If a war between two great powers were to break out today, would that war see the deployment of ground troops? It feels like the rising prevalence of the Air-Sea doctrine and ICBMs has made ground troops almost redundant.
I can only see a modern war playing out like this:
>Country A wins naval and air superiority >Country A starts to bomb the infrastructure and supply lines of country B >Country B surrenders or escalates the situation with nuclear missiles
Let's define the great powers as the USA, France, the UK, Russia, Germany, China and Japan
You might want to look up NATO's intervention in Serbia.
Or the war in Afghanistan, or the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
You've had people since WW1 claiming how command of the sky and the lines of communication will allow you to bombard the enemy into submission without the need for direct occupation. So far, it hasn't happened, and governments are way more resistant to that kind of coercive tactics than they (and you) give them credit for.
There will be ground troops, because ultimately, you will need to take and hold territory, and all the planes in the world can't do that.
Camden Adams
War studies was a humanities course at my university
Aaron Diaz
Lets be real for once we all know it will only lead to this.
Andrew Murphy
>You've had people since WW1 claiming how command of the sky and the lines of communication will allow you to bombard the enemy into submission without the need for direct occupation. So far, it hasn't happened Libya, Gadaffi, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria/ME etc, Sadam
Owen Brown
>Bomb infrastructure into oblivion and cause constant (accidental) civilian casualties >Kindle the demise of popular support for the government via 5th columns >??? >Profit
Luis Howard
not if you take out the centralised government through revolution etc then you're just cleaning up scattered mobs & renegade coup factions etc, you can probably avoid that escalation into bloc vs bloc nuclear arsenals
economic collapse into revolution after capitulated failed reforms etc
Luke Barnes
None of those were won without the use of ground troops.
Gabriel Bailey
>Libya, Gadaffi,
What the fuck are you talking about? That had ground action, all those Libyans trying to overthrow Gaddafi and being supported by, well, everyone.
>Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria/ME etc, Sadam
All had ground actions!
Is it really a fifth column if they're people rallied around the flag? I'm pretty sure 5th columnists are against the power in charge of the ground.
Aaron Hughes
>So far, it hasn't happened Literally what?
Nicholas Ramirez
Tell me something user.
Suppose that the war between Japan and the U.S. broke out post Manhattan project. And the Americans somehow manage to slip a pair of bombers in, nuke both Hiroshima and Nagasaki a month after Pearl Harbor, in the midst of a string of defeats.
You really think Japan would fold from that? I'm far from convinced, given how very nearly the a-bombs as is didn't.
Meanwhile, in the actual war, you had the gradual dismemberment of the Japanese colonial empire, an enormous ongoing war in China, the Soviets jumping in the war, all of Japan's nominal allies surrendering, the cutting off of their oil supplies, the blockade of their home waters, and the imminent invasion of their home islands, which was almost certain to succeed, albeit at a terrible cost.
It was a hell of a lot more than a couple of airstrikes, even nuclear airstrikes, that got them to knuckle under.
Benjamin Howard
>not wanting to discuss enlightening topics and theorize about interesting events even if those events are far fetched its almost like you want to drag down our IQ....
Lincoln Adams
>that got them to knuckle under. Kek.
hery were, in THE most literal sense bombed into submission. It's literally undeniable.
>surrender >>nou >okay >dropnuke.jpeg >>okay we surrender
That's not being bombed into submission? Kek. Of course there is many other things going on in the war, Nukes are the only reason they surrendered when they did, literally undeniable.
Christian Foster
Except that's full of shit. You had a severely dysfunctional Japanese government which basically required unanimity to sign any sort of surrender agreement. You already had a majority looking to fold by the start of April '45. It was mostly the Army brass against giving up, and they only did so because their coup attempt went belly up and they didn't get the Emperor into "protective custody".
That's a pretty tenuous chain of reasoning to go from nuke to attempted coup to sudden vacancy in the last objector to surrender, especially since the army coup attempt shows no indication of being linked to the atomic bombing. It's certainly a lot less than "Nukes are the only reason they surrendered when they did, literally undeniable".
Andrew Martinez
>he is still going
Lincoln Gutierrez
it would depend on who's fighting who, and where. That being said if an actual war broke out between lets say NATO and Russia. My guess is the war would stay conventional for maybe a few months before the Russians realized they were up against impossible odds, at which point they would probably demand that Nato pull back its military or Russia would fire off its nukes. Meaning either a ceasefire, or if the US missile defense system is more effective than commonly thought. It would result in Russia having a very bad day. This is assuming that Russia even allowed for a true conventional war to break out instead of immediately using its nuclear trump card which is really the only realistic defense the country has against the west.
Alexander King
>nukes didn't force Japan to surrender t. Veeky Forums
>nukes did for Japan to surrender >every scholar on every side in existence
>"Many people, including Kyuma, believe that the atomic bombs stopped Japan's 'aggression,' but Japan did not fight a war of aggression," said Tojo, who claimed the war was fought to liberate the "nonwhite" colonies in Asia from the "whites." "If there was one mistake, however, it was the fact that we lost. And if my grandfather is to blame, it's not because he started the war but because we lost." (quoted in Japan Times article, by Setsuko Kamiya, July 11, 2007)
Ples, keep going.
Adrian Lewis
>What the fuck are you talking about? That had ground action, you mean fostered internal opposition to cause slight amounts of unrest whilst an entire civilisation was carpet bombed out of existence during this decade??
James Bell
t propaganda
Jason Howard
>nukes didn't force Japan to surrender
Learn to reading comprehension.
I'm not saying nukes weren't instrumental. I'm not saying they weren't necessary. I'm saying that they were a straw that broke a camel's back, or perhaps something a bit more substantial than a proverbial straw.
Dropping the nukes at a point where Japan was crushed on every other conventional front, including 3 years of ground fighting which had pretty universally gone against them, when everyone knew an invasion was in the wind, is a hell of a lot different from just dropping a pair of nukes and pissing off, a la "ground forces are unnecessary, airpower wins wars alone"; and the confused nature of the Japanese government doesn't make things easier to sort out.
I mean an NTC estimation of 200,000 soldiers (very loosely defined here) which actually occupied cities, pulled Gaddafit out of Tripoli, and eventually shot him.
> whilst an entire civilisation was carpet bombed out of existence during this decade??
wut?
Luis Jones
>I'm not saying nukes weren't instrumental. I'm not saying they weren't necessary. I'm saying that they were a straw that broke a camel's back, or perhaps something a bit more substantial than a proverbial straw.
This has literally no fucking meaning, since you know, the bombs were dropped.
What are you saying? Taking a scenario which never happened as something which did? Using it as evidence? Kek.
Yeah, I agree, Japan could have been beaten without use of the bombs, pretty much the whole world does. The bombs were still fucking dropped though you mong. The were bombed into submission. YES, they could have been forced to submit some other way - that's not what happened in our actual history which you are trying to deny, you fucking retard.
Holy shit retards on this place will take any position in order to avoid saying >yeah my bad
You're done, don't bother posting again.
Isaac Thomas
>What are you saying?
What I've been saying the entire thread.
Airpower alone does not win wars. Even airpower supplemented by nuclear warheads.
In the case of WW2, you can't even DELIVER the bombs without ground action to seize the Tinian islands (or other islands that are within a B-29 range). And whenever you're relying upon a morale shock to defeat an opponent, which is definitely the case of the 1945 surrender, you have to draw a distinction between necessary and sufficient.
Pic related ran around the interwar period claiming that strategic bombing was the reason behind German surrender in WW1. No, it wasn't the Hundred Days offensive. No, it wasn't the blockade and the starvation. It was the 500 or so tons of bombs that the nascent RAF dropped on places like Essen and Dusseldorf.
He would have doubtlessly expressed it a bit differently, but he could have said
>THE BOMBS WERE STILL DROPPED YOU IDIOTS >GERMANY WAS BOMBED INTO SUBMISSION >YES THEY COULD HAVE BEEN FORCED TO SUBMIT SOME OTHER WAY, THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENED THOUGH! >ONLY IDIOTS ARE TRYING TO DENY THE USE OF AIR POWER
Unless you come up with some kind of formula to determine the exact moment and under what influences each and every cabinet member of Japan came up with their decision to knuckle under, and which one of them was most important (remember, we need unanimity here), you can't just point to the nukes and say "See, they bombed Japan into submission"
Hunter Martin
>every scholar on every side in existence This isn't remotely true. The debate over the usefulness of the bombs has never stopped and there has never been a consensus for them being integral in the surrender of Japan. You're parroting a narrative that you personal believe in and dismissing all evidence to the contrary because you've already made up your mind. This statement alone illustrates how you will invent fictitious 'proofs' to support your flimsy reasoning based more on feeling than fact.
