Could a well equipped Infantry Battalion outgun a Big City Police dept?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Trip,

      Not doubting your pros are good, but as Rhum said, they're outnumbered 70-1 against, say, NYC. Do you really think they'd win? I mean, if you kill 50 before they get you, you didn't carry your share of the load.

At one time at least, NYC had a surplus tank (disabled turret gun) at Floyd Bennett field. They rolled it upto a gun shop in a hostage situation once. Those guys quit FAST. (they didn’t know it was disabled).

500 activated terrorists, at large and distributed, would seemingly be more trouble.

42

“Remember the Alamo”…:wink:

43

I’ve gotta go with the military unit (assuming they were a force as well equipped and trained as a US battalion) for a while. Lots of cops are ex-military and would know that they wouldn’t stand a chance against those guys. They’d no doubt simply try to slow the approaching battalion down until National Guard troops could arrive, which probably wouldn’t be very long. (On 9/11, members of the National Guard in NY and NJ began showing up before any call up orders were given. I’d say that it’d be safe to assume that the same thing would happen once word of the assault hit the local media.

As for the locals taking up arms, I could see them doing that if the enemy troops were encamped for a long time, or if they were directly threatening someone’s property or loved ones. Otherwise, they’d most likely hunker down and try to stay out of the way. (Of course, there’d be a few nut cases out there who’d drive halfway across the city and try to stop the baddies ala Rambo.)

If the assault was on D.C. during a Presidential address to Congress, you can bet it’d be over shortly. While the actual plans are no doubt secret, I’d be surprised if they didn’t have all kinds of military forces out in the open and carefully hidden. Not to mention air patrols by both the Army and Air Force.

44

tuckerfan I doubt those national gaurd showed up with weapons. They’d have to goto the base and arm before they’d be effective.

45

Right, on 9/11 the guys showed up at their bases, before being called. But there wasn’t the delay of waiting for the call up orders to be given to the base commanders (or whomever it is who does the call ups), the soldiers getting the messages to report and then showing up. So that’d prolly cut the response time down if the guys started showing up once the news media announced what was going on, rather than simply waiting to get the orders.

46

OK, I’m gonna specify and restate the question in a slightly different vein. While I think the sleeper cell/terrorist concept is interesting and apropos, it offers far too many variables for solid debate.

I want to look at the question in a more specific organized manner.

Here’s my proposal.

A organized modern military chooses to invade a strategic target city as a jumping off point for a invasion.

Suppose the sovereign nation of Rogue and it’s well trained and equiped army chooses to execute a paratrooper assault on the city of Jacksonville, Florida to seize and control the city long enough to land heavy armor, artillery and reinforcements via the sea ports.

Jacksonville is a city of around 750,000. Not the biggest of the big, but certainly has a substantial police force with all the basic SWAT and tactical response units and heavy equipment like helicopters and armored assault vehicles.

Lets assume that the drop planes are unnoticed until they reach landfall, and the that fictional naval landing force is concealed.

I like the Jacksonville example because the surrounding metroplex isn’t of the scale of the major cities, and it doesn’t have another large city within an couple hours drive for non-military support. I don’t know what military installations are narby, but lets ignore them for the sake of arguement.

I’m far from a military buff, but having just read Band of Brothers I’m picturing a WWII style battalion of elite paratroopers dropping in. They have assault rifles, a few hundred rounds of ammo per man, mortars, snipers, and grenades. Hopefully one of the SDMB experts can update this to modern day standards. Do current paratrooper battalions have any anti-aircraft weapons, jeeps or other vehicles, or other important weapons?

So thats the scenario I’m picturing. The cops would be caught off guard, and the invading nation would have excellent inteligence as to where the police stations and communication systems are since its in public domain. The air-drop went perfectly with a quick ogranization and well chosen insertion points. They have body armour and night vision equipment.

I’m thinking the military would be in very good shape. The big catch being that the vast majority of the police’s guns won’t penetrate typical military body armour, but the typical military assault rifle will pierce police vests. The military would have communication on par with the cops, and probably better. The police’s would be easily picked up on scanners eliminating any chance of suprise in the counter-attack, not to mention the lack of skill in something massive, and the likelyhood of there being massive clutter once things got hot. The military would have secure frequencies and singular command. From a numerical standpoint, I figure there’d be something like 500 invaders and 5000-10000 officers of varying readiness. (how much of the above 35k in NYC are armed and/or trained and not simply administrative?)

The invading force wouldn’t need to entirely wipe out the police, but to simply take out the infrastructure, and take complete control of the port, while passing through the city.

While its obvious that once the US military moibilzed in response, it’d all be for nothing, but could they accomplish this mission? I think they could with suprisingly few casualties. The armed citizens would probably inflict more damage to the invaders than the police would. However I’m not sure that’d be able to stop the troops.

Any thoughts about this specific scenario?

47

Why would they even need the paratroopers to secure the city? Should Rouge’s naval invasion be concealed as you say, the para troopers need only secure the dock’s surrounding area so the heavy armor can unload safely. Although I admit, should 400 para troopers be distributed and say about a 100 troops take the dock the ensueing chaos would be an order of magnatude greater.

48

I forgot to mention this since it seemed obvious to me. But the naval force would have absolutely 0 resistance. The only problem I forsee would be commercial ships getting in the way of destroyers or whatnot. but I’d think a battleship or a destroyer could simply Ram right past most smaller ships.

49

Omni,

  Virtually all those NYC cops should be armed. That's the uniform count, and while some have admin jobs, it doesn't count civilian workers who answer the phones, etc. A well armed group could probably secure a beachhead, but I doubt the whole large city.
50

Omniscient --------- What would complicate this scenario even more is that hostages could be taken. Each small group of invaders could take a small group of hostages. You now have hundreds of hostages as human shields. You`ll have multiple hostage situations spread out all over the city. Some of the hostages will be people of influence in the city. How could the police deal with this? One hostage situation is sticky enough, but hundreds? That could get ugly!

51

I, for one, would not count on L.A. street gangs beating any sort of armed force.

Those guys are in a gang, but it’s not like they drill or anything like that.

A drive by shooting does not make for an effective defense against an organized group of soldiers or terrorists.

52

Ah… the old Hulk vs Godzilla thread.

I imagine that you could outfit an airborne battalion with just about anything that fit in the back of a C-130. That generally means HMMWVs, light field guns, anti tank missles but not tanks, self-propelled guns or other heavy stuff.

Doesn’t matter though cause it’s a silly argument. 500 trained soldiers attacking a city in peacetime, by surprise, are very likely to achieve their initial objectives (whatever that is). But what then? I’ll tell you what. They would be surrounded and trapped in whatever buildings they choose to occupy by 100s of armed cops. Several hours later, National Guard tanks and APCs and helicopters would be there to support the police and then they would simply burn them out.

Look at Waco, TX or that theater incident in Moscow. There are ALWAYS more soldiers, cops and guns than bad guys. Besides that, why throw away several hundred soliders for little return? So forget the Invasion USA Chuck Norris bullshit.