Scream to congress about weapons of mass destruction, pay Haliburton and other contractors billions and…wait, that plan never works.
Mordor is described, almost as an aside, somewhere in the Return of the King as having relatively fertile areas around the Sea of Nurn and an army of human slaves to work it to feed the war machine. I agree that, depending on the supply lines, scorched earth on your own land probably would not work, since you’re not probably not making it into Mordor to cut off the lines as well. The geography is too bad to make it through the mountains and you can’t fly over them. Your options are presumably taking Minas Morgul (ugly), taking the Black Gate (even uglier), or going through Cirith Ungol (enough firepower should easily take down Shelob and you’ve got artificial lighting, but that’s not an easy route up to the pass.) I think you’ve got to stick with the book and defend Helm’s Deep, break the Siege of Gondor, and distract Sauron by marching on Mordor.
Shame there’s no air support. I’d take a number of A-10s and the Siege of Gondor would become a shooting gallery.
This does bring up a question about enemy capability. I agree that with good firing positions, mortars, etc. you should be able to pick them off from a distance without worries of close engagement. Heck, you should be able to blow the crap out of Grond so that they never have a chance to enter Minas Tirith. But how much damage could a volley of arrows do assuming modern body armor? How about the siege weapons (though again, I assume you blow those up first)?
To an M1 tank? Exactly none. Hitting it with a 1 ton boulder from a siege weapon might work, except hitting a tank that’s moving at 40mph with a trebuchet is no easy matter.
Did you miss where asterion specified body armor?
Plus the fact that the 1st Marine Regiment doesn’t *have *any M1s. The best they can do is the LAV-25. But then again, an LAV-AD would make burger-bits out of the Nazgul and their flying beasties.
How are those in the real world? Deathtraps or actually useful/effective?
They do the job. Survivability seems to be about the same as the Bradley or Stryker.
That’s what you think. :eek:
Put 1000 guys with rifles on the walls of Helms Deep and order aimed fire from ranges well beyond effective bow range. No need for automatic weapons fire at all.
Meanwhile, the rest of the force storms Isengard. Snipers drop Saruman from the tower, then demolition teams take down the dam just like the Ents did.
Nazgul may or may not be immune to rifle fire, but their mounts are certain to go down under a hail of small arms fire. Then we test whether the Nazgul survive large amounts of small arms fire, a flamethrower or two, and perhaps some demolition charges if necessary.
Once that is completed, the entire battle group rolls down to Minas Tirith and has an Oliphant burger BBQ before moving on to the Black Gate.
A small scouting party is assigned to follow Frodo without allowing him to know they are doing so. If he walks out of the mountain at the end, their orders are to take him down and then, without approaching his body (I don’t want someone going “Oo! Shiny!”), order Samwise to throw the body into the lava. If this cannot be done, then they are instructed to carry out this task as expeditiously as possible.
What makes you so sure they’d follow through with that instead of stealing the ring?
I’d show the Nine my nine.
I once tried this with a parakeet and a revolver, and I can confirm that bird mounted firepower is, indeed, badass.
I have to say, when I first read the OP it made me think of Donkey Kong Halo.
It occurred to me last night after posting that without Gandalf, there is no Helms Deep. Saruman controls King Theoden’s mind. Until that influence is removed, Rohan is going to treat the outside force as just that, and as an enemy, and remain in place rather than retreating to Helm’s Deep.
So the first nut to crack is Isengard, and you have to hit it before the Uruk-Hai depart for Rohan.
Fortunately, it has that wonderful weakness of the dam, so no frontal assault against an entrenched enemy is necessary.
The danger here is that Men desire Power above all else, at least according to movie-Galadriel, and that goes double for Marines. Nobody becomes a Marine because they want to be meek and humble. If the Ring senses a Marine near by, it’s likely to have an “accident” to reveal itself. I think we have to concentrate our forces on the military confrontations that played out in the book, and trust that the destruction of the Ring will occur as it does in the book. This means paying close attention to the timeline. We don’t dare do anything that might upset Faramir, Frodo, Sam, or Gollum until it’s time to draw enemy forces out of Mordor.
So, first order of business is to detach a unit with artillery to Isengard to wait until Saruman’s armies have departed and then take out Saruman and flood the valley. Send a medic, a psy-ops officer, and a fairly small escort to Meduseld to try to heal Theoden. Remember, in real (book) Middle-earth, Grima Wormtongue had persuaded Theoden that he was ill; there was no real magic involved. And the Marines should be able enough to get the Rohan death or glory culture and win Theoden over.
In the meantime, the main force of Marines is split into two pieces. One goes to the West Fold, to protect civilians from Wild Man depradations. The others are going to go to Fangorn near Isengard to preserve as much of the forest as possible. This should limit the arming of the Uruk-hai, frustrating Saruman’s attempt to attack with all the force he’d like. Chances are Saruman sends them anyway. The two halves of the main force of Marines follow them and when they meet, take out the Uruk army.
As soon as this is done, half the main Marine contingent will have to trot down to southern Gondor (not easy without using the Paths of the Dead) and take out the corsairs of Umbar before they rampage all over the southern coast. They then head toward Minas Tirith, gathering locals willing to fight as they go. In the meantime, the other half of the main Marine contingent gets a day or two of R&R while Rohan musters (but not the full three days, as we want to avoid as many casualties in Minas Tirith as possible), then they all head toward Minas Tirith.
An envoy needs to go to Minas Tirith and convince Denethor that Osgiliath cannot be defended and should be evacuated. Drug him if necessary, but don’t send Faramir out on that last suicide mission. Do light the Beacons and send Hirgon with the Red Arrow. Don’t let Denethor use the Palantir anymore. In fact, destroy the Palantir if possible - a few rounds from a sub-machine gun should do it, I’d think.
The Nazgul are going to be a bit of a problem, especially the Witch-King of Angmar. Marines are better armed, but no braver than the fighters of Middle-earth. Still, I would imagine they’ll be able to muster enough courage to at least take out the fell beasts and/or horses that carry them. I suspect Marines react aggressively when they feel threatened, and they’ve got the arms to be effective when they do this. If a shell lands on one of the Nine, I imagine that will be comparable to when they were disrobed and dismounted at the Ford of Bruinen, and they’ll have to return to Barad-dur to be re-robed and re-mounted. Rinse and repeat as often as necessary.
Pellenor Fields should be a romp for the Marines without the Nazgul. Either Denethor buys in, or an uninjured Faramir, together with Prince Imrahil, leads out the final feint. The battle at the Black Gate should be pretty straightforward, even though the Eagles will probably not show up now that Gandalf is gone. Wait to see if the Ring is destroyed as written. If it is, everything is golden, and Minas Tirith can be left in Faramir’s capable hands. If the Ring is not destroyed, then we have a problem and I’m darned if I know what to do about it.
[quote=“Oy, post:55, topic:555242”]
Fell beasts and horses (and mumakil): 50 cal.
Witch-king of Angmar: Woman Marine with a 50 cal.
Easy peasy.
Not necessarily. Merry had to unknit the Witch-King’s sinews with his magic Numenorean dagger before the Witch-King could be finished off by Eowyn. Unless you have another dagger of Westernesse available, I’m not sure the Witch-King can be killed by force.
I chose the 1st Marine regiment for precisely that reason. 
Not my problem. As long as I can figure out the runic equivalent for “Mission Accomplished” for my banner, I’m good.
Oh…all right. I’m assuming my field medic can patch Faramir back together. Gondor’s been doing OK on the regent system for hundreds of years. Theoden may or may not snap out of it when we take down Saruman (as people have stated, dam – boom, tower, artillery, done). As for Grima Wormtongue – I have to figure that my mercs are going to have a few wet work specialists available.
As for the Nazgul Witch King – the Nazgul can’t be all that powerful or Sauron wouldn’t have bothered amassing huge armies of orcs. Scary, yes, but both Theoden and Eowyn stood up to them. And as I recall, after they got swamped with the big wave at the river crossing in FOTR, the Nazgul had to go off and, I dunno, generate new bodies or something. So they may be nearly immortal, but they’re not invulnerable. Unless informed otherwise, I’m going to assume that a well-aimed RPG or minigun will sideline a Nazgul for at least the duration of the battle.
That’s going to be key. If the Nazgul can get creamed by a wall of water, then an RPG will seriously ruin their day. You don’t have to kill them, you just have to take them out of the battle equation. Not to mention the morale boost the Good Guys will get when they see the Witch-King go up in a ball of flame.