Can the Militia win with superior weapons?

[kannonfyre]

A previous thread talked about how militia forces would basically lose to a regular army if both groups fought a battle over open terrain. This may hold water but what would happen if the regular career soldiers were equipped with weapons that were one or two generations behind that of the guns that the militia had?

Case in point: American revolutionary war - a group of 1000 battle hardened red coats armed with the brown bess muskets of the day and a few smoothbore cannon square off against a bunch of 1000 milita volunteers armed with lever action repeating rifles chambered with a suitable rifle caliber. The forces are seperated by 250 yards.

Would the superior personal arms of the militia negate the battle-harderend toughness of the red coats?

 

[gburner]

OR....hypothetically, could a mob of spear throwing cro-magnon proto sapiens equipped with a particle beam weapon and hand held plasma blasters defeat the Herman Goering Division in a winner take all slaughter-fest in the ever so hostile climate of Tierra del Fuego.

The answer is NO...no air cover or quarterback who can run the option!

 

[J Miller]

I to would anwser no.

But for a different reason. Modern professional armys have had, and do have excellent communication and cooperative skills.
All the best weapons wont win if the milita can't comunicate and coordinate their soldiers. Most militias are small local groups, so the logistics of coordinating their attacks and stratgies, would be daunting at least.

 

[Mark Tyson]

A militia, being comprised of all able bodied individuals, will have the advantage of numbers, sympathy among the local population, and knowledge of the terrain. If the invading army is composed of poorly motivated conscripts, there is a good chance that a militia or guerilla force could at least fight a rearguard action against the army. Look at the Russian experience in Chechnya.

 

[Cosmoline]

What a good unorganized militia can do

is take advantage of its total lack of organization. There is nobody to negotiate with or force into surrender. No prisoner can tell you anything about anyone else. Every single house, every farm, every apartment, is a new armed base that must be taken. A bullet can come at any moment from any citizen anywhere in the country. If enough civilians are shooting, it become EXTREMELY difficult for a military to secure any ground it takes. It would basically have to try to kill every single person, and if those people are sniping and running off, it's gonna be real long and difficult to track them all down and kill them.

If, in the mean time, there's a conventional force fighting the invaders, the militia can bog down enormous numbers of troops and thus offer great assistance to the conventional forces.

Without conventional forces, though, I don't think it can win against a force armed with heavy weapons and aircraft.

 

[Ian]

I think Cosmoline has the right idea. Every difference between a militia and a professional army can be an advantage for the militia if used the right way.

I read one reporter's comments about a Mujahideen 'base' he was in...the gist was that a KGB or KHaD (Afghan secret police) agent in there would go crazy, because there was literally nothing to infiltrate.

 

[Zundfolge]

oops ... posted in wrong thread

 

[brookstexas]

Superior waepons question

Most of the warefare would be in urban areas, the "Red Dawn" scenario is not valid with modern tech and the military would wipe those folks out quickly.

1-Warsaw Ghetto uprising

2-"Unintended Consequences" type action

3-IRA- maybe 200-300 members and the Brits can't get them all

Tons of other examples but in open combat the military loses, if there are enough brave men and women to fight guerilla style...

BT

 

[Solinvictus70]

In this age with air surveillance, it would be extremely difficult for irregulars to carry out operations. But, at the same time, they could make it very difficult for the occupiers by creating havoc and making it clear that there is no such thing as a safe area.

 

[George Hill]

Can the Militia win with Superior Weapons?

Yes it can.

Our country won it's freedom this way. If the Militia is smart, used the right tactics against the right targets. Then yes.

But now we are seeing laws being put into place that prevent this ever happening again.

The more important question is can a poorly armed militia win agains superior weapons?

Unfortunately not.

.50 caliber rifles are now banned. I don't see many Apaches and A-10s in private hands. There isn't an FAL in every house.

And now thanks to the Patriot Act, if you do anything that crosses the Government - you can be called a Terrorsit Threat and stomped into a mud hole before you could even mount a resistance.

 

[brownie0486]

A small band of militia with former specialized training through it's own countries military service would be able to take out a few enemy troops and steal their goods which were intended for them before they could be used.

Comm is key but secured comm is a must. They'll monitor traffic and know the moves you plan.

Codes and signals on comm would get by as long as everyone changed them regularly. They hear you coding messages, they get the codes broke PDQ.

Small bands of trained citizens, ya, I like that.
We worked in small units when we needed to get in and out of enemy territory. It would work again.

Brownie

 

[George Hill]

"It would work again."

Are you kidding? You would have to have large numbers of the Regular Army sympathetic to the Revolutionaries. You would have to have a lot of Ex Military people to train the ones that are not. And they don't ride horses anymore... they fly jets and ride in turbine powered helicopters.

What your talking about is what is happening in Iraq right now... They cap about one of our guys a day. I'll give them that. But they are not winning anything. They don't even give us pause.

No - it wouldn't work again. Militia can't call air support. Militia don't have it. For "Militia" to be able to put up a fight, the militia would have to have the right tools along with the talent. Jamming equipment. Cryptography. ECM. Tomahawks, TOWS, M-249s. Thermal and night vision.

You might think your the spookiest badarse with a scoped rifle... but your not crap to a helicopter with a thermal sight. You'd just be a target. The Volkstum was a potent force way back when. But not anymore. Not unless EVERY SINGLE man, woman, and child had the balls to fight, and had unchallenged communications and the element of supprise...
In short - it would take a miracle for it to "work".

 

[Ian]

George - .50s are banned? When did that happen (aside from California)?

Secure strategic comm is available to todays citizens in the form of PGP. Use 4096-bit keys and change them regularly and you can communicate without being snooped on. Alternatively, the militia command pass messages where they wouldn't be found - by messenger, or a myriad of other ways. Secure encryption is only needed when messages are visible to the opponent.

Air power is not invincible. The Mujahideen survived Soviet air power (Hinds and Su-25s; similar to Apaches and A-10s) for more than five years before they saw a single Stinger missile. The made their camps in areas difficult to attack by air, and they fortified the approaches to those areas with AA machineguns. They also made many successful attacks on airfields, where they were able to destroy aircraft on the ground (see also: the SAS in North Africa).

You would have to have large numbers of the Regular Army sympathetic to the Revolutionaries.

In any instance where the militia is fighting their own regular armed forces, there are a good many militia supporters in the Army. This is not the case when the militia is fighting a foreign invader, though.

 

[George Hill]

Was talking Cali... sorry.
And the Sovs didn't have then what we have now.

 

[Feanaro]

Any kind of open battle between a militia and a regular army is what I prefer to call suicide. The militia at best would be slaughtered, at worst totally destroyed. Better weapons or not fighting a pitched battle, IE on an open field is not something an irregular army is suited for.

Could a militia win on terrain on their choosing? Who knows?

 

[WingZero]

Think about the Warsaw ghetto rebellion.
It is possible, but highly unlikely.

 

[kannonfyre]

The reason I started this thread was because of the initial battle scences in "The Patriot" starring Mel Gibson. I'm not clear whether they involved continental milita or regular but they were slaughtered by the red coats. In a battle involving skirmish lines, can anyone tell me whether the militia might have won if they had anything approaching bolt action rifles? I'm not talking broad based strategy here, just the tactical paradigm of this particular battle.

After all, if the milita suddently had the technological advantage, they be able to start firing at 250 yards and average 3 volleys to every one fired by the redcoats.

 

[goon]

The rifles of the day were deadly far past the effective range of the Brown Bess musket. They were slower to reload, but there were ways to mitigate this problem. One way was to have a board with holes drilled in it. You would then place a patched round ball in each hole. All you then had to do was line the hole up and ram the ball in. Still not as fast as a musket though.
The biggest problem with riflemen was supposedly their dislike for following instructions. Most of these backwoods rilfemen had no problem with killing the British, but they didn't like to be told what to do.
Kinda like most people would be today.

 

[MicroBalrog]

The big problem with a modern-day militia would be Compatibility. Imagine we repealed all gun control, so all can carry their favourite toys.
There's a terrorist attack on a town by a large band of terrorists and we're fending it off.
I'm armed with a PKM and 2 desert Eagles.
WingZero has a FAL, and kannonfyre has, say an M16.
Kannonfyre runs out of ammo, then I trip over the belt of my PKM, fall over, catch 5 slugs and hit a claymore or three. Now, the big bunch of ammo lying on my mutilated corpse is useless to either Kannonfyre or Feanaro.

Our attackers, of course, are armed with standardized equipment, so they don't have this problem....
See were this is going?

 

[Gary H]

I would say yes, unless the answer is no.

 

[JeremyIA]

Gary H--Very thought provoking.

If this ever happened, vast numbers of enlisted men would break ranks very quickly. Some would probably take their weapons and communications equipment with them. The encription devices (ANCD) would have to be changed on a daily basis with daily defections of "regulars" equipped with those encription devices. Such daily defections with those ANCD's would create a NIGHTMARE with the communications devices of faithful "regulars". The radios of most "regulars" operate generally in one of two modes. I will call those modes "secure" and "unsecure". In order to maintain a "secure" mode, the radios must be loaded with the encription codes in the ANCD on a daily basis in order to keep all of the radios in sync since they "frequency hop" constantly in order to remain secure. Over time, they don't "hop" together anymore. That is why they must be loaded daily. If one of the ANCD's is compromised, an entirely new encription algorithm must be loaded and transferred to ALL OTHER ANCD's so that everyone's radio is on the same page of music. Daily defections of regulars possessing radios that are already loaded or regulars that have these ANCD's would force the powers-that-be to constantly change the encription codes of every single ANCD in the field. This would cause mass commo problems amongst the regulars forcing them to operate in "UNSECURE" mode if they wanted to communicate. The defectors would no longer need the ANCD's because they would be able to monitor the communications of the regulars because they would no longer be operating in "SECURE" frequency-hopping mode. It would be impossible to do so after, say, a week or two.

Anyone who currently serves or who has served within the last few years would know all of this. It's not classified.

 

[CZ-75]

I think that the only way to win is to gain sympathy from the non-committed members of the population and those in the armed forces, such that they are willing to bring political pressure to bear and betray their fellows to the resistance movement.

The attrition would be terrible to make it costly enough to the regular army to give up the fight and negotiate a settlement.

As to weaponry, the resistance, through raids, attrition of the opposition, and fifth columnists in the opposition forces to acquire superior weaponry. Still, a certain base level of weaponry is required and bolt guns and shotguns aren't it by themselves.

 

[Ed Ely]

Interesting Thread, but.......

how soon we forget. Anyone remember VietNam?
Of course you do. We lost our a*s and we were
supposedly the superior force with all the modern
day high tech weapons, C3I, comm and etc.

Same thing going on right now. We are a bunch
of candy a*ses over there in Iraq. We will be there
until we get tired of playing ring around the roses.
The only way to rid an enemy is to completely
destroy them, one at a time until they are gone
period.

Another thought, it took over six years to jail
that ol' boy over in NC. and at one time there
were somewhat like 600 feds on his track for
months. The real weapon is the BRAIN.

 

[2nd Amendment]

The militia can win regardless of weaponry. The deciding factors are public support and military morale(and, of course, avoiding toe to toe encounters). With support of a fair percentage of the public, and the poor morale this would cause(aided by many other factors) then victory, eventually, is assured.

A better question is, what would the country, and the government, look like afterwards?

 

[TallPine]

Depends on your definition of "win"


Fast forward a few years: we still have thousands of troops in Iraq, no stable local govt has been created, 1 or 2 Americans are dying each day and the public is sick of it ... another administration makes the now popular decision to just pull out and go home.

So who wins?