly make sense. But for occupying planets full of people who you consider as citizens or protectorates ? You need actual human beings with guns policing the streets. No amount of tacticool magic can solve that as Americans are finding out in Iraq. Technology lets you annihilate the enemy army but actually occupying and pacifying cities without blowing them up is another type of game.

[Shroom Man 777]

But why would there be cities the size of real cities in space? Do the planets even have the air needed to support human life? Sure, you say that there's no space limitation in other worlds, but there's also no space limitation in the cold, lifeless, vacuum of space yet sprawling metropolises and population centers chock full of insurgents and trouble makers needing occupation certainly won't sprout in the coldness of space where no one can hear you scream "ALLAHU ACKBAR!" or some shit.

In a remotely realistic situation where off-Earth habitations are composed of flimsy domes in inhospitable planets, housing a few hundred people to a thousand at best, or a bunch of floating tin can space stations that can be punctured easily and have only limited amounts of air or something, a small force of heavily-armed infantry wouldn't really be unrealistic. It's not going to be COIN in Space Vietnam or Space Iraq, in space. You won't need surges or splurges if the habitats you're occupying are tiny colonies, like the ISS or Mir's bigger brother, or a proposed Mars colony a couple of centuries in the future. It's not going to be a space city, it's going to be more like a tiny space town - and the manpower you'd need to occupy that tiny space town would be just about the same size as the local police force of Sandford Gloucestershire, led by Sergeant Nicholas Angel and PC Danny Butterman.

[Guardsman Bass]

Also, what ECR said: the MI are shown to use nukes and may be using gas, and they do so very liberally. I wouldn't be surprised if their enemies do the same. That being the case, the level of environmental protection they carry is necessary for the battlefields their own weapons create.

The Planet P raid has the Bugs using some seriously major mines, like the one described below-

. . . A fresh crater there, about scale six."

I whistled to myself. You could drop the Tours [the six-platoon transport that Rico was in earlier] into a size six crater. . . If you were near the spot, the ground shock got you; if you were in the air when one went off, the concussion wave could tumble your gyros and throw your suit out of control.

The next page describes the crater edge as being "amber-red", and that the MI in full suit could take the radiation on the edge for a long time (but going into the heart of the crater would be lethal).

As for the MI in general, I'm pretty sure they're described as the only fighting ground forces (i.e., there are no other ground troops described). Since they're perpetually under-staffed due to the difficulties in training, any type of population-centric COIN would probably be beyond them, but they do seem to do well at what they are trained to do (raid, seek, and destroy). Since they don't have any real intention of occupying Bug planets without cleaning out the Bug Warrens first, that works for them.

From what I read, it sounds like they pretty much don't have ground artillery anymore, instead relying on air and space bombardment.

[Sarevok]

But why would there be cities the size of real cities in space? Do the planets even have the air needed to support human life? Sure, you say that there's no space limitation in other worlds, but there's also no space limitation in the cold, lifeless, vacuum of space yet sprawling metropolises and population centers chock full of insurgents and trouble makers needing occupation certainly won't sprout in the coldness of space where no one can hear you scream "ALLAHU ACKBAR!" or some shit.

In a remotely realistic situation where off-Earth habitations are composed of flimsy domes in inhospitable planets, housing a few hundred people to a thousand at best, or a bunch of floating tin can space stations that can be punctured easily and have only limited amounts of air or something, a small force of heavily-armed infantry wouldn't really be unrealistic. It's not going to be COIN in Space Vietnam or Space Iraq, in space. You won't need surges or splurges if the habitats you're occupying are tiny colonies, like the ISS or Mir's bigger brother, or a proposed Mars colony a couple of centuries in the future. It's not going to be a space city, it's going to be more like a tiny space town - and the manpower you'd need to occupy that tiny space town would be just about the same size as the local police force of Sandford Gloucestershire, led by Sergeant Nicholas Angel and PC Danny Butterman.

A lot of viable space colonization proposals revolve around things like the O'Neill Cylinder. These are like the giant alien worldship in the Clarke story Rendevouz with Rama. The interior space of a cylinder is huge. They can potentially support tens of thousands or even millions of inhabitants in an Earthlike enviroment with gravity, air and vegetation. They would be lot more attractive to live in compared to a domed city on Mercury. On a planet you are basically stuck unless you are wealthy enough to afford an expensive rocket launch back into space. Living in an orbital habitat not only gives a great view but also a true freedom to explore space.

[Shroom Man 777]

Mmmm... but in a more "hard" (as in LONG and HAARRRRDDD and rigid and ERECT!) sci-fi, off-world colonies might nowhere be nearly as well-populated as more popular depictions of off-world life. In those cases, small but technologically badass armies would be totally appropriate. Why bother when COIN operations just involve blowing holes into space station modules and watching insurgents and collateral damage alike (women and children) get vented and float out into the vacuum?

[Simon_Jester]

True. I've always assumed that even without nukes and gas we'll eventually see soldiers encased from head to foot in body armor, at least in countries that can afford it. The battlefield in general is just to deadly and the civilian population tends to have little tolerance for casualties. The MI just takes that to its logical extreme.

What the civilian population is intolerant of, in my opinion, is casualties for little result. The perception that troops are bogged down in a long term occupation and aren't accomplishing anything causes more objections than the casualties taken along the way.

[Temujin]

Certainly an important factor. But any way you can reduce casualties, either by better body armor or via robotics, will increase and sustain moral on the battlefield and at home. Of course that's ignoring the obvious force multiplier that technological innovation affords, which is easily just as important to the military and the political leadership.

[General Mung Beans]

Modern armies have already adopted the best parts of the mobile infantry, i.e. air mobility, an all-volunteer force. The rest of it is science fictiony crap like god tier powered armor that "can take a battalion of tanks". Really Heinlein? The idea that you can just drop one man per square kilometer and expect to hold a planet is almost juvenile, but then again Heinlein didn't really have any idea what the future of war would really hold (i.e. pre-Vietnam). That said, it's a bit more excusable in the context of the Bug war, where the goal is extermination of the other side, but when you make the Bugs-Communism connection it starts sending uncomfortable messages about the Zeitgeist of 1950's and 1960's American attitude towards what was acceptable in conflicts.

I don't think the Bug War was one of extermination. The Federation wanted to capture the Queen and Brain Bugs to negotiate a peace treaty.

As to other branches of the Army there is a K9 Corps with semi-intelligent neodogs and there is a reference to "heavies" which as a previous poster said may mean "Heavy Infantry".

[Simon_Jester]

Or heavy armor. As for the war being one of extermination, it seemed like the Federation was willing to do that, but would prefer not to if they could find someone to talk to.

[Sarevok]

Mmmm... but in a more "hard" (as in LONG and HAARRRRDDD and rigid and ERECT!) sci-fi, off-world colonies might nowhere be nearly as well-populated as more popular depictions of off-world life. In those cases, small but technologically badass armies would be totally appropriate. Why bother when COIN operations just involve blowing holes into space station modules and watching insurgents and collateral damage alike (women and children) get vented and float out into the vacuum?

Depends on the timeframe. It is generally excepted amongst hard scifi authors that orbital habitats > planets. Planetary societies are more of a soft scifi thing. In a few hundred or few thousand years space based habitats could surpass planet based populations.

[Shroom Man 777]

In that future, the post-human populaces might be easier to counter-insurgency operate on if their post-brains are linked to the post-AI post-network of the post-space habitat, and if the post-Myocardial Infarction Mobile Infantry have post-technology to initiate post-brain post-scans on the post-thoughts of the post-human populaces. In such a future where your post-weapons have ammunition that can discriminate between civilian and insurgent-brainwaves and terrorist-DNA, you may only need very little in the way of actual infantry for COIN. If I add some words about lol carbon buckyballs dangling between people's legs, some shit about space elevators, metamaterials, and some singularity post-stargliders, people would lap this up as a ground-breaking genre defying piece of super-realistic hard science fiction. If the troops are armed with fancy new weapons systems like SHROOMIRV, COIN operations will be definitely very manpower UN-intensive in the future!