CHAPTER 15

THE RIGHT WAY: THE MANPOWER PROBLEM: SOLUTION 1

In order to have the right mix of troops, you need the right number of troops. So now we come to the big ass problem, one of the main reasons every Earth invasion up until now has failed and failed miserably: lack of manpower.

As long as the Earthlings can’t get by your defenses, you’re safe. Once they figure that out – and they always have – then it’s over.

Look around. Bloodlords look at the Magellian Horde. Magellian Horde look at the Sondrak Imperials. Imperials look at those jerks on your left. What’s the point of all this besides making me vomit a little bit in my mouth?

Excuse me.

The point is this; would you invade one of the major powers in the galaxy like the Saurians with the same skeleton force you’ve thrown at the Earth? Hell, no! If you even attempted that, you’d be overwhelmed and crushed within seconds.

Yet you feel you can get away with this when you invade the Earth. Why? Because they’re primitive? Because they’re “inferior?” The only thing primitive or inferior is that kind of thinking.

Let me make this as clear as possible: people who launch invasions without the proper logistics don’t deserve to command armies.

To invade a planet the size of Earth, you need a lot of boots on the ground. We’re talking millions and millions of frontline combat troops. Robotics and automation and superior weaponry only go so far. You can only control land that you actually have troops in, and just one soldier for every square kilometer is not going to do the job. I don’t care if he’s inside a twenty story battle mech. That’s too much ground for a single unit to cover effectively. No matter how much technology you bring to the party, your soldier can only look in one direction at a time. Okay, some of you two-headed freaks can look in two directions at once, but that’s still not enough. What’s going on in the places where you’re not looking? I’ll tell you what, a whole lot of bad crap. Bad for you, that is.

That’s why you have to bring lots of troops. And every trooper needs support staff. That quickly adds up. A minimum size for an invasion force is at least forty million personnel total, and even that is pushing things to the limit. There are six major continents on this planet, not counting the uninhabited continent at the pole. Forty million leaves you roughly six million army personnel per continent. Keep in mind not all personnel are frontline combat troops. And not all frontline troops will be engaged in battle at the same time. That still leaves roughly a million to two million troops on each continent. That may sound like a lot but, against a population of six billion, there will be times when you are just holding on. Basically, if you want to have even a chance at invading and controlling the Earth you have to come with a small country in tow.

Now this is possible. But it requires creating numerous space habitats, or habs, to house all the troops, support personnel, and their supplies. Hollowed out asteroids make a good candidate.

Each hab will be a small independent city. Very massive habs can house up to ten million people in extremely crowded conditions. That’s something to watch out for. Space will be at a premium until you conquer enough land on Earth to form permanent colonies. That may motivate your troops to fight hard, but it might also breed resentment. Keep in mind, you will need enough space to train and prepare.

Habs come with another problem. They make additional drains on your manpower. You need specialized personnel to run and administer these facilities. While the troops and invasion personnel are training and preparing, somebody has to oversee the vital systems, make sure everyone is fed, and ensure order and discipline. Soldiers like to cause trouble when they’re off duty. You need to keep that to a minimum.

It’s a major engineering project, essentially building an entire viable colony near Earth. In the past, the detection risks were low. Though, if you had been able to pull this feat off, it does pose some questions as to why you’re invading.

Before we leave this subject, I want to talk about cloning, or “grown” troops. Some people have tried to get around the manpower problem by employing troops that can be grown like plants, or otherwise mass produced. This doesn’t solve anything. You can’t grow, clone, or assemble troops out of thin air. You have to provide raw material to create these troops. Plus, you still need all their supplies and weapons. I don’t care if you grow each soldier with wings and claws, they’re going to need guns and communications equipment. So that doesn’t decrease the size of your attack fleet. It just decreases the number of soldiers at the start of your campaign.

The main problem is that to create these space habs you need a safe working environment. That used to be the case. Back when the Gorgonians first attacked, the Earth had no rockets at all. When the Sondrak Imperials came, they had just barely figured out how to put artificial satellites in orbit. When the Scythian Bloodlords appeared, they were gearing up for lunar exploration. And when Dronn attacked, they were putting the first permanent space stations into orbit.

Guess what they’re doing now? They have an extensive presence throughout their solar system. It’s largely made up of robotic drones and probes, but they’ve made sure to cover themselves. They especially made sure to watch the asteroid belt, and there’s even talk about starting space mining. You try to create habs in the belt, you will be noticed. You may scoff at the idea of being discovered. Earth doesn’t have a space fleet, true. But they can still do damage and, at this stage, your invasion would be at its most vulnerable. Everything is on a tight timetable. Habs have to be completed. Personnel have to be transferred to them. They have to be up and running. And then training has to begin. In a scenario like that, the Earthlings don’t have to defeat you, they just have to delay you for things to go to hell.