US Military Real Plan to Defeat an Alien Invasion

It's 2023 and here's the question of the hour. What are we going to do about the aliens? UFOs, now officially designated as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, have become a hot topic in Washington again. Experienced pilots have testified before Congress about their encounters with aircraft that go far beyond the capability of anything known on Earth. More salaciously, recent public hearings have accused the United States government of possessing the wrecks of aircraft that are not exactly of human origin. Some even more memorable claims have suggested the government has the bodies of aliens hidden away in a beyond-top-secret storage facility. The Department of Defense has stalled some of the investigation efforts, seemingly lending credence to conspiracy theories. Regardless of the accuracy of these particular claims, the United States government takes UAPs and extraterrestrials seriously enough to have a plan in place against an alien invasion. Let's take a look at things we know about the plan, things that would likely happen in the face of an alien invasion, and the daunting obstacles such a plan would face. The most important part of any plan for an alien invasion would be to deal with the difference in technology. Any scenario involving an alien invasion would involve a huge technological disparity. We can look at our own experience to get an idea of just how big of a disadvantage we would suffer against the alien forces. All of the armies in World War II would be easily wiped out by modern forces a fraction of their size armed with contemporary artillery, missiles, and air support, and that is a difference of less than 100 years. Any alien civilization capable of crossing the light years between the stars would be vastly superior to our own civilization, which has not even established permanent outposts on our planet's moon, much less the other planets in our solar system. One often-cited method of determining the capability of a civilization is the Kardashev Scale, originally developed by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. Subsequent scientists, like Carl Sagan, modified the scale to make it more specific, but the basic scheme remains intact. The scale measures civilizations by their total energy output. Kardashev's original scale measured three possible civilizations. First there is Type 1, which can use all of the available energy resources on its own planet. A Type 2 civilization can use energy equivalent to the entire output of its home planet's star. Beyond this is Type 3, which can use power equivalent to all of the available energy in its galaxy. Although Kardashev originally suggested that we humans are close to Type 1, Sagan and others have demonstrated that we are not. As of now, we are at a level of about 0.72 on the Kardashev Scale. It's safe to say that any civilization capable of crossing interstellar space is far beyond a basic Type 1 civilization, even if they do not use technology we would think of as particularly exotic, meaning that the gap between them and us would probably be larger than the gap between our current civilization and the ancient Egyptians or Mesopotamians. Naturally, this doesn't bode well for our prospects if an alien civilization found our radio and television broadcasts, journeyed across the light years and found something about this little neck of the Milky Way galaxy that they decided was worthwhile for them to have. So would we have any chance of defending ourselves against an attacker like this? The United States Department of Defense has plans in place to try. At its basic, the plan would involve the use of asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric warfare is not simply a more complicated way to describe a guerrilla conflict. It can involve asymmetries in societal factors, morale, and economics rather than simply military power or technology. This is appropriate, because every human being on Earth would be playing a role in a plan to defeat an alien invasion. The first step in the plan would be to ensure that we are not taken completely by surprise. Although the Pentagon has not stated this publicly, it's probably one of the reasons why an Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was established. The Pentagon admitted its existence in 2017, although funding had since dried up. That was not the end of the story, though. On November 3rd, 2021, the Pentagon announced it was establishing the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, AOI-MSG, which would synchronize efforts across the department and broader U.S. government to detect, identify, and attribute objects of interest in special-use airspace, SUA, and to assess and mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security. This is not officially a UAP program, but UAPs would be part of this mission. If the world got advanced warning of an incoming alien presence, the next step would be to try to determine their intentions. This would involve a First Contact Protocol, which is currently being developed by SETI scientists at the University of St. Andrews, with a focus on worldwide coordination and response. This first contact part of the alien scenario would be one of the tensest. Although standard prudence would be to assume the worst, acting aggressively at the first sight of an alien presence would ruin any chance of peaceful relationship. Determining the alien's intentions would be top priority. Unfortunately, given that there is no easily available method of communication, this would be exceedingly difficult unless they attack first. A hostile first contact is not inevitable, and it is possible that the aliens would come here as scientists or explorers. However, Nick Pope, a former UK official who ran the Ministry of Defense's UFO program, believes a hostile encounter is much likelier. In the event of an invasion, a few scenarios would likely occur first. Assuming that the aliens wanted the planet for some reason, they would probably not use weapons of mass destruction. They would then need to send resources to surface and occupy it. To pull off an invasion of a planet, the alien's spacecraft or fleet would need to be of sufficient size to transport all the troops and supplies necessary to carry out the operation. This would probably give astronomers advanced warning. The United States and countries around the world would then have time to make preparations to meet the invaders. It would begin by strategically positioning important military equipment and shielding them from a likely first strike scenario, an EMP blast delivered from high orbit. Cold War era plans had already prepared for such scenarios decades ago, and they would almost certainly be mobilized into action. So while an EMP blast would take out most of the civilian power grid, at least some infrastructure and military equipment, already shielded, would be reinforced in the time it takes the invaders to get to Earth. Following the plans for a nuclear shutdown with the Soviet Union, the United States military would disperse its assets to prevent them from being wiped out in orbital attacks. The aliens would certainly strike any military installation that they can find from orbit, but beyond the loss of the infrastructure there, there would probably be few casualties in this stage of the war. However, this is only the beginning, and the worst would be yet to come. If the aliens aren't too far ahead of us, relatively speaking, the United States military and every other armed force in the world with the capability, would look to destroy as many of the alien landing craft entering the atmosphere as possible. The heat signatures of enemy aircraft entering the atmosphere would make them easy targets, and because of the high G-forces involved, they would probably not be as maneuverable. This is the phase of the war where air defense systems and aircraft would try to shoot down as many of the incoming alien vehicles as possible. Aliens that can cross the vast distances between the stars might have much more advanced technology than our own, but they will still need to obey the laws of physics. Significant numbers of alien ships would be taken out during this phase. However, not all of them would be, and it's from this point that the tide would turn dramatically. As we've seen from our own history, even only a few alien vehicles would be a huge problem for humanity's forces. Any alien aircraft would easily overpower even the world's most advanced fifth-generation fighter jets. They would probably be easily able to evade the fastest surface-to-air missiles, too. The aliens would quickly establish air superiority and destroy the world's ability to retaliate in the skies. Any human aircraft or air defense systems would quickly be destroyed. From there, the aliens would clear the way for the ground invasion. It is possible that the dispersed, conventional ground assets like tanks, other armored vehicles and artillery systems would do their share of damage in the initial hours of the ground invasion. However, these assets would eventually be destroyed as well, and probably quickly. Nuclear bombardment and alien close air support would take a terrible toll, and the invaders would have superior ground assets as well. It is almost a certainty that the conventional phase of the war would be over within the first week, and that's being optimistic. Nuclear weapons probably would not be used yet, despite the huge disadvantage that humanity is facing. Such escalation might cause the aliens to use unthinkable weapons of mass destruction. At the very least, they would harm human survivors and make the next phase of the resistance difficult to carry out. It is also important to note that alien spacecraft capable of crossing interstellar distances would probably be well shielded against nuclear blasts. At such velocities, impacts with even tiny space debris can have the same amount of force as a nuclear blast. Trying to hit the large transport or ferry ships with nuclear weapons while they're still in orbit probably would not work. With the conventional phase of the war at an end, and with nuclear weapons probably worse than useless, the longest, bitterest, and most brutal phase of the war would begin. The long, grinding guerrilla war of attrition. The mission objective for this phase of the war would be simple, kill as many aliens and destroy as much of their equipment as possible. The idea would be to make the cost of the invasion so high that the aliens would have no choice but to retreat because the numbers on the extraterrestrial ledger no longer make sense. To coordinate this strategy, the United States would put its continuity of government plan into place, probably before the invasion even began. This is also a Cold War era plan that would help to prepare the United States and the world for a much more formidable adversary. The continuity of government plan is designed to ensure the survival of a constitutional form of government, with a clear line of succession to the presidency and to the departments of all major agencies in the federal government as well. There are various crisis relocation facilities hidden away, designed to shelter everyone that would perform the core functions of the federal government in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, all under an austere economy. The continuity of government would make command and control more resilient in the face of an alien invasion, although it is probably a certainty that even many of these facilities would be destroyed eventually. Still, if the continuity of government can better coordinate attacks on the aliens and make their job harder to accomplish, it would serve its purpose. The reality is, though, that much of the functioning of the United States government and other governments around the world would wither away. Cells of human survivors would need to be trusted to govern themselves accordingly, almost as self-sufficient tribes. From here, surviving soldiers would train civilians, turning them into irregular troops capable of dishing out damage to the enemy through ambushes, raids, terror attacks, and any other means of asymmetrical warfare available. The entirety of the remaining human civilization would be mobilized to meet this effort, and that civilization would change in fundamental ways, far beyond the ways it governs itself. It would be unrecognizable compared to today, perhaps even more than the ancient Spartans. Humanity during the alien invasion would be a civilization made for war. For starters, it is a certainty that women would see little action in the hostilities unless absolutely necessary. The reason for this is simple. Human guerrilla forces would take staggering casualties in their attacks against the invaders. These casualties will need to be replaced, and the biological math is clear. A single man can get every woman in the world pregnant. In contrast, women cannot reproduce nearly as rapidly. In dealing with the alien invasion, the reality is that men are expendable, women are not. Women will therefore need to have as many children as possible to ensure a steady supply of troops for the long and bitter struggle ahead. This also means that our traditional notions of relationships may need to take a holiday. To ensure genetic diversity, relationships will probably need to be polyamorous rather than monogamous. In this ironic way, the alien invasion of Earth would probably be the biggest boon for free love the world has ever seen. To guarantee against extinction, the native species will simply need to reproduce faster than the invasive species. In this way, humanity has a big advantage. The aliens would need to ship their replacement troops and supplies across interstellar space, and no matter how advanced they are, that's a much more expensive proposition than living off the land and reproducing locally. Perhaps it's true that the aliens would bring some reproducing colonists with them, but their numbers would be small, thanks to the expense of shipping things across the light years. Therefore, the invasion force would probably be mostly military in nature. Human losses would therefore be relatively cheap, and alien losses much more expensive. As the war of attrition goes on, probably for decades at least. Capturing and reverse-engineering alien technology would be a high priority for the long phase of the war. In this way, the technological gap between humans and aliens would steadily decrease. The human-to-alien casualty ratio would go down with each encounter as the native species learns more about the tactics, technology, and biology of the invasive species. Alien replacements would be extremely expensive, and they would need more of them, while humanities would remain cheap. At some point, the math would swing in favor of the native species against the invasive one. The aliens would determine that the venture is losing more than it's gaining, and decide to end the operation, leaving a humanity behind, now armed with alien technology which would make it much better prepared for the invaders should they decide to ever return. It all sounds nice, but the plan has several flaws. In the first place, it assumes that the aliens would even bother sending real biological soldiers to the battlefield. Especially in our own time with the Kardashev Type 0.72 civilization, we see automation taking off and drones playing an increasingly important part of warfare. Relatively soon, drones will take to the land, sea, and skies in much greater numbers, potentially becoming the most numerous part of the battlefield. They will become a lot smarter and more autonomous, too. There will need to be comparatively few human operators, and this will likely mean less humans take to the battlefield, as capital rather than manpower becomes even more important on the ledgers of victory and defeat. For a civilization of Kardashev Type 1 and beyond, drones and robots would be abundant, and long since part of everyday experience. Just as we have not yet taken the risk of sending human explorers throughout our solar system, but have so far exclusively sent robotic surveyors, there's a good chance that an alien invasion would consist of robots and drones, with few or no biological entities on the journey, in contrast to scenarios shown in movies like Independence Day or Battle of Los Angeles. An alien invasion scenario has a good chance of being closer to something like the Terminator. These robots and drones would be far cheaper than biological visitors, and though shipping them across interstellar space would still be extremely expensive, the artificial intelligences would probably be able to self-replicate using local resources. This would change the attrition calculus dramatically. Another scenario would involve the use of a biological weapon. Perhaps the aliens would have studied our civilization for some time before the invasion. Even if not, they would quickly discover our biology once they decide to invade. If they want to limit damage to the planet from extended warfare, a biological weapon designed to be especially lethal against humans would be one method for them to use. In contrast to the War of the Worlds scenario, where Earth's bacteria killed off the invaders, the aliens this time would use and enhance the planet's biology against its inhabitants. This is a far likelier scenario, since Earth-based microbes would have little ground to interact with a completely alien biology. For example, Earth-based viruses would likely not know how to infect alien cells, which would probably have completely different cell chemistry and genetic codes than any life form from Earth. Meanwhile, we have also seen there's a good chance there wouldn't be any alien biology in the invasion at all, making a War of the Worlds scenario all but impossible. Finally, there's the possibility that the aliens would simply change the planet, terraform it. Recall that the Earth's atmosphere as we presently know it was not its original composition, life made from nitrogen and oxygen we know about today. It was originally composed of hydrogen, helium, ammonia, and methane. These gases escaped to space or were blown away by solar wind, while volcanoes formed nitrogen and life created oxygen. It is unlikely that the current atmospheric condition would be suitable for an alien form of life, since it was created by Earth-based life. Supposing that aliens wanted to colonize the planet, they would probably desire to change the atmosphere. Just as we were talking about terraforming Mars and potentially other worlds in our solar system to make them suitable for human habitation, aliens would probably do the same to Earth. Terraforming would not happen overnight, even with an advanced alien civilization. Strategies for long, asymmetric, guerrilla-style warfare naturally assume that the atmospheric conditions around the world wouldn't change, and that the planet would remain suitable for human habitation. Over decades, this would probably not remain the case. Resistance and reproduction aren't exactly feasible when there's no oxygen to breathe, or changes to atmospheric pressure ensures that humans can no longer live on the surface of the planet. The United States military's plan to defeat an alien invasion is probably the best that can be realistically devised. Decades of Cold War-style nuclear preparedness have made it and most other advanced countries incredibly resilient against the kinds of collapses that would have wiped out earlier civilizations. However, it still makes assumptions about extraterrestrial civilizations with styles of culture and motivations we might not be able to comprehend. It is far from guaranteed that we would even be able to mount a guerrilla resistance in the face of such overwhelming technological superiority. It might not be the type of scenario glorified by Hollywood because it wouldn't make for a good story, but chances are we would be helpless in the face of an invasion by aliens that can cross the stars. But do you think the same? Would we have a chance against an invasion by an advanced, interstellar, extraterrestrial civilization? Let us know in the comments. 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