You can also use rotary-wing aircraft, or what the humans call helicopters. These use a horizontal set of tilted blades spinning at high speed to achieve lift, though most such craft will require a vertically-aligned set of blades at the end of a boom in order to maintain stability and not spin. Most such terrestrial craft have their main rotor set mounted about the fuselage, though there are variations.
If you really love your saucers, it is possible to use two contra-rotating sets of rotors at the centre of a saucer-shaped hull, though this will not have great speed or agility. All the same, the most important factor in your aerial adventures in Earth’s atmosphere is the ability to shoot down human aircraft without crashing.
Earth’s news media is replete with tales of travellers from space who are capable of traversing the infinite gulfs with their magical and near-godlike technology, but who are apparently incapable of noticing where they are in relation to the actual ground. Do not make this mistake. Do not allow the Earth natives to capture and reverse-engineer your vehicles, and to turn their crash sites into tourist attractions. If nothing else, this is embarrassing when you are trying to build a reputation as conquerors feared and respected across the galaxy.
It’s even more embarrassing if your pilots are captured, interrogated, or dissected. Note, though, that you do not actually need to have your aerial vehicles carry a pilot. Even on Earth, there is an increasing use of remotely-piloted vehicles and drones, which can be used for reconnaissance and close combat support without endangering an occupant. Since you, as new arrivals, will likely have less access to replacements for lost forces, this is a wise approach to take.
A flying machine can be replaced quite easily, as quickly as the components can be manufactured and assembled, but a pilot’s experience cannot be so easily replaced.
SEA POWER
In total, 70% of the Earth’s surface is water, and so, while you are living, working, hunting, and fighting on the surface of the planet, you will have to be able to deal with going into areas covered in water. Obviously this will not be a problem for aquatic species, who will only need to concern themselves with the issues of salinity – whether a specific body of water is salt water or freshwater – and the Earth’s own aquatic life forms being either food or predators.
If you are a land-adapted species like humanity, or an avian species, you will obviously require, at the very least, adaptation for immersion in water. It’s reasonable to assume that if you’re capable of having built starships to come to Earth from your homeworld, then you’re also capable of building both aerial and submersible vehicles. If you can make spacesuits to provide you with a breathable atmosphere or protect against low pressures, you can make suits to protect yourselves in water.
Do not, however, be tempted to think that because you have already demonstrated the ability to build a pressurized vehicle for travelling through the near-vacuum of space, that you can simply use the same constructions to travel underwater, no matter how cool SHADO’s Skydiver combo from UFO or the saucer-shaped flying sub from Land of the Giants look when you view those transmissions. Trying to pull off the combination is probably unwise, though not necessarily impossible.
The structure of a mechanical construct built to withstand the absence of pressure is of necessity very different to the structure of something designed to withstand increasing external pressures and the load bearing of immense tonnage of water. At base, a vehicle designed as a submersible will have to be built with a greater attention given to internal supports and bulkheads more evenly spread throughout the design, as opposed to being designed to withstand g-forces at launch, and then zero pressure outside thereafter.
The deepest underwater point on the Earth’s surface is 36,200 feet down. That means the pressure there will be 1,097 bar, 1,097 times the pressure of the atmosphere at surface level. The average depth of the Earth’s oceans is around 14,000 feet, or 2.65 miles, with a pressure of 424.24 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. This means any submersible vehicle must be designed and built to protect its interior from that level of external pressures.
Since the mechanical engineering requirements are very different, it would make far more sense to design and use separate vehicles for these environments. It would not be impossible to build one that could be used in the full range of pressures, but the cost-effectiveness in resources would be far less.
You will not need antigravity or the like to power submersible vehicles, or to allow them to ascend and descend. Flooding buoyancy tanks with water will allow descent, and flushing them with air will enable ascent. A submersible or surface boat can easily be powered by any form of storage batteries (so long as they are of the right scale) or power generator, nuclear or otherwise. On the surface, sails are still effective, and used across the globe. This is not a fast or highly technological means of propulsion, but excellent for silent movement and energy efficiency. Under power, a simple screw propeller, or multiples thereof, is still traditional both on surface and submersible vehicles. Propellers cause turbulence in the water, however, called cavitation (it leaves brief cavities, or holes, in the water), and because sound waves propagate even more effectively in the density of water than in air, this makes vessels detectable. A good solution, therefore, is to use some kind of hydrodynamic drive, drawing water in at the front of the engine, putting it under pressure, and squirting it out the rear, as per a jet or rocket engine. As well as being stealthier, this also makes for a smoother ride, and the relative lack of moving parts means there’s less chance of catastrophic mechanical failure.
It is also worth considering using the Earth’s magnetic field as a power source. It varies geographically and according to the local geology, but is always strong enough that you could use a magnetic drive to move along or across the field. This would be useful if you are using vehicles designed for multiple environments, as it would work equally well on land, sea and in the air. It could be considered a sort of poor man’s antigravity, so long as the vehicle remains within the effect of the Earth’s magnetic field.
If you’re visiting by means of wormhole or dimensional portal, you’ll want to make sure that the end destination isn’t under water, unless you’re from an aquatic species, of course. That said, transitioning to an underwater arrival point would be an effectively camouflaged way of arriving, so long as you are able to ensure that the displacement of the local water does not cause visible surface disturbances, or enough turbulence to affect the passive sonar of ships, or to trigger the various underwater early warning sensors that are positioned on the ocean floor in various areas.
To pull this off, you will have to plan very carefully, well in advance, so that you have worked out how to arrive smoothly. Then again, this is true of any form of arrival at a target you plan to attack, so it should be second nature by this point.
In Earth’s history, naval doctrine became vital as human civilization rose, because it was necessary to control the bodies of water in order to carry armies and trade goods. Since the land surface of the planet is so uneven, waterways were much easier options for long-distance journeys. Even now that air traffic is rife, and roads on land have been paved and metalled, and so are able to safely carry massive amounts of traffic and freight, the seas are still a vital part of global travel and trade.
The reason for this is simple; ships can be pretty much any size, and so can transport far more people or cargo than anything else on the planet. This means that you must pay attention to sea traffic and shipping, because it will be used to transport military equipment from areas where you (as yet) have no presence, to areas where the human resistance needs weapons and materiel to use against you.
You’d think that such large ships would be easy to detect from orbit – or even from the air – and destroy, but you might also be surprised. There are 225,625,000 square miles of ocean to search. That will take a lot of processing power to analyse the results your sensors trained on the oceans give you. If you have such good sensors, and
enough processing power to spare to analyse their output, good for you – go for it.
Otherwise, it helps to narrow the field somewhat. Thankfully, even on a planet with such a large expanse of open ocean, there are busy areas and bottlenecks, where larger numbers of ships tend to congregate or travel through, and these areas will make excellent killing zones for attacking human shipping.
Some of these areas are busier because they are close to major ports and land-based transport hubs from which arriving cargo can be distributed, or departing cargo can be loaded. Others are busy because they are safe channels that avoid dangers such as underwater reefs or expanses prone to storms.
The best place to attack shipping, therefore, is in the vicinity of ports. The busiest ports in the world are those of Shanghai in China, Kobe in Japan, Hong Kong in China, Dover in England, Rotterdam in Holland, and Los Angeles in the USA. A meteor or nuclear strike on each will largely disable humanity’s ability to ship materiel by ocean. Doing the same to the Suez and Panama Canals would also be advisable.
The busiest areas of open ocean are the English Channel, the Caribbean, the Arabian Gulf, and the South China Sea, especially around Indonesia. In fact the busiest part of the Caribbean is sometimes called the Bermuda Triangle, and is famed among humans for the number of mysterious disappearances of ships in the area. Most humans seem to be of the opinion that your forces are already at work there, but, in reality, the percentage of shipping passing through the area which vanishes is actually no greater than the percentage of shipping that goes missing globally. It is simply that the area is so busy that there are more ships, so more vanishings.
The existence of these busy shipping lanes is what will make the use of sea power advisable as part of your campaign on Earth. Simply dropping a meteor or nuke on the area will give no guarantee that you will destroy enough ships to prevent them resupplying human resistance. Therefore you will need to blockade these areas, and engage and destroy seagoing vessels as they enter and pass through.
Now, it is true that powered flight will get you and your forces to any point on the globe quickly, and that vessels stationed in orbit can be placed above any point you desire to observe, but a descent from orbit to the surface will still take discernable time, and powered flight, or a starship placed on station-keeping low in the atmosphere, will require a constant fuel supply. The correct shape of hull, however, constructed from the appropriate materials, will simply float wherever you put it on the liquid surface of the planet. You will require ships or submarines.
You can bring your own, build them locally, or even simply commandeer existing ones from their present owners.
Submarines will be the most valuable to you, since these will be able to track and destroy shipping in the blockaded areas quickly, and with less likelihood of detection. Any form of large breach to a ship’s hull below the waterline will deal with it quite effectively. If you are used to operating in starships you should be used to the idea of working and fighting entirely within a closed environment that protects you from an inimical exterior, so attack submarines should be quite psychologically comfortable for you.
Capital warships such as battleships will be of little or no use to spaceborne invaders, though their ability to launch missiles and bombard targets many miles inland may be desirable for those who are on a technological level similar to that of Earth in the current time zone. Your own starships should be able to deal with such targets more effectively, and slow-moving surface ships will be easy targets for missiles and air attack. Smaller and faster warships are more useful if you need to board shipping or otherwise conduct operations on the water’s surface, though it is recommended that they be protected by orbital or aerial vehicles as cover if possible.
Aircraft carriers may or may not be of interest to you. They are large and relatively slow targets that need protection, but they would also be capable of hosting your atmospheric craft if you wish to have them mobile closer to the surface, rather than based in an orbiting mothership.
Transport shipping is definitely worth considering. Spaceborne invaders do not really need a naval doctrine on the surface, as your projection of power will be from orbit to planetary surface, but other, purely surface-based, invaders will require to be able to move fleets around to transport forces and cargo from conquered areas to unconquered ones. Also, everyone, even spaceborne arrivals, will find that surface ships can store and carry more for less energy expenditure than anything else, which is always useful, and enables materiel such as weapons to be stored on the surface ready for quicker deployment. Such ships would also, once air superiority is established, and humanity’s submarines and missiles are eliminated, make excellent staging areas on the surface, out of reach of resistance forces.
Considering that huge percentage of the planet’s surface that is water, ruling the Earth still means ruling the waves.
WEAPONS AND MARTIAL ARTS
You have safely reached the Earth past its laughably nonexistent planetary defences, eliminated major military centres and weapons sites, disabled communications and travel, and landed your forces to engage the current owners – humanity – in your struggle to take possession of the planet for your own nefarious purposes. You have command of the air, the sea, and are swarming all over the land. Well done. The job, however, is not over yet. In the face of a hostile takeover, humanity is not going to just roll over and play dead. If their propaganda, broadcast into the galaxy for the last 80 years or so, is to be believed, they are going to fight back. With tenaciousness and determination in the face of overwhelmingly superior technology, they are going to fight, kick your ass, and then come and invade you.
In their dreams, right.
Some of them will come out and fight, some of them will hide and fight, and some of them will talk a good fight, but you are going to keep your nerve, and use the correct weapons and skills for the situation at hand. Your victory will thus be assured.
The term ‘martial arts’ is normally used on Earth to refer to unarmed combat and, to a lesser degree, to melee combat with simple hand-held weapons with no moving parts, such as swords, knives, spears, and so on. This is something of a misnomer, as any technique for use in combat is a martial art, even one which uses ranged projectile or energy weapons.
One thing that is often forgotten by those who talk a good fight – and those who write propaganda stories, or are involved with the visual arts – is that the choice of not just weapons but even martial arts melee style will vary according to both the mission parameters and the culture from which the warrior originates.
The mission may be geared towards killing your opponents – whether simply as military combat, for sport, for food, etc – or towards suppressing an attack, or even with the intent of subduing specimens unharmed for interrogation, their own safety, or experimentation. You may be from a culture that prizes the ability to kill quickly, or to achieve victory without killing. All these factors will affect both what weapons you use, how you use them, and your melee and unarmed combat. You must bear this fact in mind.
Different objectives and specialist tasks will also require different weapon loadouts and combat skill sets – a demolition mission is very different from a reconnaissance one, and those are different again from assassination or policing actions…
THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB
Large scale military engagements on the surface of the Earth should be avoided, partly because, if you’re doing it right, your control of the air and domination from orbit should make it impossible for the human resistance to actually gather and deploy large units in the field, and partly because such engagements are an unwelcome drain on your resources and ability to rearm and re-supply from your home planet or dimension.
Even among the nations and societies of Earth today, large-scale pitched battles are pretty much a thing of the past, as air superiority and the better use of smaller rapid-response units have taken precedence. Most of your ground-based operations against humans should fall
broadly into two categories: ground combat against smaller units of insurgent humans, and policing actions. These types of conflicts will require the use of different types of weapons and tactics, as well as different attitudes. It is vital to make sure your forces are equipped with the right weapons for the task at hand, in the operational environment.
This means, for example, that it is a bad idea to use rocket-propelled grenades when room-clearing in urban areas, as any troops who try that are more likely to blow themselves to bits than to seriously damage the enemy.
If you haven’t simply wiped out every human you find, then you will probably also find your forces engaged in policing actions in open spaces, controlling crowds and herding humans. For this sort of action you will require weapons that control and psychologically intimidate, rather than simply kill efficiently. Sonic weapons that cause fear and distress are a good option here, or at least ones that make it impossible for the humans to concentrate and co-ordinate their actions. If these are mounted on impressive vehicles for extra psychological impact, so much the better.
Stun weapons will also be necessary, whether they be electrical, energy weapons, or sonic. This will make capturing humans much easier. If you intend to use the threat of lethal force in such crowd control actions, you should equip your forces with single shot low energy, low penetration wide-area weapons with limited charge or ammunition capacity, equivalent to shotguns on Earth. These will serve the dual purpose of putting down an individual enemy quickly and messily, while intimidating other humans in the vicinity. Such weapons are also less of a threat to your own forces if the crowd should succeed in capturing them.
As an aside, this type of intimidation weapon is also ideal for issuing to any humans whom you enfold into your military as allies or auxiliary forces to boost your on-Earth numbers, as the built-in limitations will prevent them from being the basis of an effective uprising by those who have only pretended to join your side. This is the policy followed by the Goa’uld in arming their Jaffa servants in Stargate SG-1.
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