Here’s my weird and inappropriate question of the week…many fans of Science Fiction are familiar with the old standby plot device of the “Super Soldier project,” an unholy attempt by a secretive government organization to create, well, “Super Soldiers” through selective breeding or chemical/genetic engineering. My question is: have there ever been any real attempts at doing this in the real world? Aside from genetic engineering, which I’m willing to disregard out of hand. But I know the Nazis tried their hand at selective breeding (The “Lebensborn” project, as I recall), and I’ve heard incidental reports of troops from various countries being issued amphetamines at various times, to keep them up and going when manpower was in short supply (Like during the fall of Berlin…Nazis again.) But have there been any other attempts of the like by any other countries?
Dunno, real life factors are more complex than Sci-fi factors.
How much better would a genetically or chemically enhanced soldier be in modern combat? Enough that it is worth spending Billions on developing them? Probably not.
To be so much better in terms of reflexes, strength, resilance and such they wouldn’t even resemble humans anymore. Why go through the trouble of a 5% increase in effectiveness that costs 1.3 billion dollars or build a tank that increases effectiveness by 25% or more and costs a fraction of it? Or smart bombers that destroy your superhumans from insane altitudes?
Soldiering, even at the elite level, isn’t just about physical strength and endurance; it also requires attitude and rapid flexibility. The problem is that popular media likes to portray elite soldiers as blank-faced Universal Soldier-ish zombie robots. In reality, the “Unisols” would be slaughtered by any enemy army with soldiers that were quick-witted and adaptable, as the Delta-Force and Army Rangers are.
Trying to build up an elite corps is mainly a manner of taking a large group of candidates and eliminating the unsuitable. In any large population (say, 20 million) some will be naturally aggressive enough to consider a career in the military (or as a police officer, fireman, etc). If one percent joins the military, and one percent of them get advanced training, and one percent of them form an elite corps, you end up with 20 “super soldiers”, without having to invest anything in genetic engineering. Give those 20 advanced weapons, air support and rapid communications and they’ll be “super” enough to handle just about anything. No government system has ever shown the ability to raise children, so I doubt we’ll see one anytime soon.
With genetic engineering applied to the whole population to reduce the incidence of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, you may find more than one percent of one percent is physically suitable, but a person is ultimately more than their genetics. Your childhood experiences determines largely what kind of adult you are, and for some small percentage of us, that kind of adult is someone who can stay calm while people are shooting at them.
There is a lot of research into stimulants or related products that will allow special forces soliders to stay awake and reasonably sharp for days at a time. There was a thread here some time ago on this very subject.
Okay, but what about spending billions on making tougher soldiers? I think it would be neat to have soldiers who could shrug off small arms fire, or be resistant to radiation and chemical agents for example. Or with radically enhanced senses to operate equipment more efficiently. Nobody’s mentioned this yet.
How much price to you put on one dead soldier? can you even financially argue that it would just simply be cheaper to let them roll the dice with conventional hazards, or pay money to ensure their survival in the worst of conditions?
You could get many of those benefits by investing in kevlar uniforms, night-vision goggles and other gizmos that are far cheaper and more reliable then genetic tinkering.
And how exactly are you going to force your genetically engineered children to become soldiers anyway? The 13th Amendment to the constitution prohibits involuntary servitude. You can’t just create a bunch of genetically engineered babies and raise them as slaves. Unless you run a dictatorship there is no way to keep the soldiers enslaved, they might just as well decide to become violinists and floral designers rather than soldiers.
Babies require 24 hour care. It is much much much more efficient to let these babies be raised by volunteers for free than it is to try to create government military orphanages. And if these super soldiers are so efficient, how are you going to keep them from killing off their slavemasters and taking control of the country for themselves?
I’ve heard several things on this subject, but alas all of them are “things I read somewhere”, so if anyone can provide cites (or sites) I would be grateful.
During WWII, there was a rumor (which after the war proved to be false) that Germany was using anabolic steroids to enable their airman to improve their endurance on bombing flights (remember the planes then were unheated and unpressurized). The US took this seriously enough that steroid research was given higher priority than developing antibiotics!
Supposedly in the Soviet Union during the 20s and 30s, the intelligence apparatus (NKVD, or their predecessor?) operated orphanages in which the children were raised to belong to a secret police “tribe” or “cult”, rather than Soviet society as a whole.
In the US there supposedly was a trial program to test whether taking antidepressants like Prozak would help soldiers cope with stress better and reduced the incidence of post-combat trauma. But the Orwellian implications of the program raised too many hackles and the test was abandoned.
Last I heard kevlar was mainly used to protect against shrapnel and not bullets. I implore you to tell me of a body armor that could protect against .50 caliiber bullets.
Despite technology, wars are still won by the people operating the machines. I think enhancing soldiers to be able to survive wounds that would be fatal for normal people, and having the mental tenacity to be able to do their job for long beyond that of a normal person has serious tactical advantages.
Either that or robot soldiers, both ideas are things I like cue in the Terminator theme
Sure, it’s called a “tank”. I find it hard to imagine any genetically-engineered person who had tougher skin than could be supplied by conventional armor, let alone depleted Uranium. Rather than spend oodles of billions on genetic engineering, you’d be better off improving tanks and armored personnel carriers. I can picture one of the heavy-armored suits from Starship Troopers (the book) long before I can see a super-soldier.
There are already people who can do pretty remarkable things, through physical training, mental toughness and sheer adrenaline. Giving them stimulants could help a lot, too. Thing is, war isn’t slugging away at each other until one person quits, and hasn’t been since World War One. With the increased speed of combat, it’s far more valuable to be able to hit the enemy quickly and unexpectedly and escape than it is to stand there and take hits.
One trend now is to design drones that are controlled from a distance by a human oeprator, so you get the metal armor, electronic senses, jet speed and still have a human brain in control. That looks to be a highly effective combination.
Slugwoth, last time I checked, .50 caliber was a larger round than 7.62mm NATO, thereby having more mass and transferning more kinetic energy into its target. Just because your ceramic plate can stop 7.62mm NATO, doesn’t mean it can stop the .50 caliber that Incubus was talking about.
