Friday, April 5, 2013

CHAPTER 9

THE TYPICAL INVASION: PART FIVE: LONG DISTANCE WEAPONS? WHAT ARE THOSE?

Here’s another thing nearly all the big invasions have in common; the Gorgonians, the Sondrak, the Bloodlords, and Dronn’s Army. Just take a look at this.

(At this point another flurry of images appear to the guests; Gorgonian Tripods, Sondrak manta ray craft, Bloodlord flying saucers, and Dronn’s big mother ships. All of them are shown liquidating their targets with energy beams.)

What are we seeing here? That you’re all using beam weapons. No other type of weapon, just directed energy.

I berated you because your forces mindlessly blasted just what was in front of them. But because you only used directed energy weapons, you could only attack what was in sight.

In other words: no long range attacks.

Another huge mistake.

Because you waited so long before attacking, there were few high level targets still inside your immediate area. All the really important stuff was by that time several kilometers away from your location.

It would have been a good time to break out the long range weaponry. Except you guys didn’t bring anything that can hit a target beyond the horizon.

I love my directed energy weapons as much as the next mercenary. But their range is limited when used on a planet’s surface. They fire in perfectly straight lines, and the planet’s surface curves.

Again, here’s where setting up firing platforms in orbit would have come in handy. From orbit, a beam weapon can hit a wide range of targets on the surface. But you didn’t do that, so you were we left hoping that someone or something of major military importance wandered across your path.

Yes, Dronn, you did bring fighter craft on your invasion. And fighter craft do act as a long range weapon system. You had them, but you didn’t use them nearly aggressively enough. You took a few bases after your initial assault, but mostly relied on your big ships and their beam weapons.

You don’t use fighters or any long range weapon system just a few times. You use it as often as possible. It’s something we like to call force projection. Without it, the Earthlings were free to gather their surviving military and strike back at you. And boy did they ever strike back.

At the time of your invasions, Earth combat forces – land, sea, or air – were very easy to spot or locate because they used enormous amounts of fuel, and gave off large heat signatures. Any high concentration of aircraft or armored vehicles would have been easy to spot, especially from orbit.

The second they were spotted, you should have hit them, and hit them hard. That’s the beauty of fire support. It reduces your enemy without tying up too much of your own manpower.

Speaking of tying up manpower, fighters are cool, but if they are your only method of long range force you have another problem. Namely, you can only field fighters if you have pilots. Historically speaking, in many cases, an air force has been defeated because they ran out of trained pilots, not aircraft. Hell, the Earthlings don’t even need to win a single dogfight to beat your air force. All they have to do is find out where your pilots are housed and lob an explosive shell into the mess hall during lunch. The Xernians found that out during their little adventure.

In case I haven’t made my point, pilots are a precious resource, one that’s limited. You can’t be sending your fighters against every distant target. Sooner or later, you need another option, for example ballistic missiles and drones. But none of you brought missiles or drones. It’s like you didn’t want to use a missile because the Earthlings already had them.

How does this work? In most civilizations, rockets were used as weaponry before being used for transportation. Any technology that can be used to transport people can be used to transport explosives or thermal nuclear devices. You should be very familiar with missiles, drones, and probes. They’re a huge part of spaceship-to-spaceship combat. This may come as a shock to you, but they work just as well planetside.

It was as if you wanted to dazzle the humans with a light show rather than kill them. Am I wrong in assuming that entertaining the Earthlings is not part of the agenda? I hope I’m not wrong.

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