I’ve been playing Civ4 lately, taking out pikemen with tanks, and I got to thinking - what’s the biggest technological gap there’s ever been in a war? I’d imagine the biggest will be when European countries were out colonizing, but I’d also be interested in closer-to-home wars; say, biggest gap between adjacent country’s militaries.
I think the Spanish conquest of the Americas has to come very close.
Or Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
Didn’t the Ethiopians manage to kill a few tanks? Something about there being a gap in the armor suitable for spear insertion…
The Ethiopians managed to disable a number of Italian tanks by hitting them from behind and destroying their weapons and treads (the machine guns on the Italian tanks were front facing and couldn’t swivel.)
It’s also important to remember that, in the war, even though some of the Ethiopian troops were armed with spears and bows, others did have (outdated) rifles. They also had a small airforce, artillery pieces, some armored cars, and even some tanks of their own. So even though there’s the stereotype of the modern Italian army going up against the primitive, spearwielding Ethiopians, the reality was more complex than that.
The British Army, with Maxim guns, vs. the Mahdi’s Army or some of the African tribes with spears.
The latter were not always the losers of course.
Italy vs Ethiopia 1935. For every Italian they killed they lost 500 of their own men.
Casualties and losses
Approx. 500 killed1 (est. May 1936)[2]
Approx. 1,000 wounded (est. May 1936)[3]
Approx. 275,000 combatants killed, 500,000 wounded
Imperial Japan vs various Polynesian tribal groups.
Battle of New Orleans, 1815.
The Americans should have been whipped that day. Instead, the British went home in the barrels.
How the Hell is this a tech gap issue?:dubious:
Well, according to Johnny Horton, the British had cannon, whilst the Americans had to make do with alligators.
What about more recent conflicts?
I’d imagine the US/NATO vs Taliban (2001/02) was pretty one-sided tech-wise.
Not really. The Taliban still had all the equipment they’d stolen from the Russians, not to mention Stingers and the like we sent them during the Soviet occupation. Differences in amount, sure. But not so much in the basic tools of the trade.
Hell, NATO vs. Iraq was pretty much one-sided. Both times. As Bill Hicks put it, “There never was a Gulf War. A war is when two countries fight each other. So, you see…”
ETA :
Hmm, yeah, I think the Taliban are somewhat lacking in terms of fighter jets, smart bombs, cruise missiles, unmanned drones, gunships and AFVs though 
Compared to some other technology gaps the difference between Soviet-era equipment vs modern US equipment is negligible.
My vote is with some of the European colonial campaigns in Africa in the late 1800s. There were examples of a single team manning a Maxim gun against whole armies of African troops (and the odd incredible example of African troops of coming out on top despite the insane technology difference).
The British destruction of the Tasmanians comes to mind. Thanks to their isolation and small population, the Tasmanians were not only technologically in the Stone Age, but were even primitive by Stone Age standards.
Jean Baudrillard’s answer is that “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.”
That fight wasn’t so much a tech gap as a gap in military professionalism, experience and training.
The reason we ran roughshod over the Iraqi army twice like we did isn’t because they had T-72s and we had M1s, but because our guys are professional, highly trained and disicplined soldiers, and the Iraqis, by and large, were either conscripts or politically well-connected jerkoffs who weren’t serious soldiers by the standards of Western nations.
If it was technology, then the Soviet-era OPFOR at Ft. Irwin wouldn’t have dominated regular Army units like they did (do?).
I vote for the African colonial campaigns as well; Maxim guns vs. spears and bows is a 5-600 year gap at best.
Ok, so what about neighboring countries? I’m thinking that the really big wars, especially WWI, must have had at least a couple of countries enter the fray with outdated weapons. I’d be especially interested in European-on-European (well, maybe Western-on-Western) armies, where it’s more of an issue of supply, rather than having access. You hear stories of the Russian army sending guys in with minimal equipment during WWII, f’rinstance.