How many men with modern weaponry...........

[slamdunkpro]

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But how would you take a town with civilians around... without massive colateral damage and civilian casualties?

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Fight it like WWII; not Iraq - Crush the opposition and have the survivors rebuild.

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You might be walking down a street and get attacked by bowmen on rooftops, in doorways and windows, etc...

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Mortars and grenades until they're gone.

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How do you deal with Robin Hood, and his merry men, who appear to be civilians during the day?...

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Fire - lots of it.

[miw210]

Jack Bauer?

[LeapFrog]

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A small expeditionary force of 150 – 200 would be sufficient to rout a period enemy and clam victory at Hastings.


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I'm pretty sure that one guy with a loud speaker and a sniper rifle could rout a period army (at least the first time this was encountered). No point in these exercises really if we don't assume some resistance.

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The castle: 50 assault troops with AK’s and fragmentation grenades; 2 60 mm mortars, 4 RPG’s and 2 grenade launchers and you’re gold.

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So all you have for reducing the castle walls is 4 RPGs? How effective is that vs like a few stone anyways? The armor piercing warheads are designed to basically fire a jet of super hot metal and 'melt' through armor -- not sure how well this would work against sold stone. Plus you have to cross the moat/wall rubble while being fired upon. I dunno about 50 guys.

[LeapFrog]

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I'm not sure if you realize that Barrett Light .50's (employed by virtually all US Spec Ops units) are semi-auto.
Assume that all 400 men are at least equipped with a a .50 and a large supply of pre-loaded magazines. I'd say that at a distance of 1 mile (also assuming they're facing an army of 40,000 infantry) each Marine could get off 1 shot with very strong accuracy once every 5-7 seconds. each would exhaust their clip (10 rounds) in about 1 minute. That means that the 400 Marines would send 4000 rounds down range per minute. If the 40,000 were relatively tightly spaced,it's not far fetched to imagine that a single round could take down 2 or 3 men, provided it didn't hit the center of their armor.


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I did assume semi-auto, the one round per minute statement was a bit of an exaggeration [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Strong accuracy to me means >70pct hit rate which I doubt could be achieved at one mile vs galloping opponents (the 7k calvery). Of course accuracy would increase as they got closer.

Yes, given the size of the round you would have to factor in the probability of additional casualties after a target was hit, but you also are going to have to factor in target overlap.


So 4k rounds/minute is not going to be killing 4k guys at one mile (at least not vs calvery, plus all that horse flesh is going to stop some rounds), though this would of course increase the closer the enemy got.

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The fact that each each man is equipped with a rifle is a given but what about closer fighting? In the standard fire team, there are 4 men, one of which is a SAW gunner, and carries an M249 light machine gun. So let's also say that 1/4 of the total men carry these weapons, while one half would carry the standard M4 with Spec Ops mods (picture below):

The remaining 100 men could be utilized for assault purposes, and employ silenced MP5s, flash bangs, C4, basically everything that's used in a breach-and-bang/dynamic entry situation.
I think given the 400 semi-auto long range rifles, which would then be switched out for 100 M249 SAWs, 200 M4s, and 100 MP5s for CQB (close quarter battle) a 40,000 man army would be very doable. As far as being able to "hold" the country, that would be tough. There would be sustained casualties, but I tried to come up with a bare minimum number given the circumstances.


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If you can have the Snipers switch out to M4s for close/med range, along with support units with light machine guns and stuff then it gets interesting and I would say could be done even assuming you have to kill 10 or 15k troups to rout the rest and win.

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If nothing else, this thread has been a ton of fun brainstorming these possiblities, as I've often wondered about stuff like this myself.

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I agree this is an interesting, fun thread. Since the days of reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthor's Court I've pondered a few of these scenarios myself.

[LeapFrog]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But how would you take a town with civilians around... without massive colateral damage and civilian casualties?

[/ QUOTE ]
Fight it like WWII; not Iraq - Crush the opposition and have the survivors rebuild.

[ QUOTE ]
You might be walking down a street and get attacked by bowmen on rooftops, in doorways and windows, etc...

[/ QUOTE ]
Mortars and grenades until they're gone.

[ QUOTE ]
How do you deal with Robin Hood, and his merry men, who appear to be civilians during the day?...

[/ QUOTE ]
Fire - lots of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you read the War Nerd by any chance? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
http://www.exile.ru/archive/by_author/gary_brecher.html

[BigPoppa]

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How many Ewoks would it take to rule Europe?

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Very good question.

Given their proven success against larger opponents wearing armor.......

[WhoIam]

Nerve gas. I'm surprised no one has thought of this. All you would need is an artillery crew and infantry platoon, all with gas masks. There's no Geneva convention, so this would be completely legal. Is this any more cruel than mowing troops down with helicopter gunships or picking them off one by one with snipers?

This would make a hell of a fun video game. Think "Soldiers Sent Back in Time with Modern Weapons to Take over Europe: Total War"

[MuresanForMVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Nerve gas. I'm surprised no one has thought of this. All you would need is an artillery crew and infantry platoon, all with gas masks. There's no Geneva convention, so this would be completely legal. Is this any more cruel than mowing troops down with helicopter gunships or picking them off one by one with snipers?

This would make a hell of a fun video game. Think "Soldiers Sent Back in Time with Modern Weapons to Take over Europe: Total War"

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"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

[LeapFrog]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nerve gas. I'm surprised no one has thought of this. All you would need is an artillery crew and infantry platoon, all with gas masks. There's no Geneva convention, so this would be completely legal. Is this any more cruel than mowing troops down with helicopter gunships or picking them off one by one with snipers?

This would make a hell of a fun video game. Think "Soldiers Sent Back in Time with Modern Weapons to Take over Europe: Total War"

[/ QUOTE ]

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"



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nh sir. That reminds me, whenever I saw Dr. Romano on ER (yes, I watched it for a like season) I always pictured him saying 'I LIKE IT!'