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Originally Posted by Lanny_MacDonald
Depends on the type of warfare utilized. If I were the Iranians I'd force the Americans into small unit engagements. I'd use the homefield to my advantage and draw the Americans into a war of attrition, which the Americans will lose in short order. The American military is stretched so thin and is so short or armaments right now that if you divide and conquor you could beat the big bad Americans. As long as you keep the airforce involvment to a minimum (minimizing targets, lots of mobile SAMs, etc.) the American advantage is removed. As well, if you can eliminate the carriers (sub attacks and mines) and their refueling wings, you can limit the effectiveness of the air power. This was a huge weakness for Iraq in 1991. They had no navy to counteract the Americans and the US got to sit off the coast and fire tomahawks all day. Keep the birds out of the air, and you could do very well against the Americans. Air power and sea power gives the Americans an advantage no one can compete with. Get the grunts on the ground and its a different story.
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This was along the grounds of what I was saying before. The U.S. Military seems to have trouble with pockets of resistance and insurgancies because they like the Russian's are never willing to go beyond the line thats not defined by these groups. The Russian's tried for years in Chechnia (sp?), and while they leveled cities with Artillary they were never willing to go into the cities with insurgancy issues and wipe out the population, same with the American's in Iraq. Don't mis-understand me, but the reason why there were few reports of rebellions in ancient wartime was because the victorious army usually went into the villages of thier defeated foe, killed the population including woman and children and dogs, and then moved on without an enemy standing behind them. That can't be done in a civilized world which is a good thing. but as long as there are rules to warfare, there will always be problems with small pockets of enemies.
Again on the other stuff, its easier said then done Lanny, you can talk about using concentrations of SAM's but Saddam had the most complicated Russian built mobile SAM network in the history of modern militarys, but the American's swept it aside in a week. You can talk about using subs and mines against American Carrier groups, but because of the U.S. technological edge, its impossible to get within 100 miles of a U.S. carrier without being detected. Defeating American's in a military vs military is an impossible task. Now where I agree with you is the failure of the American army in dealing with small insurgancy groups that can move among civilians, and attack your softer logistics components. A lot of this happened because of the death of the effective us of air cavalry units, and because while the American's are in love with special operations units, which have never been effectively used.
Not disagreeing with you, but I think its going to be harder for Iran then people think.