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What sci-fi army do you think is the most underequipped, stupid, incompetently led, etc.
My own ideas;

Mobile Infantry from the Starship Troopers film. Nuclear hand grenades my ass.

The aliens from signs. "Yeah, lets invade a planet which is 70% acid to us, rains this acid and wich has inhabitants that could kill us by spitting on us. AND, just to make it interesting, lets bring no guns, armour or even clothes. Thats a good idea!"

Any other ideas?

Gotta agree with those two calls. After the great depiction of the military in the Starship Troopers book, I had real high hopes for the movie. And then... yuk.

Signs aliens are so idiotic you can barely know where to start.

I'd also go with Space : Above and Beyond. Realistic in some ways, but space fighter pilots used as ground infantry? Puh-leeze.

I know she's special and all, but if River Tam can defeat dozens of Alliance military on Ariel, that may be saying something.

Albeit, Firefly is such a different approach to sci-fi that it may not really count as "advanced"

Redshirts, while not as bad as Signs aliens by any stretch are pretty bad as ground troops. No machine guns, no armour, no artillery. Without them, they're restricted to starship security only, with no chance of even taking on a modern army.

Good point, in the siege of AR whatever a couple of modern day soldiers with an SAW could have held the Jem'hadar of better.

In that line of reasoning I also submit;
Klingons, the only sci-fi race I know of that drops guns in favour of a hideously designed sword.

Jem'hadar, if only for their horrendous tactics.

Rochey wrote:Jem'hadar, if only for their horrendous tactics.

And their mine design at AR558 - the idea of a minefield is to block an advance, not to make operations slightly difficult, but the Feds were able to continue to occupy the base despite it being in the middle of a dense Jem'hadar minefield.

Argh, don't remind me of those stupid mines! Who the hell thought those were a good design?

I was never really impressed with the Marines in Aliens. For a bunch of hard-ass soldiers, they're rather whiny cowards. "Game over, man!"

To be fair, they performed quite well under the circumstances. And nearly all of the whining was from Hudson anyway.

we are forgetting the Clone Troopers from the Star Wars universe. They are Storm Troopers. 'nuff said.

The clone troops from Revenge of the Sith performed quite competently. And stormtroopers only suffered from constantly fighting people with character shields bigger than the Death Star.

The clones had combined arms forces (air support, artillery, armour), NBC gear as part of their standard equipment, weapons that could blow fist sized holes in a concrete wall, and beat a droid army that outnumbered them 5 to 1 at Geonosis. They are hardly an example of poor soldiers.

As for Stormtroopers, their alledgedly poor marksmanship was demonstrated in situations where they were specifically ordered to miss their targets, to give the impression of resistance while actually ensuring they escaped. Against the Ewoks they were winning, despite being outnumbered and with their opponents having home-advantage, a pre-prepared battlefield and good natural camoflage, they were winning until one of their own vehicles was captured and turned against them.

Thanks, I was going to say all that but couldn't be bothered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtrooper_effect

http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

Oh my god, they were hillarious!

I quite liked this as well!