I was reading about aircraft carriers and their fighters’ capabilities, and I discovered I couldn’t really imagine what an open, even-sided war would look like these days. Air supremacy was won in the first Gulf War in short order and with minimal aircraft lost to enemy fire. What would it be like if the US was fighting an opponent with evenly matched tech and pilots – to say nothing of the traditional boots-on-the-ground fighting?
I just don’t think it would happen, from a game theoretic point of view.
The whole point of nukes is that no one wants to attack you openly and conventionally any more.
The way to attack an enemy with nuclear weapons is via industrial espionage, sabotage, guerilla tactics, cold war-esque conflicts in tertiary countries, etc.
To openly declare war on another nuclear power would be like being in a Mexican standoff with someone and challenging them to a game of tiddlywinks.
I could see where you could have a war over a third country or territory where both countries decided not to go nuclear. China and the US over Taiwan for example (granted China isn’t really “1st world”, but for arguments sake).
And of course there are plenty of first world countries that don’t have nukes.
Austraila and Japan could fight over something, or two of the non-nuclear European countries. Granted this isn’t super likely, but then, thats why its a hypothetical.
What countries, for example? If the US is one of them, a lot of first world countries are going to be pounded into the earth due to the US’s sheer power. E.g. US v Portugal, US v New Zealand, US v Denmark.
Now, something like Canada v Australia or Ireland v Italy is probably more closely matched.
Italy spends thirty-five times as much on its military as Ireland, has twelve times the population and ten times the GDP. I’m not sure that would be much more even then the US vs anyone else.
They might be evenly matched, but all of those countries have a problem in getting troops on the ground in the other, given the distances involved. Even Australia versus New Zealand is a stand off: neither country would be able to invade the other.
This. Projecting power is very hard - UK had trouble doing it during the Falkland War, and that was a relatively small thing compared to actually invading a proper 1st world country.
France versus Germany, if France held off on the nukes, would be a pretty spectacular bout.
But it’d be short. Armies don’t have the same volume of tanks, aircraft, etc. that they used do, and their relative lethality is much higher. The entire Luftwaffe has about 450 aircraft; L’Armee de l’Air has more, but not a lot more, and today’s fighters can find and kill each other a lot easier than in 1940. Both air forces would be a shadow of their former selves in a matter of days.
Modern warfare would see a huge amount of destruction in a very short amount of time.
Modern weapons rarely miss. It’s not like decades past when tanks fired shots at each other at long range, and occasionally got a hit. Modern tanks can hit another tank while moving over rough ground, at a range of 4-5km, with a near guaranteed hit.
Modern anti-aircraft and air to air missiles are substantially more agile than any fighter. They cannot be out manoeuvred, they’re smart enough to tell the different between decoys and the real target. They’re smart enough to see past jamming. If a missile is fired at you and you cant get out of range, you’re dead.
Communication is also much, much faster than in the past. A UAV can see a target, have the information automatically passed to self propelled artillery, who stops, fires off a couple of shells then drives off again before counter battery shells can arrive. All in a minute.
If after this initial burst of activity lasting days to maybe a couple of weeks, one side doesn’t have enough of an advantage to win, then the war will become largely infantry based, with small amounts of high tech equipment turning up as it’s built. There’s just no way you can produce enough modern high tech equipment to replace the losses of the first week. So they’ll be used as silver bullets, deployed on important battles. A few tanks, missiles, aircraft, in the hope of turning the tide.
If the war continues into years, then you’ll probably see new equipment that is modern, but much simpler and quicker to build, and utilising the lessons of the war so far. What works, what doesn’t work.
This war during the first few weeks would resemble blitzkreig attacks of 1939-1942. After then, it would probably resemble 1915-1917, as extremely accurate and deadly light weapons give a huge advantage to the defender.
Plus, the UK would have a major problem with anyone attempting to invade Ireland. Plus Ireland is neutral.
the falklands war was as good an example of two modern armed forces fighting it out. both sides got bloodied and sustained surprisingly big loses to expensive hardware.
for a really big land war, i can think of the 1979 iran-iraq war.
The Iran-Iraq War started in 1980.
There’s no such thing as a war where one side’s army, navy and air force lines up on one side of the stadium, and the other side’s army, navy and air force lines up on the other side of the stadium, and they fight each other until everyone on one side is dead.
Wars aren’t fought like sporting events, they are fought over political and economic and social objectives. So before you can decide what a war would be like, you have to ask what why the war is being fought and what the war aims of each side are.
So if you postulate a war with the United States fighting against a country or combination of countries that have a roughly similar modern military, which countries are you imagining? Japan? France? Germany? Australia? How did this war against our current allies begin? What does the United States hope to accomplish by this war, and what do the other countries? We’re not going to be conquering and enslaving France WWII-style any time soon, even if we wanted to, even with our overwhelming naval, air, and ground superiority. There’s that whole Atlantic Ocean in the way, which is a problem Hitler didn’t have.
Or are we fighting over French Guiana, or whatever? Why are we fighting? What possible value can be extracted from French Guiana to make a war over it worthwhile?
Basically, there are no first world nations that are not tight allies of each other. So how does this war start again? You can’t play out the course of the war without a scenario that makes sense, and there is no scenario that makes sense unless you include a couple thousand alien mind control slugs attached to the brainstems of the military and civilian leadership of one or more countries.
I am reasonably sure that if the US Navy met an equally equipped, funded, and trained opponent, both sides would have a really difficult time getting their planes where they wanted them. The classic dogfight is a historical curiosity, with the modern reality being that planes attempting to fly over any modern defense are very vulnerable.
I’m not sure exactly what a conventional war between evenly matched modern armed forces would look like, but it would surely be true that more kills would be obtained by soldiers sitting in an office than by people in vehicles, or with assault rifles.
If we’re talking about naval engagements, what actually existing country has a navy that is equally trained, funded, and equipped to equal the US Navy? There are navies that, on a ship for ship basis, are near-enough equally trained and equipped. The British and French navies come to mind. Except the British and French navies are a fraction of the size of the US navy. So if we’re planning a fantasy scenario like in some wargames where units are assigned a point value, and each side gets to pick 500 points worth of units, and then the units fight each other, and the victory conditions of the scenario is that the side that has the most points worth still alive after 15 turns wins, well, we could play that.
It wouldn’t be much like how an actual naval battle would occur, because military commanders hate fair fights. If they suspect that an upcoming battle is going to be a fair fight, then the fight isn’t going to take place because one or both sides is going to try to avoid the fight. Battles occur when the attacking side is convinced that they have an overwhelming advantage, and give the defenders no choice but to either fight, surrender, or run away, or when both sides think they have the advantage, but one or both sides have wrongly estimated the strength of the other side.
Canada v Australia would be fun. Moose v Kangaroos. Have at it!
Just don’t wander into our yard.
I think the US is a bit of a red herring in this - the only way to bring equal opposition would be some monstrously unlikely coalition of enemies into place. Like Russia + Germany + France + UK, or China+India+Japan with four-five years to build up an technological military industry. Aside from the US occupying the best part of a continent, there’s the difficulty that no other single country can muster the naval forces to transport its’ troops to US shores leaving the battle lost by default.