....more Firefly

A few observations of the Alliance military shows just how vast
Alliance operations are in terms of manpower.

It is commented that there are forty-thousand ("Bushwacked")
Alliance cruisers operating each carrying a probable average
complement of twenty thousand Officers, Federals (i.e. MPs
/Security /Marshals /Troops) and Enlisted men.

This totals 800 million personnel, with, say, one eighth
Officers.

A Commander would probably represent 2000 Federals, if
they are referred to by civilians as Officers ("Safe").
This ratio probably carries on to Alliance ships as it
appears that the common command rank for an Alliance cruiser
is also that of Commander (probably an amalgam of Naval and
Police terminology?). This would probably allow for 2000
Federals and 500 Naval Officers aboard ship and for the rank
of 'Captain' still to be relevant (and presumably still above
'Commander' as the Alliance Commander in "Bushwacked" is
clearly riled by Mal's use of the epithet 'Captain' to describe
himself.

In an overwhelming surveillance state such as the Alliance probably
at least a tenth of its population would be in its employ at some
time in their lives in some form; i.e. in formal and informal
police or military roles as well as the vast health (and
welfare? or at least providing sufficient housing and
[synthetic] food for the population) system in place in
[most of] the Central Planets.

If we assume that each of the nineteen Central Planets has a
population of roughly a billion, with Londinium and Shinhon
having three billion, then we have a probable population of
23 billion; or 2.3 billion Alliance. This nicely tallies
with the size of the Alliance Navy, giving 1.5 billion workers,
Federals, Officers and informants, and bounty hunters of every
description, operating mostly in the Central Planets.

Put another way, if a hundredth of the population at a time
is in the Alliance Navy, then the entire population of the
'Union of Allied Planets' probably totals 80 billion.