“We trusted you about that WMD shit, but you expect us to believe this?”
It’s either a fish or an amphibian, right? How about we get someone (I nominate Broomstick) to drop a whole bunch of pyrethrin and lime on it. If that doesn’t work, then we start blowing things up.
Sushi. Lots of sushi.
I’m wondering at the speed of response answers here. Pre-9/11, I’d assume a fairly slow response. But for all of Homeland Security’s ineptness, you have to figure that they’ve spent at least a few minutes thinking about the possibility of a container ship full of terrorists docking in a port city and making a nuisance of themselves.
It’s the type of response, not the response itself, that would slow us down. Keep in mind - the military is all about fighting the last war. If Mothra came to New York to mess stuff up, or another airborne attack on the US, I’d say we’d have a force appropriate response ready in minutes. We’ve lots of +15 alert air to air assets dotted all over the country now, which we didn’t have in 2001, or at least not to the same degree. You’ve got air to air fighters in Virginia and North Carolina, as well as Air National Guard bases all over both seaboards and a couple places in the middle as well (Montana Air National Guard, for instance) which have ready-alert air to air. You’ve also got naval units for both anti-aircraft and anti-missile defence (Aegis missile cruisers, Patriot anti-missile batteries, and the like) as well as seaborne air to ground missile capabilitites both conventional and nuclear. Most of our strategic weapons are designed for and aimed at targets a long ways away. It’s air to mud and inside the US that’s the problem.
Getting together either a massive ground-based response with heavy weapons, or a massive air to ground attack within the US, or a combination of the two, is something I would be surprised if it’s been wargamed out. A container full of bad guys landing in New York we’d contain and control with small-unit tactics, local police SWAT teams, and perhaps some Special Forces involvement - much easier to organise quickly. Full-scale deployment of conventional troops in a major US city is something that’s just not trivial to pull off. The logistics alone are damn difficult.
What about a more real-world enemy? Does the US have the capability to repel a simple ground invasion, particularly in a remote area?
Suppose, the fine people of Woodstock, New Brunswick have had enough and they invade Houlton, Maine. They intend to stay and occupy Houlton and maybe continue to take over the rest of Maine.
So, do we go to war? Do we have assets to repel the invaders? Would the US go to war to reclaim Maine? Can’t you see the protest Tshirts: “Maine: What is it good for?” or “Make lobster bisque, not war!” ? What if the citizens of Houlton welcome their new Woodstockian over-lords?
Watch out. Those Canadians might be up to something…
This is Manhattan you are talking about. You forgot about the rats and the pigeons. And the CHUDs. That carcass would be stripped in 24 hours.
Invasions take time to plan. You need to position troops, position assets (i.e. ships / tanks / bridgeing equipment / etc…). You can pull off an airborne assault (i.e. paratroopers jumping from the sky) with little or no notice, but without any follow-up ground troops, lightly-armed and supplied airborne troops would have a very rough go of it when the locals arm up and come after them.
Think of Normandy. We dropped airborne troops the night before, and leveraged the suprise very well, but it was the follow-up seaborne invasion that really opened and held the beachheads, and that took months of planning, positioning, etc…
Wow, I didn’t realize we actually had done this. On the Ike, you anchored in the harbor and ferried (by air and boat) the troops ashore. What would have been possible if you had pulled up to a pier, say the passenger ship terminal on the West Side which has loading and unloading facilities?
On the question of air to air fighters as opposed to air to ground attack aircraft, we’re talking about attacking a 500-foot tall monster here (presumably with no anti-air capability of its own). Although I doubt that air to air missles would be effective at targeting a monster, do we have gun-equipped jet fighters that could make low-flying strafing runs at the creature? I have no doubt we can shoot down enemy aircraft flying at 500 feet or less above the ground, so could we shoot a monster at that level?
Also, we’re discussing the air to ground (or perhaps air to monster) capability of fixed-wing aircraft here. Are there nearby helicopter assets we could effectively deploy?
Nah. We would just point out that there aren’t any Tim Hortons in Maine, at which time the entire invasion force would flee in head-long panic back across the border.
Post 34 for fixed-wing air to mud.
For air to air, sure a 20mm cannon on most fighter aircraft if not all can / will be used for strafing runs, but strafing is hugely ineffective use of cannons and that’s spitwads against something that weighs 100,000lbs and is 500ft tall…
As for helos, perhaps the Army at Ft Dix of Ft Drum would have Apaches with hellfire missiles which would definitely sting a touch or the Marines could deploy some Cobras from Quantico, but I don’t have the details on that. Blackhawks don’t have missiles or rockets.
Where are the nearest units that can field anti-tank weaponry? From a ground-pounders perspective, I mean. Seems to me that a few volleys of Milan anti-tank missles into the ankles or whathaveyou of the beast would definitely distract it until the fliers can arrive with bigger bangs.
Ft Drum or Ft Dix I would think…
“REMEMBER MAINE”!
There was another US carrier there at the same time, transporting another group of groundpounders. But they were anchored somewhere else and I never saw it, and sadly I can’t remember who it was at the time.
Carriers pull up many times to cruise ship terminals - I’ve been on stops to Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale) at least half a dozen times. - and embark and debark passengers and crew through their facilities.
There are three brows (access/egress points) on the port side of a Nimitz-class carrier. One is usually reserved for officers during normal inport periods - meaningless in this situation. The only basis I have for comparison about using that method to unload troups would be the day one of the ships pulls in from a deployment. Roughly 3500 people leave the ship in about 2-3 hours. (Of course, since they want to get home to their families or get to a bar, they may be a bit more motivated than a bunch of Soldiers being sent out as Monster Chow.)
Question - assuming NYPD would be the first combatants, what sort of firepower could they bring to bear? Do they have anything heavier than assault rifles?
Special Forces units, like Delta, Marine Anti-Terrorist Units, SEALS, & Air Force SP Special Forces Units would likely be very quick to respond to threats on US soil.
US Coast Guard forces have been upgunned/untrained (real word?) since 9/11. Cutters boast artillery.
Not as fast as you might think. A vast majority of the US armed forces is logistics. Our soil has not been invaded in 200 years. We are not trained to respond to invasions and domestic attacks.
In The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks describes a small outbreak in LA or similar. Two warring gangs patch up their differences temporarily and turn an inner city school into a fortress, then go to town. It was cool.
The “Spooky” weapon package you cite, with the 105mm M102 howitzer, seems to me to be capable of doing quite a number on a super-giant monster, not to mention any innocent skyscrapers that catch a stray shot.
How powerful is the M102 on an AC-130? Could it in fact hurt the monster (and how badly), the scene in Transformers '07 notwithstanding?
The division catchphrase was “wheels up in 18 hours”, at least in the 1990’s it was.
18 hours may seem like a long time, but we’re talking essentially about picking up Ft. Bragg and putting it in the air in less than a day.
No amount of biological armor can resist a HEAT round. Roll anything that can fire one, backed up by as many grunts with RPGs as you can muster. Take the bitch down the way the draves do: First the ankles, then the knees, then whatever presents itself. Then plant a Maverick into an eyeball, and it’s Game Over.