the situation is bit complicated imho.
1) if the date would be 1954, i would be all in favor of that.
stereotypical ww2 weapons all over the place, and modern weapons would appear appropriately futuristic.
but then the geoscape would be more complicated with all the nations there, unless there is a way to unite several nations into an organization or council that would finance phalanx.
2) the secrecy and small scale of the human response after mumbai.
no matter how long the explanation, it just doesn't work.
in the original game, as far as i remember, the governments wanted to have a diplomatic option while secretly financing x-com.
3) aliens wearing casual clothing or being naked (like ortnoks) on earth.
if you would go to mars, would you go naked, or with casual clothing?
aliens seem to have no appropriate protective clothing nor protective glasses.
not optimal conditions could be part of the explanation why aliens on earth are more clumsy than humans.
for example, humans have penalties with alien weapons because those were designed for aliens, while aliens are clumsy at everything they do because they are not on their homeworld.
i doubt a human soldier would perform as good on mars as on earth at least compared to hypothetical marsians.
4) there is no hint at selling phalanx battlefield footage, and financing from that profit.
in real life it would be something like this:
"leaked: top secret phalanx agents against aliens battlefield footage, uncut."
if a flamethrower gets blown up when a soldier dies, extra cash next month.
civilian gets butchered by a bloodspider, extra cash next month.
(nation happiness would drop in such cases, though)