Europe vs US wars. Who would win - Part 2.

Yes of course NZ should be in there. The 'rest' was just pointing out the very fabric of the countries would need to change for the unwritten alliance to fail. As you says its there and will be for the foreseeable future.

 

As much I dislike the military industrial complex, it is important to see that U.S. army is strong enough to take over the rest of the world and walks away with a tie militarily, in terms of technology, management and actual war experience.

But the ultimate aims of battles is to achieve a political objective and our democratic institutions never allows us to drag on for many years wihtout a clear victory. And hence any small country could possibly take on us and win the war outside the battlefield.

 

Nice 100% political spin on things.

For one, largely the MIC is a figment of the imagination and does not exist. And it is generally pulled out whenever somebody wants to blame something for why their programs does not get more money.

And no, the aim of battles is not to achieve a political goal, it is to achieve a military goal. Now that military goal may be a political one, but the two are not locked together.

And it is not our "democratic institutions" that make a long war hard for this country to sustain, it is a segment of that Institution. I am actually one of those that hates when the military becomes politicized, that entire "Support the troops when our candidate is in charge, blast them when their candidate is in charge" mindset frankly sickens me. And I have seen both sides do it all to often.

Although in most of what you said about "the rest of the world and walks away with a tie militarily, in terms of technology, management and actual war experience", the US is actually in the lead there, as often is the case.

While other nations may have a better A system, or B ship, overall I think the US tends to have the finest equipment in the world. It is constantly improved, constantly changed, so at the end of it's actual lifespan the final piece of equipment looks nothing like what we started with.



That is the first PATRIOT missile launcher, first used in 1976.



That is an early version of the current PAC-3 missile launcher.

They may look the same to a great many people, but to me it is like looking at a 1964½ Mustang, and a 1974 Mustang II. The differences are large and immediately obvious. And this is pretty much the standard, from the M1A3 and F-16E, to the Arleigh Burke Flight IIA Technology Insertion. The future USS Thomas Hudner may look like the original USS Arleigh Burke, but it actually shares little with the ship that was launched the year Milli Vanilli and Paula Abdul first moved up the Pop Charts, and Joker meant Jack Nicholson.

 

All this presupposes that Europe has twenty years to build up their armed forces.

We saw how weak the Europeans were during the Libya fracas. The RAF had all of eight airworthy strike planes. You want more proof? If the US pulled out of the Balkans, the Europeans could not do anything about Serbia rampant.

But they could address these deficiencies...in a generation.

 

Taxcutter, by your nickname, why send more aircraft when you are in a coalition with France, Italy, U.S.A., Qatar, Spain against a country without airforce, credible air defense and a split army in revolt? It would have been an useless struggle for the english taxpayer.
Libia wasn't Iraq neither Serbia, some rafale and a handful of english typhoon doing bombing runs and CAS, italians doing SEAD and air defense, spanish danish and qatari making some sorties after few american tomahawk and some elite boots on the ground were enough to smash Gheddaffi's loyalist, so why pay more?

 

By some US Tomahawk strikes, do you mean over 100? The UK only did 2 Tomahawk strikes.

 

I seem to remember people saying that back when we were involved in former Yugoslavia.

Then they shot down one of our F-117s.

Ooops!

 

100 are few in a war, im not talking about how much UK did, but why sent only a wing. btw im not British

 

Well that's a sad day for you, I am British and the Americans are needed to do just about every long range operation. Their air force and navel capabilities are stupidly good. When they do 98% of something that isn't few, that's loads.

 

US has military bases in Germany still, it can retake Europe if it likes.

France, the English men, the Russians, China men, and Indians and Paki's all have nuclear weapons.

Although after US breached the sovereignty of a nuclear armed nation to get Osama in Pakistan, it could stage similar attacks in Europe with Superior Seal Teams to disable their nuclear weapons and make them submit to American Government.

 

One area where the Europeans cannot begin to match the US ground forces: Combat experience. One good thing has come out of ten years of low-level war. Literally every corporal has "seen the elephant." Few European generals have the combat experience of a US Marine Corps E-5.

 

Why is it that certain segments of the population have such a hyper-inflated belief of what our military can do, that it totally blinds them as to what they can really do?

Your claim is about as realistic as saying that the Seal Teams could jump and wave their arms and land at the moon.

Richard Marcinko not withstanding, he claims they did things like that when he was in charge all the time.

 

I would agree with one exception, the UK. They have largely been fighting right alongside us, and have almost as much experience.

 

The British and French nuclear weapons are on submarines.

 

And we all know that SEALs can dive down to a submarine, board it, steal or disable the nukes and get away without anybody knowing they were there.

 

The UK did not acquit itself well in the Basra area of Iraq. the troops up to the company level were OK but their command structure looked seriously demoralized.

 

That's because the politicians didn't want to lose more lives in a very very unpopular war. We backed off, our military as always up to the task, but the politicians weren't. I am not happy about it, the politicians let our allies, our troops and the people of Basra down.

 

Yeah, true, public opinion in EU is usually against involvement in wars, expecially in wars that have no direct benefits. That's why the creation of units as foreign legion, they are more expendables by the eyes of public opinion. By example there was the hypocrisy of italian politicians in the beginning of Astan campaign not to send armed drones or CAS bombers (AMX were equipped only with recon pods) because was a "peacekeeping" mission and in a peacekeeping mission it doesn't sound good to keep heavy stuffs, we're not there to fight but to keep the peace, so the journalists and the public opinion were ok. Was a great mistake, now there are tanks, AMX and drones are armed with bombs. Also in lybian campaign the italian involvment in missions over lybian soil were admitted days after the beginning, a pilot who was asked by the journalist had been transferred to another wing after an interview in which he admitted absolutely nothing.

 

Italian troops saved my current member of parliament Rory Stewart in Iraq, he was governor of two provinces in Iraq and his compound was attacked.

 

If all the experience your army has is in operations constipated by restrictions from the top, you will not be nearly as effective as troops who have operated under freer ROE.

 

Hypocrisy of politicians is more dangerous than enemy fire

 

yeah except your seal teams are dumbasses that get trained by british special forces, I think we'd handle them just fine.

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and how would you plan on disabling british nuclear weapons, you do know theyre on submarines right, best of luck with that one

 

That is known as "Cross Training", and all services do it. I have trained with SEALs several times, as well as Royal Marines and the Norwegian Army. The US and UK have several Exchange programs, where officers and senior NCOs spend 1 year or more attached to a sister-service in the military of the other.

So while your statement is true, the inverse is also true, that the various Special Operations forces in the British military are trained by the US.

I can't tell you how often I have seen US forces training the British "Elite" at US bases like 29 Palms, Fort Irwin, Fort Sherman, Little Creek, etc, etc, etc.

 

Yeah, because in case of sudden war Europe let USA to use those bases, logistics and support against fully equipped infantry brigades? Ok captain, now i want that you take all the people from the kitchen on that tanker and counterattack the tanks that are invading the runway to break the enemy line

 

I think the bigger issue with respect to European ground forces is their lack of experience in large scale operations. A Canadian Infantry Colonel put it to me best. He said that at the company level all the NATO forces are of largely the same quality and could be intermixed. However, once you got to the Battalion and especially the Regimental/Brigade/Division/Corps level the U.S. was absolutely unrivaled. He attributed this to the much larger U.S. military and the much larger training facilites (NTC/29 Palms etc.) where the U.S. could simulate large scale operations. He said no other NATO country could get this kind of training. It makes sense when you think about it. You can count the number of times European Armies have operated on a Regimental plus scale on one hand in the last 20 years. He also made mention of the much greater fire and logistic support that U.S. forces enjoyed at the higher levels.

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In all fairness, European forces aren't sitting outside U.S. bases in a state of mobilization. I'd argue that a Marine MEU/airborne/Ranger taskforce with a (*)(*)(*)(*) ton of air support could probably be sent into most European bases before an entire European infantry brigade could be mobilized.