A question about military manpower vs population

[El_Phil]

It makes sense.

But I think it's wrong. You will never get then anti-technology evolving at the same rate as the technology. It's not until you know what your fighting against that you can develop an effective counter-measure. So the first use of a clever technology will normally have the edge as no-one has developed the appropriate counter-measures.

So very rarely have a force with a clever weapon and only that clever weapon met a force with the exact clever anti-weapon. In fact the counter-tech tends to be cleverer than the tech it was designed to counter. Take the tank, originally designed just to cross no-mans land and beat machine gun emplacements. Look what it became.

[Hunpecked]

With regard to the Icaran military only:

Yes, by World War II standards it does seem extremely low in manpower relative to the population, although as El_Phil pointed out there are a lot more people "behind the scenes" supporting the military: R&D, construction, merchant navy (moving resources back and forth), supply, maintenance, etc. that SEIV doesn't explicitly include.

Note that even this minuscule military is probably an overestimate. Given likely advances in 25th Century automation, a crew of 6,000+ for a super dreadnought seems wildly excessive. Personally I don't have a clue what the 25th Century will look like, but I'll bet it includes AI's with REAL "I" and highly advanced robots/droids of some sort, capable of far more than Star Wars-type comic relief.

On the bright side, having a small military means the Navy can recruit the best of the best of the best; probably the lowest swabbie on the ship is an Olympic-class athlete and chess grandmaster with a Ph.D. or three. You won't find this guy swabbing decks, either.

[Starhawk]

Well in regards to the Icaran Empire and AI to put it frankly they don't trust AIs and they believe in the "Supreme Dominance of Man" so basically trusting a machine over man is considered utter foolishness.
BTW they are more like 32nd century tech as they never had the dark ages in their history

But again basically for them it's a matter of "God made man supreme among creation so we should not trust a computer to perform those jobs man should do himself." By our standards Icaran factories are also remarkably unautomated except where necessary, this serves the double purpose of making sure very few Icaran citizens ever have to fear homlesness as there is literally a job for almost everyone in their society.

Being that a SD is just over 2km long and has actual gunnery crews among other things I decided a crew of 6,000 is pretty reasonable.....especially when compared to how cramped I thought an ST star destroyer must be what with it's crew of 40,000 odd people crammed into 1km.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

SH, no offence, but for some reason, when I read your last post the Icarans inevitably remind me of Nazi Germany.....

[El_Phil]

They have been edging more and more that way over the course of the story, maybe it was intended but lots of little things have come together and the parallels are becoming striking.

[Starhawk]

Well the belief that "God made man supreme among creation." was actually far against what Nazi Germany beleived as they were atheistic for the "official" part of their politics.

In truth the Icarans are sort of a mix of our best and worst parts of humanity, worst in that they are some of the most fanatical and specist bastards you'll ever meet, best in that they treat other humans with absolute and unswerving equality, every citizen whether noble or common born is equal in the eyes of the law.

And they have very little crime because of how strict and harsh their legal system is towards criminals.

[Hunpecked]

Well in regards to the Icaran Empire and AI to put it frankly they don't trust AIs and they believe in the "Supreme Dominance of Man" so basically trusting a machine over man is considered utter foolishness.

Fair enough. Luckily the Icarans haven't run up against the evil Wintel Empire.

By our standards Icaran factories are also remarkably unautomated except where necessary, this serves the double purpose of making sure very few Icaran citizens ever have to fear homlesness as there is literally a job for almost everyone in their society.

Having a human do a machine's job isn't necessarily the best way to ensure full employment, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.

[LordAxel]

The only thing is in star track universe i believe you are saying they hae too many ships with a number more aroud 10,000. Also starfleet is considered the military of the federation. Also i believe the dominion war casualty projections were for the entire alpha quadrant, which would include federation, klingon, cardassian, breen, romulan and all the other losses which could get you somewhere up there bt still not the 900 billion.(i also thought it may have been 90 billion in the episode or something similar

[AGoetz]

With regards to your numbers for the Honorverse, I don't have the books with me at the moment, but it is actually spelled out in one of them - the limitation isn't in getting the bodies, it's getting the bodies without wiping out the tax payers. No tax payers, no income. No income, no military budget. No military budget, no fleets of superdreadnoughts to go boom.

[Hunpecked]

No tax payers, no income. No income, no military budget. No military budget, no fleets of superdreadnoughts to go boom.

That was basically the theme of historian Paul Kennedy's book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers". In the beginning of the book he showed how 16th Century Spain, probably the wealthiest European nation at the time, eventually bankrupted itself through economic mismanagement and overly lavish military expenditures relative to its financial resources (i.e. taxpayers). In more recent times, the attempt to maintain an oversize military was a factor in the economic collapse and eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union.

With regard to Starhawk's story, the fact that the fictional Icarans can fight successfully with a relatively minuscule military is probably a major factor in their ability to sustain the war decade after decade.