Mecha-nations

...Or why We'll Never Invade Spectra (with all due apologies to Ronin :))

I was intending not to write this but instead to make it part of a fanfic I'm writing, but given my speedy writing, this might be good for an essay. Some of this may be BotP-specific, but for the most part I think it's generally applicable. Commentary and discussion most eagerly sought.

Now Jameson Brewer made a lot of weird characters, but one thing can be said for him: he wasn't in the business of making idiots.

And to a not-idiot, the notion that there could seriously be an alien nation looking to take over the *entire* world, the very concept of interplanetary warfare -- even with faster-than-light travel, is patently ridiculous. Fairly early in the series, (ep 30, counting Gatchawise), a perfectly intelligent scientist looked Anderson dead in the eye and said as much.[1] A bit earlier on (14), another perfectly intelligent scientist never for a moment thought that the hijacking of the ship he was on was anything other than a government attempt to coerce him into handing over his work (it says something about Galaxy Security [2] {since the Chief had taken a personal interest in the case}, but that's not today's topic).
Naturally, they were dead wrong (and dead, in one case), but they're right: ignoring any travel problems, logistics is a nightmare's nightmare -- every shipment is a feat in and of itself and is extraordinarily vulnerable to a blockade. And global conquest is a tall, tall order, no matter where you're from. There's a very good reason no one's done it yet. It's impossible for all practical reasons.

Enter the impractical reasons:

Briefly, a mecha is to interplanetary warfare what tanks were to WWI trench warfare -- a means of breaking through otherwise intractable enemy lines.

How does a mecha work? Let's begin with what it's no good for:

- it's no good for occupying territory Without a good ground force to back it up, any area struck by a mecha is still in enemy hands, all ready for rebuilding.

- It's a very stupid way of killing people No one should ever make a mecha for that reason. For the cost of one, thousands of chemical, biological or nuclear warheads could be made and deployed with far greater success and be considerably more difficult to stop. Plus mecha do not last long (I will return to this point later), so every operational second has to count.

What is it good for?

- The main benefit of a mecha is that it can destroy vital infrastructure in a very short period of time.
Without infrastructure, a region's ability to mount a coordinated resistance to invaders is greatly weakened. Communications, centers of commerce, industry and military technology, government seats (especially in centralized countries), energy plants, access to essential natural resources, all those are good targets. And if they happen to be heavily populated, all the better.
And if the area citizens are too clueless to think of defensive maneuvers or make contingency plans for attacks, why break out the party streamers.

- Destruction of military capability
Since a mecha is invulnerable to conventional weapons, it's a fantastic way to get rid of troublesome armies that would otherwise give an occupying force trouble. Indeed if one is very lucky, and the invaded region is very foolish, the entire 15-45 age group of men can be killed off without much effort on one's part.

- Major savings on time scale of invasion.
Mecha do in hours what a conventional army does in weeks -- they don't replace them, but they greatly reduce the number of men needed out there at any point in time and make a final push a lot, lot easier. And, by being able to pop up anywhere, go anywhere, blast anything, they're potentially extremely demoralizing to the invaded.

Now, how to run this thing:

Even in a world where the laws of physics are negotiable, there are certain considerations that ought to prevent one from building a flying terror machine 200 meters wide.

- A mecha costs too much
To even consider building one of these things requires an amazing depth of technological sophistication and a very ready cash supply. isn't an organization. It isn't a region. It isn't a country. It's an entire world with borrowing rights to the resources of several other worlds. And it's very determined to do whatever needs doing. While the cost is still very high.

- It'll never fly.
If you tell a group of engineers to build a working flying saucer, chances are you'll eventually get one. If you tell a group of engineers to build a working flying saucer that will carry 4 people in a safe manner, have a top speed of Mach 1.5 and will last for 5 years, I'll bet you my last cup of French roast coffee that they'll throw up their hands and tell you that it's impossible, especially if you only want to pay $50,000 for it.
Feasibility is strongly affected by how many constraints you place on a project.
Even the best constructed mecha has so many moving parts and is so large that unforeseen failures are almost certain, greatly limiting its useful lifespan. Instead of wasting increasing amounts of money on increasingly small gains in longevity, it soon becomes better to build more mecha that individually don't last long but do significant damage while they do work. And that works because the job of a mecha is to do a lot of damage in a very short timeframe.
This consideration is even more important when you have an effective team destroying mecha, so that no matter how it's made the expected lifespan of any mecha is 3 days or so.
Make those 3 unforgettable days.

- You still don't escape the supply line problem.
True, but you can stretch them like a bungee cord. And it is very, very well worth noting that Spectra built up a lot of bases (presumably at least partially self-supporting) to provide adequate ground support before it ever considered launching the first one.

Life without mecha (or how did we ever do without it?)

Without mecha, the Spectrans do not have an invincible advantage and home defence forces can at least fight on equalish terms. There are other examples, but one good one is Riga. They reached that place well before they reached Earth. Since they went about it by fighting a ground war and were still at it when the series begins. Once mecha came into it, however, the deadlock changed to a rout and they had the place by 61 (remember that it was a bad situation to begin with -- like an advanced cancer patient -- and not being Earth, saving it wasn't exactly vital...).

So, what's there to do about this?

Which brings us to just where G-Force fits into this. One might say that the best thing to do would be to invade Spectra and defeat them but for all the reasons mentioned above, without the kind of planning and total commitment that the Spectrans have, that isn't happening.

Alternatively, levelling the playing field by making sure that they don't have any super-weapons and rooting out any bases as can be found should put a dent in their invasion timetable, their problems aren't solving themselves with time and, if the mecha is destroyed before it achieves its objective, that's a lot of resources wasted that need to be replaced to keep on target (or else back off and focus those resources on somewhere more important) and eventually they should be over-extended and out of time and be forced to desist. At least in theory. Practice is another story. And this, I think, is G-Force's main job. I'll save elaboration for some later time.

On a level playing field, the scientists at the beginning will be right: the notion that there could seriously be an alien nation looking to take over the *entire* world, will be patently ridiculous.

Comments?
Dei.

No, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking of it -- it just popped into my head recently. Writing it up, however...

Notes:

[1] No, I don't think it's unrealistic: a) it takes some time for this sort of thing to sink in with everyone, particularly those not as yet affected by it b) scientists are infamously oblivious to anything not directly concerning them and love thinking of more reasonable explanations for strange events, such as home-grown terrorists.

[2] It has never been claimed by the show that Galaxy Security is a benevolent organization, merely one that has a very worthwhile cause. Don't tell that to Zark though.