Ability of the US Gov (state and federal) to deal with invasion by teleportation - Page 2

Michael Thayne · 08-12-2016, 07:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kale

I guess it would be up to the supers to get in and close the portal fast. If supers were dispersed among the civilian population they would be the most likely 'first responders' to such an attack and try to shut the portal down before too many enemies warped in.

Yes, I was thinking of something like this. How strong does the invading force have to be that not closing the portal (or stopping the zombie plague, etc.) fast enough is a complete disaster? Based on what I've been reading about the LA riots, I think that around 10,000 attackers with abilities at least roughly equal to a US infantryman would be sufficient to be thoroughly catastrophic, even if they were eventually defeated. A bloody mess unlike anything seen on US soil since the 19th century. (This is a somewhat dark supers game I'm going for.)

Kale · 08-12-2016, 07:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Yes, I was thinking of something like this. How strong does the invading force have to be that not closing the portal (or stopping the zombie plague, etc.) fast enough is a complete disaster? Based on what I've been reading about the LA riots, I think that around 10,000 attackers with abilities at least roughly equal to a US infantryman would be sufficient to be thoroughly catastrophic, even if they were eventually defeated. A bloody mess unlike anything seen on US soil since the 19th century. (This is a somewhat dark supers game I'm going for.)

Yeah, that would probably write off an entire city in terms of devastation if the invaders had a good quantity of heavy weapons. If they are mostly armed with small arms similar to assault rifles then the city might fare better. You'll have to decide the damage potential of an alien squad in terms of structures and vehicles. If concentrated fire from an alien squad can collapse a building then the city is going to be severely damaged.
Typically explosive weapons are hardest on buildings, whereas beams and bullets (or Gauss slugs) will just make interesting holes or burn marks in concrete. Lasers might start a pretty nasty fire though. Explosive weapons like ultra tech grenade launchers or plasma rounds will do much more damage to non-living targets like vehicles and buildings.

Anaraxes · 08-12-2016, 07:51 PM

It gets to be a rather complicated question in detail. One of the questions is what sort of response are you looking for?

There's a standing directive in the DoD that allows local commanders to respond immediately.

Quote:

In response to a request for assistance from a civil authority, under imminently serious conditions and if time does not permit approval from higher authority, DoD officials may provide an immediate response by temporarily employing the resources under their control, subject to any supplemental direction provided by higher headquarters, to save lives, prevent human suffering, or mitigate great property damage within the United States. Immediate response authority does not permit actions that would subject civilians to the use of military power that is regulatory, prescriptive, proscriptive, or compulsory.

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/c...df/302518p.pdf

("DoD officials" here includes those commanding officers. You don't have to get authorization from the governor or President. Whether or not any particular commander has the initiative to do so is a different question. Among other things, that's a function of the setting. If zombie uprisings and Chitari invasions happen every month, the commanders wouldn't be nearly as skeptical of reports as they would be in the real world, where a lone, desperate civilian running to the nearest National Guard unit and reporting a portal from a demon dimension will fall somewhere between being laughed at and locked up.)

There are three different ways the National Guard can be activated. "State Active Duty" is authorized by a state governor, and takes place in the home state, or in an adjacent state if that state's governor approves. The other two are called "Title 10" and "Title 32", which mostly have to do with who pays (Federal or state) and who issues the orders. The most important distinction is that SAD is completely non-Federal, and thus the posse comitatus act does not apply. Other distinctions have to do with activation duration and so on, which a game with an immediate emergency can probably just gloss over.

The National Guard has 10 Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection (RAID) teams, nominally 22 members each, which are spec'd to be available on 4 hours notice. (They're intentionally stationed at places that have National Guard units with airlift capabilities.) These teams are primarily meant to identify WMD type threats. Other agencies have similar teams, ranging from the FBI to the Coast Guard to the EPA. These teams aren't combat units. More like experts that show up to identify the problem and help advise and coordinate a larger response. If your setting includes knowledge about space aliens and demon portals, their fictional analogs might be equipped to identify those kinds of threats, too.

The NG also has 17 CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive) response teams, at least one in each FEMA area, each with around 570 members. These teams are supposed to be available in 6-12 hours. As you might guess from the name, their purpose is to locate, extract, and treat victims in contaminated areas and prepare them for evacuation. They're not primarily combat units, though they do have the regular NG training.

For Katrina (widely criticized as a slow and ineffective response, and also at a time when 35-40% of the affected area's NG troops were already deployed on active service in Iraq), the National Guard had 7800 members deployed as of 8 hours after landfall (according to the governor in a 2 PM press conference). By noon the next day, the total was over 10,000. By two days (52 hours) after landfall, the USS Bataan was positioned for support, with additional Navy equipment (ships and helicopters). National Guard totals from several states were over 11,000.

If you want truly large numbers of combat troops, it's going to take longer to get everyone to report. If the emergency were dire enough, I expect they'd field troops with people that were available -- reporting in 24 or 48 hours -- and then take the time to actually organize and transport them to where they're needed. Long term active service is supposed to require 30 days' notice (waived for emergencies), so there's no expectation that the entire Guard can respond in hours or even a few days -- though there are portions of many units that can, if they're willing to operate with some fraction of their personnel.

You've got a lot of leeway as GM to dictate response numbers and times in a manner that will suit the needs of your story.

Michael Thayne · 08-12-2016, 10:12 PM

What kind of vehicles would be available on short notice? I've heard it argues that e.g. standard "zombie apocalypse" scenarios wouldn't actually be much of a challenge for the US military, because tanks could just roll over them. But would a significant number of tanks be available in time? My impression is that it's common for National Guard units above a certain size to include a few light tanks, even when they're not expected to be needed, but I'm not sure.

David Johnston2 · 08-12-2016, 10:49 PM

It depends of course on just how surprised the military and government is that this kind of thing is even possible. In the real world, since such things are impossible as far the military knows, they aren't set up to respond quickly and effectively to major attacks that come out of nowhere. Once they knew that it was a risk they'd develop rapid deployment forces and have them ready to go and try to distrupt the attacker's attempts to set up a beachhead.

Anaraxes · 08-13-2016, 05:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

What kind of vehicles would be available on short notice?... it's common for National Guard units above a certain size to include a few light tanks

Depends on the type of unit, of course. Armor divisions have lots of tanks. Engineer battalions, not so many. For waves of shuffling zombies, I suspect by "light tank" you mean any of the armored fighting vehicles. So most combat units will have quite of lot of armored vehicles. The vehicles themselves will be at the unit's base, ready to go if their crews show up. (They might get used on one of those weekend-per-months, and since it's just a weekend, they can't all be mothballed in two day's worth of work to unpack and clean off the grease.)

If we count armored HumVees carrying weapons, there's even more. About 9000 main battle tanks, 7000 "infantry fighting vehicles" (the Bradley), 10,000 armored personnel carriers (M113 and Stryker)... and 260,000 HMMWVs. I don't know how many of those are armed or up-armored, but there are "armament carrier" versions with all kinds of weapons -- machine guns, grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles (not so useful against zombie waves, maybe better against supervillain bricks), 105mm artillery.

The organization of the Guard is much the same as the regular Army. That is, they don't have special Guard units with structure and equipment different from their Army counterparts. Since the Guard is something like 40% of the total US military force, it can't be too different or too specialized just for natural disaster relief or riot police duty. The Guard units will often have older equipment when new stuff is being phased in, as a matter of budget and priority. But there's not a policy differentiating the two organizations along the lines of "only the real Army gets real tanks".

LemmingLord · 08-13-2016, 07:48 AM

What are the invisible or teleporting firces' goals here?

If the goal is terrorism, a single teleporting shooter is unstoppable by conventional means, and really only limited by power limitations and supers with a esp and/or rspid deployment/detect invisible/detect teleported powers.

An invisible attacker who uncloaks to attack will be vulnerable to off duty police officers in the area and maybe a brave civillian.

A teleporter with a gun is a far worse as they can blink in, go on a short killing spree, teleport away, reload, teleport somewhere else, repeat.

If either of these kinds if attacks were executed, i would say a set of protocoks would be established to better defend against them... But here's the problem, both attackers have the advantage to pick a target area where the protocoks, whatever they are, are not being followed.

If the invisible attacker doesnt have to become invisible, the government can't even look for her.

The teleporter, however, will eventually be filmed and identified... And the government can go into big brother mode with facial recognition software looking through gobs of camera pickups.

Michael Thayne · 08-13-2016, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Depends on the type of unit, of course. Armor divisions have lots of tanks. Engineer battalions, not so many. For waves of shuffling zombies, I suspect by "light tank" you mean any of the armored fighting vehicles. So most combat units will have quite of lot of armored vehicles. The vehicles themselves will be at the unit's base, ready to go if their crews show up. (They might get used on one of those weekend-per-months, and since it's just a weekend, they can't all be mothballed in two day's worth of work to unpack and clean off the grease.)

If we count armored HumVees carrying weapons, there's even more. About 9000 main battle tanks, 7000 "infantry fighting vehicles" (the Bradley), 10,000 armored personnel carriers (M113 and Stryker)... and 260,000 HMMWVs. I don't know how many of those are armed or up-armored, but there are "armament carrier" versions with all kinds of weapons -- machine guns, grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles (not so useful against zombie waves), 105mm artillery.

The organization of the Guard is much the same as the regular Army. That is, they don't have special Guard units with structure and equipment different from their Army counterparts. Since the Guard is something like 40% of the total US military force, it can't be too different or too specialized just for natural disaster relief or riot police duty. The Guard units will often have older equipment when new stuff is being phased in, as a matter of budget and priority. But there's not a policy differentiating the two organizations along the lines of "only the real Army gets real tanks".

Okay, so the National Guard has plenty of armored fighting vehicles. Once we're talking about mobilizing multiple divisions, are there pretty much guaranteed to be Bradleys on the scene, whether they seem necessary or not? I'm not entirely sure I understand how US ground forces are organized, but it looks like at least some infantry divisions include "cavalry" and artillery regiments (the former meaning Bradleys in a modern context, IIUC).

David Johnston2 · 08-13-2016, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

What are the invisible or teleporting firces' goals here?

Already stated. They aren't terrorists. They're invaders.

jason taylor · 08-13-2016, 09:08 AM

The closest thing in US circumstance was Vietnam in which we held the "teleportation" ability via heliocopter. There has not ever been an enemy with instant mobility on US soil. I suspect that the US will be driven to conduct proinsurgency style operations on a massive scale. The US has a lot of advantages in this regard as it has immense areas to hide in and a still-armed populace. Present political discontent is probably not enough to prevent the necessary fanaticism for managing this against an obvious outside threat and hopefully the populace is not quite so accustomed to gluttony that it can't manage such things and anyway assuming that is a mistake that others have made before.

The question is what harm has to be done to the aliens before they consider the invasion a failure?

08-12-2016, 10:12 PM	#14
Michael Thayne Join Date: May 2010	Re: Ability of the US Gov (state and federal) to deal with invasion by teleportation What kind of vehicles would be available on short notice? I've heard it argues that e.g. standard "zombie apocalypse" scenarios wouldn't actually be much of a challenge for the US military, because tanks could just roll over them. But would a significant number of tanks be available in time? My impression is that it's common for National Guard units above a certain size to include a few light tanks, even when they're not expected to be needed, but I'm not sure.

08-12-2016, 10:49 PM	#15
David Johnston2 Join Date: Dec 2007	Re: Ability of the US Gov (state and federal) to deal with invasion by teleportation It depends of course on just how surprised the military and government is that this kind of thing is even possible. In the real world, since such things are impossible as far the military knows, they aren't set up to respond quickly and effectively to major attacks that come out of nowhere. Once they knew that it was a risk they'd develop rapid deployment forces and have them ready to go and try to distrupt the attacker's attempts to set up a beachhead.

08-13-2016, 07:48 AM	#17
LemmingLord Join Date: Jul 2005	Re: Ability of the US Gov (state and federal) to deal with invasion by teleportation What are the invisible or teleporting firces' goals here? If the goal is terrorism, a single teleporting shooter is unstoppable by conventional means, and really only limited by power limitations and supers with a esp and/or rspid deployment/detect invisible/detect teleported powers. An invisible attacker who uncloaks to attack will be vulnerable to off duty police officers in the area and maybe a brave civillian. A teleporter with a gun is a far worse as they can blink in, go on a short killing spree, teleport away, reload, teleport somewhere else, repeat. If either of these kinds if attacks were executed, i would say a set of protocoks would be established to better defend against them... But here's the problem, both attackers have the advantage to pick a target area where the protocoks, whatever they are, are not being followed. If the invisible attacker doesnt have to become invisible, the government can't even look for her. The teleporter, however, will eventually be filmed and identified... And the government can go into big brother mode with facial recognition software looking through gobs of camera pickups. __________________ Villain's Round Table

08-13-2016, 09:08 AM	#20
jason taylor Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Portland, Oregon	Re: Ability of the US Gov (state and federal) to deal with invasion by teleportation The closest thing in US circumstance was Vietnam in which we held the "teleportation" ability via heliocopter. There has not ever been an enemy with instant mobility on US soil. I suspect that the US will be driven to conduct proinsurgency style operations on a massive scale. The US has a lot of advantages in this regard as it has immense areas to hide in and a still-armed populace. Present political discontent is probably not enough to prevent the necessary fanaticism for managing this against an obvious outside threat and hopefully the populace is not quite so accustomed to gluttony that it can't manage such things and anyway assuming that is a mistake that others have made before. The question is what harm has to be done to the aliens before they consider the invasion a failure? __________________ "The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison