The Republic (Clone Wars Era) invades Modern Earth

[Praeothmin]

Sure, but Mike, considering that their shields, as per TCW series, can get knocked out with low level yields, even a Multi-Kiloton bomb detonating at close proximity would be devastating to them.
Fire enough of them, and one or two will surely get through.

We've seen the Empire struggle hitting a slow moving, non-evading Tantive IV in ANH, we've seen 3 ships saturating the space where Grievious' stationary ship was, and at least a third of these shots seemed to miss the target in TCW.

So I have very little faith in them succeeding in hitting even 1 of our missile, unless luck is with them.
So if we sent a few dozen, more then half at least would hit home, I'm certain of it...

[Mike DiCenso]

Sorry, I must disagree. We saw in the PT, in particular, TPM, with the Queen's ship breaking the blockade that the Trade Federation was able to hit close enough to knock out shields and hit droids. Primitive missiles will not have shields to protect them from the flak burst, which is all the Republic turbolasers need to destroy them. That and the relative acceleration and speed of the missiles will be too slow compared to a fast ship like the Queen's ship, or a Y-wing bomber.

Earth would need to send far more than a paltry dozen or so to succeed... hundreds or thousands would have to be launched on ballistic trajectories.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

We saw in the PT, in particular, TPM, with the Queen's ship breaking the blockade that the Trade Federation was able to hit close enough to knock out shields and hit droids.

Knock out shields, yeah, I have no problems accepting that, but the Droids?
I don't agree.
The angle they were shooting at, they may have been trying to damage the engines, which were protruding at the back of the ship wide enough to be viable targets.
I mean, they were able to shoot of Droids on the Royal Yacht, but they had trouble hitting yellow starfighters way bigger then Droids?
I don't think so...

[Mike DiCenso]

You're missing the point: The Trade Federation at that time was able to aim well enough that their near-misses were knocking out shields and scraping close enough to hit the astromech droids (each one only a little over a meter all) on the hull of the ship. That is all that a TL bolt with flak bursts needs to take out the unshielded and very thin alloy and composite materials of the missiles and the warheads to destroy them.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

You're missing the point: The Trade Federation at that time was able to aim well enough that their near-misses were knocking out shields and scraping close enough to hit the astromech droids (each one only a little over a meter all) on the hull of the ship.

And you're missing mine... :)
Hitting the Droids was pure luck, or else how can you explain they were hitting all the droids left and right, but all of a sudden they started missing R2?
Hitting the droids doesn't count as marksmanship, or else R2 would be scrap metal now.

And what I said stands:
They were aiming for the center mass on the rear of the ship, in order to shoot the engines and capture the princess.
Their aim wasn't that good, and hitting a ship that is a good deal bigger then most of our nuclear missiles is way easier.

So, as I stated before, if we fire a few dozen missiles, I'm sure at least one or two would go through, and then the ship getting hit would be toast...

[Mike DiCenso]

You're missing the point: The Trade Federation at that time was able to aim well enough that their near-misses were knocking out shields and scraping close enough to hit the astromech droids (each one only a little over a meter all) on the hull of the ship.

And you're missing mine... :)
Hitting the Droids was pure luck, or else how can you explain they were hitting all the droids left and right, but all of a sudden they started missing R2?
Hitting the droids doesn't count as marksmanship, or else R2 would be scrap metal now.

You still don't understand; let me clarify for you. I never said they were aiming for the astromech droids, just that they were getting close enough to the hull of the Queen's ship such that they were able to by fortunate happenstance to pick off them off, as well as knock out the ship's shields.

And what I said stands:
They were aiming for the center mass on the rear of the ship, in order to shoot the engines and capture the princess.
Their aim wasn't that good, and hitting a ship that is a good deal bigger then most of our nuclear missiles is way easier.

So, as I stated before, if we fire a few dozen missiles, I'm sure at least one or two would go through, and then the ship getting hit would be toast...

The Queen's ship was not so much bigger than a modern missile upper stage that the flak bursts would not catch them and rupture their tankage or destroy the bus section carrying the warhead or warheads, thus your supposition does not stand. Earth needs to fire as many missiles as it can muster in order to over come the TLs and the starfighter screen.
-Mike

[Dabat]

I disagree with most of the posters here. Any Star Wars invasion against modern earth will be doomed to failure unless they do nothing but flatten the earth from orbit. From everything we have seen about the Star Wars universe they would he aghast at the scale of which we fight war, their war technology is superior in very few areas, and inferior in the vast majority.

A large invasion for the Republic would be a hundred thousand troops the vast majority of which will be light infantry. Shit, you couldn't take and hold Detroit with a hundred thousand light infantry. Their clones are not any more effective then a modern irregular armed with a walkie-talkie and an AK-47, or a gang-banger armed with an uzi and a cell phone.

Clone rifles are terribly inaccurate, they have shown that they rely on massed fire and ranks to hit even at point blank range.

Their fighter craft have a stated max speed of a bare few hundred kph in atmosphere, and max ranges on their air-to-air weapons of less then a kilometer against moving targets. Our modern air engagements have taken place at supersonic speeds (thousands of kilometers per hour) and often take place at ranges of tens of kilometers.

They have shown that they routinely deploy large scale military formations without basic ECM, intergrated command nets, artillery tracking radar (or whatever they use to track incoming rounds, which never seems to work because I have never seen them have fore warning) anti-air, artillery, armor, air support or even reserves units.

Their armor and aircraft seem to carry no integral IFF or detection systems other then the Mark 1 eyeball. No heat, no starlight, no IR, no targeting assist, no radar.

Their heavy equipment is nearly always slow, bulky, unable to cross rough or built up ground and leaves crew in exposed positions.

Their threat indicators on their ships, when they do exist, will only warn about an object already near (often within a kilometer or less) and even then, only warn about an object on an intercept course. Should we resort to the nuclear option, their ships would ignore the warheads until it was far to late to do anything about them.

The sensors on their ships seem incapable of picking out objects or teraine features smaller then a kilometer, they have also shown they are incapable of tracking fighters and bombers that launch from a base (Not that our current scanners are much better mind you, the best Res we have of the moons of Jupiter, I believe, is 1 km. I am just pointing out that Star Wars has no super doper scanners that can pick out say... and aircraft carrier, and slag it as soon as it launches anything.).


Let us say, for example, that the Republic sends Six Venator class and a dozen Aclamaters, this would be one of the largest concentrations of warships they have ever shown, (the blockade in ep. 1, the battle for courrsant in ep. 3, and the battle of the second Death Star in ep. 6 are the only ones I can recall that are larger), Their total forces would be eighteen squadrons of fighters, and one hundred and thirty thousand clones, assuming each of the ships was fully stocked*. Even if you quadruple this number, the Armed Forces of the United States alone still outnumbers them in combat troops and aircraft by a wide margin.


I may be mistaken, but i believe each Ven. carries three squadrons of fighters and six thousand troops, while the Acc. carry nine thousand troops.



**EDIT**

I wandered off the point of my post. My whole point is that the Republic has little or no experiance in large scale warfare. I actually have a thread here on Star Fleet Jedi which was a response to someone who asked me (offline) how Star Wars could have such poor military tech if they were so advanced. The simple answer is they haven't needed it.

I mean it. The Republic has been at peace for, what, three thousand years? If you have been at peace of that long you go through several generations of 'why have X when you can have Y which is cheaper and almost as good', and 'why have 15,000 troops per world when they are all peaceful, we can do with just five thousand per'. Go through several hundred generations of procurment officers all saying the same thing, and you wind up with military equipment that doesn't match up with what we think a society of a certain tech level should have, and armies at a point that we would consider them ridiculously small.

On top of that, even when they do need an army or better military tech, they only need slightly better then what the other side has. Watching the Clone Wars, it seems that each side has undergone three to five periods of 'one upmanship'. The end result is nowhere near what their society is able to produce, but it is still considered 'Top of the Line', and is still good enough to do it's intended job against it's intended foe.

Earth, on the other hand, has gone through literally hundreds of these tech revolutions, just in the last century. We are a species and a world for whome war and genocide are a very real and constant threat, We need the best military equipment our tech level can produce, and our requirements for warfare are far higher then the Republic's. This is all why, despite the tech level disparity, the Republic would lose nearly any invasion it attempted of modern earth.

[Praeothmin]

You still don't understand; let me clarify for you. I never said they were aiming for the astromech droids, just that they were getting close enough to the hull of the Queen's ship such that they were able to by fortunate happenstance to pick off them off, as well as knock out the ship's shields.

That point's not in dispute Mike, I agree they can aim for a ship, and they can come close to the Yacht.
I think where our disagreement comes from is we differ on how easy it is to do that... :)

Look at the ship:
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/NabooR ... -Photo.jpg

Look at the Droids repairing the ship:
http://www.princessleia.com/images/star ... arship.jpg

Then look at the ship again, you'll see the ship is bigger then a modern nuclear missile.

Look at China's first Nuclear missile:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4 ... fp416b.jpg

Sure, it may be as long as the Royal Ship, but it is definitely narrower, thus presenting a smaller profile, thus being much harder to hit.

I do agree, perhaps just a few dozen wouldn't do it, but I doubt we would need all our modern missiles...

[Mike DiCenso]

The official statistics for the J-type 327 Nubian royal starship are all over the place; some stating it to be 76 meters long (clearly contradicted by the movie, even if you include the two long rear-facing spines that jut out from the engine nacelles). Other diagrams give a more modest size, perhaps around 58 or so meters long, including the aft nacelle spines. I'm inclined to go with a modest 50 meters based on the visuals, particularly of characters boarding and exiting the ship on Tatooine, and the 1.5 meter tall droids on the hull during the blockade breakout.

Based on consistent diagrams and other comparisons, I would say the engine nacelles are roughtly 4-5 meters wide and the main body around 6-8 meters in the section where Artoo and the other astromech droids were at while attempting the shield generator repairs. That would be about the same approximate diameter as most space-capable missiles, which would be around 2-4 meters diameter and 13 to 25 meters long. So targeting them and getting fairly close should be doable. Fighters will be able to fly into intercept the upper stages and warhead bus. Realistically we can expect that hundreds of missiles would need to be launched to score a direct hit. And yes, I believe given the launch failure rates of even satellite orbit capable rockets, like a Delta IV or Proton, we can expect that a number of the rockets will fail at launch or during the boost phase. So probably in excess of a thousand missile would be required to ensure sufficient margin here.
-Mike

[Dabat]

Can they shoot the warheads down? Maaaybe. They'd have to get real close to try. And the shown speeds of their fighter craft are a hell of a lot slower then those missiles will be going. But your assumption that the rockets will be shot down relies on three things; 1: that the Republic will see missiles coming in time to do anything about it, 2: That the Republic will have the fighters available to shoot the missiles down, and 3: That the Republic will see missiles not targeting their ships as a threat.

1: It has been well established that Star Wars scanners suck. Their effective scanning range for something the size of a Star Destroyer was only 200 km (for the record, that is close enough to see an object that size with the naked eye). ISD's are putting out all kinds of radiation and unshielded radio signals, not to mention the huge glow from their engines. An ICBM is far smaller, and has none of those to give it away.

But, even assuming they do see them at 200 kilometers away, the ICBMs are moving at around twenty to thirty thousand kph, several orders of magnitude faster then their fighters have ever been shown going. On top of that they will only have about 40 seconds to shoot them down before they are within range. In Ep 1, several capitol ships had far longer then that to attempt to shoot at ONE ship. Even if they decided to shoot down all the incoming rockets (which I will show later, they likely would not) they would not get more then a small fraction of them.

2: It has been established that the Republic fights wars with armies that we would consider ridiculously small. The whole invasion would likely only include a handful of squadrons of fighters. Keeping any of their few fighters near their capitol ships would be a waste of resources as we have no real space craft of our own, their fighters would almost certainly be down on the ground supporting the invasion which, as I have pointed out, would probably be going pretty poorly. And, due to the speed at which their fighters travel, they would have no way to recall them in time even if they did see the ICBMs at max range.

3: The threat indicators on the Republic ships only warn if they will collide with something, or an object is on an intercept course, unless they recognize it as a threat. And the warhead housing for an ICBM is pretty innocent looking, it is nothing more then a box a few meters long and a few meters wide (as they would of dropped all their fuel stages by this point). No weapons, no thrusters, not even any obvious means of propulsion. They'd likely be tagged as just another cloud of junk we have zipping around in orbit.

On top of that the ICBMs wont be targeting the ships directly, they will be target at the area the ships are in as nuclear weapons are area effect weapons (which Star Wars has never been shown to use). It is quite likely their threat and collision indicators wont go off at all, and then their ships are fried.


One last thing, I doubt we'd have to launch any nuclear tipped ICBMs at the Republic forces at all, as they have shown, several times, that their electronics equipment is barely shielded, if at all. A single nuclear weapon detonated in the ionosphere will create an EMP powerful enough to permanately fry each and every one of their ships, as well as any fighters they have nearby. Though it is likely that we shall do this several times *AND* nuke the hell out of their ships.


Do not get me wrong, I LOVE Star Wars, I like it a lot more then trek. But I accept it for what it is, High Space Fantasy with HUGE technological anacronisms (that means their equipment is very poor compared to their tech level). I mean, come on, you got Authurain Space Knights with Laser swords and magical(Force) powers... And spaceships, and an evil empire to fight and did I mention Space ships AND laser swords? What is not to love?


**EDITED, because i can't type for shit XD **

[Mike DiCenso]

1: It has been well established that Star Wars scanners suck. Their effective scanning range for something the size of a Star Destroyer was only 200 km (for the record, that is close enough to see an object that size with the naked eye). ISD's are putting out all kinds of radiation and unshielded radio signals, not to mention the huge glow from their engines. An ICBM is far smaller, and has none of those to give it away.

Except that they give off a high IR when their engines are firing at launch and through the primary stages of the boost phase. It is also highly unlikely that the sensors be hampered as we usually see since there will be no other SW starships to jam their scopes. Assuming that somehow the missiles are not spotted at launch, there is a good chance they will be picked up at around 200 km, or further out by the fighter screens.

As I've already pointed out, lacking shields, our primitive rockets will be destroyed by close flak bursts from the TL bolts.

But, even assuming they do see them at 200 kilometers away, the ICBMs are moving at around twenty to thirty thousand kph, several orders of magnitude faster then their fighters have ever been shown going. On top of that they will only have about 40 seconds to shoot them down before they are within range. In Ep 1, several capitol ships had far longer then that to attempt to shoot at ONE ship. Even if they decided to shoot down all the incoming rockets (which I will show later, they likely would not) they would not get more then a small fraction of them.

If the ICBMs are being launched into the fleet's orbit, they will have to launch at very precise windows, or be forced to wait, thus necessitating the need for a simultaneous launch of hundreds or thousands of missiles to ensure success. This also presumes that the fleet simply just does not move out of range of the missiles' ballistic arc trajectories. As ponderous as SW ships are sometimes, they at least have the advantage of being able to maintain constant thrust and acceleration for long periods of time over our mere chemical rockets. The missiles will not be constantly accelerating at tens of thousands of kph, either, they will only be able to do boosts and then will exhaust their inefficient chemical fuels and will only coast to their targets, and maybe make small adjustments in their trajectories along with way with thrusters on the warhead bus. The fighters can then pick off the warheads or the upper stages during boost phase before they get anywhere near the fleet, assuming the fleet simply just does not do the smart thing and move aside.

2: It has been established that the Republic fights wars with armies that we would consider ridiculously small. The whole invasion would likely only include a handful of squadrons of fighters. Keeping any of their few fighters near their capitol ships would be a waste of resources as we have no real space craft of our own, their fighters would almost certainly be down on the ground supporting the invasion which, as I have pointed out, would probably be going pretty poorly. And, due to the speed at which their fighters travel, they would have no way to recall them in time even if they did see the ICBMs at max range.

SW fighters may not be the greatest thing in sci-fi as far as performance, but they have demonstrated the ability to cross tens of thousands of km in seconds when the need arises. They can return back long before the missiles, which require 9-10 minutes to reach low orbit. If the fleet is in synchronous orbit, they will need hours.

3: The threat indicators on the Republic ships only warn if they will collide with something, or an object is on an intercept course, unless they recognize it as a threat. And the warhead housing for an ICBM is pretty innocent looking, it is nothing more then a box a few meters long and a few meters wide (as they would of dropped all their fuel stages by this point). No weapons, no thrusters, not even any obvious means of propulsion. They'd likely be tagged as just another cloud of junk we have zipping around in orbit.

Actually they would need thrusters to correct their courses, and I doubt seriously that even as incompetent as SW commanders can be sometimes, they aren't that bad, especially when they have heroes with them like Anakin, Asoka, Ploo-kun, and Obi-Wan to point out the obvious to them.

On top of that the ICBMs wont be targeting the ships directly, they will be target at the area the ships are in as nuclear weapons are area effect weapons (which Star Wars has never been shown to use). It is quite likely their threat and collision indicators wont go off at all, and then their ships are fried

.

Actually, in the ROTJ novelization, it is mentioned that thermonuclear weapons were used at the Battle of Endor. All of this assumes, of course, that the fleet simply just doesn't move out of the way of the spent missiles or their warheads, if they realize there are too many of them to shoot down.

One last thing, I doubt we'd have to launch any nuclear tipped ICBMs at the Republic forces at all, as they have shown, several times, that their electronics equipment is barely shielded, if at all. A single nuclear weapon detonated in the ionosphere will create an EMP powerful enough to permanently fry each and every one of their ships, as well as any fighters they have nearby. Though it is likely that we shall do this several times *AND* nuke the hell out of their ships.

If their ships weren't shielded, then how did they survive the Death Star explosion in ANH, or the DS2's in RoTJ?
-Mike

[Dabat]

Sorry for the no-reply for like a month, I had to drop offline because I had a deadline for several papers I had to finish.

Except that they give off a high IR when their engines are firing at launch and through the primary stages of the boost phase. It is also highly unlikely that the sensors be hampered as we usually see since there will be no other SW starships to jam their scopes. Assuming that somehow the missiles are not spotted at launch, there is a good chance they will be picked up at around 200 km, or further out by the fighter screens.

As I've already pointed out, lacking shields, our primitive rockets will be destroyed by close flak bursts from the TL bolts.

I haven't ever seen any indication that the limited range and effectiveness of Star Wars scanners is due to them being jammed by other ships. Even when no other ship is there to jam them, the range on their scanners seems to be limited to the hundreds of kilometers.

The only reason we can detect the heat plume of launching ICBMs is because we know what that short lived heat plume can mean, so we have devoted massive amounts of resources to developing a first warning net. Even were this heat plume to happen right under them where the Republic could pick them up, they would have no idea what it means. No one uses rockets in the Star Wars universe, they have zero experiance with them.

Lastly, You make the assumption that when they do finally pick up the warheads, that they will instantly tag them as a threat. There are literally tens of thousands of objects zipping around out upper atmosphere and higher that are around the size of an ICBM warhead housing. There is in fact so much debris up there that even with the limited range of their scanners, there will likely be a half dozen or more objects on their scanners at any one time. Most of which are far more sinister looking then the warhead itself, by this point most of them are broken and totally shut down, not giving off any signal. But not a single one of them is armed or in any way dangerous, yet you still make the assumption that the Republic will instantly recognize the warheads as a threat, and begin to shoot at them.

If the ICBMs are being launched into the fleet's orbit, they will have to launch at very precise windows, or be forced to wait, thus necessitating the need for a simultaneous launch of hundreds or thousands of missiles to ensure success. This also presumes that the fleet simply just does not move out of range of the missiles' ballistic arc trajectories. As ponderous as SW ships are sometimes, they at least have the advantage of being able to maintain constant thrust and acceleration for long periods of time over our mere chemical rockets. The missiles will not be constantly accelerating at tens of thousands of kph, either, they will only be able to do boosts and then will exhaust their inefficient chemical fuels and will only coast to their targets, and maybe make small adjustments in their trajectories along with way with thrusters on the warhead bus. The fighters can then pick off the warheads or the upper stages during boost phase before they get anywhere near the fleet, assuming the fleet simply just does not do the smart thing and move aside.

The good news for earth is that we happen to have hundreds of rockets, all stored in the same geographic regions, and all able to be launched. As horrible of a thing the Cold War was, it gave us the tools we need to obliterate the Republic fleet, as well as any other fleet they send. Yet again I point out that we Terrans are used to fighting warfare on a scale that the Republic does not see in their worst nightmares.

The rockets don't have to constantly accelerate. they would already be moving at speeds of tens of thousands of kph by the time the Republic ships saw them. If, and I say if, one of the warheads were on a course to strike a ship, then you are correct that that ship would likely just move out of the way, but only likely far enough to avoid the impact, as we have so much crap up there that moving yourself any farther will not put you in a better position. Again, we have so much stuff flying around up there, most of which is already inert and all of which is harmless, that the Republic will likely not react except to make a slight ajustment to avoid impact.

SW fighters may not be the greatest thing in sci-fi as far as performance, but they have demonstrated the ability to cross tens of thousands of km in seconds when the need arises. They can return back long before the missiles, which require 9-10 minutes to reach low orbit. If the fleet is in synchronous orbit, they will need hours.

I have seen all the same shows and movies that you have. But I have never seen their fighters able to accelerate to those speeds except in cases where they make it pretty clear that time was cut out for the sake of not dragging out the story. If their fighters can move so fast, why have they not used it on multiple occasions where such a speed was needed, either to head into a battle, or escape from one where staying was certan death?

Actually they would need thrusters to correct their courses, and I doubt seriously that even as incompetent as SW commanders can be sometimes, they aren't that bad, especially when they have heroes with them like Anakin, Asoka, Ploo-kun, and Obi-Wan to point out the obvious to them.

As heroic as their heroes are, they still have no experience in chemical rockets or warfare on the scale to which we consider normal. Without writers of the universe saying they will win via Deus ex Machina, they are at best talented newcomers to fields where we already have endless experience. And experience will trump raw talent every time.

Actually, in the ROTJ novelization, it is mentioned that thermonuclear weapons were used at the Battle of Endor. All of this assumes, of course, that the fleet simply just doesn't move out of the way of the spent missiles or their warheads, if they realize there are too many of them to shoot down.

Again, this assumes that they recognize what the housings are in time to do anything about it, if at all. As the housings encase the nuclear warhead(s) entirely, changing their shape.

If their ships weren't shielded, then how did they survive the Death Star explosion in ANH, or the DS2's in RoTJ?

No clue, but they have shown on several occasions that their ships are poorly shielded. But as things like life support never seem to go down, perhaps some vital systems are more heavily shielded, or just have more backups, than others.

-Elli