The tactical use of nuclear weapon is somewhat limited if both side have them. You can destroy a breakthrough or a bridgehead but you can just open another gap using another strike.Squilookle said:
War Game Theory: Could an old-fashioned war of conquest be stopped without nuclear weapons?
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The OP asks for a theoretical war that does not include nukes. I merely opened by citing that there have been modern wars fought without nukes as a means to entertain the idea as possible and went from there.Squilookle said:
BTW...Red Dwarf?
Well, as stated by the OP, we must assume a war of conquest without resorting to nukes, either side. So, whatever happens, both sides are committed without a last resort. It's like Risk, as opposed to Risk Legacy, which is pretty damn cool. Anyway...CrystalShadow said:
I admit, the initial attack is all-important. It requires, in fact, a Xanatos-level of long-game preparation. Completely possible, but either very hard or very lengthy. If we assume, however, that people believe as they do now - That the US would never really commit to an all-out attack across the board. - it would be possible to prepare, to fuel, and to execute that terrible, terrible first strike.
I wouldn't say it's improbable to pull off. The rules of this discussion require nothing futuristic, but there are alot of things right now that could change the face of war. For instance, drone piloting. It's not exactly future robot war yet, but we have a number of combat-ready devices that are far more expendable than soldiers. I haven't even touched tactics outlawed by the Geneva Convention. Well, maybe the mass-killing part, but not chemical and bio warfare. Actually, let's assume for the moment that that counts as a WMD like the nuke and stick to stuff you can't mount onto an ICBM and press the button.
But I do agree whole-heartedly that this is a very difficult thing to do at the initial start of it. The problem is...this is also how we like it.
[hr]Step 1: Fill a series of small wooden crates with waspsBurned Hand said:
Step 2: Load the crates onto a plane
Step 3: Whack the crates with a baton to get the wasps good and angry
Step 4: Drop the crates down onto enemy troops
Step 5: Watch as the crates bust open upon impact, spewing forth thousands of truly pissed-off wasps to descend upon your enemies[hr]
Am I doing biological warfare correctly?
Certainly, you just need a bigger or equal army. As corrupt and inefficient as the UN is, a lot of countries today are kind of obliged to oppose that kind of bald-faced aggression from a major power so the invaders would be facing opposition from multiple nations, not merely the one they're invading. In fact, most of those powers themselves are now educated enough to know that a war of conquest will ruin them financially/is unjustified, so whoever commanded this conquest plan would have themselves a rebellion in short order, forcing them to keep large numbers of troops at home to suppress it... if some of the officers themselves don't defect as well from being ordered to kill civilians on sight.
The danger comes in when the leaders who ordered said invasion see their plans in ruins and realize that they're going to be hanged for this foolishness. Then they are desperate enough to try for nukes to save their skins, or at least take the world down with them.
The danger comes in when the leaders who ordered said invasion see their plans in ruins and realize that they're going to be hanged for this foolishness. Then they are desperate enough to try for nukes to save their skins, or at least take the world down with them.
... Of course?
If it's difficult to defend against a war of aggression in modern times, surely it would be equally difficult to conduct one?
Maybe I'm just missing something, but I don't see what you think is giving the aggressor such an insurmountable advantage that another army would be totally incapable of defending against it.
If it's difficult to defend against a war of aggression in modern times, surely it would be equally difficult to conduct one?
Maybe I'm just missing something, but I don't see what you think is giving the aggressor such an insurmountable advantage that another army would be totally incapable of defending against it.
Very much this, but it applies to other agriculture.Burned Hand said:
For example, look at the potato blight in Europe of about 150 years ago. Mind you, it was mostly the British rulers of Ireland being moustache twirlingly evil that caused the worst problems there, but still was a big deal.
Totally devastating for countries that rely on the potato, totally ineffectual against nations which don't grow it. It can't spread to them, and they can deny being the cause.
Very much this. Hell, even without US forces defending the US, getting an invasion force there from China and Russia and supplying it would be exceedingly difficult. Even with the US navy helping China or Russia it'd be hard.Fieldy409 said:
Likewise, the US found things in Iraq difficult (but not impossible) because of supply issues.
Heh, fair enough.barbzilla said:
Yeah, the big hangup I saw is we assume that China would send more than one boat in this scenario, so they would've had to move into engagement range before kicking off the fireworks, and have no other country with satellite capabilities look at that and go "Well, that's...odd".
But yeah, *IF* a strategy were to work, it'd probably be something like that. Though I suppose if we're going crazy hardball, building specialized EMP bombs to detonate in the upper atmosphere to fry out large amounts of infrastructure may be easier and more reliable than tens of thousands of sleeper agents.
Not sure if that'd violate the 'no nuclear weapons' aspect of the scenario though. Hmm.
To be fair, the Japanese started it first! They had their bombs-attached-to-balloons to float across the pacific and land in population centers idea.Burned Hand said:
We weren't about to let those Japanese guys out-crazy us!
...70 years later, we realize trying to out-crazy the Japanese is a hilariously futile effort.
Sure, but like you say, little control over them, so best to use something that can't affect you. OTOH, there are plenty of things many nations immunise their citizens against which other nations don't.Burned Hand said:
IIRC, they are still using scorpion bombs in the middle east today. Not sure how you ensure they survive the impact, though.Starik20X6 said:
Really? I thought it was improbable enough that it won't happen during out lifetime because of how unlikely it is to succeedFalloutJack said:
Sounds like a good justification to poison america, to kill the drone pilots scattered about in their homes.FalloutJack said:
The US has done this before? Or is this just how their War Novels make the fictional version of the US out to be? No really, I don't know a lot about US warfare history, but you would and can give me an example where the US acted fast and put down a threat for good with an alpha strike.FalloutJack said:
It's possible to sneak thousands of tanks, fighters, bombers, soldiers and ludicrous amounts of fuel & ammunition into every country without anyone raising an eyebrow? I know I'll certainly never read your novels, my suspension of disbelief can't be held together.FalloutJack said:
Also, you have an appropriate avatar for your point of view. In more ways than you may like.
the thing that would stop it isnt nuclear weapons but logistics. even during the mid 80's nato and the warsaw pact could engage in all out conventional war for roughly 30 days and that level of intensity cant be kept up these days long term for a world conquest type thing
No no, I find the point about my avatar most amusing, actually. For more references to America's Team Evil, please stop by Wild Wasteland in the roleplay section. Anyway, let's address your real concerns.Lotet said:
{1} I believe the reason Crystal referred to it as semi-plausible was not that it couldn't succeed, but because she felt that the complicated first-strike was the real test of the plan's worth more than anything that follows it, and I agree with that much. However, I believe that if it were organized carefully, it would stand a fair chance, rather than unlikely. But remember, this is a fictional thought process of the idea that if the US were to drop its morality and use its less-than-hostile image to mask an all-out offensive. The REAL United States is far too decent to kill everyone in the world, you lucky persons you.
{2} I estimate that it would be about as hard to breach the airspace of the US as much as Russia or China, which is of course why I employed a strategy to hurt them indirectly first. Also, as I said to Crystal, we may have to take the OP's disallowance of nukes and extend that to chem and bio warefare too, on the grounds that you could WMD it with relative ease. If not, then people in other countries die in droves from total defiance of the Geneva Convention. Point is, you don't want to go down that path unless you can engineer one better.
{3} I didn't mean that we've literally done this before. It just seems to me that Americans prefer a very forceful entry into a war and then gradually begin to loathe it the longer it drags on. No one likes Phyrric Victories, but I think we may like it less than most.
{4}
FalloutJack said:
You can't move large scale forces into another country without people noticing. Even a small French Regiment has 200 vehicles and full US division has over 5,000 vehicles. A 70+ ton tank is hard to disguise and will only fit on specialist transporters.The best you can do is expand the idea on the North Korean tunnels under the DMZ. Its not impossible that you could make a tunnel large enough so that you place and armoured regiment underneath border defences. Thats within the realm of the possible but moving large scale forces is to far fetched. 10,000s of vehicles and 100000s of tons of supplies are not hidable.
Maybe so. Like I said to the last guy, I'm no expert on these matters. It WOULD be easy enough to move hand-carried or assembleable weapons, though. All the anti-personal stuff, anti-tank weapons, launchers, sniper rifles It doesn't have to be an armored division screwing up the works. In fact, a series of cutthroat attacks might be more effective as well as easier to supply. Thanks. That really helped.albino boo said:
Well, to be perfectly fair, my evil master plan essentially channels some of the darkest and dirtiest tactics in human history. Conquerors don't have time to piss about.Burned Hand said:
Any such force would be crushed rapidly. Light infantry lacks mobility and firepower. Think how fast you can move on foot and how fast you can drive, there is no contest. You can bring to bear at the point of attack a force that outnumbered the defenders easily and quickly. You will also have more firepower, light infantry will not have anything heavier than 82 mm mortars where as mechanised forces will have 155 mm artillery guns and multiple launch rockets. The kind of thing you are thinking about is something like the the Tet offensive. The Tet offensive took place in 1968 during the Vietnam war. The Viet Cong smuggled large numbers of light weapons into South Vietnamese cities and launched a surprise attack. The briefly took some cities but were destroyed by US forces superior firepower. The attack was a military disaster and marked the effective destruction of the VC as a fighting force, the rest of the war was conducted by NVA regulars. That said the Tet offensive was political success and marked the shift in middle America against the war. Burning hands example of Crimea and the Russians is not correct as the Russians already had military bases in the Crimea with significant armoured units. The wider war in the Ukraine is limited in nature, The Russians have the ability to crush Ukraine within in a few days but they can't use their forces without risking a much larger war with NATO. They have settled for de facto control over areas of the eastern Ukraine but at the price of becoming bankrupt as a nation by 2017.FalloutJack said:
No one has used nuclear weapons on ISIL and they seem to have been stopped in their tracks with little more than an opposing force.
In the information age where we can easily see the lives of people on the other side of the world the idea of Barbaric take-over is unrealistic. And even those that try, and get further than most (ISIL) are not going to bring enough people in line to achieve it. People need something to fight for, and if it's just so that your leaders can control more land then people won't buy into it anymore.
In the information age where we can easily see the lives of people on the other side of the world the idea of Barbaric take-over is unrealistic. And even those that try, and get further than most (ISIL) are not going to bring enough people in line to achieve it. People need something to fight for, and if it's just so that your leaders can control more land then people won't buy into it anymore.
Elementary - Dear Watson said:
I would argue that western airpower is acting at as force multiplier for Kurdish and Shia militias in Iraq. Part of the reason why ISIL have taken as much ground as they have, is the unwillingness of the Sunni led Iraqi army to fight for a Shia sectarian government in Baghdad. Remove the logistic block caused by western airpower ISIL could push harder.
Hmm... I've worked out with the jets, and most of what we do is Close Air Support. Yes, we certainly put pressure on the lines of communication but we maintain rather than advance the efforts against them. Ground retaken is done by units on the ground whom are only trained and advised by the west.albino boo said:
There is also the fact that the surrounding countries could always do more. People don't want it to spiral into full blown wide area conflict, but if the countries over the borders to Iraq and Syria feel the pressure enough more would be done to help. Obviously the reason they sit on the fence now is that Iran, Syria and Iraq have Shia leadership and the rest are Sunni. Their inclusion would upset the ballance if the need isn't great enough.
Of course, the West could always do more as well. And if it looked desperate enough we probably would, the issue of course being that the military is very good at fighting and holding territory. We were not employed and trained to establish and create a new country in the vaccuum and wake of where we have been. That is down to politicians, diplomats and international organisations, who often fall below the mark. The military then get the blame as we are the ones overtly on the ground!
Always a shame...
As I recall, the Viet Cong created no end of trouble in the Vietnam War. It is a fact that a small force can raise all kinds of hell for a larger foe. At any rate, the plan was never for the outposts to win, but for them to divide concentration. Milege may vary on HOW effective we both think that is, but I believe the effect is achieved to some measure. Given that the outposts and such are there, it's better to use them than to not.albino boo said:
Sure, when fighting a guerrilla war with the support of the locals. Without the latter, they would not have achieved much.FalloutJack said:
(Also, not sure that the VC/NVA were actually fewer in number than the US/ARVN/allies)