I have been thinking about how the ways of war have evolved, and I came up with a new idea on future war.

“the true aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it doesn’t of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this”.- B.H. Liddell Hart

The Mongols were able to produce this “advantageous strategic situations” through their mobility, logistic, and revolutionary tactics. Being a nomad, the Mongols knew how to survive without a supply line. Their equipments included fish hooks and other tools meant to make each warrior independent of any fixed supply source. The majority of their army was light cavalry, which made them unparalleled in term of speed. (During the invasion of Hungary in early 1241, they covered up to 100 miles per day) They often advanced dispersedly with concentrated single or serial aims, against successive objectives. (As was the case in Hungary) The combination of those three advantages allowed them to be unpredictable, therefore extremely hard to defend against.

During World War two, the German Army had a small portion of mobile force-the panzer armies. This opened up some of the tactical and strategic possibilities that the Mongols once had, but the army as a whole was not as mobile as it should have been. Valuable time was wasted due to that fact, and Germany’s enemies were given enough time to mobilize both militarily and industrially.

Today, the fastest way of traveling is by airplane. When traveling by airplanes, it is possible to reach any corner of the world within 24 hours. So if massive air fleets(With advanced stealth technology) capable of carrying tens of thousands of paratroopers were built, it would be the most mobile force the world has ever seen. With this force, it is possible to completely paralyze a country’s ability to defend itself within 48 hours after the declaration of war. The key is to have sufficient number of paratroopers to simutanously cover all the important military and industrial installations so comprehensively that further tactical maneuvering would be unnecessary. This kind of war would only have a duration of about three to four day at most.


Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

I would say that it would depend on the targeted country. Even thousands of paras would not make up for the limited firepower they would have. Meaning, lack of armour and artillery. Another problem is lack of a solid base of transport for supplies. A developed country would be able to survive a para landing simply by having a combination of armour and artllery units. Lets say the US attacks a country like Germany using para drops, Germany is still large enough to allow the paras to land but lack of mobility and firepower will limit them to hold airfields or landing zones and not much more. Market Garden is a good example of this scenario.

In reality, there has been a change in how wars are fought. Wars are now fought in the defeat of ideas and not so much against countries or governments. In this fight, guerilla warfare is the format and difficult to defeat. Look at Vietnam, 80's Afghanistan, Iraq and today's Afghanistan. You can eliminate the leaders and the fighters but there are always others to take their place. It is the 'idea' that needs to be defeated, not the fighting soldier.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

The whole idea is to strike when your enemy is unprepared, meaning before your enemy is able to effectively use her amour and artillery. Everything depends on the overwhelming number of paratroopers. This is not Market Garden, the objective is to completely paralyze your targeting country. Marlet Garden was launched when Germany was already in a state of war, there's no comparison. The supply problem would not be an issue if you had to fight only for a week.

Please read my post, I said: "The key is to have sufficient number of paratroopers to simutanously cover all the important military and industrial installations so comprehensively that further tactical maneuvering would be unnecessary."

About the "idea", it is a whole different story.

OK, is there really a situation where a country is in a state of 'unpreparedness' to the point that they do not know they are about to be attacked? For example, even tough Belgium, Holland, Denmark were countries that were easily overwhelmed, there was some kind of expectation that Germany was going to attack. Only reason they were overwhelmed was because they could not compete against the might of the Wehrmacht. A good example would be the invasion of Norway or even Crete. Both of those operations were close to failing if it wasn't for the premature withdrawal from battle of the British forces.

Once the paras take out trasnportation/communication centers then what? I cannot see a success in say the US invading Germany via airdrop only. I'm curious to see what others say.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

Lets not forget, that it is a lot easier and cheaper to create a radar and a missile that can detect stealth and shoot it out of the sky then it is to create stealth which can penetrate a country undetected.

All permanent members of the UN security council would not have a problem detecting stealth and shooting any such approaching aircraft out of the sky miles before it even reached the country.

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

There has been many cases where a country didn't know it would be attacked, look at Russia in 1941. Please do not compare this with any of the WWII battles, the UK had already been in war with Germany for more than one year in your case.
Then what? Look at my quote.

Look back in history, there hasn't been a weapon that doesn't have a counter. It is only a matter of time, trust me.
Of course it is cheaper, it is also cheaper to make a bazooka than a tank.

May I have some comments please.

Never ignore the psychological aspect of war. You have to make the enemy think that they are defeated before you can win easily. The Soviet Union never thought they were defeated, due in no small part because the realization of what would happen to them if they lost, which was a good motivator. The German in turn, faced the same diliema and fought on to the bitter end.

The Mongols often won because they made their enemy think they had already lost (e.g. Battle of Mohi). The same outcome happened at Sedan in 1940 and to the US in Jan 1968, except in this case it was the civilian government who saw defeat and not the military.

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Best Regards,
JW

This would most likely work, especially if we went to war with China, they have so many more soldiers than we do that the only war to destroy the countries military might and infrastructure is to bomb it from the air with F-22 Raptors and B-2 bombers ect...

China is too big, you would never build up a large enough of a paratrooper force to take ALL the strategic postions. On top of that your now spread out and unable to support each others operations. Bomb it from the sky? We couldn't bring Saddam to his knees with bombing only. I don't think it would work. The only thing in this thread I agree with is that regardless of future weapons and tactics, wars will always be fought by the men on the ground.

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"When war does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." -General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
"The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."-Karl von Clausewitz

Well i agree with one of the other posters, these super stealth paratrooper planes would be deteted by radar and shot down by SAM's before they could land there cargo.

But say they didn't and the paratroopers landed, how would they supply them, with even more super stealth cargo planes, bacause a conventional plane would easily be detected on radar and shot down, now in modern terms the invading country say the (USA against Germany again) the USA would have to declare way first at congress, and if they didn't and attacted illeegally the rest of the world(united nations) would tear apart the amerians, economically and even maybe, because of an unprovoked attack on another country, by war(whihc would yes destroy the delicate trade and markets all over the world creating another great depression)

Now I do understand that perhaps the UN may not attack because they didn't attack america over iraq, however that was over as we all know, ICBM's, WMD both nuclear and biological, plus the dictator saddam. But on a now peacfull country it would be political suicide.

And if they did get a legal way to attack a country, (which they wouldn't without a proper reason) there is no way the other country wouldn't know it because im sure even they watch the late news bulletins.

Ok but say all is good and they attack unillprepared country, paratroopers couldn't sustain a battle alone against a county's army they would need armour, artillery and air support, but these would take months to reach the battle zone by ship and not enough could be brought by air to sustain the amount of paratroopers you are talking about, and even if they could sustain the para's the ships with the heavier cargo woudl have had to have left port much earlier on, which would have been noticed by more then one country by crossing there shipping lanes, and that would have been questioned. But say they weren't and they arrived at the same time as the paratroopers, then i suppose it would be possible to destory all commlinks, radar, SAM, SSM, airfields and all military installations okus the political bulidings and personnel and yes take over the counrty with the right amount of training and preperation.

But like I have said in todays world all those things just arnt possible, to many countries would have to look the other way, which wont happen, and that kind of technology and amount of materials would cost a lot of money, and don't think it would be worth it in the end. Unless it is an inferior country that is being attacked such as america Vs Iraq but hten just sheer weight of numbers would prevail.

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They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them. Lest We Forget

Name one industrialized nation that is not currently ready to fight a war. This was one of the lessons learned in ww2, that you have to be ready, all of time.

Generally there are no huge advances in Military Theory, just evolutions. Lets take a look at the current US doctrine. The first wave of an attack will be done with the B-2, it will destroy a large part of all anti aircraft defensive positions. Once this is achieved the low and fast B-1s come in and finish the job. In every engagement fought in this way only a handful of well lead mobile AA has survived. The next step is to destroy know enemy concentrations from the air. The next phase is too put men on the ground. Look at the way that the current Iraq war was waged before guerrilla warfare set in. All the time that there are men on the ground there will be continuous air support.

As can easily be seen air power is now the key. The backbone is the USs satellite system, which is why China wants to be able to shoot them down, and they can. If you intend to deploy a million paratroopers you will also have to have air support for them as well as supplies. This is almost impossible, there is a reason that the B-2 is called that it cost 2 billion to make one. For your theory you would have to have a fleet of some 2 to 3 thousand of them for a total cost of 4000 trillion dollars, the total US budget is 3.1 trillion. There has been talk of a stealthy B-52 for some unheard of price. But show me where it fits in to the strategy in place. I don't see one. I see a more urgent need to keep communications up and current. Using the large para drop method would only complicate the need not too mention the need to consolidate. Look at every air mobile assault, with out the ground force link up or evacuation they failed.

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The Muslim Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands..." — Mohamed Akram. http://jihadwatch.org/

This is a rubbish thread.

So you are fond of Paras, nothing wrong with that, but to write up 'a new idea of war' as a thread and then base it on so many factors to click before it actually works is drivel.

Not to dispel that these factors actually do syncronise on occation. Remember Matthias Rust? He picked the right day to go flying didn't he?

I don't think that we have had any significant new ideas on war the last millenia. New technology yes, but the principles have been there.

The more things change the more they remain the same.

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

Come on Jaeger, give him a break, there is much worse.

Just look at the effort this idiot took to make a fool of himself Combat Reform

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In Google we trust eh ?

Nice one Za. (now don't be shy flaunting that BS meter every now and again eh?)

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

"In every new war we create new ways of killing each other"

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They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them. Lest We Forget

The atom bomb.

Also I agree with the psychological aspect mentioned by slipdigit earlier

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"Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts." - Cicero

must be a new form of counting...

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"When war does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." -General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
"The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."-Karl von Clausewitz

Ironcross, maybe you should read some or all of the books on this list and then come back and discuss this idea:

Mr G's recommended reading list on Strategy and Tactics

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Truth is stranger than bullshit!