Quote from: The Eighth Passenger on Jan 20, 2022, 06:36:37 PM
Quote from: HuDaFuK on Jan 20, 2022, 06:08:25 PM
They really wouldn't be a match for an even halfway competent military on that scale.
Even in Aliens, Cameron knew he had to neuter the Marines to make the Aliens a genuine threat.
Not really when you're dealing with asymmetric warfare. A bunch of rag tag peasants with sharp sticks gave the world's most advanced war machine a bloody nose in Vietnam. Rinse and repeat in Afghanistan with both superpowers.
And what happens if you get an infestation in a densely populated urban area, eg Hong Kong or Bangkok? Tanks and planes and nukes are not going to be much use unless you don't mind killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process. You can send in troops but they'll get picked off by untold numbers of aliens hidden and lurking in the dense urban environment.
Not that simple in any of the four instances here.
In Vietnam the first half of the war was fought against the Viet Cong who were all but completely obliterated halfway through the war and the second half of the war was fought against trained NVA forces who were supplied by the governments of USSR and China. It was the hottest conflict in the Cold War.
Afghanistan was USSR's Vietnam in that they were fighting against people who were supplied by the USA and some of that supply was cutting edge tech that helped nullify the air power of Russia.
Iraq and Afghanistan in America's conflicts had huge influencers from dozens of different outside influences and was essentially a proxy battle between coalition forces and about a dozen of other regional powers like Iran. The lines got so muddy in both countries as to who was supporting who that it was crazy. Pakistan was allowing the USA airspace to launch missions from, while simultaneously setting its own intelligence service lose in Afghanistan so they would have more influence when the coalition left, and allowing the Taliban and other groups to come across the border and hide and resupply in their mountains until spring without consequence. Neither of the latter actions were really directed anger at the USA, if somebody took over Mexico, you know the CIA would be over here, and they simply don't want to spend what it would take to dislodge the Taliban from their side of the mountains. But it isn't exactly a friendly action either.
Iraq became a proxy battle with Iran. Iran's Qud Force brought over and helped train insurgents of various groups in how to properly deploy EFP's to penetrate American armor. There has even been rumors that Qud's and Delta have directly engaged each other in Afghanistan. Even though for sure Delta killed Qud's force members with IEDs.
https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/how-the-us-conducted-secret-assassinations-using-ieds/ In terms of military prowess it is actually a huge testament to the coalition at first and the USA in the end in that you had a group of about 30,000 people the last several years in Afghanistan (and even less so currently in Iraq) that were never overran, or even lost a battle in a country of tens of millions. The war in Afghanistan was lost because of politics. Afghanistan was hopelessly corrupt and the USA didn't want to do the things it has done in countries where it has had success, South Korea and Japan, and leave a permanent base to help project itself into those countries. But after the shit show that was the Afghanistan withdrawal notice how they haven't left Iraq in the same fashion and how the Iraq government isn't so keen on them leaving anymore because they don't want to end up like Afghanistan's government.
Aliens eat everyone without discrimination and would have no allies, they have no ranged weapons, no travel capabilities other than their own feet, and are essentially huge walking targets for the military who had weapons that can auto lock on target even when I got out. Not just smart bombs. But I had a CROWs system that you could hook a m240 a fifty cal or mark 19 grenade launcher to and shoot at targets with almost no human error. A hundred years in the future and no telling what kind of gizmos we will have.
After having been in, there is no way the Aliens could ever beat the military head on unless they get a serious upgrade in capability, but at the same time, the civilian population is huge and a soft easy target to always prey on.
I think they would never win, but they'd never be dislodged either if we are talking about killing every single Alien on the planet. A single drone running around axing civilians and polar bears in Alaska might not ever be found.
Quote from: David Weyland on Jan 21, 2022, 10:51:21 AM
They might set the Earth aspect as a place of clues, mission control etc
The Xeno aspects could still remain off world and the story arc leads up to a lovely trip somewhere for a jolly
This is what i'm thinking as well.
I also considered this being a standalone series that just doesn't acknowledge the rest of the series because I don't remember them saying it was going to reference anything else.