Versus Match How many Arachnids (Star Ship Troopers (movie)) to cripple the United States?

[JagerIV]

The Council of Brain Bugs has decided that it is necessary to cripple the modern United States as a political entity for 10 years. To reduce the US to a state where it could not practically support a major foreign intervention for roughly 10 years.

However, this operation is not a high priority and thus must be completed with minimal commitment. The invasion force will be propelled to the US in drop pods over up to one month, without any additional orbital support, bombardment, or reinforcements beyond the initially budgeted ones.

Furthermore, only the following Arachnid types may be committed to the operation:

Workers: Averages 2 meters, 200 kg, no practical armor. Looks like a smaller Warrior bug. Limbs optimized for utility, primarily digging through dirt and rock, but can engage in combat to roughly the same effectiveness as using a pick axe or shovel.

Hopper: Averages 3 meter, 250 kg, effectively no armor. A strong hop can immediately propel the hopper over a 100 kmh and then glide roughly 10 meters per meter of elevation. Launching from a high location preferred. For example, from a location 100 meters taller than the target, a glide of roughly a km is generally achievable, and the distance can be covered in roughly 30 seconds.

Warrior: Averages 3 meters, 1 ton mass, 5 mm steel armor equivalent. Sloping and armor placement optimization can make effective armor much thicker, and the body is designed not to catastrophically fail even when penetrated, making them more durable than the raw armor thickness suggests. While optimized for combat, they can still engage in some utility work, such as digging.

Tanker: 20 meters, 60 tons empty, up to 40 tons of "fuel". Average armor approximately 20 mm equivalent, once again with some areas both physically and practically thicker. Acid/flamethrower combo can be used for both direct combat and utility, such as clearing obstacles and digging tunnels faster. Large front limbs can also serve as powerful diggers in their own right as well as to remove obstacles through physical force. This with their relatively heavy armor makes them useful breachers, able to accelerate tunnel production when undermining fortifications, or melt through the fortifications when direct assault is preferred.

Light Plasma: 15 meters, 100 tons. 5 mm average armor equivalent, little shaping to improve effectiveness. "Muzzle" energy generally between 400-500 MJ per shot, equivalent to approximately 100 kg of TNT. Initial launch velocity is slow, but the plasma containment field can be programed to decay in such a way to provide propulsion, sacrificing impact energy to increase range and shot velocity. Plasma can accelerate to orbital velocity with explosive energy remaining of about 10 kg of TNT. Can sustain roughly 100 shots in a 24 hour period, with resting a feeding needs, with a burst rate of fire of approximately 1 per 30 seconds.

Heavy Plasma: 50 meters, 2,500 tons. Upper carapace 200 mm effective thickness, underside thinner. Standard muzzle energy about 15 GJ, or about 4 tons TNT equivalent. Like its smaller cousin, can program the plasma containment to decay to increase speed and range at the expense of impact force. An orbital velocity projectile would still have roughly 400 kg of explosive force remaining. Also has the stamina for roughly 100 shots in a day, and can fire up to once every 30 seconds.

So what forces and tactics are needed to cripple the United States? What tactics might the US use to counter?

The US becomes aware of the Arachnid's existence and general capacities 6 months before the invasion, become aware an invasion might be imminent roughly 1 month before the invasion due to the presence of significant bug scouting activities, and can see an incoming wave about 12 hours before it makes landfall, during which they can predict rough landing areas and force composition based on number and size of landing pods.

They however would not be aware of the specific bug goals, nor aware of the overall size and composition of the invasion force, simply what's coming in in the next 12 hours, and don't know that there is only a 30 day window the bugs have available to deploy the landing force before support and reinforcements end.

Hopefully that's enough detail to have an interesting and productive conversation.

 

[Agent23]

The Council of Brain Bugs has decided that it is necessary to cripple the modern United States as a political entity for 10 years. To reduce the US to a state where it could not practically support a major foreign intervention for roughly 10 years.

However, this operation is not a high priority and thus must be completed with minimal commitment. The invasion force will be propelled to the US in drop pods over up to one month, without any additional orbital support, bombardment, or reinforcements beyond the initially budgeted ones.

Furthermore, only the following Arachnid types may be committed to the operation:

Workers: Averages 2 meters, 200 kg, no practical armor. Looks like a smaller Warrior bug. Limbs optimized for utility, primarily digging through dirt and rock, but can engage in combat to roughly the same effectiveness as using a pick axe or shovel.

Hopper: Averages 3 meter, 250 kg, effectively no armor. A strong hop can immediately propel the hopper over a 100 kmh and then glide roughly 10 meters per meter of elevation. Launching from a high location preferred. For example, from a location 100 meters taller than the target, a glide of roughly a km is generally achievable, and the distance can be covered in roughly 30 seconds.

Warrior: Averages 3 meters, 1 ton mass, 5 mm steel armor equivalent. Sloping and armor placement optimization can make effective armor much thicker, and the body is designed not to catastrophically fail even when penetrated, making them more durable than the raw armor thickness suggests. While optimized for combat, they can still engage in some utility work, such as digging.

Tanker: 20 meters, 60 tons empty, up to 40 tons of "fuel". Average armor approximately 20 mm equivalent, once again with some areas both physically and practically thicker. Acid/flamethrower combo can be used for both direct combat and utility, such as clearing obstacles and digging tunnels faster. Large front limbs can also serve as powerful diggers in their own right as well as to remove obstacles through physical force. This with their relatively heavy armor makes them useful breachers, able to accelerate tunnel production when undermining fortifications, or melt through the fortifications when direct assault is preferred.

Light Plasma: 15 meters, 100 tons. 5 mm average armor equivalent, little shaping to improve effectiveness. "Muzzle" energy generally between 400-500 MJ per shot, equivalent to approximately 100 kg of TNT. Initial launch velocity is slow, but the plasma containment field can be programed to decay in such a way to provide propulsion, sacrificing impact energy to increase range and shot velocity. Plasma can accelerate to orbital velocity with explosive energy remaining of about 10 kg of TNT. Can sustain roughly 100 shots in a 24 hour period, with resting a feeding needs, with a burst rate of fire of approximately 1 per 30 seconds.

Heavy Plasma: 50 meters, 2,500 tons. Upper carapace 200 mm effective thickness, underside thinner. Standard muzzle energy about 15 GJ, or about 4 tons TNT equivalent. Like its smaller cousin, can program the plasma containment to decay to increase speed and range at the expense of impact force. An orbital velocity projectile would still have roughly 400 kg of explosive force remaining. Also has the stamina for roughly 100 shots in a day, and can fire up to once every 30 seconds.

So what forces and tactics are needed to cripple the United States? What tactics might the US use to counter?

Tactical nuke spam on the landing sites and attempts to intercept the pods in flight.

Mobilize every single person and arm them with a Barrett rifle with some form of explosive round.

The US becomes aware of the Arachnid's existence and general capacities 6 months before the invasion, become aware an invasion might be imminent roughly 1 month before the invasion due to the presence of significant bug scouting activities, and can see an incoming wave about 12 hours before it makes landfall, during which they can predict rough landing areas and force composition based on number and size of landing pods.

Sub kiloton nuke spam.

They however would not be aware of the specific bug goals, nor aware of the overall size and composition of the invasion force, simply what's coming in in the next 12 hours, and don't know that there is only a 30 day window the bugs have available to deploy the landing force before support and reinforcements end.

Hopefully that's enough detail to have an interesting and productive conversation.

First off, Movie SST and everything it spawned is kinds crap.

The bugs are a danger not just because of the size and raw power of their individual units, but because they are very numerous.

Since they will be attacking prepared positions I think that heavy artillery, armor and ground attack aviation can be prepositioned to hit them hard, having knowledge of the approximate landing sites will decrease the chances of success, given that unlike the SST the USA military actually had heavy weapons and and tactically they are not complete morons, like movie SST.

We have seen the bugs go down to taknukes and to the few and unsophisticated bits of heavier weapons the SST had, a tanker bug might go down by an RPG or Javelin shot or by GPS guided shelling.

Airpower-wise the bugs really don't have much, the only dangers are plasma bugs and I think the tankers had some ability to shoot plasma themselves, and I haven't seen them be able to take out stuff like supersonic jet aircraft or cruise missiles.
In the movie and in the most recent video game bombardment was rether efficient and so was the use of those pretty huge transport shuttles.

The warriors should be easy enough to deal with.

This of course all hongrs on how powerful SST small arms were, and how many rounds it will take to bring down a warrior.

Also, you need to define what cripple means in this context.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Barretts seem like a terrible weapon to equip the lightly trained with. Only the Tankers are highly armored, the rest are merely resilient. Traditional assault rifles and carbines seem just fine to issue as practicality and availability necessitates.

Investment in heavier caliber machine guns to do the real work would be preferential as the rifles are more if a self defense weapon in these cases. Technicals and ATVs with mounted heavy automatic weaponry and the like for the real killing power.

Tac nukes are nice and all but the Arachnids like to tunnel and so could survive a great deal of surface bombardments and not knowing the effect of radiation it could have more deleterious effect on us defending humans then the bugs in the long run.

Surface bombardments like they did in the movie sure, but forces will still be needed to cleanse out the underground tunnel complexes. Collapsing them is an option but survivors might still be able to escape or burrow out. Entombing isn't a reliable way of extermination.

Might require special vehicles and UGV's or other heavy weapon platforms specifically designed for tunnel clearing.

 

[JagerIV]

Tactical nuke spam on the landing sites and attempts to intercept the pods in flight.

Mobilize every single person and arm them with a Barrett rifle with some form of explosive round.

Sub kiloton nuke spam.

First off, Movie SST and everything it spawned is kinds crap.

The bugs are a danger not just because of the size and raw power of their individual units, but because they are very numerous.

Since they will be attacking prepared positions I think that heavy artillery, armor and ground attack aviation can be prepositioned to hit them hard, having knowledge of the approximate landing sites will decrease the chances of success, given that unlike the SST the USA military actually had heavy weapons and and tactically they are not complete morons, like movie SST.

We have seen the bugs go down to taknukes and to the few and unsophisticated bits of heavier weapons the SST had, a tanker bug might go down by an RPG or Javelin shot or by GPS guided shelling.

Airpower-wise the bugs really don't have much, the only dangers are plasma bugs and I think the tankers had some ability to shoot plasma themselves, and I haven't seen them be able to take out stuff like supersonic jet aircraft or cruise missiles.
In the movie and in the most recent video game bombardment was rether efficient and so was the use of those pretty huge transport shuttles.

The warriors should be easy enough to deal with.

This of course all hongrs on how powerful SST small arms were, and how many rounds it will take to bring down a warrior.

Also, you need to define what cripple means in this context.

Hm, does the US even really have many tactical nukes left? Quick look at it, (https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/NuclearNotebook-May2022-US-Table1.pdf), the US only seems to have about 3,000 nukes total right now, and only about 500 of those are bomber delivered nukes that could reasonably be called tactical.

If we found out Arachnids existed tomorrow, and then 5 months later found out an invasion in likely and had a month to make serious prep, I'm not sure we would be able dramatically increase the supply of tactical nukes or any other particular weapon system not already under production. And even there you might have 3 months of production, as a while is spent debating what might be done and West Point theorizing doctrine and training adjustments.

So, the US might be in the process of a ramp up, and be just finishing up retaining of existing forces, but I don't think on the day of the invasion the US military would be able to really dramatically expand its actual combat formations, outside of mass recruited light infantry/militia forces with hopefully a month or so of training, and at worst are just issued manuals the militia has enough initiative to read and internalize and share to his troops.

Intercept on approach is likewise something I'm not sure the US has all that much capacity to do. I think our anti ballistic missile defenses are maybe hundreds, possibly thousands, of missiles. Something falling through the atmosphere I think is coming down in a 1-10 minutes, which is not a long time to achieve intercepts.

And even in the case of achieving intercepts with anti ballistic missiles or fighters shooting missiles at the descending pods, its also the most expensive way to deal with a threat. If there's overall, say, 1 million drop pods in the invasion, I'm not sure there's ability to intercept more than a 1,000 or so on the drop. Maybe 10,000 under optimistic assumptions?

That would probably be $1 billion in munitions, if not more, and if that's to kill 10,000 Warrior, let alone 10,000 worker bugs, that's probably a trade dramatically in favor of the bugs.

Hm, that would probably be the first wave thinking on it. First day you drop, say 100,000 hoppers, maybe individually, maybe in kill teams of 3-12. Spread them widely. If nothing else, the US might deplete its intercept stockpiles first day on relatively expendable bugs, and the high mobility and dispersion makes then not only poor targets for nukes, but poor targets for a lot of the US's firepower. If they can hop around at an average speed of 100 km/h, that's some 30 meters per second. The number of weapons that can engage a target like that with high effectiveness is comparatively limited.

For example, I'm not sure there would be many situations where grenades or mortars could be used. Heavier artillery, even the guided stuff like HIMARs I believe have difficulty with targets that are moving at all, let alone at a 100 km/h. Aircraft probably have to either use more expensive (and in short supply) guided missiles, or line up gun runs, putting the planes at somewhat more risk. Or at least dramatically reducing kills per sortie, which is a big degrade itself. US has something like 2-3k combat planes. If the daily sortie kill is 1-4 hoppers on gun and sidewinder runs, so the air force overall is only killing about 10,000 bugs a day, that is also not making much of a dent on the invasion force.

Small arms can be used for self defense, but I'm not sure how effective they can be at area defense: if the hopper is diving right at the soldier they're only in the M-16s effective point target range for about 16 seconds, and a target moving at a 30 m/s+ is probably not the easiest target to hit, especially if its not literally going straight to you. Then again skeet shooting exists, so its probably not that hard to train troops on hitting flying targets.

Still, WWII suggests that if your relying on manually aimed fire for defending against fast moving flying targets, that can take a lot of lead.

This is probably extra problematic for defending the Airforce: they need a big open space to operate, making hiding and fortifying the site difficult. And planes are not particularly tough either: an F-22 could probably be disabled on the runway if a hopper got to it, certainly if it got to the pilot or landing crew on the ground.

 

[Agent23]

The big problem would be to produce the fissionable material,the Americans should have enough of that and a crash sub-K nuke production program could help.

 

[Husky_Khan]

If we found out Arachnids existed tomorrow, and then 5 months later found out an invasion in likely and had a month to make serious prep, I'm not sure we would be able dramatically increase the supply of tactical nukes or any other particular weapon system not already under production. And even there you might have 3 months of production, as a while is spent debating what might be done and West Point theorizing doctrine and training adjustments.

So, the US might be in the process of a ramp up, and be just finishing up retaining of existing forces, but I don't think on the day of the invasion the US military would be able to really dramatically expand its actual combat formations, outside of mass recruited light infantry/militia forces with hopefully a month or so of training, and at worst are just issued manuals the militia has enough initiative to read and internalize and share to his troops.

It'll take eight months minimum I think to actually create new combat formations out of healthy fit volunteers and draftees. Add another four to six months for fattie volunteers and draftees to get into shape for modern military service. So at best, you'd be halfway towards your army of WW2-era Freedom Fighters.

With that said the equivalent Arsenal of Democracy would take longer. Manufacturing small arms ammunition could probably be ramped up which would be very important. I think there's still plenty of rifles and small arms around. Who knows if you'd need to manufacture more AR's and the like. Anything like artillery shells and guided munitions would still take months to properly ramp up production. Recently Germany was able to restart or create new production lines regarding 35mm Gepard ammunition but it wasn't in six months time IIRC.

It would take a span of years to restart new tank production AFAIK but American has low thousands of Bradleys and Abrams available though, so I'm sure some several dozens/low hundreds can be brought back into service from mothball. There'd probably be more of a focus on light armored vehicle manufacturing, which can be increased more dramatically. And along with the United States, Canada and Mexico are also big vehicle producers. So there shouldn't be a shortage of Humvees and light armored LAV, ASV and MRAP style vehicles, plus American has thousands of MRAPs still in storage as well (and M113's). Plus they could also probably produce military specific technicals if needbe for the mounted firepower.

I think extra sourcing for munitions and heavy equipment would have to come from countries like South Korea and Israel or Greece/Turkey and the like.

The main drawback would actually be creating new forces. There's the active armed forces, and then there's the national guard and reserves so about two million troops. You could use contractors and civil employees to do more support roles and free up more soldiers for combat troops.

Another possible source is America's paramilitaries and law enforcement. If this is a sort of national emergency, then the government can federalize and militarize America's law enforcement. So, kind of like you've seen in other places, such as Ukraine/Russia for example, you'd see American Border Patrol or ATF or what have you doing the similar thing that the Coast Guard fulfills in a maritime sense. Instead of having soldiers guarding airbases, you can have Federal police units turned into military units guarding airbases or doing rear echelon security and instead of Border Patrol doing border patrol shit, it'd be up to local law enforcement since they'd be federalized as well. You might be able to jury rig a scheme of using LEO's as a reserve or replacement pool or to build new formations around as well if this conflict lasts more like years then less then a year.

Even with all that said, there's maybe 150,000 Federal Law Enforcement so it's not increasing the numbers tremendously but it could be a nice stopgap for the year minimum it would take for creating new military formations.

Another source could be Security Contractors and using so called Third Country Nationals but I'm not sure how cost effective that would be, or what numbers it could bring in. There was a peak of 28,000 Private Security Contractors in Afghanistna and 15,000 in Iraq and chances are the Americans would already be in service in some other capacity. Maybe in six months you could get 50,000 PMC's to do stuff.... or throwing out all the stops you could significantly increase the numbers if one things its worth it. But you'd still want qualified candidates. But there are big pools available from the former British Commonwealth, and Europe in general, Gurkhas from the British or more likely Indian or Nepalese Army, and contractors from countries as far away from Malaysia to Colombia have shown up as mercenaries or contractors or whatnot and distinguished themselves well for their services. But I feel it's just another stopgap measure to support the actual armed combat forces... or could be used to train the expanding military forces.

Small arms can be used for self defense, but I'm not sure how effective they can be at area defense: if the hopper is diving right at the soldier they're only in the M-16s effective point target range for about 16 seconds, and a target moving at a 30 m/s+ is probably not the easiest target to hit, especially if its not literally going straight to you. Then again skeet shooting exists, so its probably not that hard to train troops on hitting flying targets.

Still, WWII suggests that if your relying on manually aimed fire for defending against fast moving flying targets, that can take a lot of lead.

To be fair, they were using mounted machine guns and the underbarrel shotguns to intercept the Hoppers at the Whiskey Outpost. They seem easier to take down than your average WW2 Monoplane or drone or something.

This is probably extra problematic for defending the Airforce: they need a big open space to operate, making hiding and fortifying the site difficult. And planes are not particularly tough either: an F-22 could probably be disabled on the runway if a hopper got to it, certainly if it got to the pilot or landing crew on the ground.

If they've had six months to prepare and twelve hours of forewarning, I imagine the Air Force and other bases would have contingencies in place of shifting and moving aircraft and personnel from potential landing zones. The six months would be used to creating nice standard operating procedures and other planning for these more common style eventualities.

 

[Agent23]

Now as to aircraft.

Well, they outrange what the bugs have.

An A-10 for example has a combat range of over 460 km.

F-16 - 540+

F-15 - 1200+

F-18 - over 2k and that is without in air refueling.

F-35 over 1200 km.

So, yeah, it will take a lot of hopping to get to the air bases, and even them, those places have security.

@Zachowon get in here! Time to earn your pay by stomping gigantic buugs, but do not eat zhe boogs!

 

[JagerIV]

The big problem would be to produce the fissionable material,the Americans should have enough of that and a crash sub-K nuke production program could help.

I'm not sure the Fission material actually would be the big limiting factor for tactical nuke production. I'm also not sure its necessarily that big of an advantage, especially initially. Initially, most of America is fairly inhabited. Tactical nukes on the scale of kilotons are likely to cause a lot of collateral damage, especially if the bugs follow what seems to be their standard tactic (which makes sense) of close attack: from orbit it would make sense to drop as close as possible to their target, since closing closing to the attack is their most vulnerable.

So, if the goal was a decapitation strike on Washington DC carrying out landings either on or just outside the city, I'm not sure nukes would not do more damage to the defenders than you might be inflicting on the bugs.

Likewise defending against bugs on the surface. If whisky Outpost ambush is any guide, they would preferably undermine the defensive position and arrive inside the base, but if a surface attack is necessary they seemed to have snuck in fairly close before launching the attack.

Nukes seem like they might be most useful for deep strikes into territory abandoned to the bugs. Though in that case the tunneling still might mean the immediate damage would be lower than hoped.

 

[JagerIV]

It'll take eight months minimum I think to actually create new combat formations out of healthy fit volunteers and draftees. Add another four to six months for fattie volunteers and draftees to get into shape for modern military service. So at best, you'd be halfway towards your army of WW2-era Freedom Fighters.

With that said the equivalent Arsenal of Democracy would take longer. Manufacturing small arms ammunition could probably be ramped up which would be very important. I think there's still plenty of rifles and small arms around. Who knows if you'd need to manufacture more AR's and the like. Anything like artillery shells and guided munitions would still take months to properly ramp up production. Recently Germany was able to restart or create new production lines regarding 35mm Gepard ammunition but it wasn't in six months time IIRC.

It would take a span of years to restart new tank production AFAIK but American has low thousands of Bradleys and Abrams available though, so I'm sure some several dozens/low hundreds can be brought back into service from mothball. There'd probably be more of a focus on light armored vehicle manufacturing, which can be increased more dramatically. And along with the United States, Canada and Mexico are also big vehicle producers. So there shouldn't be a shortage of Humvees and light armored LAV, ASV and MRAP style vehicles, plus American has thousands of MRAPs still in storage as well (and M113's). Plus they could also probably produce military specific technicals if needbe for the mounted firepower.

I think extra sourcing for munitions and heavy equipment would have to come from countries like South Korea and Israel or Greece/Turkey and the like.

The main drawback would actually be creating new forces. There's the active armed forces, and then there's the national guard and reserves so about two million troops. You could use contractors and civil employees to do more support roles and free up more soldiers for combat troops.

Another possible source is America's paramilitaries and law enforcement. If this is a sort of national emergency, then the government can federalize and militarize America's law enforcement. So, kind of like you've seen in other places, such as Ukraine/Russia for example, you'd see American Border Patrol or ATF or what have you doing the similar thing that the Coast Guard fulfills in a maritime sense. Instead of having soldiers guarding airbases, you can have Federal police units turned into military units guarding airbases or doing rear echelon security and instead of Border Patrol doing border patrol shit, it'd be up to local law enforcement since they'd be federalized as well. You might be able to jury rig a scheme of using LEO's as a reserve or replacement pool or to build new formations around as well if this conflict lasts more like years then less then a year.

Even with all that said, there's maybe 150,000 Federal Law Enforcement so it's not increasing the numbers tremendously but it could be a nice stopgap for the year minimum it would take for creating new military formations.

Another source could be Security Contractors and using so called Third Country Nationals but I'm not sure how cost effective that would be, or what numbers it could bring in. There was a peak of 28,000 Private Security Contractors in Afghanistna and 15,000 in Iraq and chances are the Americans would already be in service in some other capacity. Maybe in six months you could get 50,000 PMC's to do stuff.... or throwing out all the stops you could significantly increase the numbers if one things its worth it. But you'd still want qualified candidates. But there are big pools available from the former British Commonwealth, and Europe in general, Gurkhas from the British or more likely Indian or Nepalese Army, and contractors from countries as far away from Malaysia to Colombia have shown up as mercenaries or contractors or whatnot and distinguished themselves well for their services. But I feel it's just another stopgap measure to support the actual armed combat forces... or could be used to train the expanding military forces.



To be fair, they were using mounted machine guns and the underbarrel shotguns to intercept the Hoppers at the Whiskey Outpost. They seem easier to take down than your average WW2 Monoplane or drone or something.



If they've had six months to prepare and twelve hours of forewarning, I imagine the Air Force and other bases would have contingencies in place of shifting and moving aircraft and personnel from potential landing zones. The six months would be used to creating nice standard operating procedures and other planning for these more common style eventualities.

Yeah, I'm not sure we could stand up that many more formations, especially if the threat is only really real with a month warning. I think between guard and National we have something like 60 combat brigades, which would be about 300,000 front line troops. Which at commonly stated tooth to tail ratios might technically be an overstatement of true combat troops available.

This can create a very well defended position that can grind through a lot of bugs, but also can't really protect everything needed. The US apparently has about 3,000 towns larger than 10,000 people, so even to garison the most important population centers would divide the roughly 2 million active troops would spread out about 600 troops per major population center. Spread out over every town and village (about 20k) would be about 100 troops per.

This would be the most wasteful way to use the US military though, so I don't see it happening in general save a very boneheaded political or military leadership. US military I think strongly benefits from returns to scale: a brigade combat team is going to be much more costly to deal with than an isolated company, and a division would be even more costly to break through.

However, maintaining divisional scale forces, say 30,000 with support personnel included, means you can only maintain roughly 60 defensive sites. That's not even one per city with 250k+.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure the bugs benefit nearly as much from concentration of force. If the bugs landed a company equivalent of 100 or so warrior bugs at each population center, attacking all 20,000 settlements would "only" be 2 million warriors, but might inflict fairly high general casualties, reduce resources going to strong points, and if not immediately killed off and can secure some territory will cut off strong points from supply and support.

And if US forces can be isolated from mutual support or resupply, the practical firepower advantage is likely to be greatly reduced.

Not being destroyed peace meal however might require the US military pre-emotively abandon large areas, trusting to some mixture of evacuation and local militias.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Oh the bugs will be landing like all over the CONUS area? I think Agent 23 as well as myself were assuming they were concentrating their forces somewhere.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Bring out all the M2 .50 cals, M249bs, Mk -19s and anything else with high rate of fire and heavy impact.

Bradley's and their Bushmasters will do LOTS of work. Field the Avenger systems on Humvees again to rain lead downrange.

Explosive ammo becomes very normal, and claymore mines get passed around like candy.

 

[JagerIV]

Oh the bugs will be landing like all over the CONUS area? I think Agent 23 as well as myself were assuming they were concentrating their forces somewhere.

Well, its a bug invasion of the continental United States, via bug drop pods, with the goal of crippling the US. I'm sure they could concentrate if that was useful to do so, but I don't think it would be required. I'm thinking as the invader it would be better for them to launch a broad based orbital assault, rather than concentrating on securing a landing area and then spreading out.

Edit: And I obviously once they're deployed then they have to then move across, at which point ability to move, concentrate, and form defensive lines becomes more signifigant.

 

[JagerIV]

Bring out all the M2 .50 cals, M249bs, Mk -19s and anything else with high rate of fire and heavy impact.

Bradley's and their Bushmasters will do LOTS of work. Field the Avenger systems on Humvees again to rain lead downrange.

Explosive ammo becomes very normal, and claymore mines get passed around like candy.

Yeah, autocannons and 50 cals should have lots of stored kills, and they're fairly numerous weapon systems, so they can be employed widely to probably reasonable effectiveness.

Avenger I'm not so sure of: doesn't that just fire stingers? Which might be in somewhat short supply. I think the plan is to manufacture something like 50 a month. Ideally you can get that ramped up, but I don't think you can ramp that up enough to hand out to the militia willy nilly, which is what you need to arm to protect general society. 50 cals you might be able to. Googling a source says the US has roughly 50,000 50 cal machine guns, and might be able to bring more in. Plus having rifle caliber machine guns would also be a big boost.

If there were roughly 50,000 50 cal, that's still "only" 2.5 50 cals per town, or 1 per 6,000 people, but that's much better than many other weapon systems, and there should still be a relatively good ability to surge active numbers and ammunition reserves. Like everything if there's enough bugs fast enough eventually you run out of ammunition, but I'd assume a good number more bugs will die to 50 cals before that ammo supply is depleted than to Stinger missiles before that ammo is depleted.

For protecting the civilian population, do you guys lean more to shelter in place, or evacuation to "safe" areas.

Evacuation does have the advantage of concentrating the population into relatively secure areas that can actually be defended by regular troops, and in areas relatively hardened to against attack with mutually supporting forces. For example, when an attack is imminent, and it looks like bug landings might be happening in and around DC, the surrounding countryside can be emptied into shelters in DC, the Metro if nothing else can probably accommodate a pretty large population. If the national mall was converted into an artillery park, you could fairly cover a perimeter of most of the city too, so you could have general artillery cover against any breaches.

However, I could see things being very disastrous if the defense fails: people might be better protected in the Washington Metro than their own house, but if the defenses of the metro fail, well, a Warrior bug getting into a metro station packed with refugees might be able to do a lot of damage before it can be stopped. Plus places like DC are probably few and far between, with lots of stuff the military really needs to defend and infrastructure pre-existing that might be able to shelter a large number of refugees in a siege, and a large population who could reasonably evacuate to it in the 12 hours of warning, before bugs are about and moving gets much more dangerous.

Plus a defensive line set up on the DC beltway is still a 100 km permitter, so holding that is probably at least 50,000 troops, and realistically you'd need a lot of support, anti air, reserves, probably multiple belts of defenses, so ideally you'd want even more troops. Probably a 100,000 troops is closer to a minimum, rather than a maximum. Which comes to the issue that the US military at 2 million only has the manpower for about 20 such fortified locations, not even 1 per state.

Evacuation thus doesn't seem like it could work unless fairly effective territorial defense forces could be quickly mobilized and equipped able to actually make safe areas.

Sheltering in place meanwhile requires no immediate resources from the state, nor a vast evacuation plan to be executed in fairly short time. In the short run, its probably safer: if bugs don't attack a particular town, they can continue whatever activity they did to further the war effort, or at least look after their own survival.

If they are attacked by bugs, a 10,000 man town might have 3,000 buildings. People sheltering by their 3s and 4s with 1-2 guns per group will simply take a fair bit of time to clear out going house to house. If its a force of a 100 or so Warriors attacking the town, clearing 3,000 buildings house to house will take a while, and if the small arms can do at least some damage, maybe the bugs will run out of Warrior bugs before they complete house to house. Maybe killing civilians hiding in their basements just won't be a bug priority, and not encountering resistance, the bug force will move on to other targets.

I guess the big issue with shelter in place, besides the terrifying nature of it of hiding in a basement hoping the bugs don't get to you, is its an inherent temporary solution. Ideally I guess for the town the problem solves itself, with the bugs not putting that much time, effort, and casualties to hunting down hiding humans and move on. Or hiding gets enough time for the human survivors for rescue to show up. If external factors don't solve the problem however, it doesn't inherently provide a way for the town to solve it. And can result in a waste of resources if the bugs are smart.

Hopers for example setting up in tall buildings or overlooking hills can keep the town locked and suppressed, swooping down on people who leave their house. Over a long enough time that results in people dying of starvation and thirst in their house, any ammo or other material they had, from some perspectives even their lives, wasted and unused for the war effort. Generally if people are so broken up resources would be inefficiently used: someone might get sick and die without access to the right medicine or expertise able to be brought up. John might be a well equipped survialist with lots of ammo and food, but because he was a loner he couldn't maintain a 24 hour whatch and he got ambushed in the night, his food and ammo going unused. While another house only has a pistol, and one clip, which turns out to not be enough firepower to seriously harm, let alone stop, a warrior from digging through the floor to get you.

And if a town simply didn't get much in the way of any heavy weaponry, a tanker bug seems perfectly suited to clearing out an urban area.

 

[Agent23]

You guys seem to be forgetting about article 5.

I am pretty sure that places like Korea and Japan will be happy to contribute some forces too, and I doubt China and Russia would have the USA replaced with a growing colony of Arechnids.

Soz yeah, I am pretty sure this will turn into a global initiative to sell Murikah guns and ammo and help it out clear the big infestation.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Avenger I'm not so sure of: doesn't that just fire stingers?

The latter versions do. Initially they were equipped with miniguns. IT's those versions I'm addressing here.

As for the US. Y'all are overlooking the greatest resource for defense the USA has. Privately owned and operated firearms.
Form the citizens of every town and city into armed militia. Import as much ammo as you possibly can for them. While that's going on, you clear cut everything you can around the defensive points. Make the bugs cross open terrain as much as possible while you setting up some sort of tunneling detection system to watch for the burrowers.

 

[Husky_Khan]

I'm not an expert on US Invasion Defense policy but I'm pretty sure unless they are refugees themselves or there's a mandatory evacuation, the policy as far as the Defense Department is concerned is that the primary aim of warfighting is to achieve victory. As an example, in Battle Los Angeles, the film was centered around sending a reinforced squad into enemy held territory to rescue some civilians held up in a police station, when likely they wouldn't of bothered with search and rescue. It'd be up to the civilians (or search and rescue services independent of the military front line troops) to deal with actually rescuing civilians caught behind enemy lines.

Now obviously if the US government knew an attack was about to strike Los Angeles, they would've likely attempted an evacuation if feasible since protecting and providing security to the population is a primary motivator for military service. But they wouldn't be sending out regular soldiers on rescue operations. Think of it another way, the regular French Army in 1940 launching counterattacks, not to achieve tactical advantage against the Germans, but to facilitate the evacuation of civilian refugee columns or evacuating an overrun town. The military will protect civilians, but I don't see them going out of their way to do so. It'd be in a direct sort of manner or as part of a formal evacuation.

It'd likely be up to smaller towns to set up their own defenses, with government support of course. Turning State Guard, local law enforcement and armed civilians into proper militia units. I imagine, just like in actual disasters, you don't have to follow the mandatory evacuation orders and hide in your basement, but towns already have established emergency and natural disaster plans in place, and new plans would be drawn up for this event. I'm assuming for your typical small town, large buildings would be used to shelter people who want shelter. It'd be easier and more efficient to protect and supply them as well.

 

[JagerIV]

You guys seem to be forgetting about article 5.

I am pretty sure that places like Korea and Japan will be happy to contribute some forces too, and I doubt China and Russia would have the USA replaced with a growing colony of Arechnids.

Soz yeah, I am pretty sure this will turn into a global initiative to sell Murikah guns and ammo and help it out clear the big infestation.

Reinforcements from other countries is certainly a possibility, but probably not within the first month or so. With the humans not knowing the goal or scale of the invasion, I'd assume while the landing is ongoing, most are going to want to bunker down and defend themselves, and probably for the first week its not going to be obvious that the US is the only target, rather than the first target.

Most other countries are probably going to be wary of deploying their own troops to the US until at least bug reinforcements stop, which could be up to a month.

American strategy then might be to bunker down and survive the initial assault and see what the bug's general strategy is, which might be obvious day one if the bugs go for a blitzkrieg strategy massing their firepower to try and deliver killing blows to the US State and military within the first week or so, or it might take most of the landing period or longer if the bugs instead opt for a skirmishing/attritional strategy from the beginning, seeking to undermine the military and state with harassment and raids to shape the US military to carry out the killing blows on a weakened force.

The rest of the world existing might push the bugs to a shock and awe lighting campaign, seeking to do as much damage as possible within the first 1-3 months of the campaign, before major foreign intervention can occur.

Then again, as @Husky_Khan mentioned, raising new good formations is a 6-8 month process, and many potential allies would be starting from an even less prepared position than the US.

The British army for example seems to be barely a 100,000 troops right now, and with fairly minimal heavy weapons. Even if the British were willing to commit that force to support the US once there was good reason to suspect an attack on the UK itself wasn't imminent, that would still be some 1-3 months into the invasion.

A primarily light infantry force trying to attack and take ground from bugs who have been digging in for 3 months seems to be asking for a meat grinder that could attrition the British army to nothing, possibly without even achieving much. Nukes might be useful here, though there's probably a fair bit of diplomatic caution over foreign armies nuking American soil to allow those foreign armies to more easily occupy American territory. The British might be tolerable, especially if they have a limited but clear area they're operating from, such as securing Detroit/Michigan from staging areas in Canada.

The Chinese army nuking bug strongholds in California to speed up their occupation of the West coast is going to be much less acceptable. The US isn't likely to tolerate that unless they have no choice, either because of bug strength, or American weakness.

But, I would still assume most foreign nations are going to want to primarily focus on mobilizing their own militaries and economies, and major foreign forces and materials probably won't be massively available until Year 2 of the invasion.

Before then the US is probably only getting the relative scraps in military aid from its allies post invasion day, subject to political and military realities: A US military/State that's still alive as a coherent, capable force after the first 30 days can probably command more war material than one that gets basically annihilated within the first week.

Which I guess just points to the US government and military should rationally optimize its strategy around preserving the army, and the bugs potentially should optimize around destroying the US military as quickly as possible. At least as a coherent force. With the US military gone, there's less for foreign support to rally and organize around, the the bugs might still have about a year or so to raze local strongholds and population centers by claw, fire, and plasma in methodical sieges before major foreign support can arrive.

At which point I guess any remaining bugs retreat they're hives and strongpoints they have built over the prior year or so and try to make clearing those hives as costly as possible, eating up as much additional men and material as possible.

 

[Agent23]

Reinforcements from other countries is certainly a possibility, but probably not within the first month or so. With the humans not knowing the goal or scale of the invasion, I'd assume while the landing is ongoing, most are going to want to bunker down and defend themselves, and probably for the first week its not going to be obvious that the US is the only target, rather than the first target.

Most other countries are probably going to be wary of deploying their own troops to the US until at least bug reinforcements stop, which could be up to a month.

American strategy then might be to bunker down and survive the initial assault and see what the bug's general strategy is, which might be obvious day one if the bugs go for a blitzkrieg strategy massing their firepower to try and deliver killing blows to the US State and military within the first week or so, or it might take most of the landing period or longer if the bugs instead opt for a skirmishing/attritional strategy from the beginning, seeking to undermine the military and state with harassment and raids to shape the US military to carry out the killing blows on a weakened force.

The rest of the world existing might push the bugs to a shock and awe lighting campaign, seeking to do as much damage as possible within the first 1-3 months of the campaign, before major foreign intervention can occur.

Then again, as @Husky_Khan mentioned, raising new good formations is a 6-8 month process, and many potential allies would be starting from an even less prepared position than the US.

The British army for example seems to be barely a 100,000 troops right now, and with fairly minimal heavy weapons. Even if the British were willing to commit that force to support the US once there was good reason to suspect an attack on the UK itself wasn't imminent, that would still be some 1-3 months into the invasion.

A primarily light infantry force trying to attack and take ground from bugs who have been digging in for 3 months seems to be asking for a meat grinder that could attrition the British army to nothing, possibly without even achieving much. Nukes might be useful here, though there's probably a fair bit of diplomatic caution over foreign armies nuking American soil to allow those foreign armies to more easily occupy American territory. The British might be tolerable, especially if they have a limited but clear area they're operating from, such as securing Detroit/Michigan from staging areas in Canada.

The Chinese army nuking bug strongholds in California to speed up their occupation of the West coast is going to be much less acceptable. The US isn't likely to tolerate that unless they have no choice, either because of bug strength, or American weakness.

But, I would still assume most foreign nations are going to want to primarily focus on mobilizing their own militaries and economies, and major foreign forces and materials probably won't be massively available until Year 2 of the invasion.

Before then the US is probably only getting the relative scraps in military aid from its allies post invasion day, subject to political and military realities: A US military/State that's still alive as a coherent, capable force after the first 30 days can probably command more war material than one that gets basically annihilated within the first week.

Which I guess just points to the US government and military should rationally optimize its strategy around preserving the army, and the bugs potentially should optimize around destroying the US military as quickly as possible. At least as a coherent force. With the US military gone, there's less for foreign support to rally and organize around, the the bugs might still have about a year or so to raze local strongholds and population centers by claw, fire, and plasma in methodical sieges before major foreign support can arrive.

At which point I guess any remaining bugs retreat they're hives and strongpoints they have built over the prior year or so and try to make clearing those hives as costly as possible, eating up as much additional men and material as possible.

The best possible strategy is to work and prevent a beachhesd from forming.

So, track the pods, try to hit them on the air and hit the landing sites with sub kiloton nukes, thermobarics, conventional theater ballistic and cruise missiles and incendiaries then as Monk suggested send in mid-level armor and heavy infantry to mop up with large caliber aurocanons and .50 cal machine guns, manpads and drones backed by some artillery and close in air support.

This will be a logical decision given that they:
a) Are obviously bugs, you do not them making more of themselves and you can't assume there are no egg layers among them.
b) Some are clearly burrowers, and disrupting them and killing them off while they are still landing and below maximul troop strengthen and readyness.

Also, it will be a good thing to engage in area denial, given thos ebig monstrossities will need lots of calories.

 

[JagerIV]

The best possible strategy is to work and prevent a beachhesd from forming.

So, track the pods, try to hit them on the air and hit the landing sites with sub kiloton nukes, thermobarics, conventional theater ballistic and cruise missiles and incendiaries then as Monk suggested send in mid-level armor and heavy infantry to mop up with large caliber aurocanons and .50 cal machine guns, manpads and drones backed by some artillery and close in air support.

This will be a logical decision given that they:
a) Are obviously bugs, you do not them making more of themselves and you can't assume there are no egg layers among them.
b) Some are clearly burrowers, and disrupting them and killing them off while they are still landing and below maximul troop strengthen and readyness.

Also, it will be a good thing to engage in area denial, given thos ebig monstrossities will need lots of calories.

Hm, I feel like there's a threshold problem: if your very strong so you can win within 12 hours or so of landing, it makes sense to rush in and break up the beachead immediately. If you can't confidently rush in however, I'm not sure a hasty attack is the best option: it moves your forces out of their strong position and puts themselves at risk. This is more true the further the beachhead is from the base of supply: for an extreme, if your logistical base is centered around Maryland, a landing in Illinois is about a 1,000 km away.

Even assuming all the highways are safe and open, not clogged with traffic or made dangerous by commando/raiding activities, its a 12 hour drive at highway speeds. Military columns tend to on average move slower than highway. And the column moving by itself is likely traveling pretty light. Now, Illinois isn't no where either, so its not going to be as slow as though they have to supply everything they need from Maryland itself. Still, a large formation might still take a couple of days to move that distance and be combat ready at the new location. That then might be too long to get the beachhead with much element of surprise, and you would already be attacking somewhat dug in forces. And your a 1,000 km from your primary logistical hub, so if the bugs carry out flanking attacks or drops further out your forces might be cut off from resupply, and get destroyed having accomplished much less than if they had a more secure supply situation.

Now, if the forces in Illinois itself can respond to the landing and attack in sufficient strength to wipe out, the logistical issue isn't a problem, but then were back to the issue of the relatively small size of the military. If you wanted to equally defend every state, you'd be left with only 40,000 troops per state. That seems to be asking for destruction of the army piecemeal. Plus tooth to tail suggests that "mere" 40,000 in uniform in an area is not a lot of front line troops anyway to carry out aggressive offensives. Maybe equivalent of a brigade? That seems a small enough formation that any casualties can cause big drop in combat effectiveness.

Hopefully there should have been mobilized many more militia and guard members, but those would lack much firepower or coordination. So I would probably prefer not to order those to attack bug positions if it can be helped at all, even if not particularly prepared. And if the bugs do dig in, well, assaulting trenches can result in hand to hand combat even with all our modern firepower. Asking militia with rifles to assault bug trenches/tunnels with a month or so of training is probably asking for bloody battles on the scale of what's in the movies.

I'm not sure the US military is actually large and well equipped enough to stop the bugs at the bridgehead. I think it makes more sense to bunker down, tank the initial assault, and then hopefully you don't run out of strong points before the enemy assault cumulates, at which point the US can decide whether or not it has the strength to carry out a decisive counterattack, or if its better to just continue to hold the line, maybe with limited counterattacks to strengthen the defensive position and continue the build up.

I'll write up a preliminary bug attack plan, one I think is probably big enough to cripple the US, and we can compare what I'm thinking to what your thinking. Its possible I'm assuming much smaller bug formations will pose threats.

 

[JagerIV]

Number chosen basically for giving a nice round number of 10 million tons of bugs.

Workers: 20 million - lots of carrying and digging needed, plus bodies to absorb fire and clear minefields better options aren't available.

Warriors: 2 million - gives numeric parity bug warrior to human warriors.

Hoppers: 1 million - carry out large scale raiding.

Tankers: 20,000 - needed for aggressive mining and destroying human infrastructure efficiently.

Light Plasma: 10,000 - enough for general bombardment while surviving attrition.

Heavy Plasma: 400 - hopefully enough to survive attrition and rapidly destroy strongholds, may be overkill, 400 is just the number you get dividing 1 million tons by the weight of the heavy as stated.

Roughly 23 million bugs, most workers militarily as dangerous as guys with pick axes, which is probably enough to kill civilians, and can over time build up tunnels, trenches, and dismantle human infrastructure, like bridges, power lines, and rail lines. Low size and intelligence likely makes it inefficient at this though. Just needs you need more of course!

Invasion plan

Phase 1: D1-D5: Kansas

Phase one is an invasion of Kansas-Nebraska, roughly the smack dab center of the US. This puts Arachnids in a position to push out in any direction as convenient. Its also a place with limited human population, and maximumly far from any population centers, to minimize how quickly people can respond. Its also somewhat terrible for the bugs, because its a big flat area with no cover, maximizing the vulnerability of the bugs vs anywhere else.

This is because the Kansas landing is basically a trap: total forces dropped over those 5 days would be about 5 million, probably a million a day, spread out over about 500,000 km of landing zone.

Force is mostly Workers, with maybe 500,000 Warriors, some 250,000 or so Hoppers. Landing groups are about 1,000 workers, 100 Warriors, and 50 hoppers, landing about 5-10 km apart from each other. For about 5,000 separate landing locations.

This minimizes damage that can be done with weapons of mass destruction, basically limiting it to about a 1,000 bugs, maximizes the chance that some will survive long enough to dig in, the main job of the workers, and puts human defenders into a bind of either pulling out of the area, or letting themselves get encircled. Once some secure hives have been established, Hoppers now have save areas to hide and launch raids out of, hopefully lowering overall casualties.

Some hive every 5-10 km also will allow the Warriors to start massing towards the boarders and making some pushes out. Every 5-10 km means they only have to be out in the open for about an hour or two at a reasonable (large) bug walking pace, limiting exposure to air attack and to some degree hiding bug movements.

Probably only about a 1,000 light plasma bug dropped, only a 100 on the first day, more coming in later as protective positions are laid out. Those first hundred have the primary important job of shooting down as many satellites as possible, blinding some human surveillance and interfering with comms. Also provide some means of engaging high flying drones, once again so observation isn't too simple for the humans, and finally so air attacks aren't completely safe. Probably going to suffer heavy attrition.

Ideally, the humans amass inside the landing zone, so they can steadily be atritted as they get surrounded by follow on drops, but at the very least attacking Kansas and no where else should draw at least some troops into the area, and consume a lot of high end firepower on relatively expendable forces, and hopefully pull them out of position for follow on assaults.

Phase 2: D6-D10 General Attack - 5 days should be enough for shelters to have built up allowing relatively safe massing of forces on the parameter of the landing zone to now start a push out. Optimistically, a warrior might be able to travel at cavalry like speeds, which suggest something like 50 km/day. Very aggressive "force march" might push that up to 100 km/day might be plausible?

Hoppers should be able to advance faster, with gliding providing a relatively low energy travel, at least relative to its speed and distance. Several hundred km a day should be possible, especially with favorable weather.

Workers would be slower though. So hoppers could go far, warriors fairly far, but workers would be slower behind, especially with doing digging.