Posleen Force Sub: 1960.

[MKSheppard]

So it's 9 November 1960; John F. Kennedy is sitting around the Kennedy Family Compound in Hyannis Port, MA, drinking some port and enjoying his victory over Richard Nixon in the 1960 election, following Nixon's concession that morning.

Suddenly, the phone rings, and it's Eisenhower asking, nay ordering him to come to Camp David right now.

Kennedy arrives and finds that Nixon is sitting around drinking booze with none other than Leonid Brezhnev and Zhou Enlai. Ike then comes into the room and tells him how a group of alien races contacted the US, Soviet Union, and China in September 1960, and told us that another alien race, called the Posleen were gonna invade Earth, with Posleenfall estimated at around September 1965.

Ike kept the whole thing quiet with Nixon's assent to avoid throwing the election. Now, Ike is gonna announce the whole thing tomorrow; and wanted to consult with Kennedy, so that the two administrations can get to work formulating the US response to the Posleen.

Right off the top of my head; the US Navy will order the reactivication of North Carolinas, South Dakotas, and Iowas from the Reserve fleet; and a whole lot of heavy and light cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers, etc.

1959-1961 is when a lot of war-built ships were stricken from the Naval Register and shortly afterwards sold for scrap.

Army/Air Force-wise, Robert SATAN McNamarakrong is likely to order cancellation of pretty much every combat aircraft after he sees the specs for the Posleen ADA system(s); and pour that money into short-ranged tactical ballistic missiles moved around via helicopter; such as the MGR-3 Little John, which weighed only 2,000 pounds (Missile+Launcher), and had a 19,000 meter range with a 1-10 kiloton warhead; which entered service in Fall 1961.

Meanwhile, over in the Soviet Union, I'm sure that T-55 production would be either restarted or accelerated -- in 1960 alone, some 2,174 were built in the USSR.

Given that peak Soviet medium tank production in WW2 was 15,696 T-34/76 in 1943, I'm sure the Soviets can crank out 8,000+ T-55/62 a year given a year's prep time for tooling; and that's not including the Polish/Czech factories which made most of the T-55 spam anyway.

Organizationally wise, I'm not even sure the Darheel can even begin to get close in fucking up NATO/WARPAC's mobilization efforts -- in the main Posleen timeline, it was pretty much authorial fiat/act of plot.

Both sides are going to have a lot of WWII vets / political leaders who can supervise the formation of the draft forces, such as:

(not intended to be an exhaustive list, just notable names)

USA

Truman (died 1972)

(5 Star rank holders are always considered to be on the payroll, it's why Ike had to resign his commission to run for POTUS)

General of the Army Eisenhower (had rank restored when he left office, died 1969).
General of the Army Bradley (died 1981)
General of the Army MacArthur (died 1964).
Fleet Admiral Nimitz (died 1966)

MacArthur is likely to be of most use in managing the Japanese buildup as defacto military head of the Japanese Military Self-Defense Forces; to allay ASEAN regional concerns about said Japanese military buildup.

United Kingdom

Churchill (died 1965)

Field Marshal Montgomery (died 1976)
Field Marshal Auchinleck (died 1981)
Field Marshal Brooke (died 1963)
RAF Field Marshal Portal (died 1971)
Marshal of the RAF Harris (died 1984)

Germany

Germany is the big wild card. I would expect many of these guys to actually only get "consultancy" roles, due to issues with the USSR/WARPAC countries.

SS-men wouldn't even get anywhere close to actual military roles, just too politically unpopular with the USSR/WARPAC countries. They might be able to carve out unofficial milita positions for themselves if they were relatively clean and had enough connections.

Speer (died 1981)

Willy Messerschmitt (died 1978)
Kurt Tank (died 1983)

Franz Halder (Died 1972)
Kurt Zeitzler (Died 1963)
Hermann Hoth (died 1971)
Manstein (died 1973)
Hans Speidel (died 1984; was CINC Allied NATO Ground forces 1957-63)
von List (died 1971)
Erhard Milch (died 1972)
Donitz (died 1980)
Bernhard Rogge (died 1982; was RADM in Bundesmarine till 1962)

USSR

And of course Kruschkev was hanging around as a commissar during Stalingrad himself, so...

Zhukov (Died 1974)
Konev (died 1973; was on active duty till 1962)
Rokossovsky (died 1968)
Chuikov (died 1982)

Next to these big names, would be the guys who were the "middle management" in WWII, such as Westmoreland, who was a LTC/COL in WWII, before being in Korea and then Vietnam.

So yeah, I'm not seeing how the Darheel can fuck things up here, regarding personnel management and mobilization.

[Lonestar]

So, in this case we basically have the "A-Team" for total war mobilization. Unfortunately, beyond being able to produce a shitload of tubes, early '60s era armored vehicles are still inferior to "modern" fighting vehicles, and will be of limited utility without massive updates.

Fortunately, the "power armor" trope will not have set in in the Infantry yet, so hopefully "buy panels of unobtanium, bolt on"will rule the day for the upgrade effort.

[Deathstalker]

I wonder if someone else would be chosen as SecDef instead of McNamara? I would think someone who is adapt at diplomacy to work with other nations for the defense of the planet would be a better choice. There would be no shortage of WWII officers or politicians who cold handle the job.

[Simon_Jester]

I wonder if someone else would be chosen as SecDef instead of McNamara? I would think someone who is adapt at diplomacy to work with other nations for the defense of the planet would be a better choice. There would be no shortage of WWII officers or politicians who cold handle the job.

Also, didn't McNamara get the nomination for Secretary of Defense because of specific political circumstances that would be totally butterflied to death here?

He'd be more likely to stay on as president of Ford and wind up organizing the mass production of umpty gazillion Patton tanks.

[Ahriman238]

The political and military situation is a lot different. Foremost, the generation that fought WWII is just about middle-aged, and the survivors of WWI can be brought back via rejuv. Hell, the Russians will still have Marshal Zhukov. They'll have to explain a lot regarding computer technology that they didn't in 2001, but on the whole I think the world might be better-prepared for invasion.

Assuming we can make peace with Godless Communists.

[Rabid]

Assuming we can make peace with Godless Communists.

Well, just see what happened a few years back in this timeline with WWII, and you'll see it is relatively easy to have the two blocs acting together when they are facing a greater enemy. The only "problem" is what happen after said common enemy is defeated and the two blocs then happen to be perfectly equipped for war, with a fully mobilized economy, lots of conscripts and a helluva lot of surplus military goods. Then come the question "should or should I not attack first ?". Cold War V2.0.

[Simon_Jester]

If this war turns out anything at all like the one in the novels, by the time it's over both the US and the USSR will have much bigger things to worry about sifting through the rubble than they do fighting each other.

Unless we just arbitrarily say "OK, 1960 humans six zillion times more effective, invasion effortlessly defeated," and that's hard to justify since stopping them on the way down won't be materially easier... much of the globe is still going to get overrun.

[Ahriman238]

Another point, don't know if you'd say it was for or against them, but if they brought in a sci-fi author to design power armor, instead of MAD MIKE (Sorry, MkSheppard, I couldn't resist) it'd be someone like Heinlein.

[Simon_Jester]

...Fuck.

It would be Heinlein, and you could... sanely-ish wind up with M.I. suits, more or less.

Of course, that posits that the same basic decision would be made in the first place- you'd probably actually see some SF writers coming on as consultants in real life, but their ability to influence the situation would be pretty damn limited. They'd mostly be there to "imagine the unimaginable," which is something Army officers do not necessarily excel at.

So an artillery-heavy army that relies on armor for the maneuver element would be more probable, I guess.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Another thing to consider is Fleet. In Ringo-verse, Fleet was primarily the US and UK, but in 1960 the nation with the most submarine crews is the Soviet Union. They've got as much claim on donating people to fleet as NATO does, which should make commands... interesting.

Also in 1960 the soviet space program was the world leader, so is it possible that the Federation might insist that Moscow and not DC be the main contact point?

[Simon_Jester]

Since both space programs were an utter joke by Galactic standards (it's mostly just a question of whose ICBM-converted rocket boosters have the most throw weight, and it was pretty much a tie, really), I suspect that this kind of priority won't arise.

[Andehtron]

Pity most (all) British Battleships were scrapped circa 1957 or so.