Offside Report – “a thought experiment with biscuits”

This was a thought experiment of a sort – given a loose an invented Sci-Fi based scenario, we were asked to come up with the kind of tactics that an outnumbered and outgunned militia would come up with, facing a technologically advanced opponent.

Just a few brief thoughts on this:

• It was great to have someone with Evan’s knowledge, and research skills, openly say “I can’t think of everything here, that’s why I want you all to think on this”. Getting knowledgeable people together in small groups worked well, illustrating the value of combined and overlapping expertise, and suited the hybrid format of the meeting too.
• Considering how outgunned we were as the planet’s citizens, were there ways to attack without attacking? In an insurgency can you just make life harder for the invaders in innocent ways? Supplies are delayed, equipment breaks, seemingly natural phenomenon such as the flora and fauna cause unexpected problems, and so on. So as the insurgents you can affect your opponent, and in reply how can they counter-attack an engine problem or a design issue?
• The scenario we were giving was particularly tricky, with the detection of explosives being available to the invaders. So you start to think about what can be an explosive in the “wrong” context? A vehicle, a battery, a power line, a fuel supply, and so on. Especially as using innocent objects means no device needs to traverse a security control, so there’s nothing for the invaders’ impressive sensors to detect. This is maybe the equivalent of cyber security’s “living off the land” but in the physical world.
• As always, my mental emphasis was to focus on what we do know about the opponent and what vulnerabilities those systems might have. We had some information on the technology available to the invaders:
  • Some of them had limited Psionics, mainly the senior ranks. Is there anything about that ability that makes targets identifiable, detectable, or vulnerable? While risking sounding like a Temu Sun-Tzu, how can we use their strength against them?
  • The invaders probably have grav tanks, is there anything special about that technology that we can use? Bridges or tunnels or similar that will only collapse when that force is present? The disconnect between their advanced technology and our relatively primitive transport infrastructure felt worth exploring.
• We were thinking on how to attack risk free? All attacks should be remote and/or delayed – as with the very first point, it’s difficult to counter-attack or chase or persecute a timed device.
• The discussion between us highlighted some unusual weapons, or effects:
  • By initiating constant unexplained failures, can you sap the enemy morale – stationed far from home for no appreciable reason to be here. What effect will that have?
  • Or by doing nothing, but maintaining some kind of implied vague threat constantly, can you inspire boredom in the enemy troops and see where that leads. For all the reasons that a sentient being might have joined a military force, it’s unlikely that “be in a drab military base doing the same ineffectual thing with the same people day after day after day” was one of them. What entertainments will the soldiers resort to, and what vulnerabilities does that lead to?

I think with a little more to it on the scenario for the players, especially if groups were actively pitted against each other, this could be an interesting game. For example, based on the same format as John Curry’s “Enterprise Defender”, the two teams separately come up with a list of stratagems they can call on. At the end of the game the teams are brought together, and in a quickly adjudicated way everyone gets an idea of how the insurgency would have progressed as both teams submit a stratagem for the adjudicator’s consideration.

An interesting way to spend an hour or two, and to learn about real world insurgencies during my conversations within the online team.

And with thanks to Nick Luft for the title of this post.