F-35s jets and S-400 missiles

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.

....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistake

Since I don't believe I made a factual mistake, how about you type slowly and point it out. It's a simple thing for you to do. Otherwise, you are just trolling.

--ok, well....it's Haiphong Harbor--not HIGH
...this is not your everyday grammar mistake......anyone with a basic knowledge of the subject, would never say HIGHphong
......????

Wow, is that all? So I got an A- instead of an A+. If all you can find to point out is spelling and grammar mistakes, I can live with that. I never claimed to be extremely highly edumicated. And I am not writing a piece for a University that depends on spelling and grammar more than content for a grade. Most of my Long Time Friends can't spell it correctly either. Some even have trouble spelling "CAT" correctly but that doesn't mean they can't communicate what went on in their lives. And their lives all have been very long and most do not agree with the way the Press and most historians write about Vietnam. We were there, you weren't.

..I was in the USMC for 8 years...Had a relative die in Operation Buffalo Vietnam

 

[AZrailwhale]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

.....no, the ground pounders didn't do it--the air and choppers provided a great advantage
..here, the ground pounders got pounded...then they had to use choppers/etc
2 whole platoons decimated/plus
without air and choppers, it would've been worse

Operation Buffalo (1967) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Even based upon the Wiki article, that was a complete US victory. Even if you cut the NVA killed in quarters, they lost two to one fight a defensive battle. In defense the losses are usually one third to a half of the offensive losses. Compare German losses in Normandy to Allied ones. The day most of the US losses occurred, the NVA had total surprise and overwhelming numerical superiority.

 

[AZrailwhale]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.

hahahahhahahah!!?????
1. do me a favor, and re-read your post.....correct your mistake please
2. I've said it a million times--you can bomb them like we did Germany and Japan--they will NOT lose the resolve to fight

The North might not lose the RESOLVE to continue the fight, but actual events proved that once the rail links to China and Haiphong harbor which was the sea link to the USSR were cut, North Vietnam lost the ability to prosecute the war. Neither North or South Vietnam produced any of their military supplies unlike Germany and Japan in WWII. In WWII the bombing totally destroyed Japan's ability to produce any war material more complicated than a pike or sword. Germany was able to move some of it's industry underground by the use a slave labor but allied bombing totally destroyed the ability of Germany to move raw materials and finished products. Yes the Germans were able to "create" three armies for Watch on the Rhine, but the gutted their existing forces to do it and the infantry were mostly the very old and the very young who were really unfit for combat. Germany's manpower position in December 1944 was much like the Confederacy's in 1864.

 

[Dayton3]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.

......you might have been there, but you don't know history/WW2 history/bombing history/etc

Obviously you don't either. As you thought the Battle of the Bulge was AFTER the massive bombings of German cities. In fact it was largely BEFORE.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.

....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistake

Since I don't believe I made a factual mistake, how about you type slowly and point it out. It's a simple thing for you to do. Otherwise, you are just trolling.

--ok, well....it's Haiphong Harbor--not HIGH
...this is not your everyday grammar mistake......anyone with a basic knowledge of the subject, would never say HIGHphong
......????

Wow, is that all? So I got an A- instead of an A+. If all you can find to point out is spelling and grammar mistakes, I can live with that. I never claimed to be extremely highly edumicated. And I am not writing a piece for a University that depends on spelling and grammar more than content for a grade. Most of my Long Time Friends can't spell it correctly either. Some even have trouble spelling "CAT" correctly but that doesn't mean they can't communicate what went on in their lives. And their lives all have been very long and most do not agree with the way the Press and most historians write about Vietnam. We were there, you weren't.

no, no--this is not a basic grammar-spelling mistake
....so, you are not highly educated, but you think you know about history/etc? !?
...so then, you won't be able to understand or comprehend what is posted.......??!!
...so, you don't know much about Haiphong Harbor--yet you mention it in your post----you act like you know a lot about it......but you don't
???

I don't? Here is a site for you to visit if you wish to learn about Military History.

Militaryvids.com

Then tell me how wrong that site is.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.

....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistake

Since I don't believe I made a factual mistake, how about you type slowly and point it out. It's a simple thing for you to do. Otherwise, you are just trolling.

--ok, well....it's Haiphong Harbor--not HIGH
...this is not your everyday grammar mistake......anyone with a basic knowledge of the subject, would never say HIGHphong
......????

Wow, is that all? So I got an A- instead of an A+. If all you can find to point out is spelling and grammar mistakes, I can live with that. I never claimed to be extremely highly edumicated. And I am not writing a piece for a University that depends on spelling and grammar more than content for a grade. Most of my Long Time Friends can't spell it correctly either. Some even have trouble spelling "CAT" correctly but that doesn't mean they can't communicate what went on in their lives. And their lives all have been very long and most do not agree with the way the Press and most historians write about Vietnam. We were there, you weren't.

..I was in the USMC for 8 years...Had a relative die in Operation Buffalo Vietnam

One of the things I have notice, the average ground pounder isn't up on many thing other than pounding ground. That is unless they are at least a certain rank. Otherwise, it's probably not best to think about things. Meanwhile, in USAF, it's beneficial to do so. In fact, it's encouraged at all ranks.

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better. And my Military Experience far exceeds yours by at least a Decade. Got my permanent DD-2 and 5 DD-214s. I have one short tour to South East Asia and 2 long TDYs there during that time. I got to experience part of that war that no Marine nor Army will EVER get to experience. And I voted and did the background to know whom I wanted in office. Where were you at during this time? Were you even born yet?

As for family member losses in Vietnam, we all have. And the one member of your family that knew what was going on (even the slightest) ain't around to tell it. You ain't paid the price of admission.

 

[harmonica]

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better
hqhqhqhhqhqhhhahahhahahahah

 

[Daryl Hunt]

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better
hqhqhqhhqhqhhhahahhahahahah

How's the weather in Moscow? Don't bother googling it. Just stick your head out of the window.

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

.....no, the ground pounders didn't do it--the air and choppers provided a great advantage
..here, the ground pounders got pounded...then they had to use choppers/etc
2 whole platoons decimated/plus
without air and choppers, it would've been worse

Operation Buffalo (1967) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Even based upon the Wiki article, that was a complete US victory. Even if you cut the NVA killed in quarters, they lost two to one fight a defensive battle. In defense the losses are usually one third to a half of the offensive losses. Compare German losses in Normandy to Allied ones. The day most of the US losses occurred, the NVA had total surprise and overwhelming numerical superiority.

hahhahahahahah
........Russia had twice as many military deaths as Germany in WW2----Germany lost --Russia won

 

[harmonica]

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better
hqhqhqhhqhqhhhahahhahahahah

How's the weather in Moscow? Don't bother googling it. Just stick your head out of the window.

..... so the French lost...then the US lost---and you people say it was winnable and our politicians lost it???!!!!! WOOOHOOOO

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.

......you might have been there, but you don't know history/WW2 history/bombing history/etc

Obviously you don't either. As you thought the Battle of the Bulge was AFTER the massive bombings of German cities. In fact it was largely BEFORE.

..wrong.....that is total bullshit ...you are babbling---providing NO evidence/etc
...Germany was bombed long before Dec 1944!!!!!!

 

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

.....no, the ground pounders didn't do it--the air and choppers provided a great advantage
..here, the ground pounders got pounded...then they had to use choppers/etc
2 whole platoons decimated/plus
without air and choppers, it would've been worse

Operation Buffalo (1967) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Even based upon the Wiki article, that was a complete US victory. Even if you cut the NVA killed in quarters, they lost two to one fight a defensive battle. In defense the losses are usually one third to a half of the offensive losses. Compare German losses in Normandy to Allied ones. The day most of the US losses occurred, the NVA had total surprise and overwhelming numerical superiority.

hahhahahahahah
........Russia had twice as many military deaths as Germany in WW2----Germany lost --Russia won

And can you explain why that is? I think me and the others know why but do you?

 

[Daryl Hunt]

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better
hqhqhqhhqhqhhhahahhahahahah

How's the weather in Moscow? Don't bother googling it. Just stick your head out of the window.

..... so the French lost...then the US lost---and you people say it was winnable and our politicians lost it???!!!!! WOOOHOOOO

It was never ours to win. It WAS ours to lose. I know you will never understand that. So I close with that statement, Troll.

 

[harmonica]

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better
hqhqhqhhqhqhhhahahhahahahah

How's the weather in Moscow? Don't bother googling it. Just stick your head out of the window.

..... so the French lost...then the US lost---and you people say it was winnable and our politicians lost it???!!!!! WOOOHOOOO

It was never ours to win. It WAS ours to lose. I know you will never understand that. So I close with that statement, Troll.

wooooohoooooooooo!!!!!!! that's what I posted long ago...do you know who said it!!!!?????

 

[harmonica]

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better

As for education, I have a feeling I am at least your equal or better
hqhqhqhhqhqhhhahahhahahahah

How's the weather in Moscow? Don't bother googling it. Just stick your head out of the window.

..... so the French lost...then the US lost---and you people say it was winnable and our politicians lost it???!!!!! WOOOHOOOO

It was never ours to win. It WAS ours to lose. I know you will never understand that. So I close with that statement, Troll.

woooohooooooo--I posted that in my other thread--that's what JFK said--exactly we could not win it!!!!!!

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

.....no, the ground pounders didn't do it--the air and choppers provided a great advantage
..here, the ground pounders got pounded...then they had to use choppers/etc
2 whole platoons decimated/plus
without air and choppers, it would've been worse

Operation Buffalo (1967) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Even based upon the Wiki article, that was a complete US victory. Even if you cut the NVA killed in quarters, they lost two to one fight a defensive battle. In defense the losses are usually one third to a half of the offensive losses. Compare German losses in Normandy to Allied ones. The day most of the US losses occurred, the NVA had total surprise and overwhelming numerical superiority.

hahhahahahahah
........Russia had twice as many military deaths as Germany in WW2----Germany lost --Russia won

And can you explain why that is? I think me and the others know why but do you?

why does it matter??--it totally refutes what he said

 

[Dayton3]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.

......you might have been there, but you don't know history/WW2 history/bombing history/etc

Obviously you don't either. As you thought the Battle of the Bulge was AFTER the massive bombings of German cities. In fact it was largely BEFORE.

..wrong.....that is total bullshit ...you are babbling---providing NO evidence/etc
...Germany was bombed long before Dec 1944!!!!!!

Not the large scale city burning air raids.

 

[Sonc]

I can see the other guys point of view. Not with Russia and the US but with the North Koreans who hides much of their artillery and radar in caves along the DMZ. At least that is what they want us to think. They may have exactly what we think they have, they may have more, or they may have a ghost force with tatters of a real force. The only way to know is to go into full scale attack.

The problem with that is, what happens if they really do have what we think they have. They are just over 30 miles from the capital of South Korea with all that Artillery pointed at the highest population point in SK and the will to use it. In essence, NK holds millions of SKs as hostage at this point. If those systems were out in the open, it would be childs play to take them out before most of them could fire. But they aren't out where they can be neutralized much less IDd and that poses a huge problem. So the NKens do have systems that have their radar off and it's a trap. One where both sides know it's a trap.

Yes something like that.