Campaign Debriefing

Memorandum

To: The Supreme Commander, Galactic Invasion Force
From: Senior Intelligence Officer, Observation Saucer Number 4, Earth Expeditionary Force.
Subject: Campaign Debriefing

Commander,

It is with great regret that I inform you of the failure of our attempts to invade the planet Earth. Our entire offensive force has been wiped out to a man. Of the observation saucers accompanying them, the first three were all shot from the sky; my saucer alone survived, enabling me to report back to you with this grim news...

Our forces vastly outnumbered those of the earthlings and our firepower was eminently superior, so it would seem that it was our strategy that was at fault, since it should not have been possible for a single earthling defender to wipe out some sixty of our most battle hardened troops.

The earthling defender was equipped with an inferior single shot weapon, but still managed to destroy every one of our attackers, with nothing more to defend him than a handful of fragile barrier structures. Our troops had some success in inflicting damage on these barriers, but didn't manage to injure the sole defender himself in any way whatsoever. It seemed that he had some two or three of his compatriots in reserve as reinforcements, but frankly he didn't need them.

Should we attempt to risk any more of our comrades' lives on a further venture, may I suggest the following changes to our strategy:

1. I cannot see the advantage of our usual attack formation. Standing in five rows of twelve and simply shuffling from side to side makes us an easy target for our enemies. This is, I'm sure, excellent tactics for line dancing, but in the realms of armed combat it falls somewhat short of ideal.
2. I assume the coordinated raising and lowering of our arms as we move is meant to instil fear into our enemies, but it clearly doesn't work; additionally it had the effect of distracting the men from the task in hand since they had to keep checking that they were keeping time with colleagues adjacent to them.
3. Our troops MUST be retrained in the use of their weapons; today I saw the majority of our men simply firing randomly downward toward Earth with no attempt whatsoever to aim at specific targets. Also, when our enemy did take cover behind one of his defensive structures, we should have pressed home our advantage by concentrating our firepower to either edge of the said structure, to prevent him from escaping, instead of simply continuing our fixed formation allowing him to intermittently pop out from behind his defences to take sniper shots at us.
4. On the occasion when our forces, or what was left of them, did get close to the Earth, to their credit, they did speed up their attack, but rather than seize the advantage and attack en masse, they blindly followed orders by continuing with their fixed attack formation, making themselves sitting targets to be picked off one by one
5. We must consider using stealth to our advantage. If we did, we could probably be upon the Earth before its defenders were even aware of our presence. It does NOT help if our forces continue to announce their arrival by chanting "dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum" repeatedly as they advance. Likewise, my own saucer would have had improved chances of overflying the battle arena with less risk of attack if we hadn't been forced to go "woowoowoowoowoowoo" as we passed.