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111-408: Super soldiers are common in military science fiction literature, films, and video games. Examples include Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman . Super soldiers are also prevalent in the science fiction universe of Warhammer 40,000 and its prequel The Horus Heresy . Critic Mike Ryder has argued that the super soldiers depicted in these worlds serve as

222-578: A Strategic Defense Initiative in which satellites would be set up to shoot at nuclear missiles. The two authors were Larry Niven , the author of the Ringworld series, and Jerry Pournelle . Along with like-minded colleagues, they formed a committee to lobby the United States on space issues and influence Reagan's space policies. Pournelle advocated a "robust, technocratic military state". In addition to Pournelle's science fiction writing, he wrote

333-510: A major intimidation factor for power projection in both diplomacy and military strategy . A global arms race in battleship construction began in Europe in the 1890s and culminated at the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the outcome of which significantly influenced the design of HMS Dreadnought . The launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced a new naval arms race. Three major fleet actions between steel battleships took place:

444-435: A war comedy of the same name (2009) directed by Grant Heslov , starring George Clooney . The following are the known fictional super soldiers: Military science fiction Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction and military fiction that depicts the use of science fiction technology, including spaceships and weapons , for military purposes and usually principal characters who are members of

555-556: A "paper for the Air Force on stability's role in national security". President Reagan read the space advice that Niven, Pournelle, and their colleagues prepared, which influenced Reagan's 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative . "Niven and Pournelle saw an opportunity to shape the great void in their political image, and Reagan viewed space as yet another tool to defend America against the communist superpower...". Science fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov criticized

666-513: A British victory. The German strategy was therefore to try to provoke an engagement on their terms: either to induce a part of the Grand Fleet to enter battle alone, or to fight a pitched battle near the German coastline, where friendly minefields, torpedo-boats and submarines could be used to even the odds. This did not happen, however, due in large part to the necessity to keep submarines for

777-609: A captain, and are armed with semi-automatic rifles . Eventually, as science fiction became an established and separate genre, military science fiction established itself as a subgenre. One such work is H. Beam Piper 's Uller Uprising (1952) (based on the events of the Sepoy Mutiny ). Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (1959) is another work of military science fiction, along with Gordon Dickson 's Dorsai (1960), and these are thought to be mostly responsible for popularizing this subgenre's popularity among young readers of

888-480: A form of faster-than-light travel in order to facilitate the enormous scale of interstellar war . The long spans of time (e.g., decades or centuries) required for human soldiers to travel interstellar distances, even at relativistic speeds, and the consequences for the characters, is a dilemma examined by authors such as Joe Haldeman and Alastair Reynolds . Other writers such as Larry Niven have created plausible interplanetary conflict based on human colonization of

999-527: A future mercenary tank regiment . Drake's series which "helped initiate a fashion for sf about mercenaries", including The Warrior's Apprentice (1986) by Lois McMaster Bujold . A twist was introduced in Harry Turtledove 's Worldwar series depicting an alternate history in which WWII is disrupted by extraterrestrials invading Earth in 1942, forcing humans to stop fighting each other and unite against this common enemy. Turtledove depicts

1110-649: A large armored warship of 17,000 tons, armed solely with a single calibre main battery (twelve 12-inch [305 mm] guns), carrying 300-millimetre (12 in) belt armor , and capable of 24 knots (44 km/h). The Russo-Japanese War provided operational experience to validate the "all-big-gun" concept. During the Battle of the Yellow Sea on August 10, 1904, Admiral Togo of the Imperial Japanese Navy commenced deliberate 12-inch gun fire at

1221-598: A large block superstructure nicknamed the "Queen Anne's castle", such as in Queen Elizabeth and Warspite , which would be used in the new conning towers of the King George V -class fast battleships . External bulges were added to improve both buoyancy to counteract weight increase and provide underwater protection against mines and torpedoes. The Japanese rebuilt all of their battleships, plus their battlecruisers, with distinctive " pagoda " structures, though

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1332-458: A law enforcement setting. Some examples include Richard Morgan 's Takashi Kovacs book such as Altered Carbon (2002) and Elizabeth Bear 's Jenny Casey books, such as Hammered (2004). Precursors for military science fiction can be found in "future war" stories dating back at least to George Chesney 's story " The Battle of Dorking " (1871). Written just after the Prussian victory in

1443-437: A military organization, usually during a war; occurring sometimes in outer space or on a different planet or planets. It exists in a range of media, including literature, comics, film, television and video games. A detailed description of the conflict, belligerents (which may involve extraterrestrials), tactics and weapons used for it, and the role of a military service and the individual members of that military organization form

1554-530: A military science fiction story can speculate about war in the future, in space, or involving space travel, or the effects of such a war on humans; at the other, a story with a fictional military plot may have relatively superficial science fictional elements. The term "military space opera" may occasionally denote this latter style, as used for example by critic Sylvia Kelso when describing Lois McMaster Bujold 's Vorkosigan Saga . Examples that feature aspects of both military science fiction and space opera include

1665-591: A mine laid by a German U-boat in October 1914 and sank. The threat that German U-boats posed to British dreadnoughts was enough to cause the Royal Navy to change their strategy and tactics in the North Sea to reduce the risk of U-boat attack. Further near-misses from submarine attacks on battleships and casualties amongst cruisers led to growing concern in the Royal Navy about the vulnerability of battleships. As

1776-483: A mine laid by friendly forces, and sank with little loss of life. In May 1937, Jaime I was damaged by Nationalist air attacks and a grounding incident. The ship was forced to go back to port to be repaired. There she was again hit by several aerial bombs. It was then decided to tow the battleship to a more secure port, but during the transport she suffered an internal explosion that caused 300 deaths and her total loss. Several Italian and German capital ships participated in

1887-1147: A mirror to present-day issues around sovereignty, military ethics and the law. Marvel Comics , and by extension the Marvel Cinematic Universe , feature a wide array of heroes and villains whose powers are obtained through various competing attempts to create a super soldier, including Captain America , Hulk , the German Red Skull , and the Russian Red Guardian . Fictional super soldiers are usually heavily augmented , either through surgical means , eugenics , genetic engineering , cybernetic implants, drugs , brainwashing , traumatic events, an extreme training regimen or other scientific and pseudoscientific means. A few stories also use paranormal methods or technology, and science of extraterrestrial origin. The fictional masterminds of such programs are depicted often as mad scientists or stern military personnel depending on

1998-571: A mixed-caliber secondary battery amidships around the superstructure. An early design with superficial similarity to the pre-dreadnought is the British Devastation class of 1871. The slow-firing 12-inch (305 mm) main guns were the principal weapons for battleship-to-battleship combat. The intermediate and secondary batteries had two roles. Against major ships, it was thought a 'hail of fire' from quick-firing secondary weapons could distract enemy gun crews by inflicting damage to

2109-450: A number of 12-pound (3-inch, 76 mm) quick-firing guns for use against destroyers and torpedo-boats. Her armor was heavy enough for her to go head-to-head with any other ship in a gun battle, and conceivably win. Dreadnought was to have been followed by three Invincible -class battlecruisers, their construction delayed to allow lessons from Dreadnought to be used in their design. While Fisher may have intended Dreadnought to be

2220-484: A result of pressure from Admiral Sir John ("Jackie") Fisher , HMS Dreadnought rendered existing battleships obsolete. Combining an "all-big-gun" armament of ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns with unprecedented speed (from steam turbine engines) and protection, she prompted navies worldwide to re-evaluate their battleship building programs. While the Japanese had laid down an all-big-gun battleship, Satsuma , in 1904 and

2331-421: A revolution in the field of battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought , were referred to as " dreadnoughts ", though the term eventually became obsolete as dreadnoughts became the only type of battleship in common use. Battleships dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and were a symbol of naval dominance and national might, and for decades were

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2442-536: A similar design in the Bellerophon and St. Vincent classes . An American design, South Carolina , authorized in 1905 and laid down in December 1906, was another of the first dreadnoughts, but she and her sister, Michigan , were not launched until 1908. Both used triple-expansion engines and had a superior layout of the main battery, dispensing with Dreadnought ' s wing turrets. They thus retained

2553-465: A space colony requiring defense against attack out on the frontier. Gene Roddenberry described Star Trek: The Original Series as a Space Western (or more poetically, as " Wagon Train to the stars"). The TV series Firefly and its cinematic follow-up Serenity literalized the Western aspects of the space Western subgenre as popularized by Star Trek : it features frontier towns, horses, and

2664-452: A subject were collected and marketed as such. The series of anthologies with the group title There Will be War edited by Pournelle and John F. Carr (nine volumes from 1983 through 1990) helped keep the category active, and encouraged new writers to add to it. David Drake wrote stories about future mercenaries, including the Hammer's Slammers series (1979), which follows the career of

2775-461: A visual style evocative of classic John Ford Westerns. Worlds that have been terraformed may be depicted as presenting similar challenges as that of a frontier settlement in a classic Western. Six-shooters and horses may be replaced by ray guns and rockets. A "thematic subdivision" of MSF are works where "ex-military protagonists [are] drawing on their battle experience for tough and violent operations in (more or less) civilian life", typically in

2886-633: A war scare with France and the build-up of the Russian navy gave added impetus to naval construction, and the British Naval Defence Act of 1889 laid down a new fleet including eight new battleships. The principle that Britain's navy should be more powerful than the two next most powerful fleets combined was established. This policy was designed to deter France and Russia from building more battleships, but both nations nevertheless expanded their fleets with more and better pre-dreadnoughts in

2997-489: Is not necessarily set in outer space or on multiple worlds, as in space opera and the space Western . Both military science fiction and the space Western may consider an interstellar war and oppression by a galactic empire as the story's backdrop. They may focus on a lone gunslinger , soldier, or veteran in a futuristic space frontier setting . Western elements and conventions in military science fiction may be explicit, such as cowboys in outer space, or more subtle, as in

3108-561: Is science fiction which is written about a military situation with a fundamental understanding of how military lifestyles and characters differ from civilian lifestyles and characters. It is science fiction which attempts to realistically portray the military within a science-fiction context. It is not 'bug shoots'. It is about human beings, and members of other species, caught up in warfare and carnage. It isn't an excuse for simplistic solutions to problems. In 1980 and 1981, two science fiction authors inspired President Ronald Reagan 's vision for

3219-448: Is typically described from the point of view of a soldier in a science fictional setting of or near battle . Typically, the technology is more advanced than that of the present and described in detail. In some stories, however, technology is fairly static, and weapons that would be familiar to present-day soldiers are used, but other aspects of society have changed. Technology may not be emphasized in such stories as much as other aspects of

3330-646: The Battlestar Galactica franchise and Robert A. Heinlein 's 1959 novel Starship Troopers . A key distinction of military science fiction from space opera is that space operas focus more on adventurous stories and melodrama, while military science fiction focuses more on warfare and technical aspects. The principal characters in a space opera are also not military personnel, but civilians or paramilitary . Stories in both subgenres often concern an interstellar war in which humans fight themselves and/or nonhuman entities. Military science fiction, however,

3441-578: The Hiei received a more modern bridge tower that would influence the new Yamato class . Bulges were fitted, including steel tube arrays to improve both underwater and vertical protection along the waterline. The U.S. experimented with cage masts and later tripod masts , though after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor some of the most severely damaged ships (such as West Virginia and California ) were rebuilt with tower masts, for an appearance similar to their Iowa -class contemporaries. Radar, which

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3552-737: The King George V class . It was in the Mediterranean that navies remained most committed to battleship warfare. France intended to build six battleships of the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes , and the Italians four Littorio -class ships. Neither navy built significant aircraft carriers. The U.S. preferred to spend limited funds on aircraft carriers until the South Dakota class . Japan, also prioritising aircraft carriers, nevertheless began work on three mammoth Yamato s (although

3663-549: The Crimean War , six line-of-battle ships and two frigates of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853. Later in the war, French ironclad floating batteries used similar weapons against the defenses at the Battle of Kinburn . Nevertheless, wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to shells, as shown in

3774-885: The First Geneva Naval Conference (1927), the First London Naval Treaty (1930), the Second Geneva Naval Conference (1932), and finally the Second London Naval Treaty (1936), which all set limits on major warships. These treaties became effectively obsolete on September 1, 1939, at the beginning of World War II , but the ship classifications that had been agreed upon still apply. The treaty limitations meant that fewer new battleships were launched in 1919–1939 than in 1905–1914. The treaties also inhibited development by imposing upper limits on

3885-554: The Franco-Prussian War , it describes an invasion of Britain by a German-speaking country in which the Royal Navy is destroyed by a futuristic wonder-weapon ("fatal engines"). Other works of military science fiction followed, including H.G. Wells 's " The Land Ironclads ". It described tank-like "land ironclads ," 80-to-100-foot-long (24 to 30 m) armoured fighting vehicles that carry riflemen, engineers, and

3996-563: The Royal Navy was able to use her imposing battleship and battlecruiser fleet to impose a strict and successful naval blockade of Germany and kept Germany's smaller battleship fleet bottled up in the North Sea : only narrow channels led to the Atlantic Ocean and these were guarded by British forces. Both sides were aware that, because of the greater number of British dreadnoughts, a full fleet engagement would be likely to result in

4107-401: The Royal Navy , anxious to prevent France from gaining a technological lead. The superior armored frigate Warrior followed Gloire by only 14 months, and both nations embarked on a program of building new ironclads and converting existing screw ships of the line to armored frigates. Within two years, Italy, Austria, Spain and Russia had all ordered ironclad warships, and by the time of

4218-588: The aircraft carrier replacing the battleship as the leading capital ship during World War II, with the last battleship to be launched being HMS  Vanguard in 1944. Four battleships were retained by the United States Navy until the end of the Cold War for fire support purposes and were last used in combat during the Gulf War in 1991, and then struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in

4329-653: The asteroid belt and outer planets by means of technologies utilizing the laws of physics as currently understood. Several subsets of military science fiction share characteristics of the space opera subgenre, concentrating on large-scale space battles with futuristic weapons in an interstellar war . Many stories can be considered to be in one or both the military science fiction and space opera subgenres, such as The Sten Chronicles by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch , Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card , Honorverse by David Weber , Deathstalker by Simon R. Green , and Armor by John Steakley. At one extreme,

4440-499: The "unsinkable" German World War I battleship SMS  Ostfriesland and the American pre-dreadnought Alabama . Although Mitchell had required "war-time conditions", the ships sunk were obsolete, stationary, defenseless and had no damage control. The sinking of Ostfriesland was accomplished by violating an agreement that would have allowed Navy engineers to examine the effects of various munitions: Mitchell's airmen disregarded

4551-461: The 1866 Battle of Lissa , where the modern Austrian steam two-decker SMS  Kaiser ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an Italian ironclad and took 80 hits from Italian ironclads, many of which were shells, but including at least one 300-pound shot at point-blank range. Despite losing her bowsprit and her foremast, and being set on fire, she was ready for action again the very next day. The development of high-explosive shells made

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4662-451: The 1890s. In the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, the escalation in the building of battleships became an arms race between Britain and Germany . The German naval laws of 1890 and 1898 authorized a fleet of 38 battleships, a vital threat to the balance of naval power. Britain answered with further shipbuilding, but by the end of the pre-dreadnought era, British supremacy at sea had markedly weakened. In 1883,

4773-492: The 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. Both the Allied and Axis powers built battleships during World War II, though the increasing importance of the aircraft carrier meant that the battleship played a less important role than had been expected in that conflict. The value of the battleship has been questioned, even during their heyday. There were few of

4884-439: The 2000s. Many World War II-era American battleships survive today as museum ships . A ship of the line was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns and carronades , which came to prominence with the adoption of line of battle tactics in the early 17th century and the end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. From 1794, the alternative term 'line of battle ship'

4995-468: The 8-inch battery being completely unusable, and the inability to train the primary and intermediate armaments on different targets led to significant tactical limitations. Even though such innovative designs saved weight (a key reason for their inception), they proved too cumbersome in practice. In 1906, the British Royal Navy launched the revolutionary HMS  Dreadnought . Created as

5106-674: The Atlantic campaign. Submarines were the only vessels in the Imperial German Navy able to break out and raid British commerce in force, but even though they sank many merchant ships, they could not successfully counter-blockade the United Kingdom; the Royal Navy successfully adopted convoy tactics to combat Germany's submarine counter-blockade and eventually defeated it. This was in stark contrast to Britain's successful blockade of Germany. The first two years of war saw

5217-609: The British and French blockade. And in the Mediterranean , the most important use of battleships was in support of the amphibious assault on Gallipoli . In September 1914, the threat posed to surface ships by German U-boats was confirmed by successful attacks on British cruisers, including the sinking of three British armored cruisers by the German submarine SM  U-9 in less than an hour. The British Super-dreadnought HMS  Audacious soon followed suit as she struck

5328-586: The British fleet. Less than two months later, the Germans once again attempted to draw portions of the Grand Fleet into battle. The resulting Action of 19 August 1916 proved inconclusive. This reinforced German determination not to engage in a fleet to fleet battle. In the other naval theatres there were no decisive pitched battles. In the Black Sea , engagement between Russian and Ottoman battleships

5439-634: The Dardanelles Campaign and the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought SMS  Szent István by Italian motor torpedo boats in June 1918. In large fleet actions, however, destroyers and torpedo boats were usually unable to get close enough to the battleships to damage them. The only battleship sunk in a fleet action by either torpedo boats or destroyers was the obsolescent German pre-dreadnought SMS  Pommern . She

5550-513: The German Navy, and prevented Germany from building or possessing any capital ships . The inter-war period saw the battleship subjected to strict international limitations to prevent a costly arms race breaking out. While the victors were not limited by the Treaty of Versailles, many of the major naval powers were crippled after the war. Faced with the prospect of a naval arms race against

5661-538: The High Seas Fleet be disarmed and interned in a neutral port; largely because no neutral port could be found, the ships remained in British custody in Scapa Flow , Scotland. The Treaty of Versailles specified that the ships should be handed over to the British. Instead, most of them were scuttled by their German crews on June 21, 1919, just before the signature of the peace treaty. The treaty also limited

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5772-590: The Moray Firth. Whilst the escape of the German fleet from the superior British firepower at Jutland was effected by the German cruisers and destroyers successfully turning away the British battleships, the German attempt to rely on U-boat attacks on the British fleet failed. Torpedo boats did have some successes against battleships in World War I, as demonstrated by the sinking of the British pre-dreadnought HMS  Goliath by Muâvenet-i Millîye during

5883-589: The North Sea were battles including the Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank and German raids on the English coast, all of which were attempts by the Germans to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet in an attempt to defeat the Royal Navy in detail. On May 31, 1916, a further attempt to draw British ships into battle on German terms resulted in a clash of the battlefleets in the Battle of Jutland . The German fleet withdrew to port after two short encounters with

5994-550: The Republic, killed their officers, who apparently supported Franco's attempted coup, and joined the Republican Navy. Thus each side had one battleship; however, the Republican Navy generally lacked experienced officers. The Spanish battleships mainly restricted themselves to mutual blockades, convoy escort duties, and shore bombardment, rarely in direct fighting against other surface units. In April 1937, España ran into

6105-501: The Royal Navy's battleships and battlecruisers regularly "sweep" the North Sea making sure that no German ships could get in or out. Only a few German surface ships that were already at sea, such as the famous light cruiser SMS  Emden , were able to raid commerce. Even some of those that did manage to get out were hunted down by battlecruisers, as in the Battle of the Falklands , December 7, 1914. The results of sweeping actions in

6216-506: The Russian flagship Tzesarevich at 14,200 yards (13,000 meters). At the Battle of Tsushima on May 27, 1905, Russian Admiral Rozhestvensky's flagship fired the first 12-inch guns at the Japanese flagship Mikasa at 7,000 meters. It is often held that these engagements demonstrated the importance of the 12-inch (305 mm) gun over its smaller counterparts, though some historians take the view that secondary batteries were just as important as

6327-537: The Strategic Defense Initiative. After the 9/11 terrorism attacks, a group of sci-fi authors called Sigma, including Pournelle and Niven, advised the "Department of Homeland Security on technological strategies for defeating terrorist threats." In 2021, Worldcrunch reported that the French military has hired fiction writers to develop futuristic warfare scenarios, including situations that

6438-496: The U.S. Navy's nascent aircraft carrier program. The Royal Navy , United States Navy , and Imperial Japanese Navy extensively upgraded and modernized their World War I–era battleships during the 1930s. Among the new features were an increased tower height and stability for the optical rangefinder equipment (for gunnery control), more armor (especially around turrets) to protect against plunging fire and aerial bombing, and additional anti-aircraft weapons. Some British ships received

6549-516: The United Kingdom and Japan, which would in turn have led to a possible Pacific war , the United States was keen to conclude the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess, and required Britain to accept parity with the U.S. and to abandon the British alliance with Japan. The Washington treaty was followed by a series of other naval treaties, including

6660-700: The United Kingdom had 38 battleships, twice as many as France and almost as many as the rest of the world put together. In 1897, Britain's lead was far smaller due to competition from France, Germany, and Russia, as well as the development of pre-dreadnought fleets in Italy, the United States and Japan . The Ottoman Empire, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway , the Netherlands , Chile and Brazil all had second-rate fleets led by armored cruisers , coastal defence ships or monitors . Pre-dreadnoughts continued

6771-569: The Vietnam War's influence can be seen indirectly in novels such as Joe Haldeman 's The Forever War (published in Analog over 1972–1975) and Lucius Shepard 's Life During Wartime (1987). The Vietnam War resulted in veterans with combat experience deciding to write science fiction, including Joe Haldeman and David Drake . Throughout the 1970s, works such as Haldeman's The Forever War and Drake's Hammer's Slammers helped increase

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6882-567: The basis for a typical work of military science fiction. The stories often use features of actual past or current Earth conflicts, with countries being replaced by planets or galaxies with similar characteristics, battleships replaced by space battleships, small arms and artillery replaced by lasers, soldiers replaced by space marines, and certain events changed so the author can extrapolate what might have occurred. Traditional military values of courage under fire, sense of duty, honor, sacrifice, loyalty, and camaraderie are often emphasized. The action

6993-424: The characters' military lives, cultures, or societies. For example, women may be accepted as equal partners for combat roles, or preferred over men. When the "extravagan[t]" depictions of war in space operas faded along with pulp fiction more generally, military science fiction developed with a "more disciplined and more realistic notion of the kind of armies which might fight interplanetary and interstellar wars, and

7104-499: The concept of an all-big-gun ship had been in circulation for several years, it had yet to be validated in combat. Dreadnought sparked a new arms race , principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial element of national power. Technical development continued rapidly through the dreadnought era, with steep changes in armament, armor and propulsion. Ten years after Dreadnought ' s commissioning, much more powerful ships,

7215-428: The decisive fleet battles that battleship proponents expected and used to justify the vast resources spent on building battlefleets. Even in spite of their huge firepower and protection, battleships were increasingly vulnerable to much smaller and relatively inexpensive weapons: initially the torpedo and the naval mine , and later attack aircraft and the guided missile . The growing range of naval engagements led to

7326-618: The end of World War I, aircraft had successfully adopted the torpedo as a weapon. In 1921 the Italian general and air theorist Giulio Douhet completed a hugely influential treatise on strategic bombing titled The Command of the Air , which foresaw the dominance of air power over naval units. In the 1920s, General Billy Mitchell of the United States Army Air Corps , believing that air forces had rendered navies around

7437-584: The famous clash of the USS ; Monitor and the CSS ; Virginia at the Battle of Hampton Roads at least eight navies possessed ironclad ships. Navies experimented with the positioning of guns, in turrets (like the USS Monitor ), central-batteries or barbettes , or with the ram as the principal weapon. As steam technology developed, masts were gradually removed from battleship designs. By

7548-519: The first shots of World War II with the bombardment of the Polish garrison at Westerplatte ; and the final surrender of the Japanese Empire took place aboard a United States Navy battleship, USS  Missouri . Between those two events, it had become clear that aircraft carriers were the new principal ships of the fleet and that battleships now performed a secondary role. Battleships played

7659-678: The gap is not too wide for the humans to bridge. For example, the invaders have more advanced tanks, but the German Wehrmacht's tank crews facing them – a major theme in the series – are more skilled and far more experienced. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction lists three notable women authors of MSF: Lois McMaster Bujold ; Elizabeth Moon (particularly her Familias Regnant stories such as Hunting Party (1993)), and Karen Traviss . Several authors have presented stories with political messages of varying types as major or minor themes of their works. David Drake has often written of

7770-489: The horrors and futility of war. He has said, in the afterwords of several of his Hammer's Slammers books (1979 and later), that one of his reasons for writing is to educate those people who have not experienced war, but who might have to make the decision to start or endorse a war (as policymakers or as voters) about what war is really like, and what the powers and limits of the military as an instrument of policy are. David Weber has said: For me, military science fiction

7881-509: The kinds of weapons they might use". In many stories, the usage or advancement of a specific technology plays a role in advancing the plot, such as deploying a new weapon or spaceship. Some works draw heavy parallels to human history and how a scientific breakthrough or new military doctrine can significantly change how war is fought, the outcome of a battle, and the fortunes of the combatants. Many works explore how human progress, discovery, and suffering affect military doctrine or battle, and how

7992-481: The larger weapons when dealing with smaller fast-moving torpedo craft. Such was the case, albeit unsuccessfully, when the Russian battleship  Knyaz Suvorov at Tsushima had been sent to the bottom by destroyer -launched torpedoes. The 1903–04 design also retained traditional triple-expansion steam engines . As early as 1904, Jackie Fisher had been convinced of the need for fast, powerful ships with an all-big-gun armament. If Tsushima influenced his thinking, it

8103-412: The last Royal Navy battleship, the design was so successful he found little support for his plan to switch to a battlecruiser navy. Although there were some problems with the ship (the wing turrets had limited arcs of fire and strained the hull when firing a full broadside, and the top of the thickest armor belt lay below the waterline at full load), the Royal Navy promptly commissioned another six ships to

8214-402: The line gradually became larger and carried more guns, but otherwise remained quite similar. The first major change to the ship of the line concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system . Steam power was gradually introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft and later for frigates . The French Navy introduced steam to

8325-482: The line of battle with the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850 —the first true steam battleship. Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h), regardless of the wind. This was a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the United Kingdom were

8436-406: The line was overtaken by the ironclad : powered by steam, protected by metal armor, and armed with guns firing high-explosive shells . Guns that fired explosive or incendiary shells were a major threat to wooden ships, and these weapons quickly became widespread after the introduction of 8-inch shell guns as part of the standard armament of French and American line-of-battle ships in 1841. In

8547-567: The long-range gunnery duel at the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904, the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905 (both during the Russo-Japanese War ) and the inconclusive Battle of Jutland in 1916, during the First World War . Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of dreadnoughts of the war, and it was the last major battle in naval history fought primarily by battleships. The Naval Treaties of

8658-415: The mid-1870s steel was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. The French Navy's Redoutable , laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876, was a central battery and barbette warship which became the first battleship in the world to use steel as the principal building material. The term "battleship" was officially adopted by the Royal Navy in the re-classification of 1892. By the 1890s, there

8769-410: The military become "more resourceful." The German military is also using science fiction to help its military but in its approach, they do not hire science fiction writers to develop scenarios. Instead, they "use existing science fiction" to help the army "predict the "world's next potential conflict." The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) hired two science fiction writers to pen short stories about "what

8880-481: The military cannot directly study for "ethical reasons, such as Autonomous Lethality Weapon Systems (ALWS), or augmented humans." The French military says the authors are asked to imagine warfare situations that "destabilize us, scare us, blame, or even beat us", in order to provide the army with a "fresh set of practice scenarios". Military planners use the science fiction authors' scenarios to "prepare for previously unthought of situations", "boos[t] creativity" and help

8991-417: The most intense firepower . Before the rise of supercarriers , battleships were among the largest and most formidable weapon systems ever built. The term battleship came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship , now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships . In 1906, the commissioning of HMS  Dreadnought into the United Kingdom 's Royal Navy heralded

9102-505: The needs of the plot, in stories that typically explore the ethical boundaries of the pursuit of science and victory. Some depictions can be categorized as cyborgs or cybernetic organisms due to the cybernetic nature of their augmentations. In 2022, the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences reported that a team of military scientists inserted a gene from the tardigrade into human embryonic stem cells in an experiment with

9213-465: The non-intervention blockade. On May 29, 1937, two Republican aircraft managed to bomb the German pocket battleship Deutschland outside Ibiza , causing severe damage and loss of life. Admiral Scheer retaliated two days later by bombarding Almería , causing much destruction, and the resulting Deutschland incident meant the end of German and Italian participation in non-intervention. The Schleswig-Holstein —an obsolete pre-dreadnought —fired

9324-474: The only countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including Russia (9), the Ottoman Empire (3), Sweden (2), Naples (1), Denmark (1) and Austria (1). The adoption of steam power was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of

9435-518: The popularity of the genre. Short stories also were popular, collected in books such as Combat SF , edited by Gordon R. Dickson . This anthology includes one of the first Hammer's Slammers stories, as well as one of the BOLO stories by Keith Laumer and one of the Berserker stories by Fred Saberhagen . This anthology seems to have been the first time these stories specifically dealing with war as

9546-701: The protagonists and antagonists reflect on and adapt to such changes. Many authors have either used a galaxy-spanning fictional empire as a background for the story, or have explored the growth and/or decline of such an empire. The capital of a galactic empire is sometimes a "core world," such as a planet relatively near a galaxy's centrally-located supermassive black hole, which has advanced considerably in science and technology compared to current human civilization. Characterizations of these empires can vary wildly from malevolent forces that attack sympathetic victims, to apathetic or amoral bureaucracies, to more reasonable entities focused on social progress. A writer may posit

9657-470: The rules, and sank the ship within minutes in a coordinated attack. The stunt made headlines, and Mitchell declared, "No surface vessels can exist wherever air forces acting from land bases are able to attack them." While far from conclusive, Mitchell's test was significant because it put proponents of the battleship against naval aviation on the defensive. Rear Admiral William A. Moffett used public relations against Mitchell to make headway toward expansion of

9768-439: The same broadside, despite having two fewer guns. In 1897, before the revolution in design brought about by HMS  Dreadnought , the Royal Navy had 62 battleships in commission or building, a lead of 26 over France and 50 over Germany. From the 1906 launching of Dreadnought , an arms race with major strategic consequences was prompted. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts. Possession of modern battleships

9879-627: The stated possibility of creating soldiers resistant to acute radiation syndrome who could survive nuclear fallout . In the book The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004), Welsh journalist Jon Ronson documented how the U.S. military repeatedly tried and failed to train soldiers in the use of parascientific and pseudoscientific combat techniques during the Cold War , experimenting with New Age tactics and psychic phenomena such as remote viewing , astral projection , " death touch " and mind reading against various Soviet targets. The book also inspired

9990-472: The strategic position had changed. In Germany , the ambitious Plan Z for naval rearmament was abandoned in favor of a strategy of submarine warfare supplemented by the use of battlecruisers and commerce raiding (in particular by Bismarck -class battleships). In Britain, the most pressing need was for air defenses and convoy escorts to safeguard the civilian population from bombing or starvation, and re-armament construction plans consisted of five ships of

10101-659: The super-dreadnoughts, were being built. In the first years of the 20th century, several navies worldwide experimented with the idea of a new type of battleship with a uniform armament of very heavy guns. Admiral Vittorio Cuniberti , the Italian Navy's chief naval architect, articulated the concept of an all-big-gun battleship in 1903. When the Regia Marina did not pursue his ideas, Cuniberti wrote an article in Jane ' s proposing an "ideal" future British battleship,

10212-528: The superstructure, and they would be more effective against smaller ships such as cruisers . Smaller guns (12-pounders and smaller) were reserved for protecting the battleship against the threat of torpedo attack from destroyers and torpedo boats . The beginning of the pre-dreadnought era coincided with Britain reasserting her naval dominance. For many years previously, Britain had taken naval supremacy for granted. Expensive naval projects were criticized by political leaders of all inclinations. However, in 1888

10323-401: The tactics and strategy of this new course of the war in detail, showing how American, British, Soviet, and German soldiers and Jewish guerrillas (some of them historical figures) deal with this extraordinary new situation, as well as providing a not unsympathetic detailed point of view of individual invader warriors. In the war situation posited by Turtledove, the invaders have superior arms, but

10434-487: The technical innovations of the ironclad. Turrets, armor plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were also introduced. A small number of designs, including the American Kearsarge and Virginia classes , experimented with all or part of the 8-inch intermediate battery superimposed over the 12-inch primary. Results were poor: recoil factors and blast effects resulted in

10545-606: The third, Shinano , was later completed as a carrier) and a planned fourth was cancelled. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , the Spanish navy included only two small dreadnought battleships, España and Jaime I . España (originally named Alfonso XIII ), by then in reserve at the northwestern naval base of El Ferrol , fell into Nationalist hands in July 1936. The crew aboard Jaime I remained loyal to

10656-406: The threat posed to dreadnought battleships proved to have been largely a false alarm. HMS Audacious turned out to be the only dreadnought sunk by a submarine in World War I. While battleships were never intended for anti-submarine warfare, there was one instance of a submarine being sunk by a dreadnought battleship. HMS Dreadnought rammed and sank the German submarine U-29 on March 18, 1915, off

10767-700: The time. The Vietnam War led to the "polarization of the sf community", which can be seen in the June 1968 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction , in which one page of pro-war sf authors listed their names and on another page, anti-war sf authors put their names. The Vietnam War has been noted by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as having impacted anthologies such as In the Field of Fire (1987) and novels such as The Healer's War (1988) by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough and Dream Baby (1989) by Bruce McAllister . The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction states that

10878-415: The use of Fictional Intelligence ( FicInt ), which they define as "useful fictions". FicInt, a concept developed by Cole in 2015, combines "fiction writing with intelligence to imagine future scenarios in ways grounded in reality." Battleship A battleship is a large, heavily armored warship with a main battery consisting of large- caliber guns , designed to serve as capital ships with

10989-427: The use of iron armor plate on warships necessary. In 1859 France launched Gloire , the first ocean-going ironclad warship. She had the profile of a ship of the line, cut to one deck due to weight considerations. Although made of wood and reliant on sail for most journeys, Gloire was fitted with a propeller, and her wooden hull was protected by a layer of thick iron armor. Gloire prompted further innovation from

11100-484: The war wore on however, it turned out that whilst submarines did prove to be a very dangerous threat to older pre-dreadnought battleships, as shown by examples such as the sinking of Mesûdiye , which was caught in the Dardanelles by a British submarine and HMS  Majestic and HMS  Triumph were torpedoed by U-21 as well as HMS  Formidable , HMS  Cornwallis , HMS  Britannia etc.,

11211-485: The wars of tomorrow will look like." The MOD hired Peter Warren Singer and August Cole to write eight short stories about threats from "emerging technologies" including " artificial intelligence (AI), data modeling, drone swarms, quantum computing and human enhancement" in a battlefield context. The MOD hired sci-fi writers because they have a "unique ability to imagine the unimaginable." As well, both authors know about "security subjects and modern warfare." They advocate

11322-642: The weights of ships. Designs like the projected British N3-class battleship, the first American South Dakota class , and the Japanese Kii class —all of which continued the trend to larger ships with bigger guns and thicker armor—never got off the drawing board. Those designs which were commissioned during this period were referred to as treaty battleships . As early as 1914, the British Admiral Percy Scott predicted that battleships would soon be made irrelevant by aircraft . By

11433-468: The world obsolete, testified in front of Congress that "1,000 bombardment airplanes can be built and operated for about the price of one battleship" and that a squadron of these bombers could sink a battleship, making for more efficient use of government funds. This infuriated the U.S. Navy, but Mitchell was nevertheless allowed to conduct a careful series of bombing tests alongside Navy and Marine bombers. In 1921, he bombed and sank numerous ships, including

11544-462: Was an increasing similarity between battleship designs, and the type that later became known as the 'pre-dreadnought battleship' emerged. These were heavily armored ships, mounting a mixed battery of guns in turrets, and without sails. The typical first-class battleship of the pre-dreadnought era displaced 15,000 to 17,000  tons , had a speed of 16 knots (30 km/h), and an armament of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns in two turrets fore and aft with

11655-430: Was contracted (informally at first) to 'battle ship' or 'battleship'. The sheer number of guns fired broadside meant a ship of the line could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull , knocking down masts , wrecking her rigging , and killing her crew. However, the effective range of the guns was as little as a few hundred yards, so the battle tactics of sailing ships depended in part on the wind. Over time, ships of

11766-411: Was effective beyond visual range and effective in complete darkness or adverse weather, was introduced to supplement optical fire control. Even when war threatened again in the late 1930s, battleship construction did not regain the level of importance it had held in the years before World War I. The "building holiday" imposed by the naval treaties meant the capacity of dockyards worldwide had shrunk, and

11877-425: Was not only seen as vital to naval power, but also, as with nuclear weapons after World War II , represented a nation's standing in the world. Germany , France , Japan , Italy , Austria , and the United States all began dreadnought programmes; while the Ottoman Empire , Argentina , Russia , Brazil , and Chile commissioned dreadnoughts to be built in British and American yards. By virtue of geography,

11988-517: Was restricted to skirmishes. In the Baltic Sea , action was largely limited to the raiding of convoys, and the laying of defensive minefields; the only significant clash of battleship squadrons there was the Battle of Moon Sound at which one Russian pre-dreadnought was lost. The Adriatic was in a sense the mirror of the North Sea: the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought fleet remained bottled up by

12099-425: Was sunk by destroyers during the night phase of the Battle of Jutland. The German High Seas Fleet, for their part, were determined not to engage the British without the assistance of submarines; and since the submarines were needed more for raiding commercial traffic, the fleet stayed in port for much of the war. For many years, Germany simply had no battleships. The Armistice with Germany required that most of

12210-441: Was to persuade him of the need to standardise on 12-inch (305 mm) guns. Fisher's concerns were submarines and destroyers equipped with torpedoes, then threatening to outrange battleship guns, making speed imperative for capital ships . Fisher's preferred option was his brainchild, the battlecruiser : lightly armored but heavily armed with eight 12-inch guns and propelled to 25 knots (46 km/h) by steam turbines . It

12321-502: Was to prove this revolutionary technology that Dreadnought was designed in January 1905, laid down in October 1905 and sped to completion by 1906. She carried ten 12-inch guns, had an 11-inch armor belt, and was the first large ship powered by turbines. She mounted her guns in five turrets; three on the centerline (one forward, two aft) and two on the wings , giving her at her launch twice the broadside of any other warship. She retained

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