Most Realistic Military SF

[Marcus Aurelius]

I'm not sure how being sad alcoholics makes it more realistic scifi.

I like how Hav pointed out that not once during the show, was any character's alcoholism effectively solved.

Some may have gotten on the wagon temporarily, but it was always a quick fall off for them.

Another reason or two why BSG worked decently, was that it had actual non-commissioned officers and enlisted in the show; as something other than hangers on who show up in the background.

Also, bit characters could become supporting characters, and then killed off, making their deaths a bit more impactful than "Oh my god, random redshirt who we just got introduced to in the transporter room five minutes ago died!"

You mean, a bit like Babylon 5? Although I must admit that in the case of B5 the addictions of both central characters were pretty much solved, even if the possibility of a relapse was still there at the end of the show for Garibaldi. All the other plot points you mentioned were, however, done by B5.

[Starglider]

Jerry Pournelles's John Falkenberg books (The Mercenary/West of Honor/Future History) have quite realistic and gritty military campaigns, with logistics, training, morale and political context all given a lot of detail. However he achieved that basically by having the fighting take place on poor sparsely populated earth-like colony planets with only a very few imported high tech gadgets. All the weapons, comms, vehicles etc were comparable to contemporary (late 70s) military equipment, just lightened enough for interstellar transport and cheap enough for mercenaries to afford them. The 'science' part of the 'science fiction' was pretty much just the starship that dropped them off at the start of the book and picked them up at the end.

This is a basic problem, writing good military fiction is difficult and needs a lot of hard to acquire expertise (on top of being a minimally competent writer), writing good science fiction is also hard and needs a completely different set of hard to acquire expertise. Combining the two is even harder than just acquiring both sets of expertise, because in normal sci-fi you can often avoid examining the impacts of super-tech by making it an alien one-of-a-kind artifact or MacGuffin. Working out what the tactical and strategic applications and implications of radical new technology will be right through the whole spectrum of military endeavor is damn near impossible.

Of course people still try, and the results are often entertaining. For example I have 'The War in 2020' by Ralph Peters, about a post-collapse resurgant America trying to roll back Japanese world domination, which they achieved via early mastery of weapons grade solid state lasers and bribing/manipulating just about the entire Islamic world into being their cannon fodder. The plucky Americans strike back an elite force of with coilgun-equipped stealth ultra-sensor-fusion compound-helicopter gunships, operating from abandoned industrial complexes in grudgingly-allied post-collapse Russia. The book was of course written in 1990, at the height of the 'oh no Japanese world domination' craze, and the best I can say about it is that it is a 'brave attempt'. Though the scene with the Russian ex-KGB computer expert 'torturing' a recovered Japanese military microframe with destructive reverse engineering probes was actually kinda cool.

[lordofchange13]

what about the halo universe?

[Zor]

what about the halo universe?

Their tanks have glass canopies on their cockpits.

Zor

[adam_grif]

what about the halo universe?

Their tanks have glass canopies on their cockpits.

Zor

And mount 90mm main guns that fire regular "AP" rounds (i.e. non APFSDS, non-HEAT). And manage to have approximately the same mass as an M1 Abrams, whilst also moving significantly slower over all terrain. And they use an open-air jeep with the world's slowest firing gatling gun as an important part of their offensive ground operations.

Also, there are aliens that go SQUAWK.

[Srelex]

On the plus side, they've developed technology that allows you to acquire ammunition simply by walking over weapons lying on the ground. And their Gatling guns have self-replenishing ammo.

[Samuel]

Bah, modern militaries have perfected the infinite ammo pistol. A gattling gun that self-replenishes isn't impressive compared to that.

More seriously, Halo is a series about an extremely expensive supersoldier. Supersoldier tend to be rather unrealistic due to their cost and the nature of warfare.

[Swindle1984]

I do not think reverse-engineering alien tech and getting big honking super-spaceships on par with galactic standards in, like, under ten years from first contact with space civilizations is realistic.

What are the most realistic military science fiction in terms of tactics, organization, strategy, numbers, and so on?

He's not discussing technology or the stupidity of opponents.

I always wondered why there wasn't some sort of Stargate Fighting Vehicle that they rolled out, a Stryker esque thing with goa'uld shields, MG's and shit that would be designed to roll through the stargates onto hostile worlds. Every single gate they encountered that I can remember either has a magical force field or is lightly guarded by some infantry.

AFV's coming in hot doling out red hot 105mm death to Loyalist Jaffa? Awesome!

Don't know that a Striker would fit through a stargate. Maybe something like the British Scorpion light tank and/or Scimitar IFV...

[Shroom Man 777]

Bah.You know what's the most realistic military sci-fi? Aliens. The Colonial Marines, man.

[Darth Hoth]

Tom Kratman's latest series (it is called "Terra Nova", I think) is a candidate. Set four hundred years into the future, the people on the Earth-like former colony planet of Terra Nova have recovered from a devastating war with United Earth (which used to be known as the UN) and have developed a civilisation comparable to early 21st-century Earth. The leader of the alliance of Western democracies, the Federated States of Columbia, fights a war against the Islamic terrorists in the oil-rich Republic of Sumer and the chilly, mountainous wasteland of Pashtia, south of the Republic of Volga, with reluctant help from the decadent, Socialist welfare states in the Tauran Union. And they hire mercenaries to deal with Xamarian pirates who make shipping around the horn of another continent expensive.

And any similarity to present-day geopolitics is wholly coincidental, of course.

[Star Wars 888]

Probably one of the near future ones. What about Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter one and two, especially since much of the technology is based off of technology already being developed?

Although I'm not sure about this, Star Wars actually is decently believable in terms of military stuff, although some of the technology (and the Force) may be an impossibility.

A problem with that however is the huge tech difference between ground battles and space battles. The latter involves some of the most advanced technology in sci fi with a few exceptions, yet the former quite frankly will probably be surpassed by us pretty soon, maybe within 100 years.

[Srelex]

Yes, fighters that can travel about a million miles in a manner of minutes, at least. Very slow-ass.

[Black Admiral]

Also, there are aliens that go SQUAWK.

Yeah, Grunts sound silly to us. It works both ways, though - we sound silly to them.

[Srelex]

Or you didn't pay attention. We clearly see the Death Star approaching Yavin from at least hundreds of thousands of miles away, probably more, and the attack force reached it in a matter of minutes. Slow my ass.

[Captain Seafort]

Don't know that a Striker would fit through a stargate. Maybe something like the British Scorpion light tank and/or Scimitar IFV...

You could fit a Bradley or Abrams through the Stargate with room to spare.

[Srelex]

Yet it took them minutes to run down the fucking trench. In a straight line. Where not once were they hit by the towers.

Apparently leading the target is too advanced of a technique for the ultra-advanced, hyper-realistic Star Wars militaries.

You missed all the shouting about heavy jamming? You can talk about fancy hyper-advanced superduper future targeting all you want, but there's no reason you can't have hyper-advanced superduper ways of nullifying it.

[Gil Hamilton]

Or you didn't pay attention. We clearly see the Death Star approaching Yavin from at least hundreds of thousands of miles away, probably more, and the attack force reached it in a matter of minutes. Slow my ass.

Relative velocity, mate. They moved fast from Yavin to the Death Star, but they expressly were NOT moving that fast relative to the Death Star itself. In fact, their plan required them to fly in a straight line at not that fast relative the Death Star for several minutes. That whole scene in StarWars seems pretty dated and quaint because of it, particularly when you consider that we actually SAW the Death Star gunners manually aiming their guns and the TIE fighter pilots carefully twisting little knobs to adjust their guns rather than letting a targeting computer do it. In this case, the fighters were nearly at ZERO transverse velocity to each other, due to being all in the trench together and thus not moving significantly in the gunners field of vision. Given SW level technology, there is no reason they couldn't have had their guns slaved to a droid brain and have the gunner managing that battery say "Shoot at that one/those ones", and given the necessarily predictable movements that the X-Wings and Y-Wings were making, blow them out of the sky as soon as the droid brain arrived at a firing solution.

The real reason is two fold, of course. (1) is the movie was made in the seventies and George Lucas lacked the imagination to feature sophisticated computer control and (2) he was very specifically wanted shots to look like Battle of Britain footage, complete with anti-aircraft gunners personally engaging fighter jets zipping about. You particularly see this when Han and Luke are shooting at the token TIE fighter brigade sent to chase them after they escape the Death Star the first time. Lucas has ALWAYS designed things for a particular look, even when they make no sense. Remember the Age of Sail cannons they had in Revenge of the Sith where the battle drops were actually loading cannonballs into large rows of guns that were INSIDE the ship like it was Master and Commander?

StarWars just isn't good because visual effects and plot considerations are ALWAYS first. SW fans have been trying for three decades to satisfactorily explain why the hell an AT-AT was a good idea, military, but the fact is that George wanted big mechanical war elephants for Empire Strikes Back and that's what he got (complete with tusks and big stompy feet).

[Star Wars 888]

Or you didn't pay attention. We clearly see the Death Star approaching Yavin from at least hundreds of thousands of miles away, probably more, and the attack force reached it in a matter of minutes. Slow my ass.

Relative velocity, mate. They moved fast from Yavin to the Death Star, but they expressly were NOT moving that fast relative to the Death Star itself. In fact, their plan required them to fly in a straight line at not that fast relative the Death Star for several minutes. That whole scene in StarWars seems pretty dated and quaint because of it, particularly when you consider that we actually SAW the Death Star gunners manually aiming their guns and the TIE fighter pilots carefully twisting little knobs to adjust their guns rather than letting a targeting computer do it. In this case, the fighters were nearly at ZERO transverse velocity to each other, due to being all in the trench together and thus not moving significantly in the gunners field of vision. Given SW level technology, there is no reason they couldn't have had their guns slaved to a droid brain and have the gunner managing that battery say "Shoot at that one/those ones", and given the necessarily predictable movements that the X-Wings and Y-Wings were making, blow them out of the sky as soon as the droid brain arrived at a firing solution.

The real reason is two fold, of course. (1) is the movie was made in the seventies and George Lucas lacked the imagination to feature sophisticated computer control and (2) he was very specifically wanted shots to look like Battle of Britain footage, complete with anti-aircraft gunners personally engaging fighter jets zipping about. You particularly see this when Han and Luke are shooting at the token TIE fighter brigade sent to chase them after they escape the Death Star the first time. Lucas has ALWAYS designed things for a particular look, even when they make no sense. Remember the Age of Sail cannons they had in Revenge of the Sith where the battle drops were actually loading cannonballs into large rows of guns that were INSIDE the ship like it was Master and Commander?

StarWars just isn't good because visual effects and plot considerations are ALWAYS first. SW fans have been trying for three decades to satisfactorily explain why the hell an AT-AT was a good idea, military, but the fact is that George wanted big mechanical war elephants for Empire Strikes Back and that's what he got (complete with tusks and big stompy feet).

Hence why the EU is often times more believable when it comes to military tactics.

[Gil Hamilton]

You missed all the shouting about heavy jamming? You can talk about fancy hyper-advanced superduper future targeting all you want, but there's no reason you can't have hyper-advanced superduper ways of nullifying it.

All the "heavy jamming" (whatever that means) in the world is pointless, because even now, here in the 21st century we have a magic device called a Charge Couple Device, AKA the heart of digital cameras. TODAY we can track objects visually via IR and visual cameras linked to digital image processing computers. "Heavy jamming" is no excuse because its not like the X-Wings were invisible.

[Srelex]

All the "heavy jamming" (whatever that means) in the world is pointless, because even now, here in the 21st century we have a magic device called a Charge Couple Device, AKA the heart of digital cameras. TODAY we can track objects visually via IR and visual cameras linked to digital image processing computers. "Heavy jamming" is no excuse because its not like the X-Wings were invisible.

They've got casual FTL travel and planet-destroying superweapons. Is it inconcievable that their EM or countermeasures are advanced enough to screw up most tracking systems?

[Gil Hamilton]

They've got casual FTL travel and planet-destroying superweapons. Is it inconcievable that their EM or countermeasures are advanced enough to screw up most tracking systems?

Yes, because tracking them with a damn digital camera isn't interacting with anything other than the light reflecting or being emitted by the objects in question. The X-Wing fighters were not freakin' invisible. Everyone and their mom there could see them just fine. In fact, if they were somehow fucking up whatever the starwars equivalent of a CCD is, Darth Vader would have been immediately blinded, since he has digital cameras instead of eyeballs by this point anyway.

Hell, Darth Vader's damn face proves they've got the technology I'm talking about and that it wasn't ruined by any jamming. Just replace his brain with a droid brain and connect it to your turret. Simple.

[Batman]

Don't know that a Striker would fit through a stargate. Maybe something like the British Scorpion light tank and/or Scimitar IFV...

You could fit a Bradley or Abrams through the Stargate with room to spare.

Yes, but how'd you get them down there? The opening of the shaft they get the Stargate in or out of SGC-the only acess big enough to admit an MBT or even a Bradley-seems to be quite involved and even then you might have to lower it nose-down because it's too long for the diameter of the shaft.

[Captain Seafort]

Yes, but how'd you get them down there?

Aye, that's the issue - you'd be better off moving the gate itself to a facility with better access (preferably a purpose-built one).

[Master of Cards]

Yes, but how'd you get them down there?

Aye, that's the issue - you'd be better off moving the gate itself to a facility with better access (preferably a purpose-built one).

Just add another warehouse to a large base that has a lot of units and forces going through it. It gives you plenty of reasons to have units and men going there. Call it the "Small Unit Combined Arms testing/Training Unit" or the like.

[Coalition]

Aye, that's the issue - you'd be better off moving the gate itself to a facility with better access (preferably a purpose-built one).

With a variety of weaponry available. Old Ohio Battleship main guns for example. Or cruise missiles, heavy machine guns, automatic grenade launchers, etc.

Mount the Gate on a swiveling base for lots of fun. If you expect the incoming, you keep the STargate in its normal mode. If you have hostiles coming in, point it up or down. Down means the intruders can fall into a pit for later interrogation. Up means they go through, but fall back in the event horizon, killing the attackers.

After that, you make MALPs with heavy weapons for field support. Malp with camera and small gun is one thing, a MALP with grenade launchers for indirect fire is a much bigger surprise for the other side.