The Military Thread

Well, technically it was the People’s Volunteer Army – Mao was basically playing Putin and Russia's "volunteers" in Ukraine in that China would be able to fight the U.S without actually calling it a full blown war.

Assuming that you’re talking about Chosin, the end result was still that the U.N forces were forced to withdraw from their positions and retreat southwards, the Marines having to move to evacuation points along the coast. Although the Chinese had failed in their original objective of destroying all the U.N forces around Chosin, they managed to turn back the troops of one of the two strongest superpowers regardless. There actually was an interesting conversation on here that dealt with the opposing perceptions about Chosin in China and the West several months ago.

With nearly 30 times the troops if you can't push back your enemy, youre either technologically shit, or have some serious leadership/morale issues. It's not exactly an amazing accomplishment.

Or you could take the opposite view, that the most technologically and tactically advanced army in the world was thrown into headlong retreat by a WWI peasant army.

Bullets still kill people at the end of the day. As long as they aren't flinging spears a peasant army that vastly outnumbers its opponent still has the advantage.

Unless it is handgun vs tank.

edited 31st Dec '14 2:40:01 PM by Memers

And just the same, when you outnumber the enemy close on 30:1, and you have them surrounded, that enemy escaping intact is the very definition of you failing. What if they only outnumbered them 15:1? Would the Chinese all be saying "oohrah" now?

Not really. Ever heard of force multipliers?

edited 31st Dec '14 2:46:31 PM by Achaemenid

You just have to hope they're not the Gloucesters .

Even with force multipliers 30 to 1 is long odds.

The Chaffees of our 10th Battalion Combat Team were the nearest the UN Forces ever got to them. What if the Battalion that was outnumbered by at least three divisions just less than 24 hours ago (and successfully held them off) was also successful in linking up with the surrounded Gloucesters?

edited 31st Dec '14 6:15:30 PM by entropy13

Lets be honest, it was 29:1, with the Chinese havin,g at a minimum, World War 2 era equipment, which it had excess of in the aftermath of the civil war, And in Korea, the US was largely using Late-war equipment. The Sherman was still in use. There wasn't much of a tech advantage at all.

Indeed, technological advantage doesn't really come to play. It was the sheer volume of artillery that offset the numerical advantage. Although of course the Chinese "volunteers" also had their own, the available artillery for one division among the UN forces is almost equivalent to the one at disposal to one Chinese corps.

edited 31st Dec '14 10:56:32 PM by entropy13

Well, it's accurate to say that the PVA was technologically behind the UN forces because of the volume of mechanization and motorization. It makes a huge difference when your supply lines are motorized, versus if you have to rely on footsloggers sans air cover. A pre-WWII army and a post-WWII army would have that as a crucial difference.

That's actually only on the "speed" of things so to speak, but lack of air cover was irrelevant back then, since the Chinese supplies move mostly at night anyway, and always in the forests when at day. The chapter on the Korean War from the book A History of Air Warfare said that the US Air Force was at it's lowest point back then. CAS was ineffective, bombing was too spread out, and shooting down all of those Mi Gs never really mattered, except for having the first generation of "jet aces".

edited 31st Dec '14 11:51:54 PM by entropy13

So was everyone else, and in some cases using a mixture of new and late-WW2 kit, such as the Cromwells and Centurions used by the British Forces.

You're not considering "virtual attrition". The lack of Chinese aircover forced them to use the comparatively inefficient system of forest and night-bound porters rather than the few trucks they did have. It's like assessing the effectiveness of a blockade - the measure is not "how many ships can run it" but "how many ships never even try?"

This is nonsense. Piece by piece:

- "29:1" is often quoted, but how many of the Chinese were tied up in logistical trains or suffering from frostbite? I doubt the Chinese numerical advantage was particularly significant at the sharp end. I also suspect the logistics and the cold were significantly greater factors in the Chinese failure to trap the Marines than any action by the Americans.

- "WWII era equipment" is a meaningless statement. A M26 Pershing is WWII-era equipment, but so is a crummy Hotchkiss H-35. The Chinese forces' biggest deficiencies were in communications and mechanization, both of which were hugely important. The Chinese strategy was to turn this to their advantage and not playing the Americans' game, instead relying on fieldcraft and infantry experience built up over their previous two decades of warfare against supposedly-superior opponents. Even "late-war" US kit was still significantly better than anything the Chinese had.

Y'all are also forgetting one of the most important aspects of warfare: comms. US command and control was also significantly better. Of course, had MacArthur actually prepared for the Chinese intervention the Americans could have turned their better communication and mechanization to their advantage - for instance with mobile "fire brigade" reserves to counter Chinese pressure at specific points - but he instead stuck his fingers in his ears and hoped that the Chinese wouldn't come south.

edited 1st Jan '15 5:53:07 AM by Achaemenid

Except they weren't "forced". Even during their crossing of the Yalu River (i.e. the start of Chinese intervention) that system was already in place. And for obvious reasons the lack of air cover meant f**k all because the USAF's air superiority meant f**k all for knowing in advance. Using your analogy, you're asking "how many ships made of steel never even try" when they use wooden boats right off the bat.

On the topic of "WWII era equipment", it is worth noting that both the Boeing P-26 Peashooter and the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star served with the Americans in World War II, if only barely on either end. The Navy didn't even get all of their biplanes completely retired until around 1943, although they at least managed to keep them out of overseas service during the war itself.

More bad news for the F-35: the softtware it neede to actually fire it's guns doesn't exist yet.

... How and why the f*** would you design a weapons system that in order to be even fired requires software that does not exist at the time it's slated for mass-production? Isn't creating that software supposed to be... You know, part of the manufacturing process?

edited 1st Jan '15 6:47:42 AM by MarqFJA

Lockheed wasn't being paid enough to write the software.

... Excuse me?!

Wait... ONLY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ROUNDS (180) FOR A THREE THOUSAND THREE-HUNDRED-ROUNDS-PER-MINUTE (3300) GUN?! Who designed this thing???

edited 1st Jan '15 6:48:06 AM by MarqFJA

I'm pretty sure the F/A-18's internal 20mm has a similar amount of ammo. I believe that the rate of fire can and is lowered via software when in use... and the software in question doesn't exist for the F-35.

@ Marq: The F-15E (and presumably the F-15S/SA) only carries 510 rounds for the same gun, the Tornado carries two Mauser BK-27 cannon, each with 180 rounds, and the Typhoon carries only 150 rounds for its BK-27.

... Then what is the point of having that much ROF, then? I know, I know, "fire an extremely accurate small burst of rounds within a second to hit the same spot", but going over 3000 RPM seems like overkill for that IMO.