SF Military Tropes II

[PainRack]

(Also I'm not at all sure how this is a "sci-fi trope" when the only instance I can think of it occurring in is Star Trek.)

Not really. There are a couple of other minor sci-fi universes where this popped up, possibly motivated by Star Trek........

[Uraniun235]

Which ones?

[SAMAS]

To be fair, they do do this sometimes. The British Commando raids against Freya is a good example.

That's the point, in real life these kind of missions take forever to formulate, gestate and plan. In SF it's usually something absurd like:

Step 1, after a battle starts going pear-shaped someone immediately declares: "The enemy is using secret super science to defeat us!" - note how they just know this, rather than having to spend months trawling through AARs, intel and other reports to determine "hey, something doesn't stack up." And then go onto many more months and years of intel gathering to determine just what the fuck is actually happening.

Step 2, Super special alpha male team hop into their hot shit chromed-up space jet and fly themselves directly to an enemy facility without diversions, support or any form of cover and attack it. Somehow they always manage to completely luck out and a) go to the right facility, b) know exactly where to go within that facility (as if the enemy has a pre-fab base structure that is absolutely immutable and the blueprints are available for free), c) kill everyone within the facility that they encounter and d) get away scot-free having tampered with/stolen the super science. Whereas in reality, there's no guarantee that enemy outpost #5460 is going to have what you're looking for. If you dive straight in the deep end like this then there's no guarantee that your guys know what they are looking for. And then if you fucking kill a single person even close to the super science, steal it, or even leave evidence that it's been at all diddled with, then the enemy will assume it's compromised and alter it's usage or stop using it entirely and there goes your entire operations purpose. Sure you can reverse engineer it and gain some advantages of your own, but really, by leaving a trace you've just fucked yourself good and proper.

Keep in mind that in most Gundamjack cases, the intelligence-gathering and practicing parts are completely glossed over. Usually with a narration that basically goes: "But the Empire/Rebels/Federation/etc... discovered this secret project, and moved to neutralize it". with the action (usually in the first episode) starting just as the operation is underway. Gundamjacking rarely happens in the middle of a series.

One notable exception is Gundam 0080, where a half to two thirds of the series is in fact the scouting and preparation for the operation itself.

And even in those cases, most Gundamjack operations are a lot less covert. It's less about knowing exactly where it is, and is often about blowing everything up until you find it. It's a little easier to determine where the prototype is if you've already reduced the rest of the installation to a parking lot.

[Thanas]

Aside from the degree in "military" another trope that is all too common in all fiction - not just SF - is the degree in "technology".

Yes, you know the type. The person who is a reparmen can repair anything, the hacker can hack everything. Sometimes they are even folded into one character.

Of course, this gets even more ridiculous in SF. If a complex machine like a hyperdrive or a computer breaks down, usually all it takes is to put the technology freak on it and maybe scrounge of a few parts of the locals. This gets even funnier during SF missions, where you have one or two squad members who have the aforementioned degree in technology or hacking.

In RL, once your vehicle breaks down, the mission is aborted if possible. SF forces will not ask the locals for help or try to steal parts, because that leaves them open to detection. Especially as the odds of finding a spare part for, say, an ROV in a village in -stanistan are not good ones.

[PeZook]

Or they, um "acquire" transportation locally and continue

It all depends on the circumstances and mission parameters: if your helicopter gets shot down 200 kilometres from the target, then yeah, you're probably going to abort the mission ; If your truck breaks down right before you're set to hit the installation/camp/missile battery, you might very well go ahead and worry about escape later.

[MKSheppard]

I was recently reading the beginnings of the Kris Longknife series, and found two tropes right away:

1.) The Protagonist is from a super rich family that also has a fair amount of political power (ref Ky Vatta from Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War Series or Kris Longknife from Mike Shepherd's Longknife series); and basically can afford all sorts of super cool technology as an Ensign -- like super awesome perscomps that have more computing power than a Navy corvette -- and take up half the space of a standard Navy perscomp.

Also; they get to use or take this awesome technology with them into combat -- which is such a great idea (integration problems ahoy!)

2.) The protagonist is always an officer, or OCSes into one during the course of the series. Enlisted personnel, wherever they exist, are either:

A.) Cannon Fodder
B.) Misfits who are motivated into being useful by the power of the Protagonist, to show how awesome the Protagonist is in officerdom.
C.) Trusted Advisors who whisper things into the Protagonist's ear.

One thing unrelated to Longknife but something I've found in other series is this:

3.) The promotion variable in the universe (at least for the protagonist) is set to {PROMOTION_SPEED: SUPER_RAPID} and there is little understanding of brevet ranks by authors.

It may come as a surprise; but there are actually TWO U.S. Armies.

The United States Army (Regular Army)

The Army of the United States (Conscript/Brevet Army) -- it has been inactive since 1974 when we stopped conscription. Now, it's only used on the retired officer rolls.

Back when we had service numbers people who served in the Regular Army had their service numbers denoted with RA-xxx; while the wartime inductees had their service numbers appended with AUS-xxx.

Wartime promotions were often done as "National/AUS" ranks.

For example; George S. Patton III was a Captain in the Regular Army in 1917; but he was promoted to Colonel in the National Army by 1918. He then reveted to Captain in the Regular Army in 1920.

He then was promoted to Brigadier General in the Army of the United States in 1940; but was not made a Brigadier General in the Regular Army until 1944 -- on the same day he was promoted to Major General in the Regular Army (the BGEN promotion was a backstop for the MAJGEN promotion).

His final rank of General in 1945 was in the Army of the United States.

The same arc also essentially occured with Dwight Eisenhower, but with Ike climbing the upper ranks of General faster.

You never read this in SF universes:

"Good job Colonel Shroomatelli! Your assault on the Craboid High Command Bunker was instrumental in ending the war on terms favorable to us. Truly, you are an inspiration to us all. Your next assignment is as a Captain in the 20th Spaceborne's Intel Shop. Sorry about the reduction in rank, but Congress didn't make permanent the wartime brevet ranks."

[Bottlestein]

^ Isn't the demotion / punishment system in fiction generally schizoid? You get either "ridiculously lax" or "insanely strict" with no in-between. It seems almost as though authors believe that army discipline is determined by the CO rather than an actual code.

[Raxmei]

That reminds me of something. There seems to be some confusion over what a court martial is. For example, the Uplifting Primer says that anyone who fails to salute the colors will be branded and then court martialled. A court martial is a trial before a military court, hence "court martial." It is not in itself a punishment. It is entirely possible to be acquitted by court martial, and indeed in the US system a soldier can request a trial by court martial to appeal a nonjudicial punishment. The instances in the Primer are wastes of the court's time that would be better handled with nonjudicial punishment just like every other crime in the book.

A court martial is a scary thing because the court can give harsher sentences than are possible nonjudicially. Serious crimes may be taken to court martial for this reason. If you request a court martial you had better be damn certain of your innocence. I'm sure a lot of scifi gets this right, but I do see it gotten wrong from time to time.

The Commissar Cain series has an example of a serious crime taken to court martial. Cain doesn't believe that summary execution is warranted so he holds a trial to better determine what happened and what punishment is appropriate.

[Simon_Jester]

That reminds me of something. There seems to be some confusion over what a court martial is. For example, the Uplifting Primer says that anyone who fails to salute the colors will be branded and then court martialled. A court martial is a trial before a military court, hence "court martial." It is not in itself a punishment. It is entirely possible to be acquitted by court martial, and indeed in the US system a soldier can request a trial by court martial to appeal a nonjudicial punishment. The instances in the Primer are wastes of the court's time that would be better handled with nonjudicial punishment just like every other crime in the book.

The Imperial Guard is pretty grimdark, so may well use court martials as the equivalent of Stalinist show trials, as a way to encourage others and make a really public example of you. In which case your choices are:

-Nonjudicial punishment, up to and including summary execution,
OR
-Get drugged and beaten up until you'll agree to anything the prosecution says, then be put on trial and utterly humiliated by said prosecution, and then receive the same punishment you would have gotten anyway, up to and including summary execution.

[Thanas]

Or they, um "acquire" transportation locally and continue

It all depends on the circumstances and mission parameters: if your helicopter gets shot down 200 kilometres from the target, then yeah, you're probably going to abort the mission ; If your truck breaks down right before you're set to hit the installation/camp/missile battery, you might very well go ahead and worry about escape later.

Sorry, but you missed my point - I was going on more about the one soldier always knowing how to fix anything and how to hack anything.

[Swindle1984]

^ 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".

In terms of fictional military warfare, he essentially authored one entire way of military warfare, which was elite highly motivated soldiers working together. Think how the Fremen were wanked by Paul and Gurney in Dune.

The other is the "Draenei"(sp?) approach, where you have the super genius approach such as Ender and Thrawn.

His gripe against specialisation however is.... it just doesn't make sense to have that kind of technical maintenance/prepping done by the crew/infantrymen as opposed to dedicated specialists. It takes hours to do so......

We do that for our tanks only because the crew need to be able to do that in the field, but even at base, they do have access to technical support to help them. And certainly not the level of repairs Rico ended up overseeing

I don't think he's referring to specialist skills and roles, but people in general.

For instance, I work in federal law enforcement. But I'm not just a glorified cop, I'm also search-and-rescue, tactical first responder (i.e., school or mall shooting), hazmat first responder, wildland firefighter, medical first responder (and eventually EMT-Basic), conservation/animal control officer, riot control, and I've had the introductions to serving warrants, woodland ops/tactical tracking, SWAT, and bomb detection/disposal (which doesn't I'm going to do any those, I'm just aware of the basics and can advance to the next step in training.). And that's just what I need for my job.

People need a diverse skill set to function self-sufficiently. You can't just go through life without knowing how to maintain your car, care for your lawn and house, etc. Why pay somebody else when you can fix your own plumbing for much less? Why call roadside assistance when you can change your own tire? Too many idiots go through life without acquiring any skills other than what they need to function at the most basic level, never realizing their car needs its oil changed regularly, that they can fix their own computer when it bluescreens, or how to deal with a choking baby.

He's not arguing that you can't have things that require a specialist to do well (though he'd probably advocate knowing enough to do the basics yourself in case you can't get a specialist), he's arguing that you should diversify your skills and education to be more adaptable and self-sufficient.

[Setzer]

In complete Brainbug fashion, the subtleties are lost on future imitators. Heinlein advocates diversifying talents, and that creates the brainbug of "Every soldier is omnitalented in every concievable field! Infantry are also helicopter pilots/artillery crew/ tankers!"

[andrewgpaul]

3.) The promotion variable in the universe (at least for the protagonist) is set to {PROMOTION_SPEED: SUPER_RAPID} and there is little understanding of brevet ranks by authors.

It may come as a surprise; but there are actually TWO U.S. Armies.

The United States Army (Regular Army)

The Army of the United States (Conscript/Brevet Army) -- it has been inactive since 1974 when we stopped conscription. Now, it's only used on the retired officer rolls.

Back when we had service numbers people who served in the Regular Army had their service numbers denoted with RA-xxx; while the wartime inductees had their service numbers appended with AUS-xxx.

Wartime promotions were often done as "National/AUS" ranks.

For example; George S. Patton III was a Captain in the Regular Army in 1917; but he was promoted to Colonel in the National Army by 1918. He then reveted to Captain in the Regular Army in 1920.

He then was promoted to Brigadier General in the Army of the United States in 1940; but was not made a Brigadier General in the Regular Army until 1944 -- on the same day he was promoted to Major General in the Regular Army (the BGEN promotion was a backstop for the MAJGEN promotion).

His final rank of General in 1945 was in the Army of the United States.

The same arc also essentially occured with Dwight Eisenhower, but with Ike climbing the upper ranks of General faster.

You never read this in SF universes:

"Good job Colonel Shroomatelli! Your assault on the Craboid High Command Bunker was instrumental in ending the war on terms favorable to us. Truly, you are an inspiration to us all. Your next assignment is as a Captain in the 20th Spaceborne's Intel Shop. Sorry about the reduction in rank, but Congress didn't make permanent the wartime brevet ranks."

I'm not going to comment on the facts in your post, or whether they're a good idea - you know more about such things than I - but in a way this post illustrates a "trope" in criticism of SF; "that's not how the US/British/Russian* military does things - it must be wrong". In some circumstances it might be,but I've also come across the same argument when discussing the necessity for having an Army and Marine Corps, or the integrated army/navy rank structure in Babylon 5. In this case, I'm not sure the lack of 'brevet' ranks in an SF story is necessarily a flaw. With the possible exception of the end of the 2009 Star Trek movie.

*depending on the nationality of the critic.

As an aside, I take it when you say "National Army", you're referring to the "The Army of the United States (Conscript/Brevet Army)"?

[PainRack]

I don't think he's referring to specialist skills and roles, but people in general.

Its a throwback to the good old Reinaissance man, or pioneer of the outback. Look at his novel, Freehold for another example.

He's not arguing that you can't have things that require a specialist to do well (though he'd probably advocate knowing enough to do the basics yourself in case you can't get a specialist), he's arguing that you should diversify your skills and education to be more adaptable and self-sufficient.

Which has no bearing on the trope actually, which is related to the Degree in military. There isn't a need for technical specialists because combat personnel have all the time needed to master very difficult tasks and do them on top of their normal jobs.

[PeZook]

Heinlein didn't write Freehold.

[PainRack]

The full title is Farnham's Freehold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham's_Freehold

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not going to comment on the facts in your post, or whether they're a good idea - you know more about such things than I - but in a way this post illustrates a "trope" in criticism of SF; "that's not how the US/British/Russian* military does things - it must be wrong". In some circumstances it might be,but I've also come across the same argument when discussing the necessity for having an Army and Marine Corps, or the integrated army/navy rank structure in Babylon 5. In this case, I'm not sure the lack of 'brevet' ranks in an SF story is necessarily a flaw. With the possible exception of the end of the 2009 Star Trek movie.

*depending on the nationality of the critic.

As an aside, I take it when you say "National Army", you're referring to the "The Army of the United States (Conscript/Brevet Army)"?

There are two big reasons to use brevet ranks.

One is if your army's size changes drastically during wartime and you expect major scalebacks once the peace treaty is signed. In that case, you may well have ten times as many men under arms now as you did five years ago or will five years from now... in which case you need ten times more colonels to command them all. When the war ends, you can just dismiss all the surplus privates and sergeants, but the colonels are (mostly) career military officers who joined before the war, and whose expertise you want to keep around for the next war.

In that case, breveting them and then pulling them back to a lower permanent peacetime rank works and keeps you from having ludicrously more active-duty generals and colonels than your small peacetime army needs.

The other is if you've got a situation where officers are being promoted rapidly and you're not sure whether an officer can hack it in the new rank- breveting can serve as a trial period to keep officers from being promoted too far too fast for their abilities.

[xt828]

Simon_Jester, I think the only country that's really had the experience of very small professional force -> massive army is the USA - the other nations involved in WW2 tended to either have large standing forces or a top-heavy peacetime force, or both, or else didn't have the same degree of size increase or handled it differently. If you look at say the British, they have tended across their imperial period to have a lot of officers - especially naval ones - who were assigned to nothing in particular in peacetime, but who were ready to suit up for war. The Germans also tended to be top-heavy in peace, and you can see a notable decline in the quality of their officer corps as a whole across the course of WW2. The Soviets, as the other major model, essentially used the lowest ranks for training and concentrated responsibilities upwards.

[Sea Skimmer]

The British and Germans both use brevet ranks in the world wars, and long before them for that matter. The US has had them almost as long as it has been a nation. Certain rules are different but the concept is the same as that of the US. No one could have enough officers for a real war mobilization. No idea on the USSR but I’m willing to be they used the concept too.

[Artemas]

Yeah, I believe nearly all the belligerents used brevet ranks of one form or another during the Great War. WWII is rife with examples of commanders starting the First World War as junior officers, getting promoted (often substantially) then get bumped down to a lower rank at wars' end.

Not surprising given the sheer increase in personnel from total mobilization.

[Simon_Jester]

The Royal Navy's being over-officered is easily explained: they had a numerically large fleet. Navies, unlike armies, don't really expand much during wartime, at least not in the opening stages; you have to have enough ships to fight effectively before wartime construction appears, and few nations have enough shipyards to build large war fleets in less than a decade.

The RN in particular, especially in the 19th century, had a great many ships to command, which let them have hundreds of captains and dozens of officers. In the event of war, their fleet would expand fairly slowly, and the ships built during the war would likely remain in service for some time afterwards. There wasn't a problem with finding enough officers to command the war fleet.

The wartime army, on the other hand, was a very different question.

[MKSheppard]

I'm not going to comment on the facts in your post, or whether they're a good idea - you know more about such things than I - but in a way this post illustrates a "trope" in criticism of SF; "that's not how the US/British/Russian* military does things - it must be wrong".

There will always be variants of how military rank is handled -- but like others have pointed out -- there's a need for some sort of brevet rank or "alternative" rank system in order to enable expansion in a war; while at the same time preserving morale in the pre-war officer corps; who will after all, be staying in once the war is over -- they're lifers after all.

Additionally, there's the wrinkle that in some types of socio-political systems, military rank in itself would be a significant social status symbol.

So promotions and such like would be closely held, and there would be a whole clutch of options available rather than promotions, especially if the protagonist is of a "disfavored" class.

A Nova Terran as a Colonel? Impossible! Those provincials wouldn't know how to deal with the new rank!

No; give him the Orb of Golden Radiosity instead. That's something someone of his breeding knows how to handle.

The Germans had their own unique take on the need for a bunch of people to carry out the small specialist tasks that would be needed in a mass wartime expansion -- and because military rank was a social symbol in Germany right up to the end of WWII; they made up a secondary uniformed service called Beamten or "Administrative Officials".

If you will allow me to quote lengthily from a defunct website that reposted "Officials", an article appearing in Kettenhunde: The Newsletter of Feldgendarmerie-Trupp (Mot.) 200, Volume IV, Number 1 (Jan/Feb 1994) by LTC Louis H. Brown.

-------------------------------------------------

Most officials (called Beamten) ranked equivalent to officers; there were some with equivalent Unteroffiziere mit Portepee (Senior NCO) ranks.

They were members of the Armed Forces according to the Law of Land Warfare, but were not "soldiers" by the German definition. As officials, their authority extended only to their specialty field -- unlike soldiers, whose authority extends to anyone whom the individual outranks.

Beamten could not hold command. They were entitled to all the customs and courtesies associated with their rank/status, however.

In the social order of the day, being an officer was the peak of the pyramid, if you couldn't be a regular officer, being a reserve officer was next best, and a very close approximation of that would have been appointment as an official.

In addition to those performing personnel, supply, and logistics functions, army chaplains, doctors, bandmasters and veterinarians were also officials, although their uniforms differed significantly from those of the other officials in being basically those of active officers with distinguishing insignia.

The main difference between officer and official status depended much on education. Officials were by no means lesser-educated officers -- many had university degrees (which few officers did) -- but they did not meet the professional education/training requirements for appointment as officers or soldiers.

....

Beamten were not addressed by the same titles as regular officers. A paymaster Hauptmann-equivalent, for instance, was a Stabzahlmeister; a Major assigned to the Supreme Court Martial was an Amtsrat beim Reichskriegsgericht.

Whether the average landser walking down the street would have known the titles is doubtful, but those who worked with these individuals certainly did.

Most any soldier would have recognized a paymaster - - he was an important man in the battalion since he doled out food and money.

The titles among officials of equal rank also varied by specialty, so knowing the specific title for one Beamter did not necessarily give any indication at all of another's title.

....

Another category of offical was introduced after the outbreak of war; those who lacked the qualifications to be full-fledged officials but who possessed critically-needed skills were appointed as "Beamter auf Kriegsdauer" (Officials for the Duration of the War).

---------------------------------

There's a lot more, but it's generally over the colors of the straps and caps whatnot that the Beamten wore. As you might expect of Germans, they were quite anal about that.

But here are some examples of Beamten ranks:

Heeresunterförster: Army forester
Drucker: Printer
Waffenmeister: Armourer
Bibliothekar: Librarian
Obermusikinspizient: Director of Army Music
Oberfeldzahlmeister: Senior Paymaster

In the United States; we don't have that kind of offset rank system, but you can be appointed directly to a rank if you have a certain amount of technical expertise. Recently a doctor joined the Army Reserves and entered at the rank of Lt Colonel due to an Army board deciding that his years of expertise and other things justified him entering at such a high rank.

As an aside, I take it when you say "National Army", you're referring to the "The Army of the United States (Conscript/Brevet Army)"?

Yes -- it changed names between WWI and WWII -- the WWII name stuck all the way into the 1970s when the draft was terminated.

[PeZook]

The full title is Farnham's Freehold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham's_Freehold

Oh. I thought you meant the other Freehold (the libertarian propaganda piece). Which, by the way, is full of military tropes on its own

[PainRack]

Oh. I thought you meant the other Freehold (the libertarian propaganda piece). Which, by the way, is full of military tropes on its own

lol. Didn't the last thread cover all the tropes from there ?

Including Uber-stealth? In this case, spec ops floating through space to blow up enemy warships?

[andrewgpaul]

As an aside, I take it when you say "National Army", you're referring to the "The Army of the United States (Conscript/Brevet Army)"?

Yes -- it changed names between WWI and WWII -- the WWII name stuck all the way into the 1970s when the draft was terminated.

It was more the fact that it changed names in the middle of the post.

Getting back to my more general point, rather than specifically brevet ranks, this post is an example of the correct way of doing it; "No, that book doesn't make sense. The real Army does it differently, and here's why." As opposed to "well, that's fucking stupid. I was in the Army, and we never did that."