# The minimum military force required to defeat a kaiju or Godzilla **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 17, 2016, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164 "2016-07-17T23:17:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/21 "2016-07-19T15:25:16Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > The UGM-133 Trident II missile travels at 13,000mph. If you took out all the explosives and replaced them with depleted uranium and just aimed it at Godzilla’s stomach I doubt Godzilla would be around much longer. What’s the minimum range on a Trident missile warhead, and keep in mind that they’re not guided. So you’d basically be firing really big buckshot from a LONG way away- like 600 miles or so. Probably not particularly effective. I was thinking that one of those bunker-buster weapons ([GBU-28](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-28) or [GBU-57 MOP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator)) might also be pretty effective vs. Godzilla, as they’re engineered to penetrate far into the ground, punch through reinforced concreted and destroy everything inside. They weigh 5,000 or 30,000 lbs each, and are laser-guided. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/22 "2016-07-19T16:09:36Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > 1998 Roland Emmerich directed version was killed by missiles from F-18s. _Broderick & Reno VS The Giant Lizard_? Sorry-parody movies don’t count. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/23 "2016-07-19T16:22:48Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > Creatures that in any significant way resemble kaiju are an impossibility - even ignoring their superpowers, having a terrestrial animal anywhere near as large as any but the smallest kaiju isn’t going to happen - as far as we understand biology and physics. So you can’t answer the question using real world science. No, but what we do know of physics and biology tells us that a kaiju or Cloverfield monster would have to have a structure that is a lot stronger and more powerful than a scaled-up iguana. So for all intents and purposes, shooting it with 155 mm howitzers might be like shooting a rifle at a person with a small paintball gun. Annoying, yes. But unlikely to kill them. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/24 "2016-07-20T16:59:35Z")
IIRC, the rationale of kaiju biology (as of the 2014 Godzilla reboot) is that kaiju are nuclear powered silicon lifeforms dating from three billion years ago when there was much more U-235 and other radioactives in the Earth’s crust. So I’m willing to fanwank that they can be that big because they are made of far stronger substances than protein. It’s been pretty well established that their hides are more or less impervious to mere artillery shells and missile warheads. Ballistic missiles travel very fast but only in the near-vacuum of space, which doesn’t help. _Pacific Rim_ established that tactical nukes will destroy them but at the cost of massive collateral damage to the urban areas they usually attack. Aside from the Rule of Cool, the main point of fighting kaiju with mecha is sheer mass: the momentum of thousands of tons of metal has more effect than a small mass, even one moving very quickly. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2016, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/25 "2016-07-21T19:36:29Z")
My suggestion: When you have fighter jets and attack helicopters fighting the Kaiju, have them stay at least 100 feet away? You don’t have to fly within punching distance to hit a Kaiju with missiles or cannon fire. Maybe this is why your conventional aircraft are useless, you forgot to not deliberately fly into punching range. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2016, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/26 "2016-07-21T20:04:31Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > My suggestion: When you have fighter jets and attack helicopters fighting the Kaiju, have them stay at least 100 feet away? You don’t have to fly within punching distance to hit a Kaiju with missiles or cannon fire. > > Maybe this is why your conventional aircraft are useless, you forgot to not deliberately fly into punching range. Or radiation mouth beam range. Or antenna beam range. Or hurricane-force wing-flap winds range. There is no safe distance to engage kaiju with conventional military forces. Any kaiju susceptible to injury from conventional military force is insufficiently kaiju. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2016, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/27 "2016-07-21T20:37:20Z")
Could you have a real-world kaiju if it were in the form of a centipede? Imagine a line of elephants side by side for scale. With multiple limbs the size of giraffe necks. Obviously it would need big lungs - or multiple sets of lungs - rather than spiracles to operate on land. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2016, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/28 "2016-07-26T14:29:23Z")
> [@Bootis](#): > > skin like an alligator, as thick as it would be if an alligator was enlarged to 350 feet, and it’s skin and organs grew and thickened proportionally. So that’s 27x the size of a fully grown adult male alligator, which on average has about 1.5" of skin and scales. So we’re looking at a scuted leather hide 40" (or 101cm) thick. A 140mm discarding sabot round would penetrate a hardened metal plate of that thickness, so the bone and skin of Godzilla’s not going to stop it. While the M1 Abrams carries a 120mm gun, German, Chinese and Russian tanks all carry guns this size or larger. That’s not even considering self-propelled guns (howitzers.) If our current technology already includes weapons that penetrate Godzilla, we don’t need to build a big stompy robot to do it. [http://ciar.org/shotmagnet/Armor%20and%20impactor%20studies/Penetration\_Limits\_of\_Conventional\_Large\_Caliber\_Anti\_Tank\_-\_Kinetic\_Energy\_Projectiles.pdf](http://ciar.org/shotmagnet/Armor%20and%20impactor%20studies/Penetration_Limits_of_Conventional_Large_Caliber_Anti_Tank_-_Kinetic_Energy_Projectiles.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2016, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/29 "2016-07-26T14:44:18Z")
> [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](#): > > So that’s 27x the size of a fully grown adult male alligator, which on average has about 1.5" of skin and scales. So we’re looking at a scuted leather hide 40" (or 101cm) thick. I wonder how a honeycomb layer of bone or interleaving bone plates would do? ---
**Author:** ![Chihuahua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dec6dc/32.png) [@Chihuahua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chihuahua)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2016, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/30 "2016-07-26T14:48:23Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > 1998 Roland Emmerich directed version was killed by missiles from F-18s. The only time Godzilla has ever been killed by humans is the original 1954 version. 1998 Godzilla = Not Godzilla. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2016, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/31 "2016-07-26T14:58:08Z")
[Rods from God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment) ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2016, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164/32 "2016-07-26T15:33:08Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > I wonder how a honeycomb layer of bone or interleaving bone plates would do? Probably much better against an explosive or fragmenting round, but not against a high density round. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-minimum-military-force-required-to-defeat-a-kaiju-or-godzilla/760164.md?page=1)