What if the Empire invaded modern day Earth?

[Ritterin Sophia]

Tough luck. Lower canon. Also, doesn't tell us beans without KNOWING the speed of airspeeders.

14,200km/h for a Droid Gunship, 620km/h for an LAAT/i. Given that new canon (that wasn't around when the ICS was written) shows the LAAT/i going orbital I'd say it doesn't take into consideration shielding. If we use the 1/10 rule as per the other craft a shield would put it up to 6,200km/h for what is essentially an Mi-24 IN SPACE!

[kilopi505]

So...everything in Sci-Fi will fuck up Real Life Earth.

Will nothing in real life do anything to one from fantasy? Because that's what I'm feeling here.

[Aaron]

So...everything in Sci-Fi will fuck up Real Life Earth.

Will nothing in real life do anything to one from fantasy? Because that's what I'm feeling here.

Yeah, artillery fire should kill Stormies in droves provided their dumb enough to come within range. Mines, IEDs and a bunch of other battlefield obstacles should work just fine. Its dealing with the air cover that is the tricky part.

[Bakustra]

So...everything in Sci-Fi will fuck up Real Life Earth.

Will nothing in real life do anything to one from fantasy? Because that's what I'm feeling here.

Not everything, just the ones with the ability to shoot from orbit and hit. For example, most cyberpunk worlds wouldn't have much of a chance against modern Earth, due to a ridiculous amount of privatization and balkanization. The majority of high fantasy would be defeated by modern Earth, and the vast majority of low fantasy even more so. Alternate history worlds tend to have ludicrous technological development when compared with reality, so the majority might have some advantage.

This is mostly dependent on space forces, too. The ground forces of sci-fi fall into one of four categories: 1)Unknown. We have insufficient data to determine what they could do. 2)Flawed. These forces have better gear, but lack some component of modern military capability to allow them to fight on even ground. The majority of televised sci-fi fits into either of these categories. 3)Too Small. These forces have full gear, but are generally too few in numbers to actually conquer Earth. For example, Hammer's Slammers, from the series of the same name. 4) Absurdity. These are the forces that could take Earth with one hand tied behind their back, because of some ludicrous power they possess.

Now, then, on to less amusing stuff.

\
I still don't quite see where you're getting dismissal from. That is an argument about an academic definition of sci-fi. Let me introduce to an amazing new concept. It is called (hold on to your socks, you're gonna love this) the legitimate difference of opinions. I disagree with him about a definition for sci-fi, as I believe the term is too vague to be used academically. But I can respect his opinion.

The problem is, there is no room for opinion in this debate. Its numbers, or fuck off, and it always has been around here. Seriously? You want to argue for sophism? Good luck with that. I'll be waiting for you to get a brain.

And therein lies the problem. D13 has no numbers, only an opinion and nitpicking. Has he ever provided alternative explanations for what we should accept as the firepower for a Star Destroyer or a TIE fighter? No. In fact, he's argued that we cannot analyze Star Wars at all. What justification does he give? None. I can only assume its because of his academic stance blatant bias about what sci-fi should be.

I'm not sure where to begin with this, honestly. I'll start in the middle, and work out from there. Sophism. Really, sophism? No, that doesn't work either. I guess it's the beginning that is best. If there is no room for opinion in this argument, then why bring up something that is clearly a statement of opinion? I mean, surely you don't want to poison the well against one's opponent, or indeed invoke the argumentum ad hominem to dismiss his claims, right?

Secondly, "numbers or fuck off" is a childish conception of the board. Grotesquely so, since it ignores, for example, people arguing over whether a particular work is good or not. Numbers are inappropriate there, and it is indeed, a matter of opinion. In your world, such debates must be infiltrators from a parallel universe or something, I suppose. The point is that the facts are facts, measurements measurements, but the application of such and interpretation of such are essentially opinion, as we have no real way to expand our dataset.

Thirdly, he is not arguing what you think he is. He is arguing that there is a point where we must say that we have insufficient data to really understand why something is, within the universe. And so we might as well turn to out-of-universe answers. I disagree that this is an inevitability, but I am friendlier to speculation than many others. Another difference of personal opinion, it seems. Wow, those seem to crop up on a regular basis.

Fourthly, I see that you have cut out and refused to address the question of how shifting Star Wars' position in genres diminishes it, no doubt because I got too personal. Whatsa matter, Formless, gotcherself a glass jaw?

So complain to the mods, and see if anybody cares enough to oppress this thread for daring to deviate from the standard. Go ahead. I'm certainly not going to stop you. Any hesitancy as your cursor hovers over the PM button would be entirely you, and not at all the province of my dread and imaginary psionic powers. (It's not dictating the rules if you're willing to come halfway, either, but that is the province of Internet Arguing 102, and we are still in 101 territory, I think.)

Since when has it been wrong to call out someone's basic assumptions? See, this is a skill I think you lack. Technically, you and I are on the same page. And yet, here we are, debating the merits of our prospective methods of debate. It would be no different if you were arguing with a creationist and he said that in his opinion god is a real entity. You accept it for the sake of argument. Fine, there are arguments that can be had within that debate structure. Then he says that you must accept that Goddit is a valid argument and you accept that too. Then he says that his opinion, god is all powerful. You accept that that is his opinion, and try to argue within that framework. And we continue with this pattern... at some point, the rules of the debate become so rigged that at no point are you going to win that debate. Sometimes that approach is fruitless. So I step in and say "show me evidence of God's existence" and you leap on my throat for violating the unspoken rule that "everyone has an opinion". We're arguing for the same agenda, what the fuck is the matter with you? Oh, right. You allowed him to dictate the rules, and as a result you get walked all over. Just look at this mess:

The fact that you compare this to arguing about evolution with creationists only further validates my belief that you define the term "shrill cretin". There are two major differences here, but I think any reader with a brain can spot at least one, and probably the other. The fact that you believe he is shifting the rules of debate continuously leads me into terrifying, Internet Psychologist thoughts of delusions on your part. You might, I venture, lay off the LSD while arguing on the internet. It leads to bizarre statements such as this. Frankly, Formless, given that you have such a difficulty with addressing arguments that involve you personally, I would not throw stones from a glass house, if you take what I mean.

That works, and I don't have a problem with it.

Why grant him that? Whenever we do scientific research we expect to see a few apparent inconsistencies. They are called outliers, and unless they reach critical mass (which they do not) we can still say that statistically the evidence concords to a certain range of values. As for his other argument, its irrelevant to the points actually being discussed. We do NOT need to magically know how a turbolaser works before we can find its power output. In some situations that might change things (like if there were evidence of a chain reaction, say), but all the evidence suggests in terms of how it deals damage it works on the same principles as any other weapon-- brute force energy transfer.

His standard for what it would take to make statements about Star Wars tech (logic must explain everything! Sorry, that's not how science works) are way too high, yet you refuse to call this out.

What are you on about, apart from a severe lack of social graces? Is this kind of like MST3K's comatose cousin?

Somebody should do a cheesy, Thumb Wars-esque parody where all that happens. (The Death Star doesn't seem to be accelerating once it slides into orbit, though.)

Here, you don't even argue with him, choosing instead to make a lame joke. At no point do you mention that that attack vector, as... interesting... as it must be was obviously a practical move as it allowed the fighters to avoid the Anti-fighter guns.

Yes, I joked with him. That is part of how conversation works, man. Part of how conversation works.

I'll admit part of this is that I've never read any of the other material. I have a cool book laying around somewhere that has artwork of the worlds of Star Wars, but I only look at the pictures I read it only for the articles, honest!

That's a major barrier, I think, for a lot of people. It's too bad, in some ways, but good in others, considering the general quality of the books.

And yet, he never fixes that error or allow arguments from those books. Why? You never ask.

What error? The error of not devoting a significant amount of time to reading through horrible licensed fiction to be able to answer trivia about Kyp Durron? If that's an error, then by Ma'at I must be a fairly error-prone individual myself! PS: I have noted other people complaining about the barrier to entry for Star Wars discussions, which is why my reply took the form it did.

*snip ICS*

Eh, that's only really in the AOTC book. The other three lack such numbers, and they're pretty interesting asides. (Uh oh, this is another of those signs of weakness Duke Glass-Jaw is looking for! Dare I abandon civil conversation in favor of a profane wasteland? Dare I not?)

Minor edit: Alas, an error in accuracy, though not in precision.

[Surlethe]

This brings me to a legitimate counter argument (sad. I have three opponents here, but in two pages, I'm the only one who bothers to refute my own points). What if computer reaction isn't the limiting time? Perhaps the engines have high acceleration, but a poor reaction time; they need a few seconds to ignite or something.

What about the difference between acceleration along the axis of the vehicle and acceleration in other directions? You probably don't need the example, but to illustrate (and lazily drawing numbers from Wiki) the mass of the Saturn V was 1e5 kg and the engine thrust was 3e7 N, so it was capable of, in an inertial frame, accelerating at 300 m/s/s = 30g. But it would be absurd to say, "No, the Saturn V couldn't accelerate at 30g because it wouldn't be able to dodge X."

Just the same way, it would make perfect sense for the X-wings to have very high linear accelerations along the axis of their four engines and to have very low accelerations in the other two dimensions. If maneuvering is done by torquing the fighter with differential acceleration (limited obviously by the endurance of the human pilot and warmup/cooldown of the engines) across engines to spin and then linearly accelerating again, you obviously won't be able to bring 1000g to bear on getting out of the way of whatever is aimed at you. (This would also explain why they lock S-foils in attack position --- this increases maneuverability by increasing torque the engines can exert on the starfighter's center of mass.)

[Surlethe]

Indeed. The dodging would still be possible though, assuming instant reaction (bad assumption in practice), because a turbolaser bolt is unlikely to be exactly parallel to your engines. With a large enough acceleration, almost any angle will still result in large displacement. And the parallel component also serves to buy you some more time (turbolasers aren't light speed), so the other component can help a wee bit more.

Yes, but displacement will be related to the sine of the angle of incidence, if I'm correctly interpreting the picture in my head. So you don't get much displacement at all for a small angle of incidence, and if TLs travel quickly enough relative to the speeds we're talking about, that sort of small displacement isn't going to matter, especially if shields are bubbles and not form-fitting.

The limitations on dodging are probably some combination of the limited utility of dodging with a single major thrust vector, warmup or cooldown times to and from high-thrust engine performance, response time, and fuel/trajectory concerns (you need to conserve your fuel for getting home, your computer is worried about simultaneously calculating the most efficient route to take in the dogfight --- will dodging or spinning put you in the way of another enemy? etc.).

Yes, indeed. Now, if the Death Star is accelerating too (the body slam scenario), the X-Wings would need engines on their bottom to stay with it.... which is just bizarre. I think it is all around better to say it was inertial there.

But, why do x-wings seem to plunge into the surface when they die? An accelerating Death Star would explain that. Perhaps the fighters had to keep their noses up a little bit, so some fraction of their main thrust keeps them up. We don't really see them do that... but I'm willing to pretend if you are.

If the DS acceleration is minor enough, the X-wings could angle themselves slightly to direct their thrust downward. Or, perhaps the fact the DS has significant (~1% lunar) mass is relevant: don't SW vehicles have some mode of antigravity propulsion?

[Bakustra]

They do have repusorlifts, which work by pushing against objects with mass and are effectively antigravity. We only see one crash that I recall (Porkins), and everybody yelled at him to pull up beforehand, suggesting that they have to regularly adjust a little to avoid a collision.

[Surlethe]

Well, I just took the equivalent mass of 1e38 J, which is about 1e21 kg. That much energy crammed into a tiny planetoid will create (relatively) significant gravitational effects, and the density is high enough that they will dominate over the effects of the actual matter in the station. I might be off on my numbers, though; I relied on my memory re. the energy observed blowing up Alderaan, and it's been years since I've thought about that sort of thing.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

This brings me to a legitimate counter argument (sad. I have three opponents here, but in two pages, I'm the only one who bothers to refute my own points). What if computer reaction isn't the limiting time? Perhaps the engines have high acceleration, but a poor reaction time; they need a few seconds to ignite or something.

I've considered a similar idea for why you don't see ships jerking around to avoid fire despite high maximum acceleration, but the engines aren't the critical point; it's the inertial compensators. If we accept the calculations showing 103G as possible for these ships (or even anything above a dozen, really), the inertial compensation is essential at the higher end, and it may not be able to react or reach peak performance instantly. If ships start out at a few Gs and it takes a minute or more for the engines to be able to safely reach maximum thrust in a straight line, you can have ships reaching their high accelerations in straight line travel but unable to dodge bullets without exploding their engine mounts nor able to reach the high acceleration when having to maneouver since that affects the ramp-up. This also works well from a dramatic standpoint; you can get from A to B quickly but whenever anything interesting is happening the ships have to stay on screen. It also explains why collisions are such an issue, since sudden thousand-G accelerations are something ships can't handle at all.

[Star Wars 888]

Tough luck. Lower canon. Also, doesn't tell us beans without KNOWING the speed of airspeeders.

My point is that starfighters move slower in the atmosphere, especially when they don't have deflector shields. Tie fighters don't have deflector shields. They can't move as fast in the atmosphere as they can in space.

BTW, "lower canon"? Since when do the movies have any showing of tie fighters moving in the atmosphere? We only see them in space. Novels are actually higher than reference books since the later are "quasi canon".

And Wedge is certainly a reliable source. He's a legendary fighter pilot. He knows what he's talking about.

Also, tie fighters aren't that durable. They were designed to be fodder. Don't start claiming that they can survive KT explosions because every time they get hit by a KT explosion, they blow up.

Blatant lie. They were farther away, the Falcon was all over the place, they REPEATEDLY hit it, and they weren't shooting to kill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpPZgQ04T9E

Watch as several tie fighters and star destroyers keep on missing the Falcon. Oh, and also the Battle of Yavin. Obviously they were shooting to kill in that case unless if they were suicidal. Even Vader had to wait for several seconds for his targeting computer to get a lock on Luke's X wing, and Luke wasn't even trying to dodge or maneuver.

Basically, a tie fighter, even Vader with his uber piloting skills and a tie advanced, would have to use a targeting computer and spend several seconds locking on to a target that wasn't "moving" relative to the tie fighter; they were both moving forward at comparable speeds. How will they get a lock on several thousand missiles that are smaller than X wings and moving at different angles from different directions?

Now explain to me why you think that tie fighters can stop mass missile strikes and artillery strikes when being outnumbered when they can't hit a bigger target moving at manageable speeds while outnumbering the target and having a star destroyer to aid them?

The mass missiles strikes by our inexistant conventional ICBMs that WILL be intercepted thanks to having ZERO ability to dodge (unlike the Falcon) and NO deflector shields (unlike the Falcon)?

Since they start in Brazil, Brazil and other South American nations won't need to use ICBMs, simply long range missiles. The USA and Canada might be within range too.

Besides, it wouldn't be that hard to simply refit their nuclear ICBMS with non nuclear warheads, meaning that Britain, Russia, China and other world powers would be launching missiles from across the planet. The tie fighters will stop a few, but the remaining missiles will fuck up the stormtroopers and AT-STs. 100 tie fighters cannot stop thousands of missiles moving at several thousand miles an hour.

Canon quote for the range of an AT-AT on internal fuel.

Canon quote on the range of an AT-AT on internal fuel.

I don't have it with me, but an AT-TE had a fuel storage enough for 500 km. Even if an AT-AT had twice that much fuel, that would still be 1000 km, which would run out eventually.

EDIT: As someone who's had his own feuds with the quote function in the past, I strongly urge you to EXTENSIVELY use the the preview function.

I was using an ipod touch and was running low on battery.

Basically:

Stormtroopers get fucked up by missiles
AT-STs get fucked up by missiles
AT-ATs get fucked up by logistics

100 tie fighters cannot occupy a planet.

Oh yeah, and they start off in South America, which has a lot of rainforests and such. Such terrain is highly hazards to walkers such as AT-STs. If ewoks can make traps in such a terrain to defeat the Empire's finest legion of troops, Brazil's military certainly can.

[Batman]

Tough luck. Lower canon. Also, doesn't tell us beans without KNOWING the speed of airspeeders.

My point is that starfighters move slower in the atmosphere, especially when they don't have deflector shields. Tie fighters don't have deflector shields. They can't move as fast in the atmosphere as they can in space.

Nobody said they could. Hence Mach 9-12 for unshielded fighters and ~Mach 40 for shielded ones as opposed to high fractional c in space.

BTW, "lower canon"? Since when do the movies have any showing of tie fighters moving in the atmosphere? We only see them in space. Novels are actually higher than reference books since the later are "quasi canon".

Wrong. There's no such thing as 'quasi' canon for Wars. There's several levels of canon, and the 'ICSes are higher than the EU novels. I'd look up LFLs canon policy.

And Wedge is certainly a reliable source. He's a legendary fighter pilot. He knows what he's talking about.

A pity he's overriden by higher canon nor do you present any quantification for airspeeder speeds (the T-16, which can nearly reach orbit, IS an airspeeder BTW).

Also, tie fighters aren't that durable. They were designed to be fodder. Don't start claiming that they can survive KT explosions because every time they get hit by a KT explosion, they blow up.

That's funny. By all means show me where any TIE in the movies was hit with a KT level EXPLOSION. They were killed by KT level LASER BOLTS.

Blatant lie. They were farther away, the Falcon was all over the place, they REPEATEDLY hit it, and they weren't shooting to kill.

Watch as several tie fighters and star destroyers keep on missing the Falcon.

Did I said they ALWAYS hit? No. They DO hit however. And does the term bracketing fire mean anything to you? They were under explicit orders NOT to destroy the Falcon.

Oh, and also the Battle of Yavin. Obviously they were shooting to kill in that case unless if they were suicidal.

Yeah, I mean it's totally not like Vader WANTED the Falcon to escape so he could track them to the rebel base. Oh wait. It helps if you actually WATCH the miovie.

Even Vader had to wait for several seconds for his targeting computer to get a lock on Luke's X wing, and Luke wasn't even trying to dodge or maneuver.
Basically, a tie fighter, even Vader with his uber piloting skills and a tie advanced, would have to use a targeting computer and spend several seconds locking on to a target that wasn't "moving" relative to the tie fighter; they were both moving forward at comparable speeds. How will they get a lock on several thousand missiles that are smaller than X wings and moving at different angles from different directions?

Several thousand missiles MASSIVELY LARGER than X-Wings NOT moving within the Death Stars jamming NOT having an X-Wing's onboard jamming capacity? For the conventional ICBMs, missiles that DO. NOT. EXIST?

Now explain to me why you think that tie fighters can stop mass missile strikes and artillery strikes when being outnumbered when they can't hit a bigger target moving at manageable speeds while outnumbering the target and having a star destroyer to aid them?

That'd be because at both Hoth and Yavin they DID hit the Falcon, unlike the Falcon the missile won't dodge, and unlike AGAINST the Falcon in those situations they'd be shooting to kill. Oh, and I'd like some evidence for the ABSOLUTE speeds of the Falcon and its pursuers because their RELATIVE speeds are irrelevant.

The mass missiles strikes by our inexistant conventional ICBMs that WILL be intercepted thanks to having ZERO ability to dodge (unlike the Falcon) and NO deflector shields (unlike the Falcon)?

Since they start in Brazil, Brazil and other South American nations won't need to use ICBMs, simply long range missiles. The USA and Canada might be within range too.

And either do jack all since nothing nonnuclear can hurt the AT-ATs or poison their own ground with radioactive fallout. Also, how are you going to HIT a moving target at those ranges? How are you going to TARGET it?

Besides, it wouldn't be that hard to simply refit their nuclear ICBMS with non nuclear warheads, meaning that Britain, Russia, China and other world powers would be launching missiles from across the planet.

Prove it. Also, you just rendered those missiles essentially useless because their flight times means the Imperials can move out of the area of any conventional warhead they can carry (even assuming they AREN'T intercepted) by the time they actually arrive.

The tie fighters will stop a few, but the remaining missiles will fuck up the stormtroopers and AT-STs. 100 tie fighters cannot stop thousands of missiles moving at several thousand miles an hour.

TIE fighters can move faster than that IN ATMOSPHERE, can move at high fractional c in space, are dealing with unshielded no ECM fragile targets on highly predictable trajectories, and might as well NOT BOTHER. With conventional warheads all you need is a few TIEs spotting the launch and plotting the trajectories and they can simply tell the Imperial ground forces to get out of the way.

Canon quote for the range of an AT-AT on internal fuel.
Canon quote on the range of an AT-AT on internal fuel.

I don't have it with me, but an AT-TE had a fuel storage enough for 500 km. Even if an AT-AT had twice that much fuel, that would still be 1000 km, which would run out eventually.

Assuming it's true, that's surprisingly low. Still, as per the OP has enough fuel to AT LEAST cross the americas. World domination was out from the word go, anyway.

EDIT: As someone who's had his own feuds with the quote function in the past, I strongly urge you to EXTENSIVELY use the the preview function.

I was using an ipod touch and was running low on battery.
Basically:
Stormtroopers get fucked up by missiles

Presupposes anybody ever gets close enough to them to launch any. Ground forces get eaten by the walkers, air forces get eaten by the TIEs.

AT-STs get fucked up by missiles

See above. Presupposes modern conventional missiles can actually HURT AT-STs. Modern antitank missiles to NOT work the same way a dozen ton mechanical impactor does.

AT-ATs get fucked up by logistics

Eventually. They're essentially invulnerable until then.

100 tie fighters cannot occupy a planet.

I never said they could, and neither can the forces specified in the OP. They CAN however pretty much negate any military response Earth can muster. The conquest of Earth fails because the OP force doesn't have the manpower or resources to do it, not because there's anything Earth can actually do about it.

Oh yeah, and they start off in South America, which has a lot of rainforests and such. Such terrain is highly hazards to walkers such as AT-STs. If ewoks can make traps in such a terrain to defeat the Empire's finest legion of troops, Brazil's military certainly can.

Absolutely. If the Imperials ever move into the rain forests.

[Star Wars 888]

Nobody said they could. Hence Mach 9-12 for unshielded fighters and ~Mach 40 for shielded ones as opposed to high fractional c in space.

???

Where did you get this from?

Wrong. There's no such thing as 'quasi' canon for Wars. There's several levels of canon, and the 'ICSes are higher than the EU novels. I'd look up LFLs canon policy.

Iirc the reference books were stated to be "quasi canon", but either way ICSes are not higher than the novels. Where did you get that from?

A pity he's overriden by higher canon nor do you present any quantification for airspeeder speeds (the T-16, which can nearly reach orbit, IS an airspeeder BTW).

Well I'll admit that I don't have a speed reference for airspeeders, there is no evidence suggesting that they could move fast enough to outfly modern day SAMs.

Oh, in FOTJ: Allies Ben and Vestara agreed that it would be foolish for Dyon on a speeder bike to try and reach a city several hundred kilometers away in the desert. Ben mused that on a land vessel he'd run out of water before he reached there. I'd suspect that that means that it would take several hours or even a day for Dyon to reach that place, since one can last for an hour without water, even in a hot but still habitable desert.

That's funny. By all means show me where any TIE in the movies was hit with a KT level EXPLOSION. They were killed by KT level LASER BOLTS.

Ok, laser bolts. Does it really matter?

Actually, they did collide with asteroids and exploded.

Did I said they ALWAYS hit? No. They DO hit however. And does the term bracketing fire mean anything to you? They were under explicit orders NOT to destroy the Falcon.

Yet they did want to disable and capture it, which they clearly were not able to do.

Yeah, I mean it's totally not like Vader WANTED the Falcon to escape so he could track them to the rebel base. Oh wait. It helps if you actually WATCH the miovie.

BS. I am referring to the Battle of Yavin where Luke and other X wing pilots were attacking the Death Star.

Several thousand missiles MASSIVELY LARGER than X-Wings NOT moving within the Death Stars jamming NOT having an X-Wing's onboard jamming capacity? For the conventional ICBMs, missiles that DO. NOT. EXIST?

"massively larger" - not the case with artillery shells or most missiles
"jamming" - good point, but do we have any source that shows the tie fighter's targeting capabilities without jamming? You seem to be assuming that tie fighters can somehow shoot down thousands of fast moving missiles.
"that don't exist" - since when would they not be able to simply modify their ICBMS?

That'd be because at both Hoth and Yavin they DID hit the Falcon, unlike the Falcon the missile won't dodge, and unlike AGAINST the Falcon in those situations they'd be shooting to kill. Oh, and I'd like some evidence for the ABSOLUTE speeds of the Falcon and its pursuers because their RELATIVE speeds are irrelevant.

They hit the Falcon like 1/4th of the time, despite outnumbering it.
Missiles not dodging - they won't need to. They'll be coming in at different directions moving at thousands of miles per hour. You're suggesting that 100 tie fighters will be able to shoot all of them down, which is ridiculous. Show me a source putting the tie fighter's accuracy that high.
Relative speed does matter. The tie fighter pilots couldn't hit a target that would have been moving rather stationary to the pilots aside from making a few rolls.

The mass missiles strikes by our inexistant conventional ICBMs that WILL be intercepted thanks to having ZERO ability to dodge (unlike the Falcon) and NO deflector shields (unlike the Falcon)?

Show me a source showing that the tie fighters are that accurate.

And either do jack all since nothing nonnuclear can hurt the AT-ATs or poison their own ground with radioactive fallout. Also, how are you going to HIT a moving target at those ranges? How are you going to TARGET it?

They won't be able to harm the AT-ATs, but they will indeed harm the stormtroopers and AT-STs.

Prove it. Also, you just rendered those missiles essentially useless because their flight times means the Imperials can move out of the area of any conventional warhead they can carry (even assuming they AREN'T intercepted) by the time they actually arrive.

BS. As a formation they'd only move as fast as the slowest person, and stromtroopers can't walk that fast (and 100 AT-ATs cannot carry 500,000 stormtroopers).

They could break up into multiple task forces and have the AT-STs do scouting or something, but then they'd be even easier to take out.

TIE fighters can move faster than that IN ATMOSPHERE, can move at high fractional c in space, are dealing with unshielded no ECM fragile targets on highly predictable trajectories, and might as well NOT BOTHER. With conventional warheads all you need is a few TIEs spotting the launch and plotting the trajectories and they can simply tell the Imperial ground forces to get out of the way.

Except that many artillery and missile strikes are heat seeking or even have GPS systems that allow them to alter their course mid flight to hit their target.

Assuming it's true, that's surprisingly low. Still, as per the OP has enough fuel to AT LEAST cross the americas. World domination was out from the word go, anyway.

"world domination was out from the word go, anyway" - then why are you still arguing?

Presupposes anybody ever gets close enough to them to launch any. Ground forces get eaten by the walkers, air forces get eaten by the TIEs.

"ground forces get eaten by the walkers" - no. An abram tank could take on an AT-ST and win (not all the time, but at a decent rate). Sure; AT-ATs would wtfpwn any ground force we throw at them, but they can't hit everything. Don't go on bullshitting some more about their uber targeting systems either because they were shown missing large concentrations of Rebel soldiers that were a few miles away.
"air forces get eaten by the TIEs" - debateable, since the tie fighters' durability is not substantiated.

See above. Presupposes modern conventional missiles can actually HURT AT-STs. Modern antitank missiles to NOT work the same way a dozen ton mechanical impactor does.

AT-STs got shattered by swinging logs and Chewbacca would rip open the hatch of one. Oh, and an AT-ST almost got knocked over by a catapult. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but a tank shell has far more kinetic energy than a rock thrown from a catapult.

Eventually. They're essentially invulnerable until then.

Until then. Once that happens the invasion force is done.

I never said they could, and neither can the forces specified in the OP. They CAN however pretty much negate any military response Earth can muster. The conquest of Earth fails because the OP force doesn't have the manpower or resources to do it, not because there's anything Earth can actually do about it.

Snipers hiding in the forests armed with armor piercing rounds can ambush stormtroopers. Missiles and artillery strikes can pwn the ground forces minus the AT-ATs. Oh, and what about that metal storm gun? Although not completely developed yet, war generally speeds up military development and its being developed in Austrialia, which wouldn't be that high on the invasion force's priority or capability to invade. One millions or possibly even more shots per minute, no recoil, never jamming.

If mounted on aircraft carriers, tie fighters would be ripped apart, meaning that whatever transport ships the invasion force could get access to is left to try and deal with 23 aircraft carriers and other ships.

A huge amount of jet fighters could keep the tie fighters busy while soldiers with armor piercing rounds (to pierce stormtrooper armor) could ambush the stormtroopers.

AT-STs get blown to bits by Abrams tanks. Heck, they could even get a bunch of catapults from a museum to knock over the pathetic walkers.

AT-ATs could be distracted; helicopters could fly in front of it, unmanned planes could charge at it with suicide runs, or flash bangs modified to be used from the air could distract the pilots.

Absolutely. If the Imperials ever move into the rain forests.

[/quote][/quote]

Well yeah, and at least one is bound to be in the way of a major city.

Besides, huge trenches could be built along the America-Mexico border, and those trenches could have powerful magnets or something else to trap the AT-ATs and AT-STs.



Oh, and what about a scorched Earth policy? Having KT or MT weapons won't matter much if their soldiers are starving to death. Once they run out of supplies, they're screwed.

Oh, and you still haven't explained how they build ships capable of resisting aircraft carriers. They'd have no industrial base and possibly no experienced engineers either.

[Junghalli]

I've gotta rant about the ICS again. Way to take all the fun out of the analysis. One of the coolest things about doing lab work yourself is the thrill of discovery. You start with these weird numbers and hurt your brain making sense of them.

<snip>

Having the numbers just given to you in a book ruins that feeling. You'll never have a strange collection of numbers for your own big brain to crunch. You'll never find the joy of discovery with those equations. And you'll never really understand the process either. The final answer was just spoon fed to you.

It is no better being the author. There was no fun process of discovery there either, he just pulled out the formula from the reference book, plugged in some numbers and wrote them down. No observations, no headaches.

Without the agony of defeat, the thrill of victory is a shallow thrill indeed.

And then you have some corporation tell you these are the canon, so everything else stops there. Lame. At least Biblical canon still leaves room for discovery, looking at the accounts and drawing meaning from them. The Star Wars canon now literally has numbers in a fucking reference book.

Thankfully, the movies disagree with them, so we can call it what it is: a student who cheated on his lab report and got away with it.

Now I feel better about my idea of taking an approach of leaving things relatively vague in my own fiction. Like making it a point never to explicitly state a mass ratio for my .1 c fusion starships (which are how everyone gets around the stars because my setting has hilarious pretentions of REALISM).

Although I like that mainly because it makes me much less likely to predict something that will turn out to be wrong, like in this case that a fusion drive with an exhaust velocity of 10,000 km/s is eventually possible. If I just vaguely describe the ship as carrying a giant mountain of fuel then it can be anything up to some sort of ridiculous self-consuming ice-ship design which is like 99.9% fuel by mass.

And it's also a nice way to stop yourself from doing the dreaded infodumping of technical figures. Sure you can still describe the basic principles of the technology but you don't have the temptation of having a nerdgasm full of dry facts and figures all over the page*.

Sounds like a win-win-win.

* Though my nerdgasms tend to be more toward the poetic side. Like I love the concept that to reach a measly .1 c the ship has to carry an enormous mountain of deuterium and eat many times its own mass to attain those speeds. And most of that is consumed just to boost the rest of the fuel to a little bit higher speed. I, like, anthropomorphisize the ship and feel sorry for it, having to lug around that HUEG LOAD of fuel for YEARS before it's finally mostly gone and it can SURGE FORTH, finally free of all that burdensome weight, and yet also admire the sheer BADASSITUDE of the whole thing. I mean, expending all that fuel and all that energy, and then undertaking a voyage which will last CENTURIES ... that's some awesome shit there.

Mang, FTL is totally for pussies.

[PeZook]

You know, I like how people don't point out the obvious when talking about things such as "the stormies will have to face off hundreds of millions of troops! F22s can bomb them! Tens of thousands (jesus christ) non-nuclear ICBMs will rain down on them!"

Why hasn't anybody pointed out yet that the modern world has no capability to do any of these things? Nobody can quickly ship millions of troops to South America, while the Stormies are already there ; The US can't be running air strikes on that force in hours, since they will have to rebase their jets to (mostly inadequate) South American air bases and drag their supply lines along, too. Also, F-22s can't fucking carry any bombs. SAMs are irrelevant, because no country in South America has a decent air defence network. Finally, half the fucking US Army (the only country capable of moving large amounts of troops around the world) is stuck in Iraqstan. Do you remember how much time it took to gather enough forces near Iraq to curbstomp its obsolete, shitty military? How about South America, with its nice jungles and mountain ranges and shitty ports and lousy roads?

And there are less than two thousand ICBMs in the world, total, they've all been produced over decades, and there are no conventional warheads for them in existence, so no, it would not be easy at all to re-arm them.

The scenario comes down to logistics eventually wiping out Stormie equipment, yes. However, Earth doesn't magically get a pass on their logistical train, either ; Why does it matter if China has lots of troops? They're all in China. On the other hand, the Imperials have half a million infantrymen right there in South America. They can carve out their own little empire with trivial ease even without extensive mechanization, by the virtue of already being deployed while the rest of the world still has to mobilize to face the threat. Even if they were a screaming horde of militia armed with AK-47s, they'd still be a significant threat!

I would, if anything, challenge the assumption the world will automatically mobilize and unite: beyond the simple problem of the "figuring out what the fuck is going on" period, even if TIE fighters can't wipe out cities and army bases and sink ships en masse, they can still threaten to destroy the entire satellite network. Which means the only country on Earth with any significant force projection capability is suddendly massively handicapped if they want to react to the invasion because of their communications being down and their primary precision guided weapons out of comission thanks to slight GPS problems, and the world economy taking a spin and crashing - and everyone will know about that capability the moment the first TIE effortlessly goes to orbit to take a look at the planet!

The Imperials might well have a year or two to establish some sort of foothold strong enough to be unassailable by first conquering a country, then engineering a "soft landing" to upgrade its infrastructure while retaining some sci-fi technological capacity (it's a half million man army, they're bound to have some military engineers with them). Nobody gave a fuck when Pinochet murdered the shit out of his own countrymen ; The great and powerful of the world might well not give a fuck about Vader doing the same, either, especially if he kicks some advanced tech their way.

Decades of political gaming follow with Chile becoming the new technological superpower.

[Star Wars 888]

You know, I like how people don't point out the obvious when talking about things such as "the stormies will have to face off hundreds of millions of troops! F22s can bomb them! Tens of thousands (jesus christ) non-nuclear ICBMs will rain down on them!"

Why hasn't anybody pointed out yet that the modern world has no capability to do any of these things? Nobody can quickly ship millions of troops to South America, while the Stormies are already there

Actually, the USA can apparently deploy 10,000 troops anywhere in the world within 48 hours, and a million in a a week.

; The US can't be running air strikes on that force in hours, since they will have to rebase their jets to (mostly inadequate) South American air bases and drag their supply lines along, too. Also, F-22s can't fucking carry any bombs, and finally half the fucking US Army is stuck in Iraqstan. Do you remember how much time it took to gather enough forces in Iraq to curbstomp its obsolete, shitty military? How about South America, with its nice jungles and mountain ranges and shitty ports and lousy roads?

They can share supply lines and other supplies. F22s can indeed carry bombs, as well as missiles that are pretty powerful.

And there are less than two thousand ICBMs in the world, total, they've all been produced over decades, and there are no conventional warheads for them in existence, so no, it would not be easy at all to re-arm them.

What? The USA alone has thousands of them, and it would not be beyond possibility to simply replace the nuclear warheads with conventional warheads. Besides, 2 thousand would be enough to totally screw up the invasion force.

The scenario comes down to logistics eventually wiping out Stormie equipment, yes. However, Earth doesn't magically get a pass on their logistical train, either ; Why does it matter if China has lots of troops? They're all in China. On the other hand, the Imperials have half a million infantrymen right there in South America. They can carve out their own little empire with trivial ease even without extensive mechanization, by the virtue of already being deployed while the rest of the world still has to mobilize to face the threat. Even if they were a screaming horde of militia armed with AK-47s, they'd still be a significant threat!

"little empire" - in South America where they'll have almost no industrial base or supplies? And then try and take a 510,072,000 km2 planet with only 500,000 troops?

I would, if anything, challenge the assumption the world will automatically mobilize and unite: beyond the simple problem of the "figuring out what the fuck is going on" period, even if TIE fighters can't wipe out cities and army bases and sink ships en masse, they can still threaten to destroy the entire satellite network. Which means the only country on Earth with any significant force projection capability is suddendly massively handicapped if they want to react to the invasion because of their communications being down and their primary precision guided weapons out of comission thanks to slight GPS problems, and the world economy taking a spin and crashing - and everyone will know that the moment the first TIE effortlessly goes to orbit to take a look at the planet!

Well in the OP I stated that the world would unite for the sake of balance and to avoid the argument of the world simply defecting, because that's pretty much pure speculation.

The Imperials might well have a year or two to establish some sort of foothold strong enough to be unassailable by first conquering a country, then engineering a "soft landing" to upgrade its infrastructure while retaining some sci-fi technological capacity (it's a half million man army, they're bound to have some military engineers with them). Nobody gave a fuck when Pinochet murdered the shit out of his own countrymen ; The great and powerful of the world might well not give a fuck about Vader doing the same, either, especially if he kicks some advanced tech their way.

"enough to unassailable" - on the contrary, if they're to do half the things that you're stating they'd need quite a bit of land, and 500,000 troops won't be able to stop the USA and other nations from launching numerous precision strikes, nor would it stop the occupied civilians from forming resistance movements and such. Eventually the USA could recall its forces from Iraq (without the politics, the USA can withdraw their troops in a matter of hours or days if they really wanted to), and then mobilize its forces for an invasion/liberation. The USA has over 2 million personnel. Add in the National Guard, the reserve and the estimated 100 million civilians fit for duty, and you have quite a large army, possibly more than the stormtroopers have power packs. Combined with their land support, air support and sea support, and they could defeat the invasion force's "small empire".

Decades of political gaming follow with Chile becoming the new technological superpower.

??? Do you seriously think that the USA would tolerate a clearly expansionist and technologically advanced force that intends to expand and threaten the USA being right next to it?

[Aaron]

All right, this whole thing is pretty damn dumb but these two stuck out to me in particular:

Actually, the USA can apparently deploy 10,000 troops anywhere in the world within 48 hours, and a million in a a week.

OK, I call horseshit. Source please.

What? The USA alone has thousands of them, and it would not be beyond possibility to simply replace the nuclear warheads with conventional warheads. Besides, 2 thousand would be enough to totally screw up the invasion force.

What. The. Hell? Why would you even bother to rearm them? They've got the most effective warheads you could want on them right now?

[Star Wars 888]

All right, this whole thing is pretty damn dumb but these two stuck out to me in particular:


OK, I call horseshit. Source please.

The Pentagon stated it in a report. I can't find the source, but you can take my word for it. Do you really think that I'd simply outright lie in that?

What. The. Hell? Why would you even bother to rearm them? They've got the most effective warheads you could want on them right now?

Well, in the OP I stated no nukes.

[Stark]

Are you serious? He should just take your word for it?

[Batman]

Nobody said they could. Hence Mach 9-12 for unshielded fighters and ~Mach 40 for shielded ones as opposed to high fractional c in space.

???
Where did you get this from?

ICSes.

Wrong. There's no such thing as 'quasi' canon for Wars. There's several levels of canon, and the 'ICSes are higher than the EU novels. I'd look up LFLs canon policy.

Iirc the reference books were stated to be "quasi canon", but either way ICSes are not higher than the novels. Where did you get that from?

LFL's official canon policy.

A pity he's overriden by higher canon nor do you present any quantification for airspeeder speeds (the T-16, which can nearly reach orbit, IS an airspeeder BTW).

Well I'll admit that I don't have a speed reference for airspeeders, there is no evidence suggesting that they could move fast enough to outfly modern day SAMs.

Since that statement is overridden by higher canon anyway I won't bother looking up anything but I seriously doubt a vehicle that can damn near reach orbit is limited to single figure Mach speeds.

Oh, in FOTJ: Allies Ben and Vestara agreed that it would be foolish for Dyon on a speeder bike to try and reach a city several hundred kilometers away in the desert. Ben mused that on a land vessel he'd run out of water before he reached there. I'd suspect that that means that it would take several hours or even a day for Dyon to reach that place, since one can last for an hour without water, even in a hot but still habitable desert.

Speeder BIKE. IOW a LANDspeeder. We were talking about AIRspeeders which can damn near reach orbit in some incarnations.

That's funny. By all means show me where any TIE in the movies was hit with a KT level EXPLOSION. They were killed by KT level LASER BOLTS.

Ok, laser bolts. Does it really matter?

Yes? Do I REALLY have to explain the inverse square rule to you?

Actually, they did collide with asteroids and exploded.

At speeds you...completely failed to provide. Not that that's actually all that comparable.

Did I said they ALWAYS hit? No. They DO hit however. And does the term bracketing fire mean anything to you? They were under explicit orders NOT to destroy the Falcon.

Yet they did want to disable and capture it, which they clearly were not able to do.

Which has what, exactly, to do with their targeting?

Yeah, I mean it's totally not like Vader WANTED the Falcon to escape so he could track them to the rebel base. Oh wait. It helps if you actually WATCH the miovie.

BS. I am referring to the Battle of Yavin where Luke and other X wing pilots were attacking the Death Star.

Not my fault if you can't make your references clear.
Um-the TIEs DID hit a number of X AND Y wings DESPITE massive jamming from the Death Star and possible additional jamming from the rebel fighters.

Several thousand missiles MASSIVELY LARGER than X-Wings NOT moving within the Death Stars jamming NOT having an X-Wing's onboard jamming capacity? For the conventional ICBMs, missiles that DO. NOT. EXIST?

"massively larger" - not the case with artillery shells or most missiles.

Yeah. I'm totally talking about artillery when I say ICBMs. Nice goalpost move there.

"jamming" - good point, but do we have any source that shows the tie fighter's targeting capabilities without jamming? You seem to be assuming that tie fighters can somehow shoot down thousands of fast moving missiles.
"that don't exist" - since when would they not be able to simply modify their ICBMS?

By Wars standards those missiles are SITTING STILL. Showing we CAN modify those ICBMs and do so in time to matter is up to YOU.

That'd be because at both Hoth and Yavin they DID hit the Falcon, unlike the Falcon the missile won't dodge, and unlike AGAINST the Falcon in those situations they'd be shooting to kill. Oh, and I'd like some evidence for the ABSOLUTE speeds of the Falcon and its pursuers because their RELATIVE speeds are irrelevant.

They hit the Falcon like 1/4th of the time, despite outnumbering it.

Bracketing fire. They were trying to CAPTURE it.

Missiles not dodging - they won't need to. They'll be coming in at different directions moving at thousands of miles per hour.

With flight times measured in the 10s of minutes.

You're suggesting that 100 tie fighters will be able to shoot all of them down, which is ridiculous.

But everybody refitting their ICBMs with conventional warheads in time for it to matter and launching them all at the same time is not.

Show me a source putting the tie fighter's accuracy that high.

Slow as hell by their standards targets moving on highly predictable courses that can neither dodge nor survive their fire. First shot instakills.
But as I said, they wouldn't need to BOTHER. By the time those missiles hit they'll hit empty countryside.

Relative speed does matter. The tie fighter pilots couldn't hit a target that would have been moving rather stationary to the pilots aside from making a few rolls.

Yes they did. My point was it doesn't say beans about their ABSOLUTE speed (as far as such a thing can exist).

The mass missiles strikes by our inexistant conventional ICBMs that WILL be intercepted thanks to having ZERO ability to dodge (unlike the Falcon) and NO deflector shields (unlike the Falcon)?

Show me a source showing that the tie fighters are that accurate.

The entirety of Star Wars. They routinely hit much faster much smaller much more agile targets. Like, every time a starfighter is shot down.

And either do jack all since nothing nonnuclear can hurt the AT-ATs or poison their own ground with radioactive fallout. Also, how are you going to HIT a moving target at those ranges? How are you going to TARGET it?

They won't be able to harm the AT-ATs, but they will indeed harm the stormtroopers and AT-STs.

Because-you say so.

Prove it. Also, you just rendered those missiles essentially useless because their flight times means the Imperials can move out of the area of any conventional warhead they can carry (even assuming they AREN'T intercepted) by the time they actually arrive.

BS. As a formation they'd only move as fast as the slowest person, and stromtroopers can't walk that fast (and 100 AT-ATs cannot carry 500,000 stormtroopers).

Yes they can. They have between 10-20 minutes and that's EASILY enough time to get out of the area of effect of any conventional warhead any ICBM can carry.

TIE fighters can move faster than that IN ATMOSPHERE, can move at high fractional c in space, are dealing with unshielded no ECM fragile targets on highly predictable trajectories, and might as well NOT BOTHER. With conventional warheads all you need is a few TIEs spotting the launch and plotting the trajectories and they can simply tell the Imperial ground forces to get out of the way.

Except that many artillery and missile strikes are heat seeking or even have GPS systems that allow them to alter their course mid flight to hit their target.

Another nice change of goalposts. We were talking about ICBMs.
Not that I see how you intend to get artillery (which isn't going to do beans against anything but stormtroopers, if that) in range of the Imperial forces.

Assuming it's true, that's surprisingly low. Still, as per the OP has enough fuel to AT LEAST cross the americas. World domination was out from the word go, anyway.

"world domination was out from the word go, anyway" - then why are you still arguing?

Because you're a moron arguing Earth forces could actually HURT the Imperials, which is complete bullshit.I

Presupposes anybody ever gets close enough to them to launch any. Ground forces get eaten by the walkers, air forces get eaten by the TIEs.

"ground forces get eaten by the walkers" - no. An abram tank could take on an AT-ST and win (not all the time, but at a decent rate).

Evidence.

Sure; AT-ATs would wtfpwn any ground force we throw at them, but they can't hit everything.

Strange, they didn't seem to have all that much trouble hitting snowspeeders in ESB.

Don't go on bullshitting some more about their uber targeting systems either because they were shown missing large concentrations of Rebel soldiers that were a few miles away.
"air forces get eaten by the TIEs" - debateable, since the tie fighters' durability is not substantiated.

It most certainly IS. Not that it MATTERS since there's jack all modern day Earth can do to a TIE that ISN'T sitting on the ground with the pilot out for lunch.

See above. Presupposes modern conventional missiles can actually HURT AT-STs. Modern antitank missiles to NOT work the same way a dozen ton mechanical impactor does.

AT-STs got shattered by swinging logs and Chewbacca would rip open the hatch of one.

Do the _MATH on those swinging logs some time. Oh, and Chewie DIDN'T rip it open, he just opened it. Apparently the stupid gits driving the thing didn't bother to lock the hatch. Something like that happens in the real world too.

Oh, and an AT-ST almost got knocked over by a catapult. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but a tank shell has far more kinetic energy than a rock thrown from a catapult.

Show me the math. Also, it's not just about the KE. Momentum. Which the rock is going to have a lot more of.

Eventually. They're essentially invulnerable until then.

Until then. Once that happens the invasion force is done.

And UNTIL then it's essentially invulnerable.

I never said they could, and neither can the forces specified in the OP. They CAN however pretty much negate any military response Earth can muster. The conquest of Earth fails because the OP force doesn't have the manpower or resources to do it, not because there's anything Earth can actually do about it.

Snipers hiding in the forests armed with armor piercing rounds can ambush stormtroopers.

Against Imperial technology sensors? That would very much surprise me.

Missiles and artillery strikes can pwn the ground forces minus the AT-ATs.

Assuming they ever get close enough without being annihilated.

A huge amount of jet fighters could keep the tie fighters busy

No they couldn't because modern day fighter are instakills for TIEs and UNLIKE modern day fighters TIEs DON'T need hours to get from one theater to another, they can go, say, from Europe to the americas within MINUTES.

while soldiers with armor piercing rounds (to pierce stormtrooper armor) could ambush the stormtroopers.

You have evidence modern day AP rounds can pierce stormtrooper armour? I'm all eyes (this IS a visual medium),

AT-STs get blown to bits by Abrams tanks. Heck, they could even get a bunch of catapults from a museum to knock over the pathetic walkers.

Evidence.

AT-ATs could be distracted; helicopters could fly in front of it,

And be ignored

unmanned planes could charge at it with suicide runs,

And be ignored

or flash bangs modified to be used from the air could distract the pilots.

For a few seconds.

Absolutely. If the Imperials ever move into the rain forests.

ell yeah, and at least one is bound to be in the way of a major city.[/quote]
It's called GOING AROUND IT. Or simply blowiung the blasted thing to smthereens.

Besides, huge trenches could be built along the America-Mexico border, and those trenches could have powerful magnets or something else to trap the AT-ATs and AT-STs.

And you know they're magnetic because...? Not that I see what that's supposed to achieve other than resulting the magnets being attached to the walkers' bellies while they go on their merry way.

Oh, and you still haven't explained how they build ships capable of resisting aircraft carriers. They'd have no industrial base and possibly no experienced engineers either.

THEY. DO. NOT. NEED. TO. The can simply use existing cargo ships as any opposing naval force can be blown away with impunity by the TIE fighters.

[Aaron]

The Pentagon stated it in a report. I can't find the source, but you can take my word for it. Do you really think that I'd simply outright lie in that?

Well can you try to find it? Cause I'm ex-CAF and I'm really sure the US can't do that.

Well, in the OP I stated no nukes.

Oh for christs sake.


Jesus Batman, do you have to do the one line thing?

[Stark]

Did he seriously just suggest using flashbangs against high-speed aircraft at altitude? Getting them on-target is going to be hard enough, but the effect is going to be minimal against guy inside a solid object at some distance. Does he know how they work?

[Aaron]

Did he seriously just suggest using flashbangs against high-speed aircraft at altitude? Getting them on-target is going to be hard enough, but the effect is going to be minimal against guy inside a solid object at some distance. Does he know how they work?

I get the impression that he really doesn't know much of how anything military works.

[Batman]

Jesus Batman, do you have to do the one line thing?

I'm not entirely certain what you're referring to, but if it's about me answering 888s paragraphs with a one-liner, yes I do, because not only don't they WARRANT a longer response, they frankly don't NEED one.

[Batman]

Err-that was sort of my point?

[PeZook]

Actually, the USA can apparently deploy 10,000 troops anywhere in the world within 48 hours, and a million in a a week.

No it can't. It can shift around Marine batallions in their snazzy landing ships (PS, they have no heavy armor on them), but it took months to build up significant mechanized forces on the Iraqi borders in an area of the world with large, developed port facilities and good roads and giant US bases right on the doorstep.

All these problems will be compounded by the fact you'd need to withdraw all those troops from Iraqistan first

They can share supply lines and other supplies.

Where? With whom? What does it even mean?

F22s can indeed carry bombs, as well as missiles that are pretty powerful.

No, they can't. An upgrade is forthcoming to give them the ability to carry the Small Diameter Bomb, but the software hasn't been written yet, and the bombs themselves are not in mass production.

What? The USA alone has thousands of them,

No it doesn't.

and it would not be beyond possibility to simply replace the nuclear warheads with conventional warheads. Besides, 2 thousand would be enough to totally screw up the invasion force.

I didn't say it was impossible ; I said it would be time consuming because the conventional warheads haven't even been designed.

"little empire" - in South America where they'll have almost no industrial base or supplies? And then try and take a 510,072,000 km2 planet with only 500,000 troops?

Hence why it's a "little empire". Taking over the world is impossible, so they better forget it right away. Their big advantage is the fact they're 25 000 years ahead of us in science ; What they consider basic information is probably radically advanced mind-bending shit for us. Of course, the nature of industry is such that they won't be able to catapult, say, Chile to an interstellar nation, but they could do a lot still.

Much like half a million modern troops dumped into 1100s Hungary could ; They'd be all using swords and spears within three years, but in a decade the country would've been radically transformed.

Well in the OP I stated that the world would unite for the sake of balance and to avoid the argument of the world simply defecting, because that's pretty much pure speculation.

I don't know, it's just not a very realistic scenario, depending on everyone acting like they never, ever did (Vader just mindlessly attempting to take over the planet with a woefully inadequate force, for example).

"enough to unassailable" - on the contrary, if they're to do half the things that you're stating they'd need quite a bit of land, and 500,000 troops won't be able to stop the USA and other nations from launching numerous precision strikes, nor would it stop the occupied civilians from forming resistance movements and such.

Half a million troops is more than any single South American country has right now. If the Imperials take one over, then they get guerillas and an occupation, but the country is also suddendly defended by half a million technologically advanced soldiers. Just do the sensible thing and don't disband the existing security apparatus, hoard blasters for real enemies rather than guerilla fighters, and I can guarantee you the US won't bother with a large scale invasion unless Vader does something terminally stupid. Without the US, the rest of the world can fuck off, since they don't have the force projection capability to do anything.

Eventually the USA could recall its forces from Iraq (without the politics, the USA can withdraw their troops in a matter of hours or days if they really wanted to), and then mobilize its forces for an invasion/liberation. The USA has over 2 million personnel. Add in the National Guard, the reserve and the estimated 100 million civilians fit for duty, and you have quite a large army, possibly more than the stormtroopers have power packs. Combined with their land support, air support and sea support, and they could defeat the invasion force's "small empire".

Are you really saying the US would mobilize its entire labor force for this venture? Why? Why would they possibly care that much about liberating some South American state?

You would also do well to check how many combat units the US can throw around, rather than just counting heads in the armed forces (hint: it's a wrong number anyway). You will find Iraqistan has practically all of them involved.

And no, you can't shift around heavy forces in hours or days. Try months. And you can't move them into South America without securing a large port first. I would not like to see modern light infantry (heliborne, airbone, Marines, whatever) try to take a port city from troops who essentially all tote man-portable rapid-firing grenade launchers and are bulletproof.

I suppose one could unload these troops in Brazil (or another country next to the one taken over, though Brazil is a little big to occupy with half a million men, so it would probably stay independent), but then you have to march them hundreds of kilometres across rugged terrain...logistical hell for any mechanized force.

??? Do you seriously think that the USA would tolerate a clearly expansionist and technologically advanced force that intends to expand and threaten the USA being right next to it?

They tolerate Russia, which is about as dangerous. South America is close, but not "right next to it". Certainly not the kind of existential threat that would require dropping everything and shipping millions of men around to fight a gruelling jungle war in some craphole nobody cares about.

The only people who'd care would be Brazil, but they're not guaranteed to go to war, either. Not when it would require a total mobilization to have a chance in hell of winning it.