The Pointlessness of Seperate Military Services.

[Big Orange]

With the Royal Navy essentially becoming the British Army Mk. II in landlocked Afghanistan right now, with mission creep like that occuring, I'm begining to think the idea of seperate services to be increasingly redundant pretty much since WWII.

But I can understand why the Royal Navy sailors have mostly become landlubbers in Army surplus fatigues and boots is partially to pick up after the 'real' Army who've been deployed for donkey's years and also because the Royal Navy's surface fleet has been shrunk to an almost complete irrelevance so this hollowed out martime force is branching off into land operations after it got reduced to a glorified coast guard. :D

But the door swings both ways since the US Army did more beach landings than the Marine Corps. while the British Army had its own fleet of support ships and patrol boats which likely outstripped the capabilities of minor foreign navies. I wonder how the concept of military service will evolve when nations get out into the solar system and beyond.

[RedKing]

Traditionally in SF, the Space fleet is a glorified Navy, especially in SF movies. Which is why you see things like a large fleet just moping about in a flat plane being shot at from the surface - Starship Troopers, I'm looking at you - or Battleships 'crossing the T' of the opposing fleet, trading broadsides, FFS, a la the Star Wars prequels.

Even the use if fighters is just WWII carrier actions writ large.

[charismatic megafauna]

I'm not familiar with the situation in the UK, but there is really only a justification for separation between Army and Navy. The Army's focus is land warfare and holding land areas, the Navy's sea warfare, protecting sea trade/lanes, and to a limited extent transporting the Army. How the Air Force came to be a separate service is a case of defining and then protecting turf rights. Since we had a land warfare group (Army) and a sea warfare group (Navy), somehow the logical jump (almost certainly bogus) was made to needing an air warfare group (Air Force). However, the Navy almost from the beginning of aviation has had (and needed) its own air force, similar in a way to the much earlier Marines (originally for ship defense and limited land operations). Meanwhile, the army has never abandoned the need for air support and transport (mostly helicopters today).

In the US, the Air Force began as part of the Army (though in reality it was handled as a separate service during WWII). The publicity given to this fighter/bomber group was romanticized and and the Air Force became a separate service after WWII (might have had something to do with dropping the A-Bomb and ending WWII). Unfortunately some of its main jobs, logistical support and intelligence gathering, were much less glamorous than flying (the increasingly expensive) fighters and bombers and has always received short shrift. It seems likely Air Forces will devolve back to logistical support and intelligence gathering. Bombers are essentially obsolete and it's likely fighters will become unpiloted craft sometime in the not too distant future. Whether this will lead to marginalization or reabsorption is the question.

Because different mission doctrines govern land warfare and sea warfare (and by analogy space warfare), I doubt it will be possible to ever fully integrate the Army and Navy. Their jobs are just too different (think police/firemen).

[RedKing]

In the UK, after WWII, a deal was done to move the rotary wing aircraft mainly to the Army and the fixed wings mainly to the RAF, with the Navy keeping control of the Carriers and the aircraft based aboard as the Fleet Air Arm.

The waters got muddy after the 1957 Defence White Paper, which infamously declared that "the era of manned [aircraft] combat was at an end". This lead to all services having costs slashed left, right and centre and dozens of projects cancelled. A consequence of this was to stratify and calcify the services as separate bodies, each competing for limited funding.

[Big Orange]

Traditionally in SF, the Space fleet is a glorified Navy, especially in SF movies. Which is why you see things like a large fleet just moping about in a flat plane being shot at from the surface - Starship Troopers, I'm looking at you - or Battleships 'crossing the T' of the opposing fleet, trading broadsides, FFS, a la the Star Wars prequels.

Even the use if fighters is just WWII carrier actions writ large.

Since A New Hope the battles were fought in a pretty anachronistic manner, despite the high technology, and intentionally so to capture the mood of WWII aerial combat and WWI naval battles. In the Battle of Endor you had ships fighting like ships from Lord Nelson's time.

The personally think the Marine Corps. have stopped strictly being naval shock troops and since the Pacific campaigns have become a more multi-tasked, sharper version of the US Army, and also ceremonial and institutional tradition plays a part in their continued existence, filling a niche similar to the French Foreign Legion.

[charismatic megafauna]

I agree most space battles are nonsense, particularly those shown in movies. Think of the space battle in Excession which takes milliseconds (or less) from beginning to end. Even something like Battlestar Gallactica, in which human pilots fight Cylons, is totally bogus. If speeds are even a small percent of relativistic velocity the reaction times required would be far outside human ones, not to mention G-forces that would leave pilots crushed to protoplasm (unless you think small fighters would contain the equipment and power to maintain an artificial gravity capable of offsetting hundreds, if not thousands of Gs).

The use of human pilots in combat aircraft is coming to an end. Pilots really don't fly high-tech aircraft anymore, computers make the constant high-speed adjustments needed to keep todays planes in the air. In Iraq and Afghanistan remote-piloted drones are playing an increasingly important role, and these are gen 1 models. It's likely in the not too distant future onboard human pilots will not be required (except maybe on commercial flights to reassure passengers).

Marines (at least US) are now elite, quick-deploy, shock troops. Highly trained light infantry with high-tech equipment and high morale. Whether they serve any real purpose in todays version of wars is an open question.

[Big Orange]

The BS depiction of space warfare in Star Trek and Star Wars is dramatic license and the production crew wanting to show the audience something they can understand. I agree the human pilot is becoming a detriment and AI will advance to a degree to have an almost fully automated air force or fleet air arm in the next fifty years. Imagine the B2 one sixth the size it is now and many times faster, without a human pilot that takes up space and can be very easily harmed.

[RedKing]

Pilots are there to give that extra human 'je ne sais quoi' that even the best AI can't quite deliver, I think, even if the pilot's sitting a thousand miles away.

However, if the lack of a pilot stops the American Luftwaffe strafing and bombing anything in sight, including UK troops, than it's a big thumbs up from me.

[Conscious Bob]

The use of human pilots in combat aircraft is coming to an end. Pilots really don't fly high-tech aircraft anymore, computers make the constant high-speed adjustments needed to keep todays planes in the air. In Iraq and Afghanistan remote-piloted drones are playing an increasingly important role, and these are gen 1 models. It's likely in the not too distant future onboard human pilots will not be required (except maybe on commercial flights to reassure passengers).

I think the passengers on that jet that ditched in the Hudson were quite reassured by their human pilot...