SF Military Tropes II

[Zixinus]

On the note of silenced weapons, Shep: do some special forces still use crossbows?

I saw it on films and read it on Wiki that it is still used, while it made plenty of sense.

Crossbows are available, has no flash, silent by operation if a little padding is needed (but even if that can't be helped much, it is not recognized as a gunshot, perhaps not even by gun noise detectors as they forgot to program that into the thing), relatively cheap (donnu what the cost of special subsonic ammo plus silencers are, but I would hedge my bets on the crossbow in a comparision) while still powerful and quite accurate. What is powerful enough to bring down a deer in one good shot should do fine with humans (not counting body armor of course) Plus, in a bad pull, ammo can be improvised, something that you can't tell about bullets.

Of course there are the obvious drawbacks that we are talking about a weapon that the soldiers would have to be separately trained for, has a low refire rate and can be a bit bulky, not to mention that it would be somewhat suicidal in a gunfight. But still, as a stealth operative, it might not be that bad, no?

[MKSheppard]

On the note of silenced weapons, Shep: do some special forces still use crossbows?

They might, I mean crossbows are cheap compared to a gun -- a super carbon fiber lightweight crossbow out the wazoo will cost only a couple thousand -- something that can easily be swallowed in a special forces budget.

Plus as you pointed out, it would confuse the gunshot sensors.

The problems you list are critical ones -- low refire rate; fairly bulky, and extra training required. But it would probably be a pretty good infiltration weapon -- because you can make a crossbow and it's projectiles out of non metallic materials far easier than you can a projectile firearm.

It's also worth noting that non-intrusive scanning technology will get better; meaning that while you would be able to pass a composite knife through a crude metal detector or X-ray machine; a much more advanced x-ray machine/scanner would be able to discern the shape of the knife.

Semi-modern X Ray scanner image

Combine this with the previously mentioned pattern recognition software; and the computer monitoring the machine would be able to have a much higher "catch" rate than a bored human watching fifty billion bags pass per hour.

Off that -- I'd like to move onto one of my major trope annoyances:

The Unstoppable Alien/Satanic Doombeast

so beloved of thriller authors. You know the trope -- a bunch of scientists or archaelogists uncover a Divide by Zero thing -- maybe a smooth metallic egg that is older than the known universe -- they take it to a secret military base...and at the base or research installation...it opens up.

And all hell breaks loose.

And basically the beastie is unkillable by known means; it goes through scores of people like alpo, and is essentially smarter than the people pursuing it.

You know the old trick -- lead the pursuing group into a trap with a deliberate blood trail, and then spring the trap onto the group and maim them.

The problem is something like this is going to become less likely as technology trickles down -- SuperKevlar pants and jackets being cheap enough to issue to people to protect against fragmentation, lightweight foamed metal inserts to protect from rifle rounds -- the beastie of doom would be able to still kill you via blunt force or crushing trauma, it wouldn't be able to slice you open like a can of alpo as easily.

And of course, the ever so popular 'head fake you / hide in shadows' trick would become harder and harder as FLIR and image intensifier gear becomes more and more minaturized and cheaper, enabling them to be given to every man in a QRF or military squad, along with an automapping computer nav system -- it could use a simple INS system combined with a radar/sonar emitter to map the corridors as you walk through the base.

You'd have to resort to something truly so bizarre that it would begin to break suspension of disbelief and approach Trek level bizarre, like "the beastie is phasing in and out of dimensions, that's why our bullets can't hit it!".

[Zixinus]

On that note: wouldn't it make more sense to give it to a civilian organization first? After all, the military is rarely interested in archeology (in fact, there is the problem that sometimes they bomb the shit out of them...), so even if the device/doomegg/etc is clearly alien or something, wouldn't it make more sense just to use a civilian biolab and at worst, give it a military escort?

[Zixinus]

The problems you list are critical ones -- low refire rate; fairly bulky, and extra training required. But it would probably be a pretty good infiltration weapon -- because you can make a crossbow and it's projectiles out of non metallic materials far easier than you can a projectile firearm.

Well, all true. Bulk may be a problem, but I don't think that (aside the bow) a good one would be much more heavy or longer than a rifle. As for training, you can re-use the bolts, something you can't say on bullets, which sort of helps.
Making bolts would require a little practice with wood though.

It's also worth noting that non-intrusive scanning technology will get better; meaning that while you would be able to pass a composite knife through a crude metal detector or X-ray machine; a much more advanced x-ray machine/scanner would be able to discern the shape of the knife.

What if the item is combined with another item very closely? I once saw a belt buckle that sort of had a hidden blade in it.

so beloved of thriller authors. You know the trope -- a bunch of scientists or archaelogists uncover a Divide by Zero thing -- maybe a smooth metallic egg that is older than the known universe -- they take it to a secret military base...and at the base or research installation...it opens up.

On that note: wouldn't it make more sense to give it to a civilian organization first? After all, the military is rarely interested in archeology (in fact, there is the problem that sometimes they bomb the shit out of them...), so even if the device/doomegg/etc is clearly alien or something, wouldn't it make more sense just to use a civilian biolab and at worst, give it a military escort?

The problem is something like this is going to become less likely as technology trickles down -- SuperKevlar pants and jackets being cheap enough to issue to people to protect against fragmentation, lightweight foamed metal inserts to protect from rifle rounds -- the beastie of doom would be able to still kill you via blunt force or crushing trauma, it wouldn't be able to slice you open like a can of alpo as easily.

Of course, I am not doubting that gear will get better but you work in a small assumption into the thing: that the doombeast will kill like an animal. It may kill with acids, toxins, blunt force or even some other bizarre way (telepathy).

Plus, there are always patches of uncovered areas in armur.

And of course, the ever so popular 'head fake you / hide in shadows' trick would become harder and harder as FLIR and image intensifier gear becomes more and more minaturized and cheaper, enabling them to be given to every man in a QRF or military squad, along with an automapping computer nav system -- it could use a simple INS system combined with a radar/sonar emitter to map the corridors as you walk through the base.

Sounds a bit too expensive to make just for grunts. Although, I have seen a hybrid night vision device using both IR and image intensification.

EDIT: Could a mod please delete my previous message? I sort of wanted to edit that one but I somehow managed to post a new one instead. Sorry.

[Coyote]

The big thing to remember about Special Forces of any type-- doesn't matter if it is Rangers, Force Recon, SEALs, Spetznaz... whoever. Ideally, Special Ops are to sneak in, sneak out, and not be seen, not be heard, not be noticed. If Special Forces gets in a fight, their mission has failed. Very rarely are SF supposed to go in and do some sort of commando hit job and directly engage an enemy; typically "engaging the enemy" means planting explosives and running away (ie, being long gone by time the explosion goes off) or guiding a laser-guided bomb into place (again, from far away, and getting out of the area in the resultant confusion). Sometimes a sniper mission.

But guess what Special Forces usually do?

"Alright, villagers, gather round... here's some aspirin... Here's how to dig a well... Let the doc pull that tooth... Here's some antibiotics for your mule... Anyone seen this man? There's a reward... Know of any ali-babas/vietcong/etc nearby?... okay, we'll bring a fan belt for that next week... here, lemme teach you how to fire that AK properly... hey, kids, have a soccer ball... OK, see ya next week..."

Fun, fun, fun.

[MKSheppard]

I think we've nailed down special forces and how they really work pretty well with Trope Thread I and this thread.

Maybe do basic training next? This trope is so abused in SF, along with everyone having a BSc in "Military" (thank you coyote) and can drive or fly anything.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm. One that occurs to me is the notion that training/augmentation/whatever that has a huge washout rate (say, 90%) as a way to produce supersoldiers is a good idea.

For certain very unusual applciations I could see it, but as a general rule I'd think that if 50% of your recruits are washing out of basic training, either your entrance exam was too soft or you're just needlessly wasting your time by half-training more men than you're going to need.

[MKSheppard]

Hmm. One that occurs to me is the notion that training/augmentation/whatever that has a huge washout rate (say, 90%) as a way to produce supersoldiers is a good idea.

Covered in Trope Thread I post 1

For certain very unusual applciations I could see it, but as a general rule I'd think that if 50% of your recruits are washing out of basic training, either your entrance exam was too soft or you're just needlessly wasting your time by half-training more men than you're going to need.

(this was slightly covered in the linked post; but it was for US Special Forces; I'm expanding it to the SAS here)

The 22 SAS Regiment has only about 240-300 'shooters' in it.

There are two more "territorial army" regiments; 21 and 23 SAS Regiments, for another 360 reserve SAS men -- but many of the guys in those regiments are ex regular-SAS guys fulfilling their committment to reserve duty.

Each year about 200~ people manage to make it past initial screening to begin selection for the SAS. If you accepted 75% or 50% of them; you'd end up with the SAS being a 'short duty' special forces unit with people lasting only one or two years in the Regiment before they got forced out by the new guys; since the size of the SAS is limited to a certain size.

By setting up the "hill phase" to fail all but 30 people; you reduce the turnover problem to a manageable level. Even that isn't enough; so you can only try out for the SAS twice, period. Don't get in on the second try? You're never ever going to get in at all.

[Coyote]

Ohh, Basic Training would be good. Going to have to think about where to even start on that one!

Probably with the notion that the only time you're really treated "rough" is in Basic Training; all that "Full Metal Jacket/R. Lee Ermey" stuff is done for a couple months of Basic Training and then you're done. Regular military duty is a lot like any ordinary job, socially.

Once you join the military, Basic is (on the average) 2 months. That's where you have to put up with the "get on the ground and knock 'em out, you worthless yellow-bellied maggot!" Once you graduate Basic Training, that stuff evaporates. And there's a reason for it too, it is not because they want to "dehumanize" or "brainwash" you ( ) it is to see if you can hold up under stress.

Basic Training is a time to work you to the bone, with little sleep, while scary people with power over you are yelling at you with seemingly impossible and even contradictory tasks. If you can't take some people yelling at you, you sure as hell won't be able to take combat. And combat is not the time to be finding your breaking point.

Today's Basic Training isn't even as bad. They can't physically assault you (actually, they have not been allowed to do that in the US Army since the late 1970's), they can't insult you directly or personally-- so they can say "you're all a bunch of failures!" but they can't point at anyone personally and say "You are a failure!". That is because today's military, in the US at least, is all volunteer, and the "shock treatment" needed to get a bunch of unwilling conscripts in line is not needed so much. They already proved something by being willing to sign on the dotted line and show up, right?

But there is still some stressful treatment involved. It is a way to get strangers to bond to one another as a unit and think of the group, the team, and quit thinking of home.

Anyhow, all soldiers get the same Basic Training treatment, then they go to a more specifically oriented school where they learn their actual job-related skills, the job they signed up for. In the US, that is known as AIT or Advanced Individual Training. Basic is where everyone learns the soldier stuff-- the marching, the making the bunk, the uniform wear, the shooting. AIT is where you learn to be an Infantryman, or a helicopter pilot, or a mechanic, or a clerk, or a tank crewman, etc. Combat arms will still get treatment similar to Basic Training, but the more technical skills will switch to a more classroom environment.

By the time you graduate Basic and AIT, you'll be specialized in a particular area of expertise that you signed up for. The military, the US at least, does not arbitrarily assign someone to be a cook or a infantryman or whatever-- you sign up for a job set, that is what you train in. Again, a volunteer military needs to be kept happy to keep the recruits coming in.

So if you sign up to be a helicopter pilot, that is what you'll learn. You probably will not be taught anything about how a Stryker operates, or an AT-4, or how to do field surgery. That kind of "universal degree in military" actually only exists in movies (lookin' at you, Aliens vs. Predator, where the female Iraq vet shifted easily between Stryker operations and helicopter piloting).

For a sci-fi military being written about, it is as important to think of the society the recruits are being drawn from, which will determine how they are treated and what society will tolerate in their treatment. How heroes are seen in that society will determine how recruitment is done.

[Zixinus]

I once talked to a Vietnam vet that was visiting Hungary and we talked about his military training. He mentioned how you can go from basic infantry grunts trough paratrooper (as in parachute trooper), forgot the third tier and finally the Army Rangers.

The thing is that people assume that it's top-down: you get a bunch of volunteers for the elites and see how most of them drops out. To... well, I rarely hear that specified. Some even go as to insert or even outright state they just die.

In reality, if I understood the guy right, it's the other way around: you go from "lighter" training to progressively harder until you reach your limits. So, even if you fail the paratrooper training you are still qualified to be a basic grunt. That way, you will sill waste money, but at the end of the process, you still get soldiers in the end. That's what you want: to make the most out of every man and woman that enters service.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm. One that occurs to me is the notion that training/augmentation/whatever that has a huge washout rate (say, 90%) as a way to produce supersoldiers is a good idea.

Covered in Trope Thread I post 1

Ah. Oops.

For certain very unusual applciations I could see it, but as a general rule I'd think that if 50% of your recruits are washing out of basic training, either your entrance exam was too soft or you're just needlessly wasting your time by half-training more men than you're going to need.

(this was slightly covered in the linked post; but it was for US Special Forces; I'm expanding it to the SAS here)...

The SAS are a special application: their shooters make up something like 0.3% of the British military. They can afford to make their equivalent of Basic very difficult because they have far more volunteers than they could ever need, and because one of the big things they're testing for is... call it personal invincibility*. Since that can't be tested under normal conditions, it has to be tested for in extended periods of intense training, and the guys who don't have it wash out just like the guys who fail the physical requirements. I understand that.

To take an example more in line with what I had in mind, consider the movie Starship Troopers. A great deal of emphasis is placed on how easy it is to wash out of the Mobile Infantry in training, how easy it is to quit, and so on. I seem to recall Rico's training unit starting out the size of a battalion and finishing up the size of a company, though I can't remember the details perfectly and don't have a copy at the moment.

That's more what I'm talking about: training with such an immense washout rate for what is, in the setting, the regular infantry. Guys who wash out of MI training don't just wind up becoming normal riflemen who guard airbases or something; they never join the military at all. And I can't figure out a non-ideological reason to do it, aside from the "taking volunteerism to the point of insanity" aspect Heinlein injected into the book.

Or am I wrong here? Again, working from memory.

*Not invulnerable, invincible: as in "unconquerable."

[Bottlestein]

The best "pilot" trope is that junior pilots (rookies) can just get all the fuel, weapons, and clearance to take on high risk missions - no questions asked. No squadron ever has an Operations Officer, and if they do, he lets himself be overruled by amateurs

The most frequent military trope is that OPSEC is a joke, if you're the protagonist or a woman, it does not apply to you

[Simon_Jester]

The latter, I'm tolerably familiar with. The former... could you give an example?

[Bottlestein]

The former... could you give an example?

Generally, anytime one of the protagonists is a pilot / vehicle operator you will get this. Essentially, having junior ranks plan any sort of sortie with vehicles outside the supervision of an officer falls into this category, especially if the sortie is going to be high risk.

The example I am thinking of now is Top Gun, but that movie is over the top in many ways, so it's not a good example.

[PainRack]

To take an example more in line with what I had in mind, consider the movie Starship Troopers. A great deal of emphasis is placed on how easy it is to wash out of the Mobile Infantry in training, how easy it is to quit, and so on. I seem to recall Rico's training unit starting out the size of a battalion and finishing up the size of a company, though I can't remember the details perfectly and don't have a copy at the moment.

That's more what I'm talking about: training with such an immense washout rate for what is, in the setting, the regular infantry. Guys who wash out of MI training don't just wind up becoming normal riflemen who guard airbases or something; they never join the military at all. And I can't figure out a non-ideological reason to do it, aside from the "taking volunteerism to the point of insanity" aspect Heinlein injected into the book.

Or am I wrong here? Again, working from memory.

Errr.... not exactly. People who wash out from MI but still wish to be enlisted can sign on other duties, there's a naval rating(cook IIRC) when Rico became an officer. You have to ask someone else or wait a while for me to dig up the text though....

Although in relation to BsC military, Starship Troopers DOES exhibit the "we don't need no support/technical specialist" gripe. Indeed, the novel even made fun of modern day militaries having 3/4 of their unit being tail and 1/4 teeth, the MI is supposedly pure teeth(supported by engineers, telepaths and etc but.....) Every job is either held by a civilian(doctor, cleaner and etc) or double hatted..... In theory, this works great... Until we see Ric holding down multiple appointments as Duty officer of the day, mail call and etc. And most important of all, grunt maintenance of their suits.

There may have been a specialised tech depot(civilian presumably) for higher level maintenance of suit but at the platoon/company level, its all done by the grunts. The RAF used to do it this way before they realised the complexity of the job simply needed technical experts and assigning pilots to do them took time away from training.


There's also another trope though about equipment maintenance/MacGuyver effect. Apparently, heavy duty repairs can all be done at the platoon/coy level nowadays, including taking a wasted tank and returning it to combat via spit, grease and MacGuyver.

[Bottlestein]

^ To be fair to Heinlein, trivializing non -Combat Arms work is a failing of many authors.

The thing I find more objectionable about him is his "specialization is for insects" quote. And to think some people still believe he was a "military genius".

[Simon_Jester]

Well, he may or may not have been a genius in some general sense, but there's no particular evidence for military genius I know of in his work.

But yeah, now that you mention it, the conceit of MI being pure 'tooth' seems disingenuous, unless they're holding a LOT of civilians back at base to maintain things. The only way I can imagine it making sense is if the MI's support infrastructure is nominally civilian and kept back home, while only military personnel go out on raids. In that case, "everybody fights" is more like observing that everyone who jumps out of a C-130 fights when he gets to the ground; it's true, but it doesn't mean that the airborne division doesn't have a huge noncombat support organization behind it.

[Speculates that this may have been because of his experience in the Navy, where the men responsible for day to day maintenance of military hardware during combat operations and the men responsible for using it were one and the same, because of the necessity imposed by ships being at sea for long periods between visits to port]

[MKSheppard]

The best "pilot" trope is that junior pilots (rookies) can just get all the fuel, weapons, and clearance to take on high risk missions - no questions asked. No squadron ever has an Operations Officer, and if they do, he lets himself be overruled by amateurs

A subvariant of this trope is the I'm so goddamn awesome, rules and checklists aren't for me, look at how crazy awesome I am! I can fly a $500 million dollar cargo carrier by the skin of my teeth and miss obstructions like walls by only 4 inches at mach 3! one that's intended to show how great someone is as a pilot, and why we should all love them.

You can easily see this in Starship Troopers the movie, where Denise Richards' character flies a cargo/passenger hauler through the equatorial ring around the moon at top speed; dodging obstructions and walls at the last minute.

Oh, did I mention she had passengers in the back who were in abject terror?

Later, Lieutenant Denise Richards (It shows how fucking lame the movie was other than the FEDNET and WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? sequences that I don't even remember the character names other than Johnny Rico's.) is given helm control to fly the rodger young out of the equatorial moon dock that she's berthed at.

Does Lt Richards do everything all rational like, like detaching the umbilicals that provider power and oxygen between the ship and the dock before she starts to pull out?

Hell no; she starts backing out; and just at the moment before the umbilicals and airlocks(?) are taut and about to snap; she hits the release system.

As if THAT was not enough; she begins to swing the Rodger Young out of the slip, even before the bow has cleared the sides of the slip.

As it is; the Rodger Young's bow clears the slip's sides by INCHES.

And what does the Captain of the Rodger Young do?

Oh, she jumps out of her seat, and then slowly settles back in AWE of how goddamned awesome Lt. Richards piloting skillz are.

Here's a Youtube of that basic sequence if you don't believe me:

Link to YouTube

Same thing is seen in TOP GUN with MAVERICK's incessant use of his F-14 to show off by flying at almost deck level over a CVN at supersonic or near sonic speed to cause a huge boom and make the guy in PRIFLY spill his coffee.

In real life; if MAVERICK did that, he'd be finding his wings pulled and facing demotion to Ensign -- maybe even getting drummed out of the MIGHTY US NAVY for his completely unauthorized and totally dangerous stunt.

There's a big difference between unauthorized asshatting and authorized flight demos that a lot of writers don't get.

[MKSheppard]

Here's a Youtube of that basic sequence if you don't believe me:

Link to YouTube

For those of you who have no patience; here's the frames to look for:

0:27 to 1:20 -- insane piloting through equatorial ring
2:53 to 3:48 -- break all unmooring regulations

[MKSheppard]

Chain of Command? Support Staff? What's that?

Bottlestein pointed this one out -- even the junior-most pilots can plan and detail super high risk missions on their own and then go off and fly it with no questions asked or given by their superiors.

On a USN aircraft carrier I believe it goes like this (I am probably wrong -- someone can correct me on this if I am).

Admiral
Admiral's Staff
to
CAG (actually CAW -- Commander Air Wing; but is still called CAG for tradition)
CAG's Staff
to
Squadron Commanders
Squadron Staff (Intel and Operations Officers)
to
Pilots Themselves

Normally, in a lot of science fiction, whole levels of staff get cut out; ending up with a chain of command that goes from:

Admiral/Captain of ship
to
Pilot

nBSG at least made an attempt to rectify this by inserting the CAG between the Admiral and the individual pilots themselves; though the CAG usually was shown as the person who briefed the pilots at the beginning of each shift; that should actually be the job of the Squadron CO or their staff.

nBSG was also a bit funky at times because they had the tactical officer / officer of the deck (Gaeta) handling a lot of duties that normally would be handled by the S-2 (Intelligence) on Adama's staff. This can be sort of forgiven by the fact that Galactica was due to be retired, and the intelligence slots for BSG-75 were probably empty by the time of the Cylon attack.

Anyway, back to the original point -- while pilots and lower ranking personnel can suggest general ideas up the chain of command; there's a lot more stuff involved in planning an attack rather than:

Take off at 0800 hours
Blow the fuck out of alienoids at 0930 hours
Return to ship at 1030 hours
Victory party at 1100 hours.

For example, do we have the consumables and expendables to support such an attack?

What are the enemy's defenses like?

How do we deal with them without taking too many losses?

So on and so on; each question requiring an increasingly specific level of knowledge that a pilot would not know.

For example, the pilots themselves would have a general idea of the weapons envelopes of enemy weapons systems -- e.g. that a SA-N-90 SHROOMMON has an effective kill radius of x distance and can manouver at x gees...

...they would not know the exact specifics of how many SA-N-90s the enemy would have on their warships and in what locations -- how many can be controlled and fired at one time...what's the typical magazine depth of an enemy warship (how long it can sustain fire before it's magazines run dry).

That's something the Intelligence and Staff weenies would have stored in their dataservers.

Likewise; the Admiral's staff would have the clearances required to get a complete up to date enemy order of battle and target imagery taken only hours ago by national-level assets.

Plus there's more generalist stuff that the fighter pilots, by being fighter pilots...don't know.

For example, fighter pilots flying the Mark II Shroomper would be able to recite the delta vee of their craft right down to the last centimeter per second squared their auxilary RCS systems have...

They don't have that level of knowledge for the other craft that would be required for a mission, such as tanker and electronic warfare birds; so you have to bring in the other squadrons and their staffs as well.

A friend of mine just made a good insight now on the problem:

A lot of pilots in Science fiction don't behave like pilots, planning wise.

They behave more like special ops people in small squads planning small/solo type missions.

That's what was so irritating about nBSG -- they had some glimpses of interesting ideas in the miniseries, such as Raptors providing EW/AEW support to Viper Squadrons, along with Raptor fired decoys...

...and then they pretty much put those tactics back into the box for the rest of the show, *except* for the Adama Manouver around New Caprica for the Season 3 opener.

[weemadando]

On the topic of intel/operations, here's a great trope:

Every device ever is known to someone who's got science!!! So the enemy has a secret. Easy, call up your super soldier spec ops team, get them to fly their own craft out to an enemy facility. Break into the secure facility and takes one look at the device that they find and not only can they identify it, but then they can hack it/defuse it/steal it without any problems.

In reality, it is going to go more like this:

If they go with plan A) It either explodes in a horrific manner killing everyone, it anti-tampers and destroys itself, they can't figure out how to use it. Or more likely, they don't know what the fuck they're looking for and walk straight past it and grab something that looks suitably shiny, but is in fact nothing important.


In reality:

Weeks, months and possibly years of initial intel gathering to determine that the enemy is using something new for this particular role.

Weeks, months and possibly years of tens to hundreds of boffins from a variety of agencies/organisations trying to figure out the details that they have of it so they know (roughly) what it is, how it works and what it should look like etc.

Weeks etc of further intel gathering to figure out how to get to it without having to drive a fucking carrier battle group to the door to capture it, and in the process burning all those years of precious intel gathering by telling the enemy that you have accessed or captured their super secret goodies.

Days to months of training for the spec ops guys in how to get into said facility without raising alarms, leaving bodies or marks and safely handle/access the device.

And then they go and do it. And probably fail a few times because a janitor is running late doing his rounds or a security guard refuses to fall asleep at his desk or the access that they thought would be clear had a bookshelf up against it.

[MKSheppard]

Days to months of training for the spec ops guys in how to get into said facility without raising alarms, leaving bodies or marks and safely handle/access the device.

Friend of mine just mentioned this to me:

Don't forget the cost/time of building a reasonable facsmile of the facility or whatever it is you're going to send your SF team against.

REAL terrorists do this to varying extents; one trick they used to use was wooden stakes pounded into a empty field with ropes tied between the stakes to create a pattern simulating the floor plan of whatever it they plan on attacking.

This saves a lot of cost and time in building a actual facsmile; and also makes it harder for hostile intelligence agencies to figure out what they're up to; as you can have Achmed go out and randomly change the floor pattern every night.

This is what my friend absolutely HATES about Star Trek from TNG onwards:

They got the fucking holodeck.

Do they EVER use it for realistic pre-combat exercises?

Nope. They use it for the Vulcan Sex Slave III programme.

* shake head in disgust *

The holodeck as shown in TNG is a military planner's dream come true.

Get the floorplans and other bitz through various methods to make a simulation of the place.

Just from taking a walk inside, you figure out things you never thought of from looking at charts.

As in 'wait a minute, they can SEE us from that window', or 'hang on a sec, this manhole here is directly under a security intersection, we can pen it with a charge'.

You can even turn stuff semi-transparent so you can figure all sorts of shit out.

But instead of all this, you have...

Vulcan Sex Slave III.

[xt828]

What about the Trek-propogated trope that flagship = bestest ship.

[Thanas]

What about the Trek-propogated trope that flagship = bestest ship.

That is not really a trope because even today, the flagship of a carrier group is usally the carrier. During WWI, we also see that the commanders had their flag carried on the largest/best ships in their squadron (the notable exception being the british, but that is because they employed the QE class dreadnoughts in a different manner). But even if WWI is sketchy, you still got hundreds of years before that when the best ship was the strongest ship in the fleet. Nearly every navy from antiquity over the age of sail to WWI worked according to that prinicple.

What is retarded however is that the flagship gets sent to do cruiser or destroyer-level tasks like patrolling etc.

[Ryan Thunder]

What struck me more was the notion that the entire starfleet has the Enterprise as their flagship.

Or rather, that the entire Starfleet would have an overarching flagship in the first place.