As a companion to the Nazi vs. US army thread, let’s say that the Arab world was transported to Jan. 1944, a few months before D-day. Thinking this to be a glorious miracle from God, they set about restoring the Caliphate and immediately move on Europe(let’s assume Israel didn’t get to come so as not to mess up the Arab’s mojo here).
Now the Arab world is pretty well armed, and there’s a lot of manpower. And while their militaries aren’t as modern as the US’s, many of the countries have substantial 70s to 80s era Soviet equipment, and some, like Saudi Arabia, have pretty modern NATO equipment. Stuff that easily outclasses any 1940s military: on paper.
But what happens when they try to organize all this stuff and throw their rather poorly trained and led forces at the combatants? I assume their most obvious invasion route would be through the Caucusus and Balkans, so they’d probably also come into contact with Soviet forces pretty quickly. How would they fare?
You clearly don’t have the slightest idea about the military forces of the region. And the people. Geesh.
That aside, if the Saudis can fly their AWACs and F15, EF2000 etc, then their biggest problem in the war would be repetitive strain injury from all the pushing of buttons and on the ground, are you kidding. There literally is nothing in any army at the time which can penetrate modern armour at any ranges. (Some large Artillery pieces might damage a tank with a direct hit). It will be a massacre.
As for transport, we have ships today which can carry much more tonnage than whole flotillas of ships in WW2. Their biggest problem will be the relative lack of modern port and air facilities available in Europe to transport stuff there.
I think a lot of it depends if you count Turkey (or Iran) as part of the “Arab” world (hint: they aren’t, as you know quite well).
If they have to go through Turkey to get to Europe, it going to extend their supply lines and logistics and make them more likely for disruption.
Not to mention, the stuff they have (and many of the Gulf countries have state-of-the art weaponry) is all that they are ever going to have, so once it is used up/breaks down/gets destroyed, they are forced back on their own resources, and that is a losing proposition against the massive forces Europe (and the USA) can bring to bear.
Since you mention 1944, it also depends on the reaction of the warring nations; does Germany try to bring them in against the Allies? Does Russia launch some type of counter-strike? Do the Allied forces in Egypt (which is considered part of the Arab world, albeit some Egyptians might disagree) act?
Now, if you had Turkey with all their modern weapons and population…well, can you say The Second Ottoman Empire?
The Gulf nations have enormous shipping fleets at their disposal and very large airlines like Emirates, Etihad, Qatar. The problem is going to be finding a port which can take their ships not getting to the region.
Well, if the nations are transported in time “as is”, it will only be the number of ships in the port, which may number in the dozens rather than the hundreds that would be in other ports or on the open ocean. And with modern (but usually very small) navies, which also will suffer that there would be no replacement for their missiles/bombs/torpedoes, those ships are just as vunerable to bombing/sub attack as any.
And the airlines would suffer the same problem of spares and support (there are limited numbers of refineries in the Arab world that can produce JP4, IIRC), not to mention where you could land the (&()_ things in 1944.
Again, it depends on what Adaher defines as the “Arab” world. If it’s the Gulf states plus Lebanon/Syria/Iraq, you are talking about maybe 20 million people, and that’s simply not enough. If he includes the Persians, the Egyptians, and the Turks, then maybe they could sustain something (if they could all get along, something that has been a problem for centuries).
So the very same high-tech military forces that are currently bogged down in a drawn-out war of attrition against a few hundred thousand rag-tag Yemeni tribesmen right next door are suddenly going to transport themselves six thousand kilometres or so and transform into an irresistable juggernaut of destruction against several million rag-tag ww2 soldiers?
I´m not completely convinced. Pretty much every force in history that has relied on an awesome technology advantage to carry the day has ended up learning expensive lessons. If the sum total of their military superiority is enough shiny non-replaceable toys to last a couple of weeks of high-intensity warfare, then starting a big brawl could get be a big mistake.
That’s not even getting into the whole question of how modern countries could cope without their non-military supply chain. Just how many weeks supply of imported flour, beans, medicines, batteries etc are sitting in the warehouses when the ships stop arriving from 21st century canada, china, brazil and so on?
I admittedly do not know much about Saudi military capability. But we’ve all seen the Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, and Libyans in action and it’s not been good.
It’s a more conventional war though. Presumably the German and Russian forces are going to be using traditional WW2 doctrine, at least at first, and massing their armor. That’s a nice inviting target for Saudi Tornados and Soviet-era Hinds from other countries. The Soviet and Nazi tanks would also be mincemeat for M-1As and T-72s.
But how well do the Arab armies do combined arms and mobile warfare? The Iraqi army got bogged down by mere human wave attacks. And although the WW2 armies are outclassed, you’re still asking modern soldiers to drive their modern vehicles into a hale of ordinance the likes of which they’ve never seen. Morale is going to be a factor.
Much like the Germans and Japanese, you figure exploiting conquered lands would be important. And what if the Arabs start out by striking at the oil supplies in Rumania and southern Russia? Seems that they could achieve a dominant position in oil supplies pretty quickly.
Not been good when they fight above their weight class. Before the war Saddam had the 7th most powerful military in the world. Kuwait had the French build “unbreakable” bunkers for their fighter jets. The Iraqis put their fighters inside so we blew them up. The Kuwaitis sued the French since we blew them up, they’re still in pieces at the airport, and the French said they were unbreakable to anything in the region, not against Americans.
Would taking on Iran be “punching above their weight?” Or Syrian rebels? Syria’s military is not acquitting itself well. Plus, are Mig-21s really so bad that Israeli F-16s should shoot them down at a rate of 80-1?
and what happens when the tornados and hinds have expended every piece of anti-armour ordnance they have, and every M1-A and T-72 is down for maintenance, and the factories have churned out another few thousand T-34s or PzIIIs or whatever? The obvious answer is to hit the factories before getting started on the battlefield, but are there enough munitions to do all that? What happens if you hit the factories, then the battlefield, and find that they’ve repaired the factories?
It’s not really about a hail of ordnance though. It’s about taking a reasonably well equipped but somewhat poorly organised force that is small by ww2 standards and going on an absolutely epic marathon cross-country jaunt, building every single required bridge and road and culvert and airport and fuelling facility as they go, while destroying all resistance, and husbanding their human and technical resources. Every time they fire a howitzer, lose a combat engineer to a sniper, a tank falls into a canal or the infantry fail to keep the enemy out of mortar range of a fuel truck they are down an irreplaceable asset.
I think even the US Army with all its back-home supply sources and global logistics would find it a daunting task to trundle across the entirety of Europe rebuilding 1930s infrastructure to support a modern army, while being shot at. It could do it, definitely. but it would take a while.
So they only have to expend ordnance on shutting down oil production, and destroying all existing combat assets not dependent on oil, and all production facilities for non-oil dependent combat assets, while simultaneously retooling captured 1930s-40s facilities to supply all their modern needs (military and non-military) - all in the short time before the wheels come off the wagon. It still sounds like a big ask.
For reference, I seem to remember that a few years ago the UK was about 60% self-sufficient in food, and had a few days(!) worth of food reserves stacked up in the supply chain. The UK armed forces were good for a couple of weeks of flat-out fighting before they ran out of ammunition, spares, trained personnel, etc that would significantly affect their ability to fight.
There’s also the issue that one function of some of the military described in the OP is to keep the civilian population looking down a gun barrel the wrong way. Who’s keeping the population in line while all the soldiers are away abroad and the shops are emptying of food?