I'm trying to write a military SF novel and I want to create an in-universe version of the Dorsai as adversaries:

For Carl Grant the journey to Freya had been the latest link of a long chain of personal humiliations.

Although he had graduated with honors from the Federation Military Academy at West Point the first combat operation he took part in as a newly commissioned officer had been an absolute disaster. A battalion from the 101st Air Assault Division attempted to carry out a raid in the Central African Quarantine Zone and his own platoon had been cut to ribbons by the Jihadists. Although he survived several serious wounds His right knee joint had to be replaced and remainder of the military career was restricted to staff and training positions.

As a Lieutenant Colonel in a teaching post at West Point he would give some thought to the problems of projecting surface combat power across interstellar space. Of specific concern was overcoming the the limitations of current technology for moving combat personnel across interstellar space. And Grant would eventually write a book detailing his new doctrine under the title of Future Forces: Organization and Doctrine.

But some of the reviews, especially by other professional soldiers, were scathing.

Colonel Arvid Simmons of the Quarantine Force wrote in his review:

Lieutenant Colonel Grant has attempted to adapt his Future Force to the limitations of the existing transportation infrastructure. He has tried to minimize the number of combatants in a transported unit and at the same time to maximize their impact on the battlefield. While this appears to be desirable on the face of it--in the actual history of warfare the practice has a negative impact.

One example of this error was the design and adoption of the Sterling heavy bomber. The wing span was limited to 100 feet to allow it to use the existing facilities of the Royal Air Force. But the overall effect the design flaw was to limit the range, payload , and survivability of the aircraft in operations against the Third Reich.

Another example is the Argentine Medium Tank (Tanque Argentino Mediano or TAM) The TAM was designed to mount what was then the standard tank gun for the NATO alliance, and every effort was made to reduce the overall mass of the vehicle to allow it to use the existing civil transportation infrastructure. While the TAM would have been effective against any possible South American opponent it was also helpless against any contemporary NATO standard tank such as the M60A1, Leopard I, and the Chieftain.

When the United Kingdom was bombed with nuclear weapons during The Final War the Argentinians made their second attempt to take the Falkland Islands. As the Senior member of the Western Alliance the United States under the direction of President March immediately erased Buenos Aries and every military airfield within operational range of the Falklands. The USMC along with the Paras and the Royal Marines would land on the islands while the U.S. Army and other surviving British units would land on the Argentine mainland. Pitted against the current generation of Abrams and Challenger tanks each remaining TAM was quickly reduced to scrap metal.

What Grant has also failed to understand is that citizens of the colonies are very well armed and the inhabitants of the more remote or primitive worlds being personally armed and skilled to the standards of the regular forces on Earth. And even if his future force were able to avoid contact with a regular formation it would still drown in a sea of armed citizens and ultimately suffer the fate of the infamous three letter Federal agencies during The Reformation.

If Grant were to actually lead his future force into action on any colony world he would quickly join the parade of arrogant fools such as Custer and Elphinstone who led their own forces to complete destruction.

The Future Force concept is an absolute dead end.

From: Leslie Bates (via tml list) <nobody@simplelists.com>
To: Tml <tml@simplelists.com>
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2015 2:47 PM
Subject: [TML] Question

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Is there a site that describes the organization of fictional ground force Dorsai units?

les

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