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[Amperzand]

Another set of questions relates to orbit.

Are the satellites immediately shot down, robbing all major powers of orbital surveillance?

Does this cause crippling Kessler Syndrome, preventing new orbital infrastructure? Does it not?

Is orbital militarization relevant? ("Space marine" drop-pods, rods from god, ETC.)

Also, non-nuclear WMDs?

[Egan_BW]

Space is expensive, yo. Rods from god would be much more expensive than just nuking the joint, and about as effective. It's not as simple as "dropping it from orbit", you have to expend a significant amount of fuel to put it there, and again to get it back down. Remember that space agencies try to keep stuff as light as possible, and the whole point of using tungsten poles is that it's heavy.

[Erkki]

Currently the only nation that has capability of reliably shooting down a satellite and doing it more than once or twice is the USA. Even that only goes for LEO sats though, and not all military satellites are there. For example missile launch detecting sats are mostly at geostationary, and theres at least 50 or so of them alone.

[Baffler]

China at least has the capability, and Russia might as well. On paper, at least, since nobody has ever actually field tested an anti-satellite missile. Just because they only have a couple of those missiles now doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to produce more down the line, and it's not like the satellites are going anywhere.

And it's worth remembering that the entirety of Iraq fell in only a couple of weeks, the only reason Canada and Mexico would last longer is that they're a bit larger. Neither of them have a hope to actually stop or even slow down the US military, and any coalition forces that do manage to get past the navy and air force and land there aren't going to be resupplied anytime soon.

[Erkki]

China at least has the capability, and Russia might as well. On paper, at least, since nobody has ever actually field tested an anti-satellite missile. Just because they only have a couple of those missiles now doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to produce more down the line, and it's not like the satellites are going anywhere.

And it's worth remembering that the entirety of Iraq fell in only a couple of weeks, the only reason Canada and Mexico would last longer is that they're a bit larger. Neither of them have a hope to actually stop or even slow down the US military, and any coalition forces that do manage to get past the navy and air force and land there aren't going to be resupplied anytime soon.

ASATs have been successfully test-fired at satellites by all three of those nations.

If USA wants to conquer Mexico, they'll have to fight through and occupy Mexico city too. That'll need a lot of troops, and army is where US relatively at least weakest. I'd say no matter how advanced you are right now in terms of hardware, theres only so much you can do when you have 315 million people vs. over 7 billion and have less than 1/4 of GDP and lack, in long term, resources to keep turning that GDP into civilian consumables and war material.

[Shadowlord]

China at least has the capability, and Russia might as well. On paper, at least, since nobody has ever actually field tested an anti-satellite missile. Just because they only have a couple of those missiles now doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to produce more down the line, and it's not like the satellites are going anywhere.

And it's worth remembering that the entirety of Iraq fell in only a couple of weeks, the only reason Canada and Mexico would last longer is that they're a bit larger. Neither of them have a hope to actually stop or even slow down the US military, and any coalition forces that do manage to get past the navy and air force and land there aren't going to be resupplied anytime soon.

ASATs have been successfully test-fired at satellites by all three of those nations.

If USA wants to conquer Mexico, they'll have to fight through and occupy Mexico city too. That'll need a lot of troops, and army is where US relatively at least weakest. I'd say no matter how advanced you are right now in terms of hardware, theres only so much you can do when you have 315 million people vs. over 7 billion and have less than 1/4 of GDP and lack, in long term, resources to keep turning that GDP into civilian consumables and war material.

If the entire world were against the USA, there would be nobody to object to the US also going back to the Old Ways of laying siege to any major cities until they surrendered unconditionally (like Assad has been doing in Syria, actually, except one hopes with less genocidal intent).

Methinks Kessler Cascade is a likely outcome of shooting down US GPS satellites, and even if not, the alternative systems would promptly get shot out of the sky by the US, leaving nobody with gps functionality. Besides the economic effects, this would also prevent the use of gps-guided bombs and missiles. Maybe the US would have to go back to carpet bombing?

Other satellite navigation systems in use or various states of development include:
GLONASS – Russia's global navigation system. Fully operational worldwide.
Galileo – a global system being developed by the European Union and other partner countries, which began operation in 2016[156] (and is expected to be fully deployed by 2020)
Beidou – People's Republic of China's regional system, currently limited to Asia and the West Pacific,[157] global coverage planned to be operational by 2020[158][159]
IRNSS (NAVIC) – India's regional navigation system, covering India and Northern Indian Ocean
QZSS – Japanese regional system covering Asia and Oceania

[Baffler]

China at least has the capability, and Russia might as well. On paper, at least, since nobody has ever actually field tested an anti-satellite missile. Just because they only have a couple of those missiles now doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to produce more down the line, and it's not like the satellites are going anywhere.

And it's worth remembering that the entirety of Iraq fell in only a couple of weeks, the only reason Canada and Mexico would last longer is that they're a bit larger. Neither of them have a hope to actually stop or even slow down the US military, and any coalition forces that do manage to get past the navy and air force and land there aren't going to be resupplied anytime soon.

ASATs have been successfully test-fired at satellites by all three of those nations.

If USA wants to conquer Mexico, they'll have to fight through and occupy Mexico city too. That'll need a lot of troops, and army is where US relatively at least weakest. I'd say no matter how advanced you are right now in terms of hardware, theres only so much you can do when you have 315 million people vs. over 7 billion and have less than 1/4 of GDP and lack, in long term, resources to keep turning that GDP into civilian consumables and war material.

You're right, hardware isn't everything. A quality officer corps, well trained and disciplined troops, sound strategic planning, robust logistical service, and a solid NCO corps all contribute to how well an army will actually perform. In all of those categories, with the possible exception of logistics, I have very strong doubts you'll find many militaries that match the USA in more than one or two of those. How useful are a bunch of barely trained African villagers given the minimal training their militaries provide actually going to be? How many officers and instructors from countries that actually do have competent militaries can be lent to them? Or how about a decently led but tiny and underequipped continental European army with no ability to project force? How many countries rely on American military advisors? The UK, France, Russia, China, and India are going to be doing the heavy lifting here. And their navies aren't really a match for the USA's. And that's not even accounting for sorties of aircraft from the USA itself on approaching ships. The USA isn't going to occupy the whole world, but it's borders can be secured.

Resources are more of a problem, but even just the strategic resources held in reserve aren't going to run out quickly.

[Erkki]

Tomahawks worked fine without GPS in -91. Submarine-launched missiles still use star navigation, because the exact location of the firing platform is inaccurate.

[Shadowlord]

"Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate." - Spartan Battle Manual, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Naturally, the Spartans were usually one of the first two factions to get wiped out in virtually all of my SMAC games.

[Taricus]

The problem with the US navy is that it'll be contending with rapidly expanding navies, and it's far from being able to prevent those shipyards churning out ships. It'll certainly have an initial advantage but that'll rapidly decline as the war drags on.

Same goes for air superiority, only that's going to start off better in the UN's favour to begin with (And still end up being in the UN's favour massively. And thanks to that relative air superiority any invasion the US tries is practically doomed to at least be a significant slog. Add to the fact that the US navy is severely limited in it's strategic options due to losing most of it's naval bases meaning the range of most of it's ships are hobbled in terms of operational range.

[misko27]

If the entire world is against the USA, then that means Mexico and Canada too. There are already "footholds" on the continent. There need not be an opposed landing or a suicidal hike across the Alaskan landscape (seriously, invading through Alaska is not an option).

And tell me, how long is Canada going to last from the declaration of hostilities? Long enough for the major powers to mount a massive reinforcement?

I'm surprised no one picked up on the thread of my "what happens to Japan?" question. It's not like it's a trivial question mind. The fate of the world's third biggest economy is kind of a big deal.

The problem with the US navy is that it'll be contending with rapidly expanding navies.

It's questions like this that make me ask "why the fuck does this war happen in the first place?" and "Precisely how long are we talking about?".

Firstly, the UN can't be involved, the US has veto power there, so some whole new organization has to be formed specifically to combat the US. And for this situation to occur, numerous countries that are either dependent on the US (Iceland, Japan, Phillipines, Israel), or highly vulnerable to the US (Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, literally all of Central America really) have to declare war on the US, knowing precisely how shitty it is going to be because of it. How determined are these countries in the first place? There are real differences if the entire world is dedicated single-mindedly to annihilating every single last US citizen than if, say, the major foreign powers of the world founded a "Coalition of the Willing" of sorts. The latter scenario is actually possible, for one.

Beyond that, I tell you that even best case scenario for total war is "Fortress America." Even if the world resists America like it did the Third Reich (and note, the world did not resist the Third Reich as much as the world is resisting America here! in WW2 you had collaborators and such, neutral states such as Sweden and Switzerland, etc. So whatever caused this fantasy scenario is America being more widely and deeply reviled than Nazi Germany), as long as the US can set up some sort of Vichy Canada (or an "Independent State of Quebec" ala Croatia if Vichy Canada proves unviable) situation, it can hold out for quite a long time due to American trade being primarily with its neighbors.

So then we get back to "What does the world want out of the US?" and "How much is the US/World willing to pay for that?" If the answer is "a decades-long siege" we start getting into the longer-term "Fortress America" ideas, then we enter the realm of fantasy as we discuss what military forces either side could or could not be able to produce in the near-to-distant future. Again, it would be really interesting fantasy, a very good book setting, and if someone wrote that I'd read the hell out of it, but it's not really armchair generaling at that point.

[Erkki]

You're right, hardware isn't everything. A quality officer corps, well trained and disciplined troops, sound strategic planning, robust logistical service, and a solid NCO corps all contribute to how well an army will actually perform. In all of those categories, with the possible exception of logistics, I have very strong doubts you'll find many militaries that match the USA in more than one or two of those. How useful are a bunch of barely trained African villagers given the minimal training their militaries provide actually going to be? How many officers and instructors from countries that actually do have competent militaries can be lent to them? Or how about a decently led but tiny and underequipped continental European army with no ability to project force? How many countries rely on American military advisors? The UK, France, Russia, China, and India are going to be doing the heavy lifting here. And their navies aren't really a match for the USA's. And that's not even accounting for sorties of aircraft from the USA itself on approaching ships. The USA isn't going to occupy the whole world, but it's borders can be secured.

This is very true, training, doctrine, morale and so forth can make great difference. I of course dont think goes for every unit or branch, but I think USA has perhaps prepared a bit too much for fighting an asymmetric warfare since the fall of USSR. Now that is allright itself, you train and prepare for most likely scenarios of course, but preparing for asymmetric warfare is slightly different than preparing for symmetric warfare.

I'll take an example from this year: US 2nd Cavalry Regiment (Stryker) took part to our Arrow 16 excercise last Spring. Good part of the men had combat experience from Iraq and they were naturally well equipped with state of the art stuff.

You can view photos and video of the excercise, some awesome stuff there: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragoon2scr/albums/with/72157667753049771 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghi8iN2zgvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqYg5CFciEU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ-RPOgS1E

This excercise showed what an overreliance on equipment and support can cost, to an individual unit at the front any way. Apparently for the first time ever, for the Americans that is, there was radio interference jamming and an enemy more mobile and aggressive than they were. They had serious issues in making decisions on the go with lacking situational awareness on enemy and friends. Way too inflexible and indecisive, and during the first half of the excercise(force-on-force phase) they had their butts whooped multiple times by conscripts and reserve motorized infantry moving on tiny MT-LBs from the 70s.

edit: notice you can turn on subtitles on the videos, they're well translated too

[Egan_BW]

The the sake of the scenario, the rest of the world hates america because of magic. The point of the scenario is to answer the question "could America beat every other country in the world at the same time", and that includes countries that have nothing to gain by fighting america.

[Taricus]

I'm pretty sure if every other nation on the planet is at war with the US, the US' veto power isn't going to mean shit in the UN. Probably would need to be re-headquartered though.

And presumably if every nation is at war with the US, any military bases the US had on dependant nations would've likely been closed years prior to the war (Which in the case of israel, is improbable but we're discussing the war itself, not the cause.) in preparation for it to avoid equipment and manpower losses.

And a fortress america is an untenable situation, given the growing air and naval superiority of it's opposition. It won't have the shipbuilding capacity to beat them in quantity and it'd likely lack a lot of resources needed to maintain it's current fleet.

And the problem with domestic trade is that dries up immediately on hostilities, and is unable to reach the levels it did pre-war. Furthermore, it's not the financial side of trade the US would be concerned about as it would be the resources, and you can bet there'd likely be some measure of scorched earth given the relative likelyhood of resisting US occupation.

[Parsely]

-any coalition forces that do manage to get past the navy and air force and land there aren't going to be resupplied anytime soon.

So the American military is going to seize the combined land area of North and South America?