This is part two of my post about how comedians and entertainers don’t seem to have a clue about how the military functions in the real world, and how they don’t understand how armed civilians can fight that military. They seem to feel that any advanced weapon that the military possesses is powerful in all situations. I discussed the use of Drones, Aircraft and Artillery, and how they are of limited use against an insurgent force, and also have their own weaknesses. And how the use of weapons of mass destruction might backfire on those who use them, not only driving more people to revolt, but also probably many regulars and guardsmen as well. Maybe even whole units of them. But let’s say that the government can keep most of the troops in line. The strength of our Army and Marine Corps is in their discipline and ability to proficiently use weapons. Now the strength of the civilian gun owners, especially the hunters, is their knowledge of the area they are operating in, and the ability to proficiently use weapons. Most hunters, and many of those who aren’t, can consistently hit a target within the effective range of their weapon, whether it is a pistol or a scope mounted deer rifle. Many civilians are also veterans, who with a minimal amount of retraining, could effectively use machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers, etc. Where would they get these weapons? From the people that are using them against the populace. Supply convoys, warehouses, trains, all kinds of places. Whenever a military unit loses a firefight there will be weapons to pick up.
The strength of the rebels is their familiarity with their area of operations. A soldier from New York State may also have been a hunter, but he is not going to be as familiar with the Ozarks as someone raised in Arkansas. The rebels will be able to choose where they fight. As a relative of mine pointed out to me, this will not be a recreation of the civil war, where regiment fought regiment in open battle. Rebels will strike at the best place and time for them to strike, bringing their forces together to hit a smaller and weaker Federal force. Sure, there will be times when the soldiers gain the advantage, moving troops into position by APC or helicopter. Even if they win a thousand of these battles they will still lose the war. In a battle of attrition the side with the most troops is almost sure to win. And the strength of the military, its discipline, will become diluted as they lose well trained men and have to replace them with new conscripts who may not be the most motivated to put their lives on the line for the government against their friends and neighbors. I figure the desertion rate would continue to grow throughout the fighting. In John Ringo’s book Live Free or Die, the US sends troops into Vermont to take away the maple syrup that aliens want because it acts as a valuable intoxicant for other aliens. The men of Vermont don’t want to give up their syrup, which can eventually be sold to the aliens that really want it for the technology to raise the Earth up to a status where they can defend themselves. The soldiers don’t fair too well in the woods of Vermont against experienced deer hunters, many of whom are good enough shots to wound instead of kill. I think Ringo was spot on in developing this scenario. Sure, hunters would die, but the soldeirs wouild also be run through a meat grinder.
The strength of the rebels will be in their anonimity. When not on operations they will be indistinguishable from the rest of the population, while a soldier will look like a soldier, whether while in battle or in garrison at a base. The rebels could not be found while they were not pursuing their non-rebel tasks. Leaving the military to either depend on catching enough of them, or on using reprisals to stop people from fighting as rebels or supporting the rebel cause. History has shown that such a tactic is unlikely to work. Rounding up and hanging innocent civilians might cause some people to give up their neighbors, but most would become really pissed, and the ranks of the rebellion would swell. History has also shown that colaborators normally don’t last very long either. And again, except in limited situations, the rebels will be dictating the time and place of battle, and many of them will be men and women with military experience, some with a great deal of experience. They will know how to cammoflauge and use terrain to their advantage. What about the militias, said to be the target of the government forces? Coming to target the militias would also mean that the militias would target them. I doubt these paranoid people would just hand over their weapons and allow themselves to be led to detainment centers, which would also become targets of the rebels.
The military has tanks and armored vehicles, you might say. Yes, they do, and such weapon systems are formidable. They are also very vulnerable in a number of ways, especiaily when deployed in urban or forested terrain. Modern tanks are very hard to kill, but fire can still do the job, and insurgents have been using fire against tanks since WW2 and the Molotov Cocktail. Most verterans know how to make jellied gasoline that sticks to tanks (and people). Many Americans have some expertise with explosives, either from military training or civilian demolitions work. A seventy ton tank dropped into the river is dead. Tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters will still inflict severe casualties in some fights, In others they will helplessly patrol the edge of a battlefield in frustration. My brother told me of a situation in Vietnam where paratroopers on a training jump were trapped in a swamp. Their armored cav company was called in to bail them out, and after the one culverted bridge into the area was taken out by a rocket, all they could do was fire their cannon on a high arc and hope they hit something. They weren’t very successful. The Afghanies learned how to shoot down heavily armored Soviet helicopters with fifty caliber machine guns fired down from the heights. There are quite a number of fifty caliber rifles out there, with more to be gathered by the rebels after a battle.
Another area in which the rebels might have some success is in the world of industry. Weapons need to be built and transported to where they are going to be used. This includes spare parts, ammunition and fuel. The rebels can interdict these in the factory through sabatoge of production lines, then stop the transport by rail or truck on the transportation arteries. The military could try to compensate for this by transporting equipment by air, an expensive propostion in fuel and time. And of course the airbases themselves could be attacked. Any way you look at it, the US Military would face a daunting task trying to supress a population in revolt. Just about anything they do would just cause the revolt to widen and the rebel forces to increase, while their own strength was whittled away. I believe that not only could the American civilian population stand up to an attempt at military control, they would eat the military alive within a very short time. A year on the outside. Even if they achieve a nine to one kill rate they lose. So all the rhetoric about how civilians don’t have a chance against the military is a bunch of crap. If their firearms are taken away their chances are really reduced. This is waht happened in the Soviet Union and NAzi Germany, where only the authorities had weapons. That is not the America I want to see.
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I write mostly military based science fiction and fantasy. It is my preferred niche. I think that the conflict really drives the story. What would a fantasy story be without conflict other than My Little Ponies? Science fiction can have other forms of conflict; man against planet, against space itself. Some people even believe that once we get established in space humankind will give up its warlike ways. I really don’t believe it. We are hard wired to be aggressive and territorial, just like the apes we came from. We’ve taken it to a whole other level of course. Most apes don’t kill within their own species, while that seems to be out preferred method of operation. Now we are carnivores, or at least omnivores. Are herbivores capable of intelligence? And if they are, can they be aggressive? I think anyone who has seen a charging rhino or a snorting bull would agree they definitely can be aggressive. Are all intelligent species aggressive? I guess they really don’t have to be until they run into a truly aggressive species and then it’s either learn war or go under. And can we actually change our natures through nurture. Can humanity become a totally peaceful species through psychology or drugs? And would we really want to make ourselves so helpless?
One of my favorite Larry Niven stories came from the known space series. Mankind has become the peaceful we don’t study war no more species that many flower children wished it to be. Anyone who used a fist on another person was brought in for treatment and reprogrammed. History classes were even censored, and only certain qualified people were taught about past wars, lest the delicate sensibilities of the rest of the race be disturbed (and maybe someone get ideas about conquest of fellow humans). So some of these peaceable humans, who happen to include one of those who took the forbidden history courses, are in a feeble sublight Bussard ramjet on its way to one of the human colonies, pulling a tenth of a gravity acceleration. Up comes a big hawking sphere decelerating at two hundred gravities, which means the aliens either have much superior tech to the humans, are much tougher, or both. Their tech is really superior in some respects, and the humans believe that any species that advanced must be peaceful. Switch view into the alien spaceship, which is manned by three meter tall, one thousand pound catlike creatures called the Kzinti. Kzinti are not peaceful. Their whole rationale for living is to hunt and to conquer. They prefer their foe to give them a good fight for the sake of honor. But they’ll take their subject races as they find them, and this looks like a perfect subject race. Too feeble to win a war, but with enough acumen to become good slaves in a high tech society. The humans win by a fluke. They use their com laser to cut the alien ship in half before the Kzinti realize it is a weapon, and the humans send a signal back telling the home world that the good times are over.
I do believe there will be conflict in space, whether it is between humans or between humans and aliens. Despite all of the talk of morality by the world’s religions, the morality of many people is simply to get what they can by whatever means possible, including force if they can get away with it. I am sure that many alien species will have representatives of the same kind of moral code. There was a saying that was popular back in the sixties and seventies that it took two to make war. Actually it takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make uncontested conquest, with armies rolling over the borders to take life, property and freedom. If the invasion is contested then it takes two or more, and the name of the activity is then called a war. I don’t think many people or groups will allow themselves to just be steamrolled without a fight. And from that determination will come armed conflict, now and in the future.