Is there a good justification in fiction for a state military to invest in supersoldiers/generals/whatever versus stuff...

Is there a good justification in fiction for a state military to invest in supersoldiers/generals/whatever versus stuff like infrastructure or weapons like supercarriers and drones?

While the cost effectiveness of super soldiers or super weapons is debatable and largely depends on the setting, I'd say the morale boost to your side for having them might make them worth it.

Sometimes you can't just flatten everything from orbit, meaning you need dudes on the ground. And sometimes you need better dudes on the ground.

>AI drones
Do you want to get Skynet'd?

>RC drones
Can be disrupted.

Well the Spartans in Halo were originally made for more spec ops type stuff like assassinating separatist leaders and terrorists which were a major problem for humanity before the covenant showed up.

Supercarriers can't hold ground, and drones suffer from their own problems.

Maybe the only major breakthroughs in technological developments different to our world are those that don't have applications to robots or supercarriers.

Like pharmaceutical and genetic engineering developments.

All fields of science and engineering don't grow symmetrically

But we already make supersoldiers, OP. Training and equipment for special forces is way more expensive than other infantry.

Sometimes the mission requires a small team and in that case you want the best of the fucking best to compensate.

>Biopunk
>Common EMP/hacking technology
>Infiltration
>Roaming Pirate nation
>Rule of cool
>Not wanting to destroy everything belonging to your foe
>Inspires the troops
>Solving population/unemployment issues
>Boarding parties
>Hate sieges
>Not sci-fi

Someone's lobbyist won.

Some congresscritter thinks it sounds cool.

Seriously, either or both of those justifications are all you need to justify any outlandish military project.

Some private organization decided they wanted the most high-tech paramilitary group in the world.

We need something capable of fighting everywhere
But in all serious ness all we need to do is wait for NASA to make more super materials

This. Plus if you found a cost effective way of mass producing them (as is what happens as technology advances), they could become your standard soldier.

Special Forces.

Yes, when you're limited in the quantity of units you can transport, support, supply, and insert for a mission you want them to be as of high a quality as possible.

That seems like it'd only come about if either of the two options I mentioned were true. What kind of returns are you expecting on a high-tech paramilitary unit that you're not leading out to an existing military?

>0062
That depends entirely upon how much investment we're talking about here. If you're talking about some kind of super-serum or suit of armor that can be used en mass to improve an entire army's combat ability (a la Starcraft Marines/Captain America), then odds are it's worth the cost. Now, if you're talking about having to literally RAISE super-soldiers, give them special training AND give them fancy gear (a la Halo/40k), then the value proposition gets a little dicey.

Internal security? Maybe they are secretly planning to overthrow the government? Maybe they are planning on profiting by third partying a war?

Who even says they have to be making any kinds of returns on it, maybe the leader/owner of the private organization just wants bragging rights and is too rich for his own good?

You need supersoliders exactly BECAUSE supercarriers and drones are a thing.

Lets break it down.With supercarriers and drones, you can blow up pretty much any target you want from a distance. Assuming this is a scifi setting like your OP pic, orbital superiority makes that even easier and harder to defend against.


But what long range firepower can't do is capture objectives, hold ground, or extract valuable materials/people. All shit that is important in war. For that, you need boots on the ground.

But here lies the problem: any large military force on the ground is, itself, open to being wiped off the map by supercarriers and drones.

The solution is supersoldiers: the smallest possible concentration of firepower to boot, presenting a smaller target that is more quickly moved and easier to hide, while still being able to accomplish the same objectives as a larger traditional army. With such a small group, in many cases you can even use your enemies own resources as a shield. They are much less likely to missile your team to death if they don't know where you are until you are already in their cities/military base.

Supersoldiers provide the enemy the least opportunity to use their own supercarriers and drones to stop you. If they are crazy enough to bomb themselves, your guys still die. But there is only so much you can do about that.

I can't see foot soldiers ever becoming totally obsolete.. And with that given, the only obstacle to super soldiers is for super serum and cybernetic implants to become cost effective.

Weapons are only as good as the man who operates them. If you can improve the overall quality of your personnel, why wouldn't you?

Due to logistical constraints, a supersoldier could be the most viable option. Think about it, if you can only pack so many people in a carrier, and it takes enough time/effort/money to transport them that mass attacks aren't feasible, you'd want to have the best end product you can have.
>Example scenario:
Attacking Alpha Centuari because reasons
>Sublight drives, at say... .25C
Unless cryogenics become usable, your troops on the other end will either have to be children at launch (ethical issue to most), or old as fuck when they get there (combat effectiveness of old guys... Less than stellar)
>Therefore, you need some way to get your dudes there, ethically and not be old fucks (Granted, by military standards, 28 is old) when they get there.
>Make your dudes live longer, or just retain their combat effectiveness longer
Expenses:
>Spacecraft are fucking expensive, so you'll want to get the most out of them that you can
>Training and conditioning only counts for so much, but a more efficient metabolism, less need for sleep, more muscle mass (and denser muscle too), better respiratory system and cardiovascular system? That'll make your already well trained soldier a whole hell of a lot harder to kill.
>Therefore, supersoldiers could be a cost effective and logistically simpler way to fight interstellar wars.

I don't know, if it takes 30ish years just to deploy soldiers from point A to point B, wouldn't the war have probably been decided by the time they get there? I mean, that's at least 4-5 presidents' worth of time.

Same argument on why we spend money training SEALs when we could just spend it on aircraft carriers.

Different purpose, different requirements and costs.

In the far far future, maybe super humans are necessary to compete against enemies that are extremely difficult to keep up with. In Halo, that would be the elites, in 40k even space marines would be pressed to keep up with a normal ork without his armour.

Although honestly if you can breed super soldiers we should be at a society that can manufacture super robot soldiers also.

Because in almost every situation, supersoldiers are force multipliers. Normal marines fight harder when the Chief is around, normal guardsmen fight harder when Space Marines are around.

Not ever situation can be fixed with a nuke from orbit.

"It is said that a Vanguard Veteran, armed with only his fists and his wits, could storm an entire armoured bunker alone and emerge victorious, and when armed with the chainsword and bolt pistol of his grisly trade, could defeat ten times that number."

Society has progressed to a point where war and fighting are extremely unappealing choices for most human beings or we have become so specialized in non military roles that it becomes necessary to designate a small % of humanity to be soldiers and if youre doing so, they might as well be super soldiers.

We might have far fewer soldiers but they're better trained, better bred and better conditioned for this purposes.

You might run into a problem where in a total war scenario, you couldnt exactly easily scale up your army and you couldnt afford many defeats in the short term.

That's the thing, it's 30ish years, one way or the other for both sides. Wars could drag on for far longer than now, simply because it would take that long for an attack to actually get to the target. It's the same way where a mid-range firefight can drag on for potential hours, but breaching and clearing a house takes minutes at the very most and is typically decided in the first few seconds as the fatal front (area right behind the door) is cleared. It all depends on how easy it is to get rounds on target, and who can out maneuver who. Same concept applies here, if two countries that are sharing a border go to war, it's fairly simple (relatively) to get troops from Point A to Point B, whereas pulling off an island hopping campaign like the US in the Pacific Theater during WWII, is a much more logistically challenging fight, given the far greater number of considerations just to get your troops to the target, before they start fighting. And if you can't deploy numbers of troops like Operation Overlord, you need to make sure that the troops that do get to the fight, can do the most damage they can, because there are a whole hell of a lot less of them before they start taking casualties.

Supersoldiers are tailored not for superior strength, endurance, and combat skill, but superior reflexes and multitasking abilities. Each super soldier is a one-man squadron of combat drones, which they control from the relative safety of the sturdiest powered combat armor their army can equip them with.