Questions tagged [military]
For questions relating to the structure or relations regarding a fictional military or its parts.
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Conquering a Metropolis with near-zero own casualties
You have a trillion dollar/year military budget. You can buy all the toys (that are physically and financially possible to build with current technology). You can hire the manpower, command the ...
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Is there any real reason for Dwarves not to have cavalry?
It's a fairly common trope in fantasy worlds/stories that dwarves don't use cavalry.
But is there any real reason why?
Off the top of my head the two most likely ones seem to be:
Their size. Except ...
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Military Tank drone, why are they not common yet?
I was wondering--why are there no self driving tanks in the US army?
They seem much easier to build than a flying drone. Most of the space within the tank is wasted on instruments/cabin space for ...
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Would a non-lethal military be effective?
An empire spanning the globe has a military force trained and equipped for the temporary impairment of combat forces, such as sleeping gas, shields and nets.
The empire is by far the most ...
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Why would The Machines not hunt humanity?
The Slow War is almost over. The Machines appeared almost twenty years ago, and since then we've all but lost humanity without them firing a single shot. Instead they won through brute industrial ...
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How would modern naval warfare have to have developed differently for battleships to still be relevant in the 21st century?
So basically, battleships are awesome. I am interested in creating a setting where they were never superseded in their role of long-range command vessels and fire support by aircraft carriers, ...
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Storming Area 51 [closed]
As you've probably heard, there's been a recent tongue-in-cheek event on Facebook to storm Area 51 on September 20th. Over 222,000 people have "confirmed" that they are going, with more than 251,000 ...
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What would be the pros and cons of a merged military and police?
What would be the pros and cons of a merged military and police?
In the world I am building war is an ongoing issue, and so the culture's military is quite extensive. Also the majority of people carry ...
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What is a realistic time needed to get a properly trained army?
The situation is the following:
a country, in theory an industrial power (modern times equivalent), maintains a tiny (but well trained) peace-time army which could be used as a source of officers and ...
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What kind of spells would magicians cast in combat if the fuel to magic is very expensive
In the story I’m working on, there is a strict ruleset on how magic works, one of the main points being it needs a “fuel” to work, and that “fuel” is VERY expensive. That being, most magicians use ...
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Is it possible to win many wars while not being highly regarded in the military art?
I have a commander who won several wars with relatively small casualties, against opponents who were similar in strength.
Is it possible his victories to be disregarded as flukes and opportunism, and ...
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Why would space fleets be aligned?
Recently I noticed how space fleets are all constructed so the ships are all aligned.
With 'aligned' I mean the way how all ships seem to have a 'right way up' and that all the ships have the same ...
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How much havoc can a small amount of people cause in a metropolis?
Our forces have surrounded the modern city of Vale; a large metropolis of over 5 million citizens who all have decided to try and rebel against us and form their own country. The city has large dams ...
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Encryption in the 19th century
Heinrich is a scientist and a scholar, one of the greatest minds of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire around 1880. He studied mathematics, physics and engineering. He patented a few of his ideas and ...
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What kind of war would lead to Ultra-Heavy tanks being useful?
Ultra-Heavy tanks are a fun concept. Simply scale up a tank to weigh 1000+ tonnes, add a stupid amount of guns and armour, and you end up with something like the image below.
Of course, this monster ...
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How to stop soldiers from selling their equipment?
Assume there is a resource that allows for rapid regeneration of body parts and termination (magical deletion) of foreign objects in the body upon usage. Let's say it is scarce enough that you can't ...
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Is it plausible that a country developed steam engines before gunpowder?
Man, I really have to find a way to stop getting into logic dead-ends.
So, in the story I’m writing, there’s this country that developed big bad war machines that run on steam engines. The way they ...
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What kind of land transportation can be used for plowing through hordes of zombies?
Set in a zombie apocalypse world somewhere in Chennai, India.
News report shows an estimated 90% of the population here has turned into zombies overnight, soldiers setup a human chain perimeter ...
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What measures might an early-medieval society take to deal with draugr?
The Background
I have an early medieval/late dark ages society roughly equivalent to Anglo-Saxon Britain or Viking Scandinavia. Everything's fairly normal...apart from the fact that people who drown ...
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How is warfare affected when armor has (temporarily) outpaced guns? How can guns compete?
This a follow up on the previous post that asked how strong graphene armor would be and the general conclusion is that we have no idea sadly. So in this post I will ask a more relevant question.
...
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How would one attack or lay siege to a flying castle?
So we already know that flying creatures are good at attacking castles. But what about a flying castle attacked by ground creatures?
Let's say we have ourselves a medium-sized castle built on a ...
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Reason to use tridents over other weapons?
So, I wanted one of my species in a world of mine to primarily use tridents as their weapons. I'm not sure of their location outside of a mesa. I did a little research and tridents were indeed used in ...
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Would a National Army of mercenaries be a feasible idea?
Would it be practical for a small, largely isolated country to have a drafted army to be hired out to other countries as guards for caravans or a policing force? The soldiers would all serve around 4 ...
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Minimum force needed for an air strike against a wind farm?
Mission Overview
A long-simmering conflict is about to break into open war in more-or-less modern-day Earth. You are part of the staff of an air force general, who is in charge of planning a wave of ...
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Infantry weapons, or why are there people running around down there anyway?
I've got an idea about boarding parties on spaceships but it's based on the continued existence of infantry, and infantry weapons that are designed to function in an open-system environment. The ...
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How would a military staffed only with women be different?
Assume that in a world with current levels of technology much like our own, a developed country with at least tens of millions of people and more than a city-state sized territory, decided that all ...
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Are dragons useless when there are guns?
Right now, I'm facing a problem:
Dragons are useless.
This is dragons every time they come into contact with any fireteam.
Most of my characters are non-humans. Among them, dragons have the problem ...
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Is the concept of a biometric smart gun that will detonate when anyone besides its owner touches the weapon unrealistic?
This is basically an extension of the idea of the smart gun, a gun that will only fire when in the hands of its biometrically linked owner, but two steps up.
The idea is that someone won't dare to ...
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Tactics and strategy an army can use to counter Human Wave attacks?
TL;DR: What tactics can a professionally trained army use against a horde of untrained conscripts using human wave attacks?
(This scenario takes place in the very-near future.)
Background ...
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The role of anthropomorphic foxes in a medieval army
In my universe I am designing anthropomorphic foxes similar in appearance to the japanese mythological kitsune. For those who are familiar with the game League of Legends: Ahri is a good example of ...
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How would the navies of the present hunt down a sea monster with sonar invisibility?
I am assuming that present day navies would hunt a sea monster using techniques similar to ASW (anti-submarine warfare). According to my research most ASW weapons like torpedoes, mines and missiles ...
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Why would they use human soldiers over undead ones?
In my setting you can revive people from the dead as long as the brain is intact, though you have to remove all their organs and replace them with a suitable alternative Egyptian mummy style.
The ...
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What does a naval ship's hierarchy look like in detail? [closed]
I am having trouble finding a detailed breakdown of the chain of authority on a naval ship. I have been able to find fully detailed charts for Merchant and Cruise ships, but not so much for a naval ...
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How to prevent your enemies from digging under you?
So, my world is a sphere (roughly) within hyperbolic space. Since the surface areas of spheres in hyperbolic space grows exponentially with radius, it has the same surface area of the Earth (indeed, ...
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Fighting a dragon with modern military units (or Smaug vs. a MEU)
First off -- this differs from our history questions on this topic in that we are dealing with modern assets here, not historical ones, and from this question in that our military units are out to ...
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What transfer of goods would require a large military escort these days?
I am trying to write my first story and I'm having trouble imagining goods that would need a military convoy (included private) if they were to be transferred safely on a non-at-war soil. It doesn't ...
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Are there examples of rowers who also fought?
In my world I plan to have a naval army with boats that are driven by manpower. The rowers are not slaves but are also soldiers. However, I am struggling to find examples of times in history where ...
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Airborne 18th century soldier: Feasible?
All right, in this fiction there are airships, they're not like blimps or zeppelins, they're much more like the fantasy-esque "age of sail ship that floats", cool and dandy. With their creation, some ...
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How would a command structure and strategy for a galactic war be organized?
Background
In a galaxy not so far far away....
The Andromeda galaxy is presided over by two major powers - the Y'Ing and the Y'Ang. These powers have existed together but never integrated with ...
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Why Wouldn't The Military Intervene with a Zombie Apocalypse?
I was looking around the site bored for a while, when I found this question: Why would the military use tanks in a zombie apocalypse?
Because I'm writing my own zombie story, I realized that I need my ...
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Which geographic areas within an empire produce the best soldiers?
In my book series, the Aurean Empire is a vast entity spanning an entire planet. I'm kind of wondering what parts of my empire would the Aureans draw their best soldiers from (for example, the Roman ...
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An Undercover Army
Suppose you want to invade Russia. But, beating it in a conventional or nuclear war isn't possible for your people for some reason.
What if, instead, you line up 500,000 soldiers to move to Russia ...
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Why Have Faceless Helmets? [closed]
What are plausible reasons for equipping an army with the Faceless Goon style helmets? Is there a good reason at all? Please note that its a faceless helmet not a Balaclava or other form of covering ...
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How to kill an alien with a decentralized organ system?
I had a cool but not so original idea: aliens with many many redundant organs, and a nervous system spread across their bodies. This creates some issues. How do I kill one?
What the Alien is like:
The ...
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Mounted Cavalry in the Modern Era
Let's assume for a moment that horseback cavalry somehow managed to survive to the modern era. This might have been due to extremely strong cultural foundations, or archaic legal policies, or perhaps ...
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Can one guy with a duplicator initiate a nuclear apocalypse?
The setting:
Present day. The country is up to you. Whatever would be easiest.
The guy:
Highly skilled. Maybe ex-Marine? Special forces? You can have him be "top of his class" at just about ...
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How could I make a secret lab subtly noticeable?
The main setting for a piece I'm planning is a lab whose purpose is to find the cause of the orcs in my world (they're basically hypermuscular humans, but nobody knows this in-universe yet). It's ...
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Full plate - ways to make individual suits look more distinct
So I have a fairly large empire led by knights, and there are a lot of different households with their own proud histories and strong personal identities. As a natural consequence of this, a culture ...
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Why would a country with high population suffer from low manpower?
This country has very low mortality rates and basic medicine, it is also very well-connected with a strong government and homogeneous culture and people. The country is self-providing of all resources....
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U.S. Army/Military's response time to an army appearing in the middle of a major city
In the scenario I have in mind, a handful of portals appear in a major U.S. city from which an army of golems starts pouring forth with the intent to cause as much damage as possible.
The specifics ...
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