No disrespect taken. However, I have heard it said that individual soldiers from places like Australia and New Zealand are probably superior fighters to their American counterparts (to be fair, a. I head this from Australians and New Zealanders, so they may well be biased, and b. I’m a suburbanite, unfit, overweight slob who has no reason to brag by proxy - any US soldier could no doubt kick my arse six ways from Sunday). Anyway, this reasoning was based on several things - none of which was an intrinsic inferiority on the American soldiers’ part - notably the very fact that the US soldiers have always known they have the full weight of the world’s most awesome military behind them, so on an individual level they can afford to relax a bit more than a soldier from a smaller nation who thinks “O fuck it’s just me and my rifle. I’d better pull my finger out”. Also, some of it was entirely within the context of Vietnam, where Australian troops had the advantage of being trained in jungle warfare at home. Stories abound of the Viet Cong tracking US soldiers because of the smell of their feces (Western food), whereas the Australians ate Vietnamese food in the jungle, or of US guys making themselves obvious by use of marijuana, pungent aftershave, and loud rock music. I’m sure however, that these stories are not entirely fair - there was some lingering animosity here towards American armed forces from WWII, and that might have something to do with it.
The less gung-ho Australian vets I’ve spoken to put the skill levels at:
The Viet Cong
Australian forces
US forces
South Vietnamese forces
They also said there was never any question about the Americans’ bravery. Indeed, they said they were often the bravest, but their bravery often got them into trouble. The classic scenario is a VC sniper deliberately shooting an American in the legs rather than a lethal head or chest shot, knowing that his buddies would put themselves in plain sight to stop to help him where they could be popped off one by one, but the Australians would say “sorry” to their colleague and keep marching. Again, this is just what I have heard and I’m not taking it as gospel.
Nonetheless, overall military might on a collective level has the United States far out in front. Military experts have responded to the Australian extreme right’s fears about an Indonesian takeover by saying that the only nation which could successfully defeat Australia on home soil in a non-nuclear war would be the US. For the rest of them, even those with much more powerful militaries than we have, the sheer logistics of crossing the deserts or the oceans to our southern cities would be beyond them. That the US can do so is testament to their power. Still, they’d cop a lot of casualties with the long supply lines and such, and we’d not be “soundly whupped”, just defeated.
Beyond all this, most balanced military experts I’ve ever heard comment on this matter have disagreed on who has the best general forces, but they have all tended to agree that the special elite forces from all the major players are equally excellent, and you’d not be able to put much difference if any between an American, British, Australian ,Israeli etc elite soldier. Those guys are quite incredible.
Anyway, just to reiterate I’m in no personal position to brag, having never served, so I’m just relating what I’ve heard over the years. No offence to anyone meant.
Crikey, mate, I’ve also heard “credible witnesses” claim to have seen UFOs piloted by Elvis Presley, but I’m still a mite skeptical. “Biased” Aussie and kiwi soldiers? Impossible, even if they are bulletproof and 10-feet tall.
Actually, assessing the superiority of “individual soldiers” isn’t terribly meaningful in the real world, given that military units fight in units/squads and rely on cutting-edge technology, logistics, intelligence and experience–much of which the blokes from down under don’t have in abundance.
EVERY army’s soldiers claim to be the best trained in the world. Mine did. This statement is of absolutely no comparative value whatsoever. Zero, nada, nil, zilch.
As has been pointed out already, it is a classic example of missing the point to claim one country’s “individual soldiers” are better than another’s. Better at what? Tougher? Smarter? More skilled with weapons? Better at “Super Mario Bros.”? An army is not a collection of soldiers, it’s a very complex organization.
I’ve been a soldier. It’s just not that hard a job to learn; I know I’ll get shit on for saying this, but the people I worked with a met were by no stretch of the imagination an exceptional bunch of individuals. They were ordinary. It’s a job almost anyone can do as long as they are passably fit and not retarded. You need a better brand of soldier from SOME specialist roles, to fill out your special forces and your snuiper teams and what have you, and you’d certainly be a BETTER soldier if you were smart. But, most people in a modern army don’t do that stuff. And I met soldiers from other countries and they weren’t supermen, either.
The quality of an armed forces is based on a hideous number of variables, and “soldier quality” is itself comprised of thousands of variables. Saying that this army has “Better soldiers” than another, and passing that off as meaningful, is exactly akin to saying that one army has “better trucks,” and passing that off as meaningful.
Let me use an example; the Soviet Red Army and the German Heer in 1944. By the account of any soldier on either front who fought the Germans, they were GREAT soldiers; determined, alacritous, aggressive, and willing to make decisions. They still lost. Why?
The common answer is that the Russians outnumbered them. But really, that is simply not true; the Russians had a better armed forces in a LOT of respects. I could cite advantages all day. Soviet soldiers were better trained in the use of camouflage and deception; this was reflected at all levels of the organization, right up to high command; the Russians put great importance on making deception a part of their operational plans. The Soviet intelligence arm was superior in almost every respect - human intelligence, signals intelligence, whatever you want. They were, by 1944, placing more emphasis on mobile warfare, and had put more effort into motorized transportation, like trucks and cars. Russian soldiers were provided with far more support in the way of logistics. They got their mail from home on time more than the Germans did; they got supplies faster, their vehicles were fixed quicker. And by 1944 their army was organized in a fundamentally different fashion, as German divisions were shrinking in size. I haven’t even gotten to context of geography, or different attitudes towards air power, or tank design, or the manner in which the Soviets overhauled the officer corps, or discipline, or a million other things.
And if you look at the way German soldiers were trained and organized, it did come to have its disadvantages. The Germany army at an operational level tended to grant low level officers and NCOs more tactical freedom than the Allied or Soviet armies. A company commander (a captain, usually) in the Heer would not have been expected to wait for orders if a situation arose; “follow orders by all means, but don’t wait to be asked” was the German approach. German commanders were expected to make tactical decisions at a local level independently, and were trusted to do so because they were drilled in common doctrine, so you could trust them to act a certain way. If the German company commander was lacking for orders but he saw an opportunity to attack, he would attack. A Soviet, American, British, Canadian, French or Polish officer might wait for orders - a significant time disadvantage. Being slower is awfully bad in war. As Forrest put it, war is about being there firstest with the mostest. Allied commanders found the Germans disconcerting to fight because of that speed of response.
But by 1944, was this an advantage? The problem with local operational freedom and emphasis on the offensive is that you tend to take more casualties. A British divisional commander can better conserve his forces if his regiments, battalions and companies aren’t as independently aggressive; he can hold back his strength and apply it all at the same moment. If you look at German casualty rates for the campaigns they WON, they’re just astoundingly high - something like 30,000 in the Battle of France, for instance, which only lasted six weeks and was a total German victory. Thirty thousand! In a battle they CREAMED their opponents in! In 1940, no problem - their army was huge and kicking ass, lots of reserves left. But by 1944 the German army was bleeding itself white. An aggressive, decentralized organization was wildly successful against a shocked and unprepared enemy in 1940, but in 1944, against an enemy on the offensive and better organized to meet the challenge, it was a terrible drain and made it hard to organize a defence at every level of command. Germany’s armed forces was organized more or less the same way in 1940 as it was in 1944, but in context the quality was totally different; what was right in 1940 was wrong in 1944.
So who had a better armed forces in 1944? It’s easy to default to the standard Western “the Germans were better but the Russians outnumbered them” but it’s awfully hard to examine Operation Bagration and come away with any impression other than that the Germans were ridiculously outclassed.
That’s just absolute, total horseshit. It’s about as historically accurate as saying that the Vietnamese bombed Pearl Harbor. The Viet Cong - properly the PLA, People’s Liberation Army, which is what they were officially called - were a badly organized militia force - they were basically kids and civilians forced into service to oppose a foreign force. They were lower in quality than the National Guard; they had very little training, were not particularly well organized or led, and were beset with desertion and entire formations collapsing from shock. They had a cadre of reasonably competent guys, many of them actually North Vietnamese, but the ranks were filled with motivated but sketchily trained conscripts. They were an EXTREMELY low quality force, and got their asses handed to them in almost every open battle they fought. The Americans were a superior force in every conceivable respect, and it was not exactly the USA’s shining hour. The North Vietnamese Army was better than the PLA, and still not as good as the Americans.
It is absolutely, positively insane to suggest the VC/NLA were better soldiers; the majority of them were sheer amateurs. As a matter of fact, they barely made it to the end of the war. People would like to BELIEVE the VC were master guerrillas; much of the American public has always wanted to believe this because it’s easier to construct a myth about being beaten in a vaguely unfair manner than it is to admit the U.S. just acted stupidly. But it’s just not true. Vietnamese people don’t like running around in the jungle any more than Americans do.
So why’d they win? Well, it ain’t about winning battles sometimes, it’s about winning wars. The United States was trying to liberate a country from itself, and predictably failed to do so, it being a logical impossibility. The only way to “win” would have been to kill everyone in the country. The PLA and NVA didn’t have to win any battles, they just had to keep fighting until the U.S. got sick of it, which is precisely what happened.
Yeah, that’s why the US Army had a 100’s:1 kill ratio against them. By the standard you are using here, our own homegrown Crips/Bloods/LAW/etc are some badassmofo soldiers. Mere failiarity with violence and brutality doesn’t automatically make good soldiers.
I’m pretty sure the Australian SAS troops are the best fighting force in the world as proved by this dispatch.
Thousands of Taliban soldiers are marching toward their base when they hear from behind a sand-dune, “One Australian SAS soldier is better than ten Taliban”.
The Taliban commander quickly sends his 10 best soldiers over the dune. Gun shots are heard and a fierce fire fight continues for some minutes, then all is silent.
A voice from behind the dune calls out, “One Australian SAS soldier is better than one hundred Taliban”.
The enraged Taliban commander sends 100 crack troops over the dune
and almost immediately a massive gunfight begins. 10 minutes later all is silent again.
The Australian calls out, “One Australian SAS soldier is better than one thousand Taliban”.
The Taliban Commander prods and cajoles one thousand fighters together and orders them over the dune. Grenades, mines, cannons, rockets and machine guns all create uproar as a huge battle is fought. Then silence. Through the smoke appears a wounded Taliban fighter crawling back to his commander. He collapses at his feet and cries, “Don’t send any more men, it’s a trap, …there’s actually two of them.”
Imagine how surprised the Army Rangers, 10th Mountain Division, Delta Force, and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment are going to be to find out that they have been transferred to the Air Force.
The question was about “armed forces” and you have to look at all branches and how they cooperate to really talk about effectiveness. Consider Israel.
As armies run, the IDF is decidedly second-tier. It’s about as good as you can get with short service conscripted soldiers (and much, much better than anything else in the region), but a US Marine division could pretty much roll it up.
That said, the IDF managed to defeat its neighbors in multiple wars while heavily outnumbered, which is only partially explainable by the fact that modern Arab armies are generally crap. The real key to Israel’s military success is it’s air force. All the IDF has to do is maintain a strong defensive posture to pin opponents in place so the IAF can pound them into paste.
Israel’s military is far and away the class of the region, but if you just consider ground forces you won’t get an accurate picture.
Can you expand on this a bit? I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I have always thought that the Australians were grateful to the United States for saving them from the Japanese in WWII. Or is that what the problem is?
I don’t know about military forces in general, but I can speak a bit about air power.
It would appear the U.S. has the best air power, in terms of technology, training, and funding. According to some fighter pilots I know, the conventional wisdom for quite some time has been that if you are a foreign pilot, you engage U.S. fighters at your peril.
However…
I think we sometimes believe our own publicity too much. For example, in February 2004 the USAF had it’s collective ass handed to it by the Indian Air Force during an exercise.
It’s a complicated analysis, but the upshot was that the U.S. war planners weren’t simulating combat very well compared to what other countries could actually put up against us.
If this is the same exercise I’m thiking of (the Cope India), it wasn’t too surprising that the IAF won. For one thing, it wasn’t the entire USAF, just the 3rd Wing. At India’s request, India took on the US wing at 3-1 odds and the US was not allowed to use the full range of the AMRAAM missiles (limited to 32km, rather than the full 100) nor were they allowed to use the active on-board radar capability of the missile. Meaning that instead of long-range, fire and forget missiles, they now had short range missiles that required the pilot to keep tracking of the IAF fighter. The Indians were also permitted an AWACs platform and allowed to use the full fire and forget capabilities of their Micas.
All that said, you are correct that the US pilots were not trained as well as they should have been. The Indians had different radar signatures than the US pilots had been trained to deal with, and it came out that the US was not training pilots adequately against launch and leave threats.
