And of course there is the story of the unsung hero of Australia against massive odds in New Guinea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Potts
I ackowledge these points you make. However I dont see their relevance to the discussion at hand. The latest Russian aircraft are certainly not comparable to "a peasant wielding an AK" ... they are top technology! having 5 or 10 of them to every one F35 => whoever has the MIGs will cr@p all over the other side having the far fewer F35s. Simple as that!
You cherry-pick a few notable examples to suit your case but history has shown an army with numbers and decent quality will beat a smaller but superior enemy. The Spanish Armada claim is also false, since England fielded about 200 ships to counter about 140 Spanish/Portuguese ships (from memory). And the weather did most of the damage to the Spaniards, not English guns. The Battle of Britain also wasn't "overwhelming odds" considering the British had about 2000 aircraft to the Luftwaffe's 2500 (a good portion of these planes being sitting duck bombers and Stukas) and had been building its fighter defences all throughout the 1930s. One thing I have to hand to the British is that they have a very active myth-making industry, taking what were victories and then talking them up to be more than they actually were. And I'm not talking about arming peasants and sending them off on human wave attacks - this is not a "good soldier". I'm talking about the choice between 100 excellent soldiers and 300 good soldiers (good as in "above average").
To add to what i said previously - i believe you have very conveniently dismissed the lessons which the Germans taught the rest of the world in WW2 - namely the tactics of Blitzkrieg - where concentrated firepower was used to overcome any and all targets. the Germans did not always have the very best of all equipment, but if it was not the very best (#1) then it certainly was a close second best! however the point is they attacked in numerically superior concentrations ... outnumbering the enemy! An important lesson i believe in modern warfare - and especialy in modern airial warfare.
I am not picking any sides w.r.t. the best platform as it is so far out of my area of expertise that we may as well debate why the flappy things under the wings have been painted a certain colour. As you've realised I was adding another important variable into the suite of reasons why a given instrument can be a better proposition than another besides $X vs $XXX. At the end of the day the equipment needs to be "fit for purpose" noting that today's purpose may be different to tomorrow's, that today's "fitness" given your other equipment (and the other guys equipment) will probably be different to tomorrow's "fitness" and that "fitness" depends critically on environment. Chubb happily employs antique trucks manned by two plump, old men with pop guns in certain locations/situations but wouldn't dare use them in other locations/situations.
How would you operationalise "the US kicked ass"? If you could, it would certainly solve the old question "who won the Viet-Nam war". By that same rationale, one could then determine who won in the war between in Afghanistan between the Russians and the Taliban, and perhaps later make a determination as to will have won in the current USA (sorry, "ISF") vs Taliban war again in Afghanistan.
Tell me did ALL Vietnamese people want communism? I am not by any means defending the US military and their atrocities but surely there were many South Vietnamese that did not want Uncle Ho taking over the entire country. Was Vietnam better off under communism? Btw you may not know this but there are plenty of South Vietnamese flags flying in parts of Sydney. Look at the Korea example. I am certain the South Koreans are thanking their lucky stars the US/UN stopped the communist advance. Otherwise they would have been part of that basket case failed state known as North Korea.
insightful would also be English translations of North Vietnamese authorities on the war..................
Why do you assume the war started with American involvement. After the Viet Minh threw out the French the Vietnamese were fighting amongst themselves. After the Vietnamese partitioned the country, 900,000 fled to the South the escape the Communists, estimates are 400,000 more would have followed except the Viet Minh stopped them on threat of execution. Only 50,000 fled to the North and these almost entirely received guerilla training, returned as Viet Cong to start terrorising their villages and assassinate any local leaders who were pro-Diem. If Vietnam recovered so quickly after the war why were there 'boat people' still escaping into the 1980s? It has been estimated that 65,000 Vietnamese were executed after the end of the war with 1 million being sent to prison/re-education camps where an estimated 165,000 died. Estimates of 1.5 million boat people fled to the world. We just saw boat people from the South. Boat people from the North usually had Chinese heritage and fled to Hong Kong. Don't forget that the land and possessions of political prisoners and escapees in communist countries is redistributed to communist party members - which is why journalists can find elderly Vietnamese who fought the Americans in every village. That's called redistribution of wealth to me.
I think the North Korea case has far more to do with trade sanctions. Maybe if the entire situation had been left alone Korea as a whole would be more like Vietnam today. It is a mistake to think that force and violence solve problems. They don't. It didn't solve the problem of the Iron Curtain countries either. They turned on their own as their economic situation became untenable. Just let people trade and they will become more educated and liberalised as they become more wealthy as a whole. Cut them off and don't be surprised at the results.
So explain to me what good the Americans did in the end? What would have happened if they'd left well enough alone? People would have got fed up with fighting and/or run out of the resources to as they always do. All the Americans did was prolong the situation which is probably why it took as long as it did to recover.
The English ended up fielding more ships vs the Spanish, correct, but most of these were press-ganged crews on merchant ships forcibly appropriated by the Crown in the months leading to the Armada sailing. Most had few contingents of soldiers on board leaving them vulnerable to boarding by the Spanish ships which all brimmed with soldiers. Phillip of Spain had been planning the armada for 2 years, all the ships were outfitted for their campaign (even though logistically the campaign was farcical). Their strategy was to attack en masse and overwhelm individual English ships, and convert ships to their own use, expanding the Armada. The English ships that actually did the fighting were the small contingent of small, light, dedicated warships with good cannon drills and excellently trained crews. I'm not using this example because it sounds good. Battle of Britain - About 400 Spitfires pilotted by exhausted pilots and I recall a similar number of Hurricanes. They had already lost 67 Spitfires (I just read online) over France before the Battle began. Did I not quote 3 failures? Did I not mention Isandlwana? I deliberately avoided mentioning Rourkes Drift which was a day later.
The Germans didn't outnumber anybody except the Belgians and Dutch. I'm not conveniently ignoring anything. I'm actively aware of what the Germans taught the rest of the world. Blitzkrieg under the Germans always involved fewer numbers of excellently trained troops with up to date technology. It involved going around defended positions and hard points, not hitting them head on like in WWI. Cut off a unit and deplete its' resources and reinforcement. Concentrated firepower at the enemies' weakest point. Destroy the enemies' ability to manoevre and you destroy their ability to continue as an offensive force. There were always fewer tanks, fewer panzer divisions, numerically facing the British in France or Russians at any time. Watching documentaries leads you to believe the German army was just tanks and the air was full of Stuka dive bombers. Reading the history books they all state that after the Blitzkrieg (tanks, mechanised infantry etc) had destroyed or contained the manoevrability of an enemy, they moved on to the next target or contact. Conventional light infantry were always following on from the mechanised infantry to continue containing the enemy until they were soft enough for light infantry attack or they just surrendered. It's no accident that Rommels text book on Blitzkrieg was called 'Infantry Attacks' and not 'Tank Attacks.' Read 'Stalingrad' by Antony Beevor or any other book that details Operation Barbarossa, it was always about highly trained soldiers in their superior tanks moving faster and thinking quicker than superior numbers of inferior units could operate. It was when the Blitzkrieg was halted, due to Hitlers' lunacy and wanting a set piece and ideological victory at Stalingrad, that the tide was turned. By then, the Russians with their overwhelming numbers had the time to concentrate their Armies and give the Germans a taste of their own medicine.
If you can find any, please share. Hackworth is good reading as he pointed out American failures and where they could have improved.
Trade sanctions are not the problem with N. Korea as China actively trades and supplies them with fuel, food and everything else. The problem is that it is a stalinist totalitarian regime that has terrorised, indoctrinated and starved its citizens into submission. Outsiders are not the cause of the problem. I actually think that the Korean war was a just one (as the North attacked and invaded first) and that the people that live in the South are much, much better off today because of it. Unlike recent wars the Korean war was one truly based on freedom vs repression. Even if Korea had been left alone, turned communist and resembled Vietnam, you have to remember that Vietnam today is still in a far inferior position in terms of living standards, compared to South Korea. Come on would you rather live in the South or the North if you had a choice?
English liberty at work? I guess those sailors weren't shown a copy of the Magna Carta before they were press-ganged. But jokes aside, the Spanish had a similar number of armed Merchantmen in their armada as the English. In fact, most of the Spanish losses to weather was those Merchantmen. For the great English victory the Spanish Armada was meant to be, most of the 20-odd Spanish galleons made it back to Spain to fight another day. Drake claimed 5 of the 140-odd ships of the Armada in combat. The Irish weather did the rest (and not the last time the Irish pulled English buns out of the fire!) So while there is this romantic image of Drake sailing into battle with a handful of ships against galleons bristling with cannon, it simply didn't happen (although the Battle of Gravelines was a good English naval action). But while the Spanish Armada is often talked about, what about the English Armada of the next year? Where the English suffered losses comparable to the Spanish Armada, 40 of the 130-odd ships failing to return to England? My understanding is that in August 1940, the RAF had 750 fighters to the Luftwaffe's 800 fighters, the other 1400-odd Luftwaffe planes being Stukas and bombers. It also seems that 1700 Hurricanes passed through Fighter Command throughout the battle, so it can't be said the British were not well-supplied. In the end, both the RAF and Luftwaffe lost a similar amount of planes at around 1500 each, so close to a 1:1 ratio. So again, the reality is not one of poor Biggin Hill Spitfires alone against a sky blackened with Me-109s leading to Churchill saying "so much by so many to so few" (but nothing but respect for those pilots who flew 3-4 sorties in a day). The British do have a prestigious record of military defeats and failures, my favourites being Patay, Castillon, Medway, Landen, Cape Lizard, Fontenoy, Cartegena de Indias, Carillon, Castlebar, Corunna and New Orleans. It seems that as a general rule, the British should avoid doing battle at places that begin with a "C".
