Super-Soldier Army

[Pendaran]

I am still thin on how what amounted to a lot of Captain Americas with fancy guns killed Thor, Imma be real.

And no one get smart with me and tell me how they had a machine that could generate the crimson bands of cyttorak, that machine got blowed up earlier. That was straight up just a lot of Captain Americas with guns. ;p

[Shellhead]

As a kid, I jokingly referred to What If? as Who Dies? What If stories often default to the death of a character that Marvel would never normally leave dead.

[Beadle]

Yeah, they were fun stories though. At least the first couple of iterations.

I always remember What If The X-Men Lost Inferno? as a good one. With Dr Strange and Rachel Summers forming a coven(?) of mystics and psychics.

Edit: Of course, I haven’t read that for 30+ years…

[Sharpandpointies]

Yeah, they were fun stories though. At least the first couple of iterations.

I always remember What If The X-Men Lost Inferno? as a good one. With Dr Strange and Rachel Summers forming a coven(?) of mystics and psychics.

Edit: Of course, I haven’t read that for 30+ years…

That WAS a good one!

[Alan2099]

(To be fair these were really his only options who said yes to him. To be less fair he totally recruited an all brute force team of Avengers.)

Also to be fair, it's a lot easier to find people that hit stuff really hard than it is to find people that don't want to be noticed.

Also, I always thought it was really weird that they made a statue of the Avengers where it looked like they were all running away.

Yeah, they were fun stories though. At least the first couple of iterations.

They were usually pretty fun.

Now we just get stuff like "What if Miles Morales was Thor and didn't have the backstory or personality of either Miles Morales or Thor and also Asgard is a Ghetto?"

[Sharpandpointies]

'What if Baron Mordo became the Sorcerer Supreme?' was a pretty decent one of the older What If-?'s, though it had some enormous SMvsFL in the final page.

[Captain Smith]

WWII is not a pushover because you have stronger infantry. Artillery killed most soldiers. Machine guns take down even charging Caps. His shield is sort of a joke as he has legs and a head. It is PIS that he is taken off at the knees if facing trained infantry. You still have to invade and deception was what allowed the Allies to get easier footholds at Normandy. Being a meat super soldier doesn't help if your Higgins boat takes an 88 mm. The Allied control of the air and naval bombardment allowed the landings to proceed.

Digging the Japanese out of their prepared defensive island positions - well, it might help to be stronger and faster bu these folks are not bullet proof. You ain't running into a cave with a shield with prepared MGs even at peak human speeds.

Having super soldiers doesn't make it a stomp but somewhat easier.

[Pendaran]

WWII is not a pushover because you have stronger infantry. Artillery killed most soldiers. Machine guns take down even charging Caps. His shield is sort of a joke as he has legs and a head. It is PIS that he is taken off at the knees if facing trained infantry. You still have to invade and deception was what allowed the Allies to get easier footholds at Normandy. Being a meat super soldier doesn't help if your Higgins boat takes an 88 mm. The Allied control of the air and naval bombardment allowed the landings to proceed.

Digging the Japanese out of their prepared defensive island positions - well, it might help to be stronger and faster bu these folks are not bullet proof. You ain't running into a cave with a shield with prepared MGs even at peak human speeds.

Having super soldiers doesn't make it a stomp but somewhat easier.

You don't just have stronger infantry. If they can super soldier the crap out of everyone, you have pilots, artillery operators, all what have you, with comic book peak human reflex and processing time. Your overall military forces at that, can now operate on comic book peak human endurance for how long they can operate in the field and the level of capacity and focus they can maintain while doing so.

Also on the shield thing, I mean, if they're at least training the infantry to Cap's degree of such for the war, they can aim dodge trained infantry, shield or otherwise, who are by comparison just people. For every enhanced soldier getting shot by infantry, a bunch more won't be.

It's still pretty stompy.

[Sharpandpointies]

Keeping in mind, as noted, this isn't just 'a whole lot of Caps'. This is a whole lot of trained soldiers with similar weapons to their enemies (ie, firearms, artillery, etc), who have ridiculous speed, reflexes, capacity to endure punishment, endurance, strength, etc. To the point where, real-world, they are literally superhuman.

Sure, some of them die. The point is that we're not fielding specialized groups of supersoldiers in the middle of the Allied forces. The entire US army is now these guys. All of them. A whole lot LESS of them die in any conflict, and a whole lot MORE of the enemies die. Casualties become ridiculously disproportionate. And that continues, as the US just keeps bringing in more recruits and making them into these supersoldiers.

[Captain Smith]

I grant you that super soldier reflexes and speed might make for better fighter pilots but we had air superiority based on mass production of better planes as the crucial variable. Might they load artillery faster, yes - you got that.

I'll disagree that you could dodge that well against fortified machine gun positions and you can't dodge incoming artillery. Have to wait for an empirical test. Super sailors, can't see that as a big deal.

[Sharpandpointies]

I'll disagree that you could dodge that well against fortified machine gun positions

Captain America does this all the time, as do people on his level. Is it unrealistic? Sure. Is it part of the thread as it stands, that these guys basically become super soldiers on the same level as Cap? Absolutely.

To deny this is to basically deny all of the feats that Captain America and those on his level have. I get it - again, it's not realistic. But feats are feats, and Captain America's capacities (and other peak humans abilities) are pretty well-documented. Moving too fast to be targeted. Sprinting at close to 60 mph. Accurately targeting stuff to an inhuman level while doing so. Being effectively untiring compared to normal humans (yes, peak humans tire, but it takes ages, and Cap tires even more slowly as compared to other peak humans). Punching literally through people's bodies. Blitzing groups of normals.

Charging into the massed automatic weapon gunfire of a dozen guys while sick and feverish, moving so quickly and erratically that they can't target that sick, feverish person, then beating that group down with their bare hands (this was Nightwing, who is somewhat inferior to Cap).

Imagine, now, if this kind of soldier is using firearms. And there are equal numbers of them as the US army fielded back in WWII.

- you can't dodge incoming artillery.

As for dodging incoming artillery, we're still dealing with soldiers who are moving faster over terrain, far faster than is humanly possible, taking enemy positions with ridiculous speeds, moving out of artillery-carpet-bombed areas faster, etc. And who are tough enough to withstand injuries that would knock-down, knock-out, and cripple normal people without serious issue.

Again, will some of them die? Sure.

Again, will it be nearly as many as normal soldiers, due to the various reasons noted above? Not even close.

Will the casualties be disproportionate? Absolutely.

This isn't even getting into the tactical and strategic stuff of moving around soldiers who are vastly quicker both on a tactical and strategic scale (they don't need sleep nearly as much, can get through supposedly 'impassable' terrain effortlessly, etc) as normal soldiers.

Will this change the nature of the war, and subsequent wars? Absolutely.

[Pendaran]

I grant you that super soldier reflexes and speed might make for better fighter pilots but we had air superiority based on mass production of better planes as the crucial variable. Might they load artillery faster, yes - you got that.

I'll disagree that you could dodge that well against fortified machine gun positions and you can't dodge incoming artillery. Have to wait for an empirical test. Super sailors, can't see that as a big deal.

Your premise, as opposed to that of the thread, seems to be that people powered up to operate at the level of a comic book peak human will instead operate bounded by real world capacity.

It's also odd to hold onto it not being a stomp when you're now noting "we had air superiority based on...". Yes, and the specific point is, on top of that is now stacked that everyone in these planes will have reflex capacity that does not otherwise exist in the real world, that's part of why this is a stomp. Taking existing advantages, and then full mass producing onto them operators who operate on the level of Captain America is a huge plus. That's part of the note of "it makes things from a win into a stomp". That you feel this will be apparently negligible to the point of "it's just an easier win", feels odd.

I mean all the pilots, every single one, can now otherwise maneuver their machines, outfly other planes, even simply endure air pressure and the strains of flight in ways normal human beings cannot. And your feeling is this will make everything, say, 10% easier I guess?

Again, the thread premise is "the entire military force gets Captain America'd in capacity". Your take on this seems to be "well reality would mean...". The second statement cannot result from the first statement.

Super sailors, can't see that as a big deal.

It is strange to look at something like, setting everything absolutely else aside, "this entire force, all of them, gets tired from an exertion at a rate far superior that of a normal human being" and feel that is not significant.

So much military tactics and strategy are around "don't overtire/overexert your forces", and the place where that now happens is so much further into the distance.

At the most basic level, sailors do stuff. People do things in their jobs. Their capacity for time spent stuff doing is now wildly increased. Again, just as basic operational stuff, shifts can be well longer, crews function at peak capacity near always. That's a net gain.

[Spamotron]

The thing about real combat is that 9 times out of 10 kills were made by seeing the other guy first and getting a shot off before they knew you were there. This is true for all branches of the military, from infantry to tanks to planes. Cap is no Daredevil or Wolverine but the superiority of his Peak Human senses, vision especially has been noted over and over again. Peak human coordination and agility does wonders for stealth too. Most fights against Supersoldiers would see half the enemy unit shot before they even know what's happening.

On another note the only thing preventing the U.S. from having an army of Supersoldiers even after Erskine's death was an incomplete understanding of what the serum had done to Steve. It wasn't until after he was thawed out in the present that it was discovered that the SSS had both made him a universal donor and that anyone who received a blood transfusion from him became a Supersoldier too. See Diamondback. If they had known back in the day they could have had Steve give a transfusion to a volunteer then wait for Steve and the volunteer to recover, and you would have two supersoldiers. Then have both of them transfuse two more volunteers making four, then four becomes eight, etc. In a year they could have had thousands of supersoldiers ready to fight.

[Pendaran]

I mean hey, it's still WWII in the 616 universe, the Axis did have some metahumans and all, and mad scientist tech and crap, it's just... tiny miniscule fraction comparatively now (also the Original Human Torch and Namor are still going to end up fighting the Nazis for their various reasons as far as the heaviest hitters the Axis can draw on).

On another note the only thing preventing the U.S. from having an army of Supersoldiers even after Erskine's death was an incomplete understanding of what the serum had done to Steve. It wasn't until after he was thawed out in the present that it was discovered that the SSS had both made him a universal donor and that anyone who received a blood transfusion from him became a Supersoldier too. See Diamondback. If they had known back in the day they could have had Steve give a transfusion to a volunteer then wait for Steve and the volunteer to recover, and you would have two supersoldiers. Then have both of them transfuse two more volunteers making four, then four becomes eight, etc. In a year they could have had thousands of supersoldiers ready to fight.

I feel like that ignored a bit of "if you don't do the full Cap process, they go kiiiinda insane" though, from what I recall of it.

[Pendaran]

Just to otherwise note:

Then have both of them transfuse two more volunteers making four, then four becomes eight, etc. In a year they could have had thousands of supersoldiers ready to fight.

As long as they have Erskine to get it going they can do that anyway, and really even more quickly without having to touch on whether the blood transfusion thing should come with mental instability.