It's a sci-fi story discussing the influence of people's background in a military training.
BACKGROUND: The earth is bound to be invaded by aliens in a 'mars attacks' style. they deploy an air attack, and all earth's air forces are used to defend, but they're far superior and destroy most of earth's defences. Some alien machines are captured, and a joint earth effort building some kinda matching flying war machines.
But there are not enough pilots left to run these machines, and there's not enough time to train new pilots from scratch. So the last resort to find technically qualified pilots is to go to all big world cities and call all the professional motorbike riders, i.e., pizza deliverers, couriers etc to join the war efforts.
And they manage to form an army to fight the aliens...
THE QUESTION IS: I find this is a very interesting setting to discuss how to turn the recklessness which is intrinsic to the professional motorbikers into the organised machine which is an army. Or at least what is historically an army, or what armies sell as their image. How much would the biker's backgrounds influence the express training process? Could such an army succeed in fighting?
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A somewhat similar theme worked for "The Last Starfighter." But I am reminded of Samuel Goldwyn: "If you want to send a message, call Western Union."
Instead of pizza deliverers as pilots it might be more fun to have kids who play video games as pilots. It would probably attract a huge audience among game players who are probably convinced they are militarily capable.
MMMM... interesting points. i find game players would definitely identify with that, but indeed it would pretty much resemble the last starfighter. i didn't quite get the western union bit, though.
BUT the game player thing gave me a nice idea: what i'd like to develop is how these very reckless, laddish people would fit (or not) in a military system. it happens that, in brazil, the stereotype for these guys is that they're very into arcade games (pinball and video) even during working hours. and that for them being laddish is the coolest behaviour.
PLEASE clarify the western union thing :)
Success of such a non-traditional fighting force would rely very heavily on strong leadership in training scenarios. The model for such a force may be found in WW2 Allied paratroop companies. The overall success of the Normandy Invasion paratroops may be because the execution of the drops were so scattered and disorganized the defenders were badly confused. Small groups of lightly armed, ruthless killers can do an amazing amount of damage, but the ensuing confusion has to be followed up with a conventional attack.
A fighting force like that would not be very effective. In high-tech warfare, professionalism and know-how will beat bravado every time. However, this doesn't really matter in a movie. In the movie "Top Gun", Tom Cruise plays a hot dog pilot who is supposed to be the best around. Supposedly, he's good because he doesn't follow the rules and just plays it by ear. In reality, Top Gun pilots are meticulously trained professionals. They may hot dog sometimes during training, but they study and practice the science and physics of air combat in detail. There is no room for hot dogging in air-to-air combat.
I was offended when in "Top Gun", Cruise abandoned his wingman in the climactic dog fight and then, after some soul searching, returned to save the day. In the real world, by the time he turned around it would have been too late. His wingman would have been shot down and Tom would have spent the rest of his life kicking himself for his mistake.
Someone's been watching too much anime. I'm afraid all the youthful recklessness and natural dexterity still really is no match for trained military experience. Even if a long shot is made, battle is not one of those things where if you lose one, they commentator says, "Oh well, he's the highest scoring rookie we've seen in a long time." Sometimes even pros get shot down. There was a phrase in early dogfighting, still don't know if it's around. The "Golden Bullet," you're flying in a plane worth millions of dollars, billions of dollars of support, countries would spend billions to have it, and millions to destroy it, and one 7.62 mm bullet worth under 10 cents kills you.