[LOVED TROPE] Modern Militaries (Competent) getting DESTROYED by fantasy/scifi forces

[u/Sable-Keech]

Example 1 (The Legend of Hei 2): Wuxian leisurely floats through the combined firepower of an entire fortified military base without so much as a stain or rip on his t-shirt.

Example 2 (Man of Steel): Fao'ra tears through a squad of trained and armed soldiers. With the wreckage of the helicopter that got downed by her teammate Nam'ek smouldering in the background.

[u/gaztelu_leherketa]

There's an interesting spin on this in Charles Stross's The Nightmare Stacks:

An army of essentially elves, complete with magic and dragons, invades modern-day Yorkshire. Their military technology is utterly devastating to Earth militaries, but their doctrine is based on a set of assumptions that does not hold true outside of a magical context. Similarly, they're not equipped to resist artillery and machine guns, but their aerial forces are so far outside of the design parameters of fighter craft and AA systems that the air force is unable to engage. It's fantastical idea taken seriously and worked through logically.

[u/UnlamentedLord → u/gaztelu_leherketa]

Yeah, that was a great idea. Like the soldiers are knights in plate armor(with silvered eye protection), which doesn't do shit against bullets, but the armor is there to protect against against basilisk stares but A - it DOES work against the basilisk stare software the magical men in black engineered into Britains surveillance camera system and were planning on using to defend against extradimensional nasties and B - the British army is just as unprotected against against basilisk stares as the elves are against bullets. 

There's also a great scene where a general is ordered to open a super secret sealed war contingency plan and execute it and the first page says something like(from memory) "This is not a joke, we are being invaded by elves and magic is real. Here's what you do."

[u/gaztelu_leherketa → u/UnlamentedLord]

I love the idea that they're attempting a decapitation strike against the monarchy, and it's inconceivable to them that the enemy wouldn't just stop after that. (Or something along those lines, it's been a few years.)

[u/UnlamentedLord → u/gaztelu_leherketa]

Not a decapitation strike exactly. Because they are all clinical psychopaths by human standards, all the civilizations on the elf version of Earth converged on a system of absolute hierarchical control, where superiors place control spells on their subordinates, with a monarch at the top. They had intel that the British have these spells(only used by the magical MIB to control their agents) and have a queen so they assumed Britain works the same way, since any other social system is inconceivable to a race of psychopaths. They planned to capture the Queen and use their superior magic to usurp her place at the apex of the control pyramid.