Can you win a war with only light infantry in the 21st century?

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leibowitz

Junior Member
Lezt said:
Thats fantasy as well, The US dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than the whole of WW2; what could 2 super carrier do to the Ho Chi Men trail that the Stratigic bomber command cannot? especially, when the HCM trail is in Burma, - 100 KM inland, staying safe from any silkworms the Vietnamese may have, your combat air support will have to fly 200 km one way, through hostile airspace with a possibility of SAM and MIGs.

//edit
Don't believe in the classical interpretation of the vietnam war by mainstream media and story spinners. If the USA feared Soviet intervention, there would not have been a cuban crisis. If US feared an all out war with the SU, the USA would not have supported China nuclearly during the sino-soviet crisis. The fact is simple that the US was not prepared for the vietnam war and did not have the determination to win it at the price that it was costing.
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Right, the lesson of Vietnam was that air interdiction alone couldn't shut down motorized supply routes through the jungle. But had the US opted to invade North Vietnam and Cambodia, then it could have cut the supply lines with ground forces. Also, the most of the air ordnance the US dropped on N Vietnam was wasted. It would have done much better with a systematic firebombing campaign against Hanoi, Haiphong, and every Vietnamese city, in order to deplete the manpower available to the NVA.

EDIT: They also should have followed it up with systematic bombing of food supplies and chemical/biological warfare against the Vietnamese rice crop. Unfortunately, the US was too sensitive to take civilian casualties to adopt such a strategy. Given that the Vietnamese people were engaged in a total war against the United States, they should have been regarded as legitimate military targets, however.
 
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313230

New Member
Thanks all,
vesicles said:
As to Vietnam war, the Americans were winning the war. They pulled out because they could no longer achieve their political objective while sustaining the level of casualty that was acceptable to them. The Vietnam war is a good example of how the civilian govn't should not handicap the military.
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The US goverment got through WW2 which was the most tensiled war. And many countries have civilian govn't, how do you think govn't should react in case of Vietnam war?
 
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313230

New Member
delft said:
This is fantasy. In 1975 South Vietnam was defeated because its soldiers didn't want to fight for the dictatorship. Some ten years before the dropping of South Vietnamese commando's north of the 17th parallel was halted because every infiltration was immediately defeated. The US just couldn't have held the North because the war would have continued until they were gone.
Remember that the US government expected in 1955 that in the elections promised for 1956 in the Geneva Agreement of 1954 some 90% of the South Vietnamese would vote for reunification under the North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh and against the South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem. That's why there were no elections in 1956.
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Well, I don't think so. In war people's will not worth as military as there are many many cases in the history the invaders could easily force people follow their way. Europe in WW2, no one liked Nazi, but without military, people's vote means nothing. Soviet could invade many countries, every Empires did so without people liking them. And US Army is very powerful.

The problem is that I don't think the US Army is an invading army, it is designed as an effective fighting force, not an invading force. I think Chinese or Soviet/Nazi army is the more effective invading army
 
L

Lezt

Junior Member
t_co said:
Right, the lesson of Vietnam was that air interdiction alone couldn't shut down motorized supply routes through the jungle. But had the US opted to invade North Vietnam and Cambodia, then it could have cut the supply lines with ground forces. Also, the most of the air ordnance the US dropped on N Vietnam was wasted. It would have done much better with a systematic firebombing campaign against Hanoi, Haiphong, and every Vietnamese city, in order to deplete the manpower available to the NVA.

EDIT: They also should have followed it up with systematic bombing of food supplies and chemical/biological warfare against the Vietnamese rice crop. Unfortunately, the US was too sensitive to take civilian casualties to adopt such a strategy. Given that the Vietnamese people were engaged in a total war against the United States, they should have been regarded as legitimate military targets, however.
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One thing to remember is that Vietnam is not an Urban country, the manpower comes from the rural areas -> villages, hamlets, small towns; the arms and supplies are mainly from China so bombing Hanoi or every major city Vietnam had will not put a dent to Vietnamese war machine. Similarly, destroying the food chain in Vietnam will only mean that more of it would come from China.

Unless you are suggesting that the USA use WMD on North Vietnam... which is political suicide and would cost the US dearly in the UN and likely increase the risk of the Chinese/Russian intervention with Chemical/biological/tactical nukes... on american troops...

Also what make you think that the USA can sustain a ground war in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia? The NVA; according to the US; dictated 90% of their engagement with US forces on search/destroy missions. How will the US ground forces be supplied in the jungle with no roads? -> make roads and allow supply convoys to be ambushed in the forest?

The Vietnam war, like Afghanistan, Korean War and Iraq is not a simple war, they are all limited wars with significant diplomatic, economical and societal battles fought internally and externally in additional to the actual war fighting. It is not the British conquest of India, but more like the Crimean war.
 
3

313230

New Member
Lezt said:
One thing to remember is that Vietnam is not an Urban country, the manpower comes from the rural areas -> villages, hamlets, small towns; the arms and supplies are mainly from China so bombing Hanoi or every major city Vietnam had will not put a dent to Vietnamese war machine. Similarly, destroying the food chain in Vietnam will only mean that more of it would come from China.

Unless you are suggesting that the USA use WMD on North Vietnam... which is political suicide and would cost the US dearly in the UN and likely increase the risk of the Chinese/Russian intervention with Chemical/biological/tactical nukes... on american troops...

Also what make you think that the USA can sustain a ground war in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia? The NVA; according to the US; dictated 90% of their engagement with US forces on search/destroy missions. How will the US ground forces be supplied in the jungle with no roads? -> make roads and allow supply convoys to be ambushed in the forest?

The Vietnam war, like Afghanistan, Korean War and Iraq is not a simple war, they are all limited wars with significant diplomatic, economical and societal battles fought internally and externally in additional to the actual war fighting. It is not the British conquest of India, but more like the Crimean war.
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IMO, if US actively engaged in North Vietnam's ground then there are advantages:

No need to fight in the jungle, just control main road, which supplied North Vietnam army food, fuel, ammo from Chinese. Without trucks and trains, very hard to carry supply around the country. This would force NV to active engagement and let the US wait, lower the cost of war very much.

Political engagement: local government can help in spreading propaganda and preventing North Vietnam recruiting new men for its army.

With these two, and the superior firepower, US could push NVA to jungle very fast and so it would not be a total war but just a COIN operation. Without manpower and resource, NV would be a dead army
 
P

PanAsian

Major
313230 said:
The problem is that I don't think the US Army is an invading army, it is designed as an effective fighting force, not an invading force. I think Chinese or Soviet/Nazi army is the more effective invading army
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An effective fighting force which can operate anywhere in the world. is the most advanced technologically, and is difficult to be retaliated against is the most effective invading army.

The US has the natural advantage of being the unchallenged power on its own separate continent so it can basically "bomb anyone back to the stone age" (excepting nuclear states capable of hitting the US) at minimal risk of counterattack on its homeland.

Forget about invading and holding another country, why bother when the US can simply keep them in "stone age" form?
 
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313230

New Member
PanAsian said:
An effective fighting force which can operate anywhere in the world. is the most advanced technologically, and is difficult to be retaliated against is the most effective invading army.

The US has the natural advantage of being the unchallenged power on its own separate continent so it can basically "bomb anyone back to the stone age" (excepting nuclear states capable of hitting the US) at minimal risk of counterattack on its homeland.

Forget about invading and holding another country, why bother when the US can simply keep them in "stone age" form?
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Basically, war is another form of political or economical confrontation

Well, bombing them to stone age would destroy their resource, thus winning a war. But if you can holding their resource, it is far better in the long term

The dominance of US is because of its technology, or quality. When other countries like China keep advancing on techs as well, the quantity will be important and become the dominient factor. That is when holding means much more than bombing to stone age. E.g Chinese Communist Party who held mainland China and now they nearly on par with US despite their lacking of techs, capital.. at the start. Huge resource will become fruit after half a century. From military point of view, not many would love a strategy that long
 
L

Lezt

Junior Member
313230 said:
IMO, if US actively engaged in North Vietnam's ground then there are advantages:

No need to fight in the jungle, just control main road, which supplied North Vietnam army food, fuel, ammo from Chinese. Without trucks and trains, very hard to carry supply around the country. This would force NV to active engagement and let the US wait, lower the cost of war very much.

Political engagement: local government can help in spreading propaganda and preventing North Vietnam recruiting new men for its army.

With these two, and the superior firepower, US could push NVA to jungle very fast and so it would not be a total war but just a COIN operation. Without manpower and resource, NV would be a dead army
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Historically, massive military force is ineffective vs a primitive nation; so I won't be as idealistic as you.

The Japanese with 3 million men and more collaborators were not that successful against the CCP/KMT during WW2 even thou, Japan occupied pretty much all of China's big cities and rail network.

The Soviet Union held all major cities and infrastructure in Afghanistan yet lost the war

The USA and Co holds all major cities and infrastructure in Afghanistan yet cannot eradicate the insurgents.

Or how overwhelming is the Israelite armed forces compared to Hamas and how many colonies Israel holds, yet, Palestine continues to resist.

You also seem to gravitate towards roads and rail; considering most NVA supplies were transported on FOOT on the ho chi min trail, how would taking the North's cities and roads put a significant dent in the NVA logistics? I mean have you looked at a Map of Vietnam? the country to this day is still a huge jungle -> so pushing the NVA into the forest? Most of the cities are surrounded by the dense tropical rain forest.
 
vesicles

vesicles

Colonel
Lezt said:
Historically, massive military force is ineffective vs a primitive nation; so I won't be as idealistic as you.

The Japanese with 3 million men and more collaborators were not that successful against the CCP/KMT during WW2 even thou, Japan occupied pretty much all of China's big cities and rail network.

The Soviet Union held all major cities and infrastructure in Afghanistan yet lost the war

The USA and Co holds all major cities and infrastructure in Afghanistan yet cannot eradicate the insurgents.

Or how overwhelming is the Israelite armed forces compared to Hamas and how many colonies Israel holds, yet, Palestine continues to resist.

You also seem to gravitate towards roads and rail; considering most NVA supplies were transported on FOOT on the ho chi min trail, how would taking the North's cities and roads put a significant dent in the NVA logistics? I mean have you looked at a Map of Vietnam? the country to this day is still a huge jungle -> so pushing the NVA into the forest? Most of the cities are surrounded by the dense tropical rain forest.
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Although the Chinese forces during WWII were inferior to that of Japan, I would not say they were primitive, certainly not the kind of comparison between the Soviets and Afghanistan, or Israel vs. Palestine. In these cases, the weak side was no match to the combined forces and they mainly had to use guerrilla style fighting. On the other hand, the Chinese forces, mainly those of KMT, went head-to-head with the Japanese in most of the battles. We've discussed this extensively in other threads, but the vast majority of the Japanese successful advances were in 1937. After that, the Chinese forces, with similar troop numbers, held their ground punch-for-punch against major Japanese attacks.
 
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L

Lezt

Junior Member
vesicles said:
Although the Chinese forces during WWII were inferior to that of Japan, I would not say they were primitive, certainly not the kind of comparison between the Soviets and Afghanistan, or Israel vs. Palestine. In these cases, the weak side was no match to the combined forces and they mainly had to use guerrilla style fighting. On the other hand, the Chinese forces, mainly those of KMT, went head-to-head with the Japanese in most of the battles. We've discussed this extensively in other threads, but the vast majority of the Japanese successful advances were in 1937. After that, the Chinese forces, with similar troop numbers, held their ground punch-for-punch against major Japanese attacks.
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Vesicles, I do not doubt that the PLA and NRA were able to fight limited head to head battles. Before 1941 when the USA entered the war, the disparity between China and Japan is like that of the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan wars.

The typical Chinese formations were light infantry with rifles, grenades, DaDaos and LMG; No HMG, no Motars, No artillery, No tanks, No close air support. The Japanese opposition had, rifles, LMG, MMG, HMG, motars, tanks, artillery, naval gunfire support, close air support.

In a sense, I would feel on paper, the NVA provides a much more formidable challenge to the USA; they had tanks, artillery, mortars, soviet air crewed migs, RGP7s, AK47s, GPMGs, SAMs and China and the USSR behind their back. Like the mujahadeen pulling out stinger missiles, or Hamass shooting Vampir

Afghanistan, Palestine, Vietnam all had heavy foreign backers for the light troops, the PLA/NRA did not really until much later in the war. So in that sense, I consider the Chinese armies primitive.
 
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