Originally posted by: rahvin
Quoting the CIA world factbook:
China
Military manpower - availability:
males age 15-49: 370,087,489 (2002 est.)
United States
Military manpower - availability:
males age 15-49: 73,597,731 (2002 est.)
370/70 = 5.28:1 Advantage
That is assuming that China would arm all 370 Million of those people and put them in the Army.
That is no more likely to happen than is America to put all 73 Million of those people into the military.
Your thought process is flawed from the start on that point.
Regardless, to fight to a draw every US serviceman would have to kill 5.2 Chinese servicemen.
Based on your logic, we would have to kill 370 million people to win the war.
That is absurd, only nuclear weapons could kill that many Chinese people. We could carpet bomb for years and not kill 370 Million people.
This analysis also fails to take into account that up to 50% of US forces would be in supply and support roles where the Chinese would be able to utilize their female population to outfit for supply and support. This combined with a real service level of support and the US would easily be facing 30:1 outnumbering in the field in a ground war with China. It's foolish to even suggest that we could beat them in sustained land combat.
I don't even know where to start with all the flaws in your thought process.
Let me just say this... Your thinking about military conflict is decades out of date and does not reflect modern military reality.
China can quickly field about 5 million soldiers, the United States can quickly field about 1 million soldiers. Our 1 million soliders are many times more effective than China's are. We would destroy a lot of military equipment long before we had to deal with a stand up frontal battle, and when that came, our tanks would destroy their tanks at about a 100 to 1 ratio. So we might lose 100 tanks in the whole war to their tanks, and maybe another 100 tanks to other various weapons.
We have over 2,800 Main Battle Tanks, so we'd lose perhaps 7% of our tank force in the war.
China did not field ANY armor in the Korean war.
Sure they did, they used equipment bought from Russia as well as North Korean equipment... But they didn't use very much of it, that is true.
What happened is a million Chinese soldiers crossed the border when we were not prepared, and did not have the forces in place to do anything about it. At the time, our tanks were fragile and could not withstand sustained attack from handheld anti-tank weapons and mortors. Today, our tanks can withstand anything a soldier can carry, and can withstand point-blank shots from other tanks.
Only missiles and bombs from aircraft can destroy the M1A2 Abrams tank.
They lacked an airforce and had limited artillery and heavy weapons.
One we regrouped and recovered, we held them at the original border, they could not make any further headway, despite huge numbers of reinforcements. Once we held them, we bombed them into submission and they sued for peace.
They still fought us to a draw. Armor can be powerfull, but against infantry armor is almost useless.
That was true then, it isn't true now. That is the gap the M2 Bradley filled... The 25mm auto cannon on the front filled the gap between the .50 cal machine guns and the big 120mm main gun on the M1A1 Abrams. Those two armored vehicles working together means that no longer do American soldiers have to dismount to fight. We can take on large numbers of human wave attackers using the weapons mounted on those vehicles.
Never never underestimate the guys with guns on foot armed with 2lbs of grey matter.
Again, back then guys on foot could destroy a tank if they could get close enough and use anti-tank weapons. Today, nothing a man can physically pickup will destroy a M1A2 Abrams tank. The armor has simply gotten too good.
: ) Hopper
