How can a planet-spanning empire keep their soldiers experienced without wars to fight?

Question

Suppose you have a planet-wide empire that has the benefit of Ancestral Guidance. The empire has conquered the entire world long before it developed interstellar travel. There are no other inhabited planets around. However, the weapons keep evolving, about 500 years. Then they encounter aliens, and they're hostile.

Because of the many generations between the last war and the first skirmishes with aliens, there are no soldiers alive with firsthand combat experience. All soldiers that remain have only had their limited training. They have no combat experience, no memories of combat, not even parents or grandparents that fought in the last war, 500 years ago.

How can the army ensure that their soldiers are actually reliable in a fight, i.e. that they stay in the fight, that they know how to handle their equipment, and that they're killing enough aliens?

Answer 1

Ignoring ancestral guidance, I would focus on war games.

Many modern militaries have regular war games where units compete against each other or their allies. These can take many forms, from submarine hide and seek, to field exercises with paintball guns.

There's even some evidence that nuclear command units participate in war games and drills. It looks like their willingness to launch is put the test every so often. Given the moral and ethical implications of using nuclear weapons, governments want to be sure that their people will really "push the button" when the time comes.

---

On the other hand "Ancestral knowledge" may change things a bit. If the majority of soldiers can be imprinted with the memories of long dead ancestors they may more or less inherit veteran status. This would probably help with developing a willingness to fight, bravery in the face of danger, and obedience.

That said training and war games would still be necessary simply because the weapons and tactics will have changed significantly since the last war.

Answer 2

How can the army ensure that their soldiers are actually reliable in a fight, i.e. that they stay in the fight, that they know how to handle their equipment, and that they're killing enough aliens?

In short...you can't.

If five hundred years have passed since the last war there are several problems you are going to face and I think the premise of the question is flawed in a couple ways. (that's not to say the question is bad, if I didn't like it I wouldn't bother answering)

• Military funding during peace time. Resources are focused where they are most needed. This would be especially true in a planet spanning empire. Running that large a government would be very resource intensive. If there is nothing to be gained by supporting a standing military force it won't be funded. At best a shell of command and specialists would be available when hostilities break out with aliens.

The US military is arguably the best in the world...and generally (Vietnam excluded) has enjoyed popular support. (if you want to argue ping me in chat)

With that in mind here is a chart of defense spending for the US military in the 20th Century:

Clearly during peacetime spending drops rather drastically, it did so especially during the era of total wars, which is the type of war it sounds like you are planning for. While well trained and experienced today, even the US military is not trained/manned/equipped for a total war.

Your planetary government would not support a standing military, let alone a large well trained military during peace-time. So experience is a problem yes, but having a large standing force trained in the basics is also implausible.

The second issue is military technology. Again, with no driver for development for over half a millenia odds are things have not progressed significantly. Perhaps technology has but its application for war and proven effectiveness just wouldn't be there.

---

So...how are we going to fare against these aliens. Poorly, especially at first. The first few years (if the aliens take that long to fight us) are going to be very...very bad. It takes a lot of time to develop a military infrastructure. Factories have to be built, bases have to be built, people have to be recruited and trained, weapons have to be mass produced...and keep in mind this isn't the middle ages, you can't just hand a guy a spear and say "Pointy end goes that way"

Training pilots takes 3-5 years, advanced weapons systems can take months, tanks take a while as well.

The inclusion of ancestral guidance would be helpful in training and operations. If nothing else it provides a baseline and can help in the creation of training programs, but if tech advanced over five hundred years you are starting from scratch on weapons training.

Answer 3

There is a very ancient and well respected technique for dealing with such situations: make it up as you go.

If you lack experience fighting, it's going to be hard to be confident that you know what you are doing. This goes doubly-so for fighting aliens: most combat styles are developed to be effective against known enemies. You can do War Games and VR like others have suggested, but there's no substitute for putting boots on the ground and finding out what the real thing is like.

Of course, this attitude looks suicidal at first, so we're going to need to provide some focus. The empire should start off by trying to fight battle in locations where there isn't all that much to lose, physically, but fight battles which are rich in information about how the combat is going. Your goal is to buy time in the less valuable parts of the empire so that you have a crack squad of troops ready as the aliens push into the core of the empire.

I will note you have one advantage: you will have kung fu. Your description of how Ancestral Guidance would have a Chinese kung fu grandmaster salivating. They could not ask for a better medium to transfer their art, so you would absolutely have kung fu.

There may also be stockpiles waiting to help this fight. In Dune, the Great Houses all had their Family Atomics. By treaty, these were never used on each other. They were held in reserve to help combat any "alien intelligence" which invaded the empire.

Answer 4

I believe VR might be their best bet in this situation, if their tech is up to it. A helmet that gave you complete range of vision inside the simulation, as well as provided very realistic audio, and a suit that somehow provided tactile sensations based on what happened in the simulation (crawling through tall grass, something grabbing you, maybe even getting shot in the leg). Guns would be easy to simulate, but hand-to-hand weapons would be harder. They'd probably have to be both dull and somewhat soft, and could only be used against other people (as opposed to the AI inside the program).

This would let them test the soldiers against many different possible fighting styles and plans of attack that the aliens could use, since you could load any possible configuration you wanted. The fact that pain would be transmitted through the suit would probably be sufficient to get the soldiers used to it, and see if any would desert.

As for how the suit would work, it'd probably have to be some combination of electrodes and a device/material lets call mechanized rubber, that stretches or contracts based on what voltage you put across it (kinda like a muscle). The electrodes would provide the pain, and the mechanized rubber would simulate tactile feelings. It could contract and release very quickly to simulate an impact, or maybe contract very tightly and hold to simulate an injury. It might even be able to squeeze just slightly in specific places to simulate walking through tall grass or something.

The whole program would need to be housed inside some sort of huge gym, maybe with soft-ish wood structures everywhere, corresponding to where structures are in the game. As many video games have shown, there are a huge amount of possible types of fights you can have on even a small number of maps, so not very many of these gyms would need to be constructed.

Answer 5

Simulation

This is entirely dependent on your level of technology, but a common trope is VR or neural combat simulations. The idea of this is to cover the areas of combat that cannot be taught in traditional training. As other answers pointed out, just a strict training regimen can do a lot to ensure proficiency with weapons, battlefield tactics, standard communications etc. What is harder to train is the psychological hardship.

However, with a little more technological advancement, people could "live" battles. This could be through immersive Virtual Reality, through neural manipulation, or in your case the Ancestral Guidance. Imagine syncing with a warrior ancestors memories to re-experience ancient battles first-hand. While the tech may be different, presumably the horrors and pressures of war are not.

For a great example, read some chapters from Hyperion about the stim-sim training they do. Basically, military personnel have to re-fight famous battles through neural stimulation, and thus are conditioned to the hardships of battle.

Military Tradition

Think Sparta. Even when there is no all-out war, if war is part of the culture it will stay prevalent. If societal worth or class standing are measured by proficiency with weapons, toughness, one-on-one combat, etc., then these things will remain skills. Clearly, this doesn't replicate a large-scale war, but the psychological toughness, killer instinct, respect for equipment, etc. will all stay key parts of society, at least among the elite.

For examples of this, consider ancient Sparta, or the culture of the Golds in Red Rising

Answer 6

Others have said this but let me reiterate: You really don't keep a military well trained after that long. Some points though:

1. Some military units will still exist, but these will be purely ceremonial. Royal Guards and such. They have archaic/ceremonial weapons and are trained only in drill. Not using them in combat.
2. The REAL job of guarding the Sovereign (Emperor/Empress) will fall on a protection unit created for the job. This can be military, but most likely civilian/police. These WILL have weapons but will probably be limited to small arms and support weapons (anti-vehicle stuff). No heavy weapons at all (no artillery, very little armor, some aviation assets, some sea going assets, forget aircraft carriers/warships)
3. By far the largest armed formation on the planet is the Security Service. This depends on what kind of government you're envisioning of course. A totalitarian empire will have a large Security Service that include heavily armed riot police, secret police, counter insurgency forces, etc. A democratic government will have less. If you're building a utopian world, the security services would probably consist of volunteer constables with temporary powers activated only in times of need.
4. There will probably be a large, well trained, well equipped Emergency Service though. Firefighters, EMTs/Paramedics, and others. So keep these in mind as the conflict looms. They would have to play a major part, I think.

Having said that, if there is ancestral guidance, you can probably alleviate these a little. These Ancestors probably fought in real wars and have a good understanding of TTPs. How their experiences translate into fighting Aliens (who will likely have alien doctrine/TTPs) is up to you of course. For reference, maybe read up on some Warhammer 40k novels. They're not literary masterpieces, I know, but they show how human soldiers with human TTPs fight widely different races with their own doctrines.

Good luck!

Answer 7

Training

Even with the capability boost of Ancestral Guidance, combat with aliens is going to far outside the capabilities or training plans. Drilling on the basics of weapon usage and coordination will be about the only thing you can do. A strong intelligence service and science division may help even the odds.

If the story contains any indication of the existence of aliens, then it's plausible to train your troops to match that threat. If not, then most likely the troops will have training plans intended to deal with known threats, the rebellions and family feuds cited by the OP in the comments.

While it's true that weapons may evolve over time and improve without evolutionary pressures, it makes me uneasy that weapons without strong pressure to improve would really improve all that much. For example, the competition between the USSR and the US had enormous impacts on the advance of technology, not just weapons.

Answer 8

Several good answers, I won't repeat them. Let me just add:

While the situation you describe is more extreme than any I can think of in recorded history -- absolutely no enemies for 500 years -- there have been plenty of times when a nation had periods of relative peace and so was not prepared when attacked. The U.S. was certainly not prepared to go to war at the time that either world war began, and that was after only a few decades of peace. The Byzantine Empire was not prepared to fight the Muslims. Etc.

As James points out, if this planet has had one world government with no enemies for 500 years, and they're not expecting an alien invasion, why do they have an army at all?

I guess you're assuming that they haven't had to deal with revolutions, that everybody on the planet is at least generally satisfied with the government. If there are periodic rebellions that the army has to put down, than the question goes away.

Since the idea of a standing army was invented, the routine solution to this problem is training and military exercises. Yes, this is highly flawed technique. Normally in training exercises the soldiers are not REALLY trying to kill each other, so the experience is far from the same as actual combat. And a classic problem of training exercises is, as the old saying goes, they prepare the troops to fight the last war instead of the next one. Years ago I read -- sorry, I can cite the source -- that France studied the lessons of World War 1 and built the Maginot Line. Germany studied those same lessons and developed the Blitzkrieg.

Answer 9

Robots.
But make them with real guns and none of that "protect humans" drivel. They will have a kill switch if they start to gain real grounds on your army but other than that, they will have carte-blanche to exploit resources, design weapons, try to assassinate, conquer, enslave and terrorize humans.

You need an opponent with true malicios intent, unexpected strategies and respectable power. Anything else is a waste of time.

Answer 10

I would add one point - Remember that armies almost always are perfectly prepared... for the previous war they fought.

Take World Wars One and Two for example. The mechanisation of war fundamentally changed the way war was fought with the First World War, and the fast paced nature of change was one of the primary causes of the strategic and tactical stagnation faced by both sides.

With World War Two, the reason the Third Reich was able to take such vast amounts of land in such little time at the beginning of the war was that the allies simply were not prepared for the rapid pace of Blitkreig warfare.

Its the same throughout modern history.

Add in the difficulties covered by the other answers, and even extensively trained "VR" soldiers are going to be little match for unusual or strange tactics. How your soldiers perform from there is very reliant on how flexible they and the command structures that support them are.

Answer 11

Sports and simulation

Ritualize and adapt the combat into sports.
We've done this with a lot of sports. Many of the Olympic games got their start in war.

Whatever the preferred form of combat, find away to take elements and turn them into competition.

War games are another, where teams simulate real combat against each other.

And simulation, like VR, video games, etc.
You could even design games to be used as recruitment tools and training, with leagues and the like to provide structure and teach people to follow orders.

Answer 12

Arrange for little rebellions

Your peace doesn't have to be complete. This or that odd corner of the world might rebel now and then. These little wars provide nice laboratories in which to test weapons and tactics. They also are useful as crucibles in which to harden some troops from each generation.

In fact, little wars might be so handy that, if they don't arise spontaneously, it might be worthwhile to provoke them. Your secret police can identify malcontents, bring them together, and whip them up. Just keep them far away from the people with power.

Yes, it's a really cynical thing to do, not to mention expensive in lives and money. But ancestral guidance might make in plausible, and having an enemy to unite people against can be quite useful politcally.