MI practicality

[Invictus ChiKen]

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.

There is combat engineers and a corps that uses genetically altered canines (smart as a stupid human). I always assumed there was more but we really only see what Rico sees.

[Simon_Jester]

If the troops are armed with fancy new weapons systems like SHROOMIRV, COIN operations will be definitely very manpower UN-intensive in the future!

To translate from Shroomanian to a more civilized but less awesome language:

In far future settings where everyone lives in orbitals, "it is generally excepted amongst hard scifi authors that" AI will be advanced enough that most occupation duty can be taken on by drones. Not necessarily heavily armed drones, either; just having ubiquitous surveillance would make a huge dent in manpower costs, because you could reliably zero in on trouble before it happened.

The SHROOMIRV is Shroomy's idea of what such a weapon system might look like. Which probably tells you more than you ever wanted to know about it right there...

[Shroom Man 777]

SHROOM (Strategic Heavy/Homogenous/Homoerotic/Humongous/Horrible/Hardcore Reconnaissance Orbital Occupation Munition)

Ships could easily dispense these miniature smart weapons from orbit! Tactical orbital bombardment! Anti-personnel orbital bombardment! Imagine killing snipers from orbit. Or, imagine, head-shotting a suicide bomber from orbit before he detonates himself in a market place in Space Gaza! If your orbital warship has sensors powerful enough to see everything, or a whole bunchload of UAVs seeing everything, man. Even a random thug taking potshots or throwing rocks at your people can be eliminated from orbit.

Hell! You can set up remote check points! From orbit! Just put a sign "CHECKPOINT!" and if a car speeds up or avoids the checkpoint, your ship fires a warning shot from the sky. If the car doesn't follow that warning shot, the ship in orbit shoots its tires out! The car must comply, its drivers must go outside of the car and open the trunk and/or the hood to let the orbiting ship see that the car doesn't have any contraband goods or weapons inside, from orbit.

Orbiting warships can perform house searches at night! It launches a smart missile that knocks on the doors, or if failing that, comes in through the windows. If the house occupants are found to have weapons, the missile explodes and kills them all. Or, blows up with a flashbang and then occupation troops can come in and detain them. If there's nothing, the missile flies to the next house and if there's weapons there, it blows them up!

We can call it the... Strategic Homogeneous Reconnaissance Orbital Occupation Munition!



An enhanced variant will be able to waterboard prisoners too. "Enhanced" variant, get it!

SHROOMIRV

It can be deployed from orbit by a space warship, and the SHROOMIRV bus will have submunitions that are capable of independent targeting and re-entry. The SHROOMIRV bus itself will glide in low-orbit, occasionally skimming the upper atmosphere before dispensing its munitions - just like a Dyna-Soar. But the SHROOM submunitions themselves will be equipped with hyper-efficient variable-cycle turboscramramfanjets that allow them to supercruise quickly to their destination, before its variable-geometry swing wings and VTOL systems and 5-dimensional thrust vectoring allow it to decelerate and make terminal corrections as it reaches its target. Then TERCOM sets in as it hugs the surface, using either radar or lidar as it closes in. Then when it's that close, it can use its TV cameras to read the road signs in Farsi or use its AN/SPRQ-55 audio/olfactory sensor systems to sniff the target out. When it comes in range of the targets, it can have a rotary munitions dispenser to choose between incapacitating agents like mustard gas or sonic-electronic ball breakers, or more permanent systems like fuel-air-explosives or tungsten-tipped armor piercers or something, to neutralize the enemy.

Variants can allow increased loiter time via conformal fuel tanks and improved programming can allow it to ask for directions, or engage in road check-point operations or house-to-house searching or hearts and minds missions or even hostage rescue operations!

Modular upgrades can allow it to hack into your computers with spyware, malware, badware, trojans and whatnot! But yeah, the tiny missile can have USB ports and blue-tooth and wi-fi functionality, and its AN/SPQR-52 radar systems can be modified to act as a jammer. Its data bus is also expandable and can download the entire planet's internet, if needed be, for superior electronic warfare purposes! For shock and awe, as the missile comes in on terminal approach, its MP30 player can start blaring Beethoven's Ride of the Shroomkyries to scare the Charlies who don't surf!

[Gil Hamilton]

My reading of Starship Troopers was that the Mobile Infantry was largely the Terran Federations ground force. Its briefly mentioned that they live their artillery and heavy support weapons in orbit with their ships. Heinlein does specifically detail that the Mobile Infantry is by far the smallest army in history when compared to the size of the population it defends. It gets away with this in two ways.

One is that Shroomy has a point. Other than Earth, human populations in space aren't that large. They really don't need to drop millions of dude on a planet, particularly when the other side is likely to be throwing nukes around too (note, in training they train against this, its even commented that the enemies they expected to fight would have similar kits to them).

The second is that they use the Mobile Infantry as a raiding force generally. The raid at the beginning of the book was to let the Skinny's city, they laid it out front that it was just to smack them around a bit, even though they refrained from bombing them. Note, this entailed burning down their city. When the Federation means business, they likely just bomb the ever living shit out of things with nuclear weapons, which is alluded to in the story, until the other side either surrenders or is gone, with the Mobile Infantry handling lighter stuff. This broke down in the Bug War because the Arachnids built deep into their planets and they couldn't be sure they COULD bomb them out of existence, necessiating the MI to actually fight them face to face in large scale combat. Also note, invading Klendathu was an absolute disaster for the Mobile Infantry, because they didn't have enough of them and virtually everything else went wrong too. The Terran Federation's solution was to make planet destroying weapons, but enough humans had been sent to Klendathu as prisoners that they didn't want to simply blow the planet out of the sky. Had they had the planet killing bomb at the beginning of the war, they'd have almost certainly used it to wipe out the Bug homeworld rather than foolishly attempting to invade it.