GalTech RAR!

[Ahriman238]

Since I haven't done a RAR yet.

A couple of men in black suits lift you from your ordinary life to a secret locked-down conference. It turns out that aliens, the ever-hungry Posleen, are invading but "good" aliens are giving us technology with which to defend ourselves. Only problem is, these pacifist 'Galactics' only barely know what a weapon even looks like. Right now they use a sort of tank that fires a half-assed energy mine. They tried building robots to fight for them, but the robots developed free-will and had to be destroyed. Hence, this secret conference to figure out how to adapt their technology to military purposes.

In another world and time, they might have gotten the Baen Books crowd to this, but Weber's last books sucked, and none of the militant philistines putting this thing together have even heard of David Drake. But they have heard of SD.net, hence why you are abducted by men in black and stuck in a room with all of us. If they're going to get 'fatty nerds' to adapt alien tech, by god they're going to do it right.

You have six months to design, from the ground up, a means of facing the Posleen in space, sea, land, maybe even air if you can swing it. And advise the Joint Chiefs on the deployment, use and/or modifications to existing technology and forces for these purposes. You will develop and test all tech yourself, like in the book, you have a free ticket to do what you need to without oversight from military contractors and suppliers. You do not have advanced future knowledge, which mostly means you don't know the Darhel are going to fuck you over, or of the supply problems that will cause, but you are assured someone is investigating every possibility. You do have a shiny new AID to instruct you on Galactic technology.

They have fantastically advanded chemistry and metallurgy, thanks to their sohon ability. Very advanced nanotech, antimatter in semi-common use and magitek inertial dampening/momentum redirecting. No other psionics or physics-defying tech.

Preety much it, if you want to design mecha, design mecha, just remember you only have six months to draw up the designs then build and test a prototype. And the rest of us might laugh at you.

[Purple]

Do we have data on the Polsen them self and their strategies?

If so I have only one word, Artillery and loads of it. Mass produce the ML-20 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/152_mm_how ... 37_(ML-20)) or what ever is the most modern non computerized howitzer and mix it up with some Grad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-21_Grad) bolted on to every single pickup truck, jeep or Humvee you can find in the continental united states and be done with it. No fancy mechanised artillery (or rather nothing more modern than WW2 vintage) and definitively no expencive computer targeting. This has nothing to do with any advanced knowledge but just common sense. You don't need accuracy of the sort computers give you or things like time on target when fighting a human wave. What you want is rate of fire and as many tubes as you can bring down on the enemy. And for that you want cheap and cheerful. Adding computers and modern targeting systems to an artillery piece used against a target as the Polsen is like adding flame thrower turrets on your hypersonic bomber jet just in case it ever needs to do near ground strafing runs. You want those guns firing on pre calculated points based on a radio sporter telling you what grid to level and not hitting a moving target with 20 rounds at one.

As for the rest, simply restructure the entire ground forces to match the structure of a soviet block Artillery Army. In other words, an all arms formation with the rest of the forces playing support for the artillery. Scrap the air force entirely and just stick with short to medium range (like 100km no more) remote controlled recognizance drones. You don't need hyper smart and hyper expensive fighter jets or UAV's that the enemy will shoot down. You want cheap and cheerful model aircraft with a camera that can help guide in your artillery. And you want them cheap enough to die in swarms and still keep coming. Also, scrap all the alien tech entirely, we don't need it. The only thing that needs be done with it are those space canons. Furthermore, by funeling all alien tech into the space canons we can actually make sure they work and get here in numbers.

At the end of it you will get a really huge army of conscripts armed with as many barrels and rockets you can get your hands on laying mine fields ahead of the polsen to box them in from 40-50km away and than leveling them with blind barrages. And by sheer random chance you also end up with an army no alien force can mess with unless they suddenly send chaos demons down to corrupt the pen and paper you use for the sort of minimal ballistic calculations needed to hit roughly inside a really large square on a map. The war will be done within a few weeks.

[Ahriman238]

Your briefing on the Posleen will be as complete as the original. Very little of their tactics, since the usual Posleen invasion of a Galactic world is more like a culling than a campaign. As much of their physiology as can be understood without disection, as much of their behavior as has been observed. The Galactics are still, for instance, under the impression that it is completly impossible to rout the Posleen. You'll be apprised of their weaponry and NBC resistance. You will be told what their major weapons are, about the tenar and their destruction of aircraft (but not their radio/radar or gunfire autotargeting.) You know roughly what their ships look like, and how they all link together to form first B-Decs, than battle globes.

You may make suggestions and recommendations and strongly worded memos about what to do with other forces, but the only thing you can directly control is the design and distribution of GalTech.

[Purple]

Can I do what I said above but instead put a GAlTech micro chip in each vehicle with the task of keeping the secondary spare tire inflated and than claim that this makes it alienTechTM and that it should be issued to the entire army?

[Forgothrax]

Three words:

Terra. Is. Lost.

The Posleen simply have far too many advantages on the ground for us to overcome in five short years. That's barely enough time to start the process of building the infrastructure to fully roll out GalTech, let alone design, test, build and train the population of Terra in its use. If we let the Posleen come to us and dictate the terms of the war, humanity loses. Sure, maybe we fend off all five waves of Posleen but in the end what we're left with is a ruined Terra and the bare remnants of humanity. Five billion humans died in the OTL invasion of Terra. Even assuming I can do much, much, much better the dieoff will be immense.

The answer: If you can't fight a foe in the field, then the best way to fight him is not to meet there.

My recommendation is to abandon ground combat as the way of the past and focus Earth's resources and GalTech entirely on the production of warships necessary to fight the Posleen. I recognize that it is necessary, if only for reasons of morale, to fight to protect our homeworld but focusing primarily on the ground requires us to fight the Posleen where they are strong. Remember, the Posleen run their starships through verbal commands to the AI that they barely understand. In the OTL real warships deal devastating losses to the Posleen even when they are used incompetently. Used competently, we can smash the Posleen assault waves in space and then redeploy to help the Galactics.

The first step is to acertain what GalTech can be made without Sohon. This does not mean current-level GalTech, merely equipment more advanced than we have now. Emphasis should be placed on equipment that can get used to Earth Orbit. That may mean advanced engines, that may mean a space elevator, that may mean a frickin' magitek cannon that shoots stuff into orbit. Whatever works that we have the possibility to build, even if we have to be bootstrapped to build it. If the Posleen can do it without Sohon, so can we.

The second step, assuming we have a cheap way to make orbit, is to make ever HardSF lover's dream come true. We start the production of outer-system habitats with the end intention of moving a significant percentage of humanity off-world and into the orbit of Saturn, Jupiter, the asteroid belt, etc. If possible, we consider moving them to a system without any inhabitable worlds that will not be attacked by the Posleen. These members of humanity will be selected with the intention of building a true Star Navy using technology that will make us beholden to the Galactics as little as possible. We don't need fancy GalTech that lets a single frigate take on ten B-Decs and come out with nary a scratch-- if we can build twenty frigates that can take a single B-Dec apiece, we have won. If necessary, and only necessary, we consider teaching humans to use Sohon themselves.

The third step ties in the first: build an army that can use GalTech equipment, even obsolete GalTech, that works. Rifles shall be replaced with 3mm railguns (if a 1mm can ensure 1-hit-1-kill on a Posleen normal, we go with 1mm) similar in design to the Posleen railguns, but built for human use with proper sights. Armor will be considered; if we can build unpowered armor that protects against 1mm railguns and shotguns, the most common Posleen weapons, and it can be built without a great deal of hardship, it will be done. Otherwise, scrap it. Heavy weapons will focus on automatic grenade launchers using GalTech-derived explosives for area affect and backed up with 50-cal machine guns similar to the manjacks already available in-universe. Tenar can be destroyed with 50-cal rifle rounds, so we shouldn't need anti-tank weapons. Tenaral (?) are a problem, if the Galactics tell us about them; we might need to retain minimal anti-armor assets to deal with them. Artillery should be the main focus of the ground army. High volume of fire is the greatest asset so we need to pick a basic design (preferably with auto-loading available) and mass-manufacture it. GalTech shouldn't be necessary here, human artillery is good enough. We just need to be able to produce enough to fire 24/7. Armor should focus on low-profile designs. Standard Abrams armed with antipersonnel shells and GalTech armor appliques should do fine.

The Posleen don't war at sea. Every aircraft carrier should be scrapped, surface combatants should be kept only if they are suitable for fire support from the sea, and subs should be refitted into freighters and personnel carriers. The naval personnel thus released will be forwarded to the Space Navy.

The Air Force gets cheap GalTech drones for intelligence purposes. Combat aircraft should be scrapped completely and their pilots/support personnel forwarded to the Space Navy.

If we have a sufficiently large force assembled and armed at the end of the six months, we need to put them on Diess or a similar world against the Posleen. Not only do we need the experience fighting the Posleen, but (and if we question the Galactics, this should be made clear), if we win we get every single Posleen ship currently landed on Diess. That's hundreds to thousands of landers and C-Decs right there. That would give us a crappy yet effective Space Navy that we can use, along with home-built ships, to fight the Posleen. Even if we can only use those ships to fight off the scouting wave and the First Wave, that gives us time to build up our space manufacturing infrastructure and build real ships that we can use to smash successive waves. Heck, for that matter, we can let the Posleen land, then wipe out their armies from orbit.

[KlavoHunter]

Can't we just buy the contracts of a couple Clans of Indowy so they can come and work on Earth for us? Sure, I'm sure the Darhel would gouge us like hell for the initial investment, but it'd pay off if we could keep them from becoming Posleen chow.

[MKSheppard]

Three words:

Terra. Is. Lost.

Wrong. We have 500,000 MRLS DPICM rockets in USA Stockpiles alone; and something like millions of 155mm DPICM shells sitting in stockpiles; along with piles of 20mm Oerlikon ammo that was crated in 1945 in the US alone.

I shudder to think of Russian and Chinese strategic stockpiles left over from the Cold War and mass demobilizations elsewhere. Ever wonder why everyone has Leopards now? It's because they buy old German Army stock from the Cold War, and have them upgraded.

[MKSheppard]

You'll be apprised of their weaponry and NBC resistance.

I will demand actual posleen to be delivered to USAMARIID to see this [NBC resistance] empirically tested, rather than taking Galactics at their word.

[Ahriman238]

Can I do what I said above but instead put a GAlTech micro chip in each vehicle with the task of keeping the secondary spare tire inflated and than claim that this makes it alienTechTM and that it should be issued to the entire army?

You could claim that, and you could get the chips made and probably distributed to every command, but that's about it. Your suggest organization and doctrine would remain a suggestion. And even that presupposes the rest of the design team (i.e. all of us) don't shoot it down.

But I know you're an intelligent and creative man- er... purple box. I somehow doubt that with a looming alien menace, all this tech, AI, antimatter etc. your sole contributions to the discussion would be suggesting an artillery-centered approach and designing the never-go-flat tire.

Can't we just buy the contracts of a couple Clans of Indowy so they can come and work on Earth for us? Sure, I'm sure the Darhel would gouge us like hell for the initial investment, but it'd pay off if we could keep them from becoming Posleen chow.

It may be possible. It may not, originally the Darhel were going to pay the human forces as much as an Indowy laborer, eventually we bullied them into a large raise, but the fact remains only two earth banks are even recognized by the galactic economy.

Three words:

Terra. Is. Lost.

Wrong. We have 500,000 MRLS DPICM rockets in USA Stockpiles alone; and something like millions of 155mm DPICM shells sitting in stockpiles; along with piles of 20mm Oerlikon ammo that was crated in 1945 in the US alone.

I shudder to think of Russian and Chinese strategic stockpiles left over from the Cold War and mass demobilizations elsewhere. Ever wonder why everyone has Leopards now? It's because they buy old German Army stock from the Cold War, and have them upgraded.

I don't think we ever settled this in the analysis thread. Can the MRLS rockets go ballistic before crossing the horizon and becoming Posleen fodder? Keep in mind we've seen God-kings go as high as a kilometer into the air.

You'll be apprised of their weaponry and NBC resistance.

I will demand actual posleen to be delivered to USAMARIID to see this [NBC resistance] empirically tested, rather than taking Galactics at their word.

Well, bio and chem resistance, in-universe is generally inferred by being alien life, not everyone gets poisoned by the same things and damn few diseases can spread to multiple species from different worlds with fundamentally different biologies.

The Radiation thing on the other hand... we're told a few times the Posleen are very resistant to rads. The only time we get numbers is after the hell-weapon (antimatter cluster bomb) goes off. 400 rems, about a 50% fatality rate in humans is fatal to 20% of Posleen. However, the risk drops off a lot faster than the radiation does, and the Posleen consider the area "safe" again in a tenth the time we do. As shorthand, we'll just say it takes ~2.5-3x the rads to kill a Posleen.

Within the scenario? You are absolutely right to insist. Trust but verify is the magic phrase, even between old allies with common interests.

[Rabid]

I don't know the setting, so I'll ask :


What is/are the obstacle(s) to Nuke Spamming (say, with 1-5-10 KT warheads launched from MLRS, Large Caliber Artillery, or cheap automated/remote-controlled "stealthed" kamikaze drones) ?

If their preferred mean of attack is "human" wave tactics, you have to break their momentum and bleed them dry to have a hope of winning. If they are literally swarming you, you have to develop some serious firepower to counter them. And even if they are more resistant to radiation than humans are, I doubt they are that much resistant to intense heat and over-pressure. NBC environment ? We have the techniques and the material to fight in these conditions. We'll just have to train our troops and adapt our Doctrines (which we'll have to do anyway).


Also, do we know their degree of mobility (strategic, tactical) ? Can they easily move their troops inside a Theater or even between Theaters ? If so, in which numbers ? How do they do so ? How can we deny them this capacity if they have it ? Can we replicate this capacity for ourselves ?


What are their degree of Space Superiority ? What can we do to conserve our own space-assets (observation satellites, GPS satellite array, weather forecast satellites, communication satellites, etc...) ? How fast/mobile are their ships inside a gravity-well ? How resistant are their ships ? Are they resistant to 1-10-20-50 MT thermonuclear explosions ? Can we place into orbit thousands and thousands of defense satellites each loaded with dozens and dozens of Anti-Space-Ship WarHead (cIrcumPlanetary) ? How do we do this ? How resistant are our own satellites to repeated nuclear explosions in Orbit ?


How easy the production of Anti-matter is made with the help of Alien-Technology ? What sort of Unobtainium do we need in order to make anti-matter ? What are our sources of Unobtainium ? Do we have the capability to produce this Unobtainium ourselves ? What would we need to produce this Unobtainium ourselves ?


Does the alien have some form of "Universal-assembler"/Nanotech Wank/Über-wanked automated manufacturing capabilities ? How is it competitive with classical manned or roboticized assembly lines ? Can we put dirt in and have a gun out ? Can the Aliens offer/sell/lend us it ?

[Ahriman238]

@ Rabid, most of these questions you could find out by checking out the other thread, but since that's gotten a bit large I'll answeras best I can here.

What is/are the obstacle(s) to Nuke Spamming (say, with 1-5-10 KT warheads launched from MLRS, Large Caliber Artillery, or cheap automated/remote-controlled "stealthed" kamikaze drones) ?

Nothing save the desire to hopefully, one day, live free and happily on a green earth after the war is over.
Oh, and having had a robot rebellion once already, a requirement of the Galatics is that all AIs be human directed and can be overridden at a moment's notice.

Also, do we know their degree of mobility (strategic, tactical) ? Can they easily move their troops inside a Theater or even between Theaters ? If so, in which numbers ? How do they do so ? How can we deny them this capacity if they have it ? Can we replicate this capacity for ourselves ?

On a tactical scale, the vast majority of Posleen travel on foot. However, they can reach speeds of roughly 20 kph and sustain them for hours. The vast majority of Posleen have chimp-level intellect, but they all obey the sentient 'God-kings' who travel in open-cockpit flying saucers called tenar with advanced sensors and heavy weapons. Though rare, it is not unheard of for God-kings to form temporary aerial units for scouting or to eliminate enemy hardpoints. There is also an armored, enclosed unit, the tenaral which is basically a flying tank.

The Posleen generally have shitty logistics and trouble with any real terrain obstacles.

On a strategic scale, they sometimes use their ships for airlift.

What are their degree of Space Superiority ? What can we do to conserve our own space-assets (observation satellites, GPS satellite array, weather forecast satellites, communication satellites, etc...) ? How fast/mobile are their ships inside a gravity-well ? How resistant are their ships ? Are they resistant to 1-10-20-50 MT thermonuclear explosions ? Can we place into orbit thousands and thousands of defense satellites each loaded with dozens and dozens of Anti-Space-Ship WarHead (cIrcumPlanetary) ? How do we do this ? How resistant are our own satellites to repeated nuclear explosions in Orbit ?

Crappy ships, clumsily operated, in insane and overwhelming numbers. A 10 kt nuke, detonated inside the ships thanks to a very serious penetrator, is the most consistent manner of taking out a Posleen ship.

How easy the production of Anti-matter is made with the help of Alien-Technology ? What sort of Unobtainium do we need in order to make anti-matter ? What are our sources of Unobtainium ? Do we have the capability to produce this Unobtainium ourselves ? What would we need to produce this Unobtainium ourselves ?

Manufacturing antimatter is simplicity itself, and out physicists should be able to learn how in something like an afternoon session. Containing antimatter is a whole 'nother story. They use sohon, we eventually make some workable fullerene.

Does the alien have some form of "Universal-assembler"/Nanotech Wank/Über-wanked automated manufacturing capabilities ? How is it competitive with classical manned or roboticized assembly lines ? Can we put dirt in and have a gun out ? Can the Aliens offer/sell/lend us it ?

Sort of. They do use nanotech-assembly (the sohon process) but it requires constant supervision by highly trained professional sohon adepts. The upside is these nanites can manipulate things on the quantum level and produce all sorts of exotic molecules that do not exist in nature, or only as an outlier. The downside is that the Galactic production machine consists of a few billion sohon masters and their many apprentices who spend weeks or months putting together a unit one molecule at a time. It's high quality stuff to be sure, every Galactic starship comes with a hundred-year warranty, but not well-suited to mass production.

The good new is that humans can learn sohon, but it takes years to do so, and is the sort of training best begun during childhood. If we begin immediatly, the first human sohon users should be hitting Journymen around the time the first invasion wave hits us.

[Rabid]

Thanks for the answers.


So, yeah. I'll go for space-superiority all the way. Effort will be 50/50 for the Space Army and the Ground Army. For the space army, here is my advice :


First, I'd advice a Total War Mobilization (War Economy, Mass Conscription). We are fighting for the survival of our specie. Nothing less can be adequate.

If the Aliens are willing to lend their own space-lifting capabilities, build as much defense-satellites as possible and put them to orbit. Design them to be manned if necessary, but if so, make less of them and transform them into spaceships. We have to totally saturate Earth Space with the defense-satellite network. And by saturate I mean that from the surface to GEO, in a sphere of 100 Km radius, there should always be at least one defense satellite. A quick and dirty calculation show that would mean around 50 million satellites, give or take a few millions. Scratch that, this is stupidly overkill : just go with manned spaceships (basically, ISS modules with a limited orbital mobility and a weapon bay holding hundreds of ASSWH(IP)), and build a dozen of thousands of them. Also buy more "refined" spaceships from the Aliens, for the dual-purpose of being retro-engineered & used in front-line duty. On the ground, manufacture as much Antimatter Warhead as possible, and use them. Better to lose a country-worth of arable land than the death of our specie.


If the Aliens do not wish to lend us their space-lift capabilities, then there's basically no way we could achieve Space Superiority with our current space industry and only 6 month / 2 years prep. time, and I would advice in that case that we go for a 90/10 repartition of resources in favor of the Ground Army, following the advices given by Purple. The funds attributed to the Space Army are to be used to develop a Moon Colony and/or Space Habitats, which will have for mission to "spread our eggs", in case the Earth Front were to be lost. And I would advice that on the ground we go with Nukes whenever it would be justified (mass concentration of troops, landing zone, unpopulated zones, etc...).


In both case, commence mass training of Sohon Users, and import Sohon Users from Allied Alien Races for our own uses.

[MKSheppard]

I agree with the others, that GalTech should be spent on space superiority, and establishing an offworld industrial base, like the Chinese General in I think one of the first books was talking about.

It was childs play after all for the Galactics to move a full NATO Army, with all it's tanks and vehicles, etc and ammo, and POL to another planet. So that's an absurd amount of starlift we can use to settle Ceres; since it's said in the initial briefing that the Posleen avoid the fringes/extremities of the solar system; and just go for the habitable planets.