War Theory is philosophy, right?

[Blaze]

Ok, so, this occured to me while watching Starship Troopers this evening. They talk about knowing how the bugs think, and thereby knowing how to beat them. So, I decided to think for a moment and try to apply a logical strategic theory to each side's battle plan, and see how well it fit. Then, I took the loser's side (human), and tried to come up with a winning plan for them.

If any of you have any favorite battles to evaluate (fake or real. Choose the battle of bunker hill, or invent your own), or input on my evaluation, go ahead and do that. It's almost a forum game, but not quite.

Anyhow: First Battle, Starship Troopers:

Base information: Side 1 (Human) is planning a counter offensive against side 2, for their Mass Destruction attack on Side 1's home territory (Earth). They elect a strategy of attacking side 2's homeworld first.

Side 1's plan and thinking: A massed, frontal assault should take side 2 by suprise, and fired up, angered soldiers should make good progress on adrenaline alone. Risk is low, for the following: Better firepower, Better Armor, Better Range, Weapon Diversity, and a strategical thinking advantage.

Side 2's plan and thinking: Mass available heavy firepower in secret, knowing revealing it too soon will cut its effectiveness. Use to its maximum to cut invading troops' heavy air support. Order troops to use shock tactics, such as slicing and devouring enemies, rather than just killing them. Again, objective is to suprise and frighten enemy, before they have a chance to establish a defended invasion perimiter, which will be well guarded at a range side 2 is incapable of hitting.

Victory: Side 2, by moving to counter enemy's heavier firepower, and range, by taking advantage of Side 1's supposed Strategic Advantage.

How the battle could have been turned: Side 1, rather than frontal, massed assault, seperates their heavy cruisers over a large area, decimating any chance side 2 might have had to effectively use their minimal heavy fire support. Small squads of troops are then deployed over a large area, at key locations, with a battle plan to advance to meeting waypoints. The small squad size prevents size 2 from massing their superior numbers against any one area, and reduces the effectiveness of shock tactics, by preventing a mass break in the line if one group becomes frightened.

What say you? Do I win?

[Schmuck]

Starship troopers was laughable.

If the humans insist on fighting bugs at close quarters they aint gonna do well at all. they had reasonably high power automatic weapons and could have easily fought from a distance, but they insisted on shuffling back and forth withing a range of a few metres when fighting individual bugs. If they must fight on foot, then use grenade launchers or at least train the soldiers to be able to hit the vital spot (which seemed to be about half a metre across) reliably. Better tactics would have been to use armour (tanks, if you prefer to call them that) or preferably stay in the air, fight with gunships etc, only sending in ground troops to mop up isolated areas.

[Siljmonster]

[quote="Schmuck";p="534225"]Starship troopers was laughable.

If the humans insist on fighting bugs at close quarters they aint gonna do well at all. they had reasonably high power automatic weapons and could have easily fought from a distance, but they insisted on shuffling back and forth withing a range of a few metres when fighting individual bugs. If they must fight on foot, then use grenade launchers or at least train the soldiers to be able to hit the vital spot (which seemed to be about half a metre across) reliably. Better tactics would have been to use armour (tanks, if you prefer to call them that) or preferably stay in the air, fight with gunships etc, only sending in ground troops to mop up isolated areas.[/quote]

Humans = stupid.

[HTRN]

Well, I'd like to point out that the director was french

The book was VERY different.


HTRN

[Rileyrat]

The way Blaze has it laid out is fairly reasonable. Taking into consideration that the Movie deveates greatly from the book and puts the ground troops out on foot like that is like the Japnese charging American machinegun bunkers on the Pacific islands. The only viable way for side 1 to overcome the obviously superior fighting power and numbers of side 2 would be armored battle.
Now in the book things get a little more level, the MI or Mobile Infantry were not on foot but in powered assault suits. Side 2 was also capable of interplanatary flight and, if I recall correctly, used weapons. The movie was little more than an ignorant Hollywood director take massive "artistic" liberties with the story line in order to make the story more beleivable to us, or so he thought anyhow. The story the director painted has the human race being eraticated from the universe by overgrown insects.

[Euthanatos]

The book was essentialy a near-even fight. The humans have power armor, but the bugs have weapons that can beat it and numbers, not to mention tunneling ability and allies, those tall gangly traitorfucks.

But as for the movie goes, if they hit our homeworld from range, why can't we do the same? Massive ranged bombardment, either meteor, standard explosive, or nuclear, would reveal bug hidden capabilities and eliminate the need for ground troops. I like how we can travel space but basically still have M4s for the troops, and jack shit armor. Engage bugs at range, use advantages like chemical, biological, and robotic assaults, and pull air assaults all over.

The movie Starship Troopers was like Vietnam War in space.

[Grumlen]

As far as the movie is concerned, I agree 100% that sending in standard infantry was a mistake. With the techonology they had, APCs and Tanks should have been much more prevalent. Also, explosives should have been standard tactics for use against a swarming enemy, rather than assault rifles used at close range.

As for the split up and go to waypoints tactic, while that reduces the ability for the foe to focus all their troops, it also reduces the ability for units to back eachother up. It would be a simple matter for the bugs to split their forces into 2 equal parts and sytematically slaughter the seperated squads.

[Seraphim]

if I recall correctly, used weapons.

I know the bug soldiers had ranged attack, but I can't remember if it was built in or weapons. In their power suites a human was a physical match for a bug in simple hand to hand combat. No weapons.

There's more I want to say, but I'm afraid of my memory.... I need to reread that.

[HTRN]

[quote="Grumlen";p="534530"]As far as the movie is concerned, I agree 100% that sending in standard infantry was a mistake. With the techonology they had, APCs and Tanks should have been much more prevalent. Also, explosives should have been standard tactics for use against a swarming enemy, rather than assault rifles used at close range.[/quote]

Armor is good against Armor and fortified compounds. Against, infantry, not so good.

What they really needed was something like a an AC-130 Gunship. A weapon platform specifically designed to attack mass numbers of organic assets. I heard that the Vietcong were deathly afraid of them.


HTRN

[Schmuck]

[quote="HTRN";p="535197"]
Armor is good against Armor and fortified compounds. Against, infantry, not so good.

What they really needed was something like a an AC-130 Gunship. A weapon platform specifically designed to attack mass numbers of organic assets. I heard that the Vietcong were deathly afraid of them.
[/quote]

I agree on the gunships, but armour can be very useful against infantry, as long as the infantry don't have significant numbers of anti-tank weapons. As far as the battle in the movie goes (I haven't read the book) I think specialised armour units could have been decisive. They'd need to be reasonably fast moving, with medium armour and medium to heavy weapons. Say a few heavy machine guns firing explosive rounds (similar to the WWII era pom-pom and oerlikons for example, maybe with a higher rate of fire) and perhaps a 2" or 3" main gun on each tank.

[workmad3]

Armour is always susceptible to infantry as the infantry can always go into geurilla warfare and have much better mobility.

Admittedly in the starship troopers film(not read the book) the tactics they used were just stupid. They charged headfirst with infantry into an opposing infantry force that vastly out numbered them. The infantry were trained against unrealistic targets(nothing in the training we saw came even close to a bug in armour or speed), and they used the trained infantry as scouts. They also used their precision insertion to drop the infantry miles away from anything useful, and with no intention of establishing a beachhead.

What would have made more sense. Train the infantry against something that was at least as hard to kill as a bug. Use either specially trained ground troops or low flying recon planes to scout the territory first. Chose a well defended area close to any scouted enemy positions to insert into. Drop heavy troops and/or armour into the position first to establish a perimeter and secure the beach head. Then drop in the mobile infantry, get a firm force established on the planet with a base to fall back to and strike from. Procede to perform strikes against enemy strongholds from the base.

[Grumlen]

Not sure how many people have heard of this, but in war there are essentially 4 different types of units: Light Infantry, Light Cavalry, Heavy Infantry, and Heavy Cavalry. Eash of these types of units is susceptible to one of the other types of units.

Heavy Infantry beats Heavy Cavalry which beats Light Infantry which beats Light Cavalry which beats Heavy Infantry.

The reason for this is simple. Heavy infantry is effectively represented as a block of armored spearmen, which will obviously defeat a group of mounted knights. In turn the mounted knights would have no problems running down a group of archers (light infantry) since the archers can't do anything effective enough to harm the knights. The archers defeat the mounted light cavalry due to superior range against an unarmored for that they can harm, and the light cavalry is able to defeat the armored spearmen using superior mobility and avoiding the spears.

In this case, the M.I. would be light infantry and tbe basic bugs would fall under either light infantry or cavalry depending on their tactics. In the case of the first battle, they were being uses as light infantry, so heavy cavalry is the natural counter (fast moving tanks). This line of reasoning is for battles, however, not wars. Such things as guerilla tactics don't apply to it since they are a war tactic.

[workmad3]

Just a couple of questions for the view above?

Where abouts do things like mounted infantry and horse archers come in under the above description?

Or things like heavy artillery etc.

Also, things like flanking maneuvers from units will mess up the balance of power as described.


Although admittedly, it is a very good way of describing the battle in question (i.e. the starship troopers battles) as it seems they were written like this anyway

[Schmuck]

[quote="Grumlen";p="535692"]

The reason for this is simple. Heavy infantry is effectively represented as a block of armored spearmen, which will obviously defeat a group of mounted knights. In turn the mounted knights would have no problems running down a group of archers (light infantry) since the archers can't do anything effective enough to harm the knights. The archers defeat the mounted light cavalry due to superior range against an unarmored for that they can harm, and the light cavalry is able to defeat the armored spearmen using superior mobility and avoiding the spears.
[/quote]

as regards mounted knights vs archers, I direct your attention to the battle of Agincourt. Although there were other factors involved there, terrain, 'rules of warfare' etc. for the other situations you describe, smart tactics could overcome reverse the expected outcome. Which unit was attacking would also be a factor.

[Seraphim]

Grumlen, good point. I forgot that the battles were set in England a few hundred years ago, as opposed to say... Another planet in the future.