Battleship Earth: Does the Pentagon have the right weapons to fight off an alien invasion?

Foreign Policy ^ | May 30, 2012 | Cara Parks and Joshua E. Keating

[C19fan]

As summer blockbuster season kicks into high gear, big-budget action movies like The Avengers, Battleship, and Prometheus remind us that there's one thing that unites Americans: Our shared fear of an alien attack. They also remind us that when the invading space fleet arrives, humanity is not going to surrender without a fight to our intergalactic invaders. Instead, we will band together to fight off their incredibly advanced weaponry with our ... well, with what, exactly? Are we really ready to battle our would-be alien overlords?

Luckily, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, as well as some of the world's largest weapons manufacturers, are dreaming up the weapons of the future today. With the help of everything from lasers on jets to hypersonic planes to invisibility cloaks, we just might be able to make the battle for Earth a fair fight. You may think we're joking, but why else would NASA be uploading The Avengers to the International Space Station if not as a training manual? Here's a look at some of the most space-worthy inventions being cooked up now.

[nomorelurker]

Road not Taken is one of my all time favorite stories simply because it is such an unusual concept.

[AndrewB]

No worries. Got it covered...

[gdani]

I suspect aliens have already nosed around Earth, studied its inhabitants, and said, “no thanks”.

[Michael Barnes]

Playing along with this little game, probably not. We are not even close to being a Type I civilization yet; aliens travelling here would be at least early Type II civ’s and not something we want to mess with.

[pgyanke]

[dfwgator]

"They blew up Congress....HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

[GreenAccord]

I'm sure it does, but they have to be deployed at the borders to be effective, and that isn't happening.

I believe you've hit upon the definitive answer. Spot on.

[Little Ray]

Travis Taylor, among others, has actually examined this in a scholarly fashion.

Basically, the only we can win is to swamp them with bodies, and hope their resupply and on-site fabrication can’t keep up. And hope they can’t just exterminate us with an engineered disease, etc.

[Little Ray]

Or just a styrofoam cup hitting earth at .99c.

[Drew68]

The ONLY rational motives there could be for interstellar travel would be knowledge, or escape.

Or they need a new home. In which case, we'd be in their way and would be quickly eradicated.

Stephen Hawking has made a pretty compelling argument that maybe we shouldn't try and contact alien civilizations. It wouldn't be anything like Columbus and native Americans. It would be closer to humans vs. ants. When was the last time you tried to engage in diplomatic negotiations with that fire ant hill in your back yard? You didn't. You eradicated it swiftly without any troubling thought.

This is what aliens would do to us.

[circlecity]

Just start broadcasting Debbie Wasserman Shultz from every frequency, then stand back and watch their heads exploding.

[Ransomed]

Exactly. Was it rational to build the pyramids? I reckon to the slaves it was a moot point.

Poul Anderson has a novel called “the High Crusade” where the alien conquerors descend on medieval britan and get their spaceship siezed by the completely savage knights when they charge it.

Freegards

[Night Hides Not]

We've got plenty of weapons...here's a few:

[Rio]

No problem

[cripplecreek]

I’ll have to read that. I’ve considered the possibility that we’re missing certain technologies simply because we think inside a certain box. That’s why I think its important to at least consider some pretty wild ideas.

[Paradox]

Exactly. Was it rational to build the pyramids? I reckon to the slaves it was a moot point.

More modern evidence has shown that the great pyramids were built by a paid labor force. One of the things they paid them in, was beer.

[BuffaloJack]

> “Does the Pentagon have the right weapons to fight off an alien invasion?”
> Hummmm...but we can’t keep our borders safe....
> Does anybody see the irony in that?

We already have a alien invasion. It’s taking place at our Southern border.
We could always try out new weapons on the South of the border aliens as we prepare for invasion by space aliens.

[albionin]

Spending money on this would be as big a waste as trying to prevent global warming. The energies and technologies involved in FTL space ships would outclass anything we will be able to produce for at least 100 years. Our greatest weapon is our minds and our indomitable spirits.

[PapaBear3625]

If aliens have the ability to travel far enough to get to Earth from anywhere else, we better hope they are friendly. That kind of technology will probably include some pretty awesome death rays.

The conquistadors who landed in South America has awesome weapons relative to the Indians they found there. They also were a hell of a long way from resupply, which would be a vulnerability.

Any actual alien invader would probably not bother with death rays. They would just tow a few asteroids into intercept orbits against the Earth. A few hundred-megaton-equivalent hits on major cities and the governments of Earth would be very compliant.