The Doctrinal Similarities of the UNSC and GAR

 Recently I had a very fun conversation with some friends about Halo's UNSC on a doctrinal level, mostly discussing how annoying its ground vehicles were and any sensible lore reasons I could come up with explaining why they were missing certain important aspects of what we consider essential parts of a modern conventional force.

The discussion was done more or less in a good-faith fashion (not just saying "because Bungie at the time knew nothing about guns or modern combat doctrine in even a disconnected educational sense," and leaving it at that) and it eventually moved on to encompass the Clone Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) from Star Wars and how remarkably doctrinally similar they are.

It would help to explain what I mean by "doctrinally similar," a little bit before diving into some of the nitty-gritty, so in brief: both the UNSC and GAR are air-assault/air-cavalry with a reliance on both special forces and aerospace superiority. Because of a relative lack of static defenses and some relatively poor-quality combined-arms terrestrial vehicles, losing either of these edges often results in disaster.

A couple of caveats before I continue: when it comes to both forces I'm mostly talking about what we see in their mainline series. For Halo, that means I mostly care about what we see in the FPS games and some novels; I know Halo Wars is a thing and I don't have a lot of time in it, but what I do remember still supports my point in the main. For Star Wars, I mostly care about the films, mainline TV series like the seven-season Clone Wars, and some novels.

The UNSC and GAR both seem to be at their best when we see them on the attack. We often see Clones fighting to great success in scenes and sequences where they're assaulting planets or objectives. The UNSC also performs well when they're allowed to focus on a target and take the initiative, but it seems less clear in their lore because we so often see the Covenant victorious in space...when you have the capability and willingness to drop super-nuke-tier ordinance on your opponent's planets, how well they fight in the mud doesn't mean so much.

Looking at the gear and doctrine of both forces, this makes some sense. Both factions have really excellent air assets: the GAR has a wealth of high-quality starfighters including the ARC-170, Headhunter, Torrent, and V-Wing, and universal carry/close-air support (CAS) in the LAAT series. The UNSC operates with similar high-tier air in the form of Longswords, dedicated CAS like Hornets and Wasps, and two different forms of drop/support: the Hind-like Pelicans and the Cayuse-like Falcons.

Space Hind: no one does it better!

Damn near every single design I've listed is excellent at doing its job and can sometimes do other stuff with distinction, and even the lesser examples like the Torrent fighter were respectable mid-tier assets that were pushed out quickly to fill in until better designs arrived; holding the line exactly as needed.

Both forces also benefit from warships acting in support. This makes perfect sense, as in both cases a starship is logistical support and a staging area with high-quality medical and CAS on-demand. Imagine fighting any conflict with a friendly battleship or aircraft carrier right there off the coast. Except you don't need a coast, they can be anywhere. No wonder these forces specialize around the idea, it's too good not to build around.

When this is just nearby, who needs a FOB? Art by Ukitakumuki

The level of high-quality aerospace support is super important because nowadays air superiority is easily one of the greatest keys to modern conflict. The Great War gave us a taste of it IRL, and before that war was even over "aeroplanes," had cemented themselves as a golden-egg-tier priority. WW2 comes around and you see aircraft carriers completely supplanting battleships as the kings of the sea and bombing campaigns deciding the strategies of entire nations. And air assets only ever become more important from then on! The entirety of America's war in Kuwait was decided by a month-long air campaign that turned the ground war to follow into an absolute cakewalk. We see it reaching a natural end-point in SF like Halo, with how often the UNSC and Spartans win battles on the ground only to abandon the planet because the UNSC Navy fails to establish orbital superiority.

The golden triangle of combined-arms terrestrial warfare is typical considered infantry-armor-artillery. But what would happen in SF properties is that artillery is supplanted by air-support. This is actually pretty normal, and something we see in IRL history starting from WW2 onward; for example mostly horse- and some truck-hauled artillery couldn't keep up with the blitzkrieg in 1939 so dive-bombers were used on targets that a forward commander would have typically asked artillery to hit. The usage of bombs over artillery shells only grew from there, and nowadays we have the ability to drop computer- and laser-guided bombs capable of landing on a coat-rack; if you have established air-superiority then classic big guns are almost obsolete.

This isn't to say that everything is working perfectly for the UNSC and GAR. As I alluded to before, both forces suffer from a lack of high-quality ground vehicles; both main-battle and indirect/support. The AT-TE walker and Scorpion tank are both really cool, but they're not actually especially effective, especially when you take aspects of their design and compare them to modern vehicles. The Scorpion, for example, is cool in that it's one-man crewable and you kick a ton of ass in the games...but the entirely automated (read: vulnerable to malfunction) cannon is set up in such a way that it's a massive shell-trap and the tank is not at all good at fighting hull-down on hills (the 343 redesign fixes this latter point a little bit); the Warthog is similarly neat but at the end of the day it's just a fuckin' jeep technical with an autocannon/missile pod/anti-armor gun on the back. The AT-TE is cool in that it's a massive tank that can carry a couple squads of men and deploy them...but it's remarkably slow, is more vulnerable than regular tanks to being "tracked," by shooting out a couple of its legs, and its main gunner and driver are both very vulnerable to return fire; the GAR TX-130 Saber hover-tank is similarly neat, but similarly vulnerable to being stopped in its lightly-armored "tracks," and its crew incapacitated.

Pictured: incredible levels of firepower, but lots of vulnerable points and moves at the pace of a nice jog

So none of these main-battle tanks or light fighting vehicles are much good...aside from the very, very important detail that all the above can be air-dropped and air-lifted by each faction's respective drop-ship. Continuing the very important trend, the UNSC and GAR rely incredibly on their high-end air assets to make up for deficiencies elsewhere.

There's also a general lack of important terrestrial vehicles. We don't really see artillery or anti-air artillery at all from either side. As discussed with the former this isn't as important because of a wealth of CAS, and if your doctrine assumes you'll establish air-superiority then generally speaking anti-air vehicles aren't that important either. The most you'll see is characters aiming hull-mounted machineguns (or automatic blasters) up in self-defense, or MANPAD (man portable air defense) action, especially in games like Halo 2 and Reach which established the SPNKR "rocket launcher," actually fires missiles that could lock-on to designated targets.

There are also no infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) or armored personnel carriers (APCs) for similar reasons. UNSC Marines and GAR Clones serve as what's called "light infantry," meaning they have a reduced vehicle footprint (read: they carry most of their shit on their backs) compared to heavy infantry who fight with attached armored carriers. In modern parlance at least, air-assault/air-cav fall under the umbrella of light infantry, and the UNSC/GAR are no exception. Pelicans/Falcons and LAAT "larties," are doing most of the work here, dropping off squads and platoons on an objective, remaining on-station for CAS duty, and picking up/relocating their attached fighters to attack the next objective. The doctrine has an emphasis on high-speed assaults and surprise attacks, and we see in their various media that these boys prefer blind-siding and sucker-punching their foes where possible.

I also alluded earlier to special forces. Between Spartans (IIs and IIIs, and later even more numerous IVs!), ODSTs, Republic Commandos, ARC troopers, and Jedi, there is a wealth of exceptional individuals one can rely on for important objectives. This is incredibly valuable, because air-cav actions are usually very savage and effective but also remarkably dangerous. High casualties are unfortunately expected in such a high-risk doctrine, and efficient special forces capable of focusing on the hardest targets--or supporting the main thrusts in valuable ways like striking flanks or disabling defenses and eliminating enemy officers at key moments--are incredible force-multipliers. Especially when those special forces are wearing power armor and carrying truly wild amounts of firepower.

Pictured: so many player-characters! The much better looking Noble Team is courtesy of the Reach Mark V Edition mod

Now that we've put all the pieces together, let's do a bit of an overview on an idealized UNSC or GAR operation:

After space-warships, a heavy aerospace fighter presence, and special forces landed ahead of time (or at the critical moment of assault) soften up an enemy presence on-planet and establish enough superiority, air-assault infantry and supporting armor can be landed in relative safety. What follows is a series of rapid-fire hammer-blow deployments--and, at need, redeployments--of light infantry and air-transportable main-battle and light armor supported by the gunships that brought them on-site. At all stages of battle special forces are assaulting high-priority objectives considered too dangerous to attack en masse or supporting the main attack by carving into enemies from vulnerable flanks.

The idealized UNSC/GAR assault is a well-oiled machine but unfortunately vulnerable to kinks and snags. Things go really bad for these guys when combat turns into a slow grind. Enemy put up just a little bit too much resistance for a rapid assault to work, or they were better prepared than expected and the air-cav takes heavy drop-ship casualties coming in? An operation can grind to a halt and it's often up to aerospace and spec-ops to save the day...if it can be saved at all. At the same time, if the special forces fail an important objective or a commander tries to force an assault where aerospace superiority hasn't been properly established then it doesn't matter how willing the light infantry are to slug it out; things go to shit. Combined-arms operations are delicate even in the modern era, and specialized forces like air-assault/air-cav can suffer heavily when forced to fight against their idealized scenario.

Now that we've gone over the doctrines--ups and downs included--of the UNSC and GAR, I feel like digging a bit into the past and looking into why the air-cav model is so popular with science fiction army dude portrayals.

It's entirely possible to go in-depth about how beneficial and natural it is to build around air-cav when you're operating out of a starship, and yeah that's cool and true. Hell, I've already done it above. But I feel like the answer is a bit more meta than "well, it's a fairly sensible way to do things." I think it's got a lot more to do with the grand-daddy of modern sci-fi army dudes: the Colonial Marines. ALIENS is a hell of a film. James Cameron really blew it out of the water with that one. And part of the film's success had a lot to do with the space-Vietnam charm of its Colonial Marine protagonists.

"Yeah! I am the ultimate badass!"

The USCM establishing scene with the characters waking up from cryo, spending time jawing off and endearing themselves to the audience, and prepping for the operation on LV-426 is well-known across the SF community as having been the last scenes filmed in the making of the movie because by then everyone was good and friendly with each other IRL and more than capable of doing the amount of ad-libbing the sequence required. The prep and mission proper have an incredible tone and attention to detail, and no matter how much you know it's an inherently anti-war (and especially anti-corporate-war) film inspired by the experiences of Vietnam War veterans you can't help but feel like one of the guys and be even just a little gung-ho by the time the marines have landed and things start going to shit.

I mean just look at the sheer style on display here! The outrigger rocket pods look dumb when they fold out, but the mantis-like silhouette the Cheyenne has after is fucking menacing

What's more, the USCM established a ton of the tropes that we come to expect from our SF space-armies. They're carried to the operation in a warship that stays on-station to support where possible (ignoring that in this film the ship was entirely automated and thus didn't actually help much), deploy via badass drop-ship sequence in something that absolutely looks like a Hind fucked a hover-craft, operating a support vehicle that is really cool looking but arguably not too efficient (notable that the USCM's M577 APC is arguably the most effective ground vehicle compared to the Scorpion and AT-TE), and bedecked in really dope plastic prop armor with a ton of customization options and an absolutely iconic infantry weapon (the Pulse Rifle is up there with the Halo Battle Rifle for "most iconic SF small-arms of all time," and Star Wars blasters are immediately recognizable for what they are in damn near any circumstance).

"You could fry half a city with this puppy."

Everything that we know and think of when we picture "troopers in space," was put on the big screen and popularized in a big way by the USCM long before the UNSC and GAR got around to it. Ours boys well and truly got some today, and I think it's safe to say that visually, vibes-wise, and doctrinally the latter two have done an excellent job of living up to the expectations set up by the "ultimate badasses," James Cameron blessed our screens with.