I think the answer to the above question is a firm “No.” Unless the United States helps them out. But all kidding aside, I’m pretty sure that if aliens do invade, Earth is not the horse to bet on.
Britain has the weapons to stop a UFO invasion, says the British government’s former top UFO adviser.
“We do have several prototype aircraft and drones and other weapons you won’t see on the news for another 10-15 years,” says Nick Pope. Pope ran the UFO project for the British Ministry of Defense, where he investigated UFO sightings, abductions and other unexplained phenomena. Pope says that only about 5 percent of the cases “defied conventional explanation”, and that he “can’t rule out the possibility. There’s some intriguing evidence, but no hard proof.”
Yet Pope, who was a defense planner before he investigated UFOs, is confident that if aliens do come, Britain has enough high-tech weapons to stop an invasion, including the Taranis combat UAV. Now, with all due respect to Her Majesty’s brave armed forces, I’m not so sure that Britain could fend off the Cylons or the Klingons.
The military is being slashed to the point where the British Lion is becoming the Mouse that Roared. The Army is being cut by 20 percent to just 82,000 soldiers, less than half the size of the U.S Marine Corps alone. If the Bugs from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers show up, force size could be an issue. Then there is the downsizing of the Royal Air Force and Navy. If the Cylons arrive with a fleet of carriers and space fighters, the Royal Navy has only one old aircraft carrier (actually a helicopter carrier), and a new carrier under construction that depends on unproven F-35 fighters.
If British soldiers are being blown by Taliban IEDs because London can’t afford enough helicopters to fly them over the battlefield, I’m not confident that there is a secret high-tech arsenal that can repel the Borg. Of course, special operations forces like the SAS could wreak havoc on the alien home world. But if the alien home world is 50 light-years away, inserting the commandos there may be a problem, not to mention retrieving them.
Then again, would the U.S. do much better? Our stealthy F-22s might do as well as Will Smith did flying an F-18 in “Independence Day”, but this assumes the Raptor’s oxygen system doesn’t asphyxiate its own pilots. If our ballistic missile defenses can barely knock down Scuds, a barrage of alien faster-than-light missiles might prove a bit sticky.
At least there’s always the space marines from Moonraker.
I appreciate how this article tries to explain all of the specific ways in which our armed forces would fail, but honestly, it’s a no-brainer. Any species that can master interstellar (or inter-dimensional, depending on your particular UFO belief system) travel will, I’m quite certain, be able to decimate us without much effort.
