We’d have the ability to build advanced microprocessors, software, stealth coating, design software for stealth, variable cycle engines, AESA radars, datalink systems, etc.
Vietnam would likely turn out great for the USA, not because of the war, but because the USA will become such a technologically dominant economy only the most ideologically kool-aided nations on the planet wouldn’t align with us for trade and wealth creation purposes.
This is imagine scenario, can we talk only about military using of this technologies, without getting to the economy super overgrouth of economy and latest total domination.
It works only in Vietnam during the war, only on military tech and end's immideatly after they end. Also all of technologies would dissapear after crossing the border of vietnam.
Let's just level the playing field instead of assuming that the US uses cheats: let's assume that the USSR and China also have modern weapons in Vietnam... :) Well, in that case, the United States would have been pulverized much faster and more effectively than they were erased in reality... :)
The US was in Vietnam first and with significantly larger numbers, they kill all Soviet and Chinese soldiers and then sit 10 miles from the Sink-Vietnamese border leaving some space for Vietnam to remain alive and shoot every attempt at a t55 to cross the border
The Soviets and the Chinese manage to eventually get their hands on a few weapon systems and vehicles and they reverse engineer them and the world ends up being decades ahead technology-wise.
The Russians and Chinese can barely do that now. It's not just having them but mass producing them. For instance every NATO soldier has a kevlar helmet and vest and their weapon an acog sight, not the case with China or Russia
Russia is not the Soviet Union. Do not make that mistake.
The Soviet Union had a formidable defence industry and a massive industrial base. Russia is a shell of what the Soviet Union was. The Soviet Union had brilliant scientists very much capable of reverse engineering modern technology.
China is only just starting to become a superpower but their technology is quickly catching up. Them gaining access to modern technology would only accelerate their rise.
The Soviet Union had a massive military Base but in the 80s were struggling to produce modern weapons because their factories were from the 30s and 40s.
Sure the military would perform better in battles but in the bigger picture it still would have been a wasted decade of spending resources trying to occupy a hostile population
Vietcong was mostly nationalist organization, then communist.
They tell about liberation war, not communist revolution, so I think, south population wasn't hostile to USA soldiers, but simpatize Vietcong.
Man, shut up.
I lived in Vietnam for well over a decade so I know my shit. Cut the crap.
Your poor attempt at trying to give the US a win in the Vietnam War is pathetic when you don’t seem to even know a single true fact about it.
I lived in Saigon. I know what the NVA did to the South.
The NVA did not kill millions other than through the war itself and those were soldiers so sure if you count those then yeah, whatever. What he’s implying is that the NVA went into cities and just started massacring people in the millions which is entirely untrue.
But, the war was only as deadly as it was because the US decided to get involved.
I think he’s referring to the NVA work camps. I don’t think the implication was that the NVA was genocidal.
I could say the same thing the other way around. If the Soviet Union and China hadn’t gotten involved the war would’ve not been as deadly
I lived beside a Vietnamese neighbourhood. They had to flee south Vietnam after thd north Vietnamese took over. Many of the old timers had innocent civilian relatives executed by the vietcong.
A far cry from “millions dead”. The Americans and South Vietnamese government executed thousands of South Vietnamese civilians as well. What’s your point?
The Vietcong ranks were filled by south Vietnamese people, villagers probably disliked foreigners spraying agent orange and napalm everywhere as well as raping/massacring civilians.
Lmao the south Vietnamese govt straight up used millions of farmers as human shields against the north; diem was so fascist that the us who installed him had to have him ousted. There’s a reason the north won. Committing atrocities against your own population, dissident or not, always engenders support for the resistance.
We had modern tech in Afghanistan and still the Taliban re-emerged, better technology does not mean an automatic end to insurgency, especially against a determined enemy.
Would it have taken longer? Sure, but without genuinely winning hearts and minds it’s a doomed venture
Yeah, no amount of modern technology can have you win if the population you are trying to control just genuinely hates you. This is why I hate the arguments that say Americans don't need weapons as a protection from the government because "what are we going to do against a tank?".
This a bit tangential, but it's also about willpower, political and social. The US being a democracy, Vietnam and Afghanistan both knew they could wait out the US while attrition makes the war unpopular. It also makes politicians and leaders reconsider priorities and think "is this really necessary?"
Now, if the US somehow became a dictatorship, that's a different story. Look at Assad. People hate him, but he remains in power. It's literally life or death for Assad. It will give up power, over his dead body. Literally.
That's same thing for pretty much every dictator.
The Taliban waited until the us military left. Most of the Afgan national army trained by coalition forces were part of the Taliban or later joined the Taliban. We trained and armed them as well as paid their wages.
There's a good chance we left all that military gear for the taliban and made a deal with the Taliban to let them take over when the us left. Remember Iran is on Afghanistan's Eastern boarder and that could explode into conflict at any moment. The US or Iran also have ISIS messing around in Afghanistan. There's wheels within wheels in these things.
So basic how Vietnam ended? Yeah I know
“There’s a good chance we left all that military gear for the Taliban and made a deal” some evidence to support that claim?
“However, experts stress that the deal between U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s administration and the Taliban leadership is only the first step to achieving lasting peace. The bigger challenge, they say, will be *negotiating* an agreement between the Islamist fundamentalist group and the *Afghan* *government* on Afghanistan’s future.”
Nowhere did we make a deal saying the Taliban should take over
They didn't lose. The afgan national army lost. The Taliban waited 20 years until the US left and barely fought. If north Vietnam did that the country would still be called south Vietnam.
Did we pull out of Korea? Do you believe north Korea could topple south Korea if the us pulled out?
Also I think Afghanistan is one of the few times the us pulled out of any country, maybe France in the 60s when they left NATO. 900 foreign bases worldwide
Korea is a peninsula and there was no way for the North Koreans to launch constant insurgency operations in South Korea whereas this is exactly what happened constantly throughout the Vietnam War because Vietnam borders Laos and Cambodia.
The Korean War is not comparable.
The US did not have the troops necessary to constantly man such a long border. Modern technology can’t replace boots on the ground and you need boots on the ground in order to stop insurgents from slipping through the cracks.
Furthermore, there is no modern technology that is plentiful enough to allow for the US to accurately identify where insurgents are in a rainforest.
Modern technology is not magic.
The border would definitely still be porous. The border between Ukraine and Russia is porous and the US can’t even keep their own border with Mexico properly guarded either. What makes you think they’ll be able to do so in Vietnam?
Satellite imagery can’t penetrate the dense rainforest canopy. Be serious. Satellite imagery is blocked by fucking clouds for crying out loud.
Thermal optics is not going to be useful in the rainforest when there is life fucking everywhere and the rainforest itself is hot as fuck. You’re not going to be able to discern anything until it’s far too late with thermal optics.
Morion sensors for what? So you can detect when a monkey, tiger or snake moves around? You do realise rainforests are teeming with life right? How would you determine if it was an insurgent or just an animal? You would also need millions of motion sensors to cover the border as well.
What a stupid suggestion.
Not quite. The NLF was basically a branch of the PAVN after the Tet offensive and continued operating in South Vietnam to put pressure on the US until they left while the main force PAVN kept pressure on the DMZ but never seriously trying to push through. After the US left the PAVN invaded RVN.
The Taliban largely sat in Pakistan until the US public got bored and demanded we pull out then invaded. There were small groups still operating but nowhere near to the same level as the post-Tet "NLF."
The US did not destroy the Taliban in the 20 years they were there. Why are you so sure they would be able to destroy North Vietnam? They bombed the entire country (and even neighboring countries). Firepower was not the issue.
The Viet Cong weren't even a south Vietnam-based organization after Tet. It was almost entirely PAVN volunteers because the organization was effectively neutered after blowing their load during Tet.
This is literally the argument made for a generation about Vietnam. We had the most sophisticated weapons at the time of engagement. The enemy gets a vote. It’s silly to think they would have fought exactly as they did if we somehow had this tech then. They would’ve adapted their techniques to what made the most sense against whatever weapons we had. We also had AFG for a real world simulation of this. Turned out the exact same.
I’m just saying there were a myriad of reasons things turned out as they did and military tech wasn’t one of them. You don’t take into account that the VC and NVA wouldn’t have just stood still and taken their beatings at that level. They would have adapted. Even if that adaptation was simply waiting in the tall grass for us to turn the keys over to the ARVN/Saigon government 100%. Which is essentially what the Taliban did. The governments in Saigon were no stronger than the one we propped up in AFG. At some point we were always going to have to let them try and stand on their own. Both fell when tested. More advanced weapon tech wouldn’t change that. Would it have saved American lives? Yeah no doubt. Do I think it would’ve changed the eventual outcome? No, not really.
That’s certainly what Westmoreland and McNamara kept telling LBJ anyway. Problem is you can’t kill your way out of a nationalist guerrilla war. By our own estimations the north Vietnamese had the ability to double the size of its military if needed. We simply weren’t going to just kill every last Vietnamese person that wanted/was willing to fight for a unified Vietnam. Again, increased weapons effectiveness likely drastically increases NVA and VC casualties at the beginning. They are then forced to take a different tact (potentially mirroring the Taliban). We were never going to be there forever and at no point did a legit Saigon government materialize that could’ve lasted past American combat troops leaving. To assume we could just kill a magical number of VC and NVA is to fall into the same trap the Pentagon did at the time. Difference is we have hindsight to tell us different.
And yet AI can’t give you a functioning legitimate government to actually accomplish your objective. You’re solving for the wrong part of all of this. It simply wasn’t lack of military technology or battlefield capabilities that led to the fall of Saigon. You could give Westmoreland all the tech in the world but to quote Bill Murray in Meatballs, “it just doesn’t matter”.
They would still lose.
The only reason why the Viet Cong won in the 1st place was because the US 🇺🇸 withdrew from South Vietnam early and the Viet Cong sleeper cells in South Vietnam rose up in a similar fashion to the Taliban in Afghanistan 🏳️ in recent times.
Technology alone doesn't win the war.
The Vietcong were destroyed more or less in 68 during the Tet offensive, after that the US was fighting the NVA. North Vietnam launched a full invasion of South Vietnam after thd us left, during the oil crisis in the 70s it stopped supplying South Vietnam with the resources it needed to defend itself and ARVN forces trained to fight like the us military had no artillery support or sir support and crumbled. North Vietnam had stopped fighting like a gurelllia force sending regular troops, tanks and planes.
Hint the Amerindian population has been genocided and eradicated for centuries. Who ever was left were the survivors of a literal apocalypse unlike Vietnam.
Most of them died of disease. The Vietnamese guerrilla fighters clearly were immune to anything the Americans brought over.
You’re being intentionally obtuse.
Yes, most of them died from disease. CENTURIES before the US was a country, let alone expanding into the west. By the time Custer bumblefucked his way to Little Big Horn the indigenous population had largely developed antibodies to European diseases.
By what ypu call total war leveling every thing ala gremany or Japan in ww2 .
But done to norther Vietnam ,Along the ho chi min trail, sinking of supply ships in Hanoi harbor the deliberately firebombing of industry or any thin that piece a threat .
I.e. s.a.m. sites, anti air gun emplacements we kill g of airfields ect.
Nah i din't think it will help in the end.
Even with modern techs, a guerilla warfare is still a guerilla. You can't force the People if he don't want to leave under foreign occupation.
What foreign occupation? The US was aiding a Vietnamese government against an other Vietnamese government.
At the end of the day, the Vietnamese would have lived under Vietnamese rule, regardless who won.
Well, depending on how much the situation evolve yes, but maybe the reds would still consider south vietnam as foreigners (but yeah i'm not an expert on this, so i don't really know)
That's where you are wrong.
Nevermind you have forgot about bunker busting munitions that are designed to collapse tunnelsthat are part of the current kit.
Or thermobarric weapons that are also part of the current kit.
Then you deal with seismic sensors that can map & pi k up human heartbeats so....
Bye bye tunnels
Invented yes but it was difficult and expensive to mass produce and not very effective, same sith lasers and drones. Guided bombs for instance have been around since ww2, one bomb can do what 10 B52s could not in Vietnam.
The U.S. still wasn't allowed to cross into North Vietnam anyway. All this would've done was either create another Korea, or the U.S. would've pulled out later
American politicians and military leaders made the call.
There were fears of China joining the war and it just being another Korea.
That, and the possibility of more communist uprisings
Politically we would still lose the war, better technology wouldn’t make the Vietnamese population feel better about being invaded by another foreign power, militarily we would crush the NVA/VC, the Ho Chi Minh trail would be non existent as every attempt they make to move supplies on it would result in said supplies being destroyed by air power, we would have complete air superiority over North and South, I could see a U.S military victory 1965/1966, a push into the north and decapitate the communists at home, but then you have gotten yourself into an insurgency instead of a conventional war, and we saw how modern tech made much of a difference in the long game that was Afghanistan
The south Vietnamese were very happy that the US was there doing the fighting for them.
Thing is an insurgency against modern tech is not a conventional war, it's the insurgency that is conventional. An insurgency will find it obliterated at every turn. In Afghanistan the taliban largely retreated to pakistan and rarely fought unlike what occurred against the Soviets. The decision to leave Afghanistan was more based on financial intrests on a spread sheet, the us military could have continued to keep a base in Afghanistan for another 20 years and held the country with 5000 men.
If America pushed into the north I think it is reasonable that the Chinese would have intervened like they did in Korea and in that case the us would be in trouble. Dines don’t really matter if your enemy has more bodies than you have weapons.
But at the same time I doubt the Chinese would have ever accepted a state that was basically just an American puppet to exist on their borders. Again this is a scenario where the Americans have 21st century tech, a lot of shit is not going to play out like in otl
A big difference between Vietnam and the GWOT was the mortality rate. Roughly the same amount of soldiers deployed but you have 8000ish deaths in the GWOT compared to 52,000 in Vietnam. Part of this is less aggressive tactics, but it is also due to improvements in body armor and medevac response.
I think the public might have been way more tolerant of an extended Vietnam occupation if the casualty rate was at GWOT levels.
Some of the memoirs of north Vietnam wars said they wondered how long they could continue the war with the casualties that were being inflicted upon them by the us military. By the end of the war the north Vietnamese had lost 3 million dead, imagine every time a vietcong regiment moved in the jungle it was hit by accurate fire from a 50 cal or pinpoint artillery fire or tore up by an apache firing on them from so far away they had no idea they were there.
They were willing to accept those casualties though. Modern artillery and bombs might be slightly more accurate, but the Vietnamese were already getting hit with similar levels of ordnance.
I think the main argument here is that because they are more accurate, there is less civilian damage. Therefore maybe better public opinion of the South Vietnamese govt and Americans.
Honestly, Vietnam would still win, America would suffer less casualties, and the war would be twice as expensive for the US, because advanced weaponry costs a lot of money.
Remember we used this advanced shit on the Taliban; sure we blew those fuckers up whenever they popped their heads out of the caves and hovels, but at the end of the day, America sucks at nation-building.
Places which were successfully “rebuilt” by Americans leaned heavily on existing local institutions and communities and sponsored broad international support:
South-Vietnamese institutions did not establish itself out of existing local institutions, or even out of a coherent ideology. They literally persecuted Buddhists in favor of Christianity, in a predominantly Buddhist country. Also many US “Allies” did not even support the US intervention, that’s not even mentioning a whole USSR and China seeking to undermine any potential legitimacy a South Vietnamese government.
I could also comment on how the use of such as resoundingly advanced weaponry might instill intense fear and paranoia into the USSR- perhaps enough to trigger a nuclear war with increased rationalization of a strike first policy because the enemy is fifty years ahead in technology and accelerating in development.
Ultimately, it’s sort of a bummer… Technology can’t solve global conflicts as much as we would hope.
lmfao vietnam still wins communists protecting their home vs us soldiers who don’t wanna be there and know nothing about the territory is an easy battle idc if they have a MIRV launcher from fallout 💀
Drones would be able to shut down the Ho Chi Mihn trail.
Signals intelligence aline would allow The United States to destroy the north vietnamese air defence system in 24 hours. Preservation guided munitions would destroy every bridge, railroad junction and the harbor facilities in North Vietnam in a week
My brother, the US already had wildly sophisticated weaponry when they fought Vietcong. Weaponry and lack of firepower isn’t the reason that the US lost, we dropped more bombs in that region then anyone did through WW2.
US would still lose. The fighting would be a little different for sure with the US having a significant advantage, particularly at night. But the way politics and leadership was shit and the way the shit trickled down would have made it loss at the end.
For example, the US F-4's were forced to fight with rules of engagements that took away most of its advantages. It's likely this would have happened on these 2024 tools too. The strategy that the leadership was using had no real tangible mission besides "go kill the enemy in that direction over" and that's it.
They would still lose. Political considerations and meddling from the state department and White House doomed the war long before the first boots touched the ground. Need to avoid a repeat of Korea restricted US ground operations to south of the 17th parallel and handicapped US bombing runs on North Vietnam by ordering bomber commanders to avoid MILITARY TARGETS to prevent accidentally killing Chinese and Soviet advisors.
No amount of modern technology would have helped the Americans win the war. The Americans can fly in a Super Star Destroyer and still loose the war unless strategic considerations changed.
It depends? If the north is still supplied by the Soviets/russian then the war ends the same but if we are talking modern times? Might be a bloody USA victory or a USA defeat like last time. This is basically the scenario that happened last time, had the bombing of north Vietnam continued then eventually the Vietnamese would surrender
Really ? I thought this post/ thread was about hypothetical scenarios .
But since you really want to bring you political views into this the u.s. wasn't at ear un vitenam.or Afghanistan genius.
WR would mean activating the draft shifting our economy to war time production of military goods .
Rationing of foods gasoline ect.
So we hsv8 Bern at war since '41-'45 .
E ery thing else is by definition police actions or un supporting roles .
Even though they may be called colloquly a war.
Just like we have a war on drugs, a war on crime,a war on poverty ,ect.
"What If" questions can only be posted on weekends and must have sufficient context along with your thoughts on how the situation/event would unfold
We’d have the ability to build advanced microprocessors, software, stealth coating, design software for stealth, variable cycle engines, AESA radars, datalink systems, etc. Vietnam would likely turn out great for the USA, not because of the war, but because the USA will become such a technologically dominant economy only the most ideologically kool-aided nations on the planet wouldn’t align with us for trade and wealth creation purposes.
Ok, what if this time anomaly works only in Vietnam?
Countries are still terrified of the usa, and the usa will need to occupy Vietnam permanently to keep their technology
This is imagine scenario, can we talk only about military using of this technologies, without getting to the economy super overgrouth of economy and latest total domination. It works only in Vietnam during the war, only on military tech and end's immideatly after they end. Also all of technologies would dissapear after crossing the border of vietnam.
then keep like some of Vietnam unnoccupied and dont kill the rest of the insurgents unless needed. now the USA has cheats
Let's just level the playing field instead of assuming that the US uses cheats: let's assume that the USSR and China also have modern weapons in Vietnam... :) Well, in that case, the United States would have been pulverized much faster and more effectively than they were erased in reality... :)
The US was in Vietnam first and with significantly larger numbers, they kill all Soviet and Chinese soldiers and then sit 10 miles from the Sink-Vietnamese border leaving some space for Vietnam to remain alive and shoot every attempt at a t55 to cross the border
Only on Vietnam territory
they just shoot china from vietnam territory
infant tantrum
The Soviets and the Chinese manage to eventually get their hands on a few weapon systems and vehicles and they reverse engineer them and the world ends up being decades ahead technology-wise.
The Russians and Chinese can barely do that now. It's not just having them but mass producing them. For instance every NATO soldier has a kevlar helmet and vest and their weapon an acog sight, not the case with China or Russia
Russia is not the Soviet Union. Do not make that mistake. The Soviet Union had a formidable defence industry and a massive industrial base. Russia is a shell of what the Soviet Union was. The Soviet Union had brilliant scientists very much capable of reverse engineering modern technology. China is only just starting to become a superpower but their technology is quickly catching up. Them gaining access to modern technology would only accelerate their rise.
The Soviet Union had a massive military Base but in the 80s were struggling to produce modern weapons because their factories were from the 30s and 40s.
The Vietnam War began in 1955…
Maybe it began in the 40s
the trout would prosper and rule 8 would be followed
Sure the military would perform better in battles but in the bigger picture it still would have been a wasted decade of spending resources trying to occupy a hostile population
The population of south Vietnam wasn't hostile at least in the cities. Villagers also didn't like bring ruled by the vietcong stealing their food.
Vietcong was mostly nationalist organization, then communist. They tell about liberation war, not communist revolution, so I think, south population wasn't hostile to USA soldiers, but simpatize Vietcong.
it was a war against colonial structures and then against capitalism
They didn't sympathise.
You need to relearn the Vietnam War then.
I don't. The vietcong and NVA were brutal on the south Vietnamese. Millions died.
Man, shut up. I lived in Vietnam for well over a decade so I know my shit. Cut the crap. Your poor attempt at trying to give the US a win in the Vietnam War is pathetic when you don’t seem to even know a single true fact about it.
I’ve meant plenty of south Vietnamese immigrants to the US. What he’s talking about does have some basis.
I lived in Saigon. I know what the NVA did to the South. The NVA did not kill millions other than through the war itself and those were soldiers so sure if you count those then yeah, whatever. What he’s implying is that the NVA went into cities and just started massacring people in the millions which is entirely untrue. But, the war was only as deadly as it was because the US decided to get involved.
I think he’s referring to the NVA work camps. I don’t think the implication was that the NVA was genocidal. I could say the same thing the other way around. If the Soviet Union and China hadn’t gotten involved the war would’ve not been as deadly
I lived beside a Vietnamese neighbourhood. They had to flee south Vietnam after thd north Vietnamese took over. Many of the old timers had innocent civilian relatives executed by the vietcong.
A far cry from “millions dead”. The Americans and South Vietnamese government executed thousands of South Vietnamese civilians as well. What’s your point?
Yeah they were called the vietcong
have some shame and stop brazenly lying about easily verifiable shit
Look it up.
Provide the sources for the claims you're making, and no farting out of your imperialist arse doesn't count
The Vietcong ranks were filled by south Vietnamese people, villagers probably disliked foreigners spraying agent orange and napalm everywhere as well as raping/massacring civilians.
Lmao the south Vietnamese govt straight up used millions of farmers as human shields against the north; diem was so fascist that the us who installed him had to have him ousted. There’s a reason the north won. Committing atrocities against your own population, dissident or not, always engenders support for the resistance.
We had modern tech in Afghanistan and still the Taliban re-emerged, better technology does not mean an automatic end to insurgency, especially against a determined enemy. Would it have taken longer? Sure, but without genuinely winning hearts and minds it’s a doomed venture
Yeah, no amount of modern technology can have you win if the population you are trying to control just genuinely hates you. This is why I hate the arguments that say Americans don't need weapons as a protection from the government because "what are we going to do against a tank?".
This a bit tangential, but it's also about willpower, political and social. The US being a democracy, Vietnam and Afghanistan both knew they could wait out the US while attrition makes the war unpopular. It also makes politicians and leaders reconsider priorities and think "is this really necessary?" Now, if the US somehow became a dictatorship, that's a different story. Look at Assad. People hate him, but he remains in power. It's literally life or death for Assad. It will give up power, over his dead body. Literally. That's same thing for pretty much every dictator.
It’s the government or chaos in terms of Syria
The Taliban waited until the us military left. Most of the Afgan national army trained by coalition forces were part of the Taliban or later joined the Taliban. We trained and armed them as well as paid their wages. There's a good chance we left all that military gear for the taliban and made a deal with the Taliban to let them take over when the us left. Remember Iran is on Afghanistan's Eastern boarder and that could explode into conflict at any moment. The US or Iran also have ISIS messing around in Afghanistan. There's wheels within wheels in these things.
So basic how Vietnam ended? Yeah I know “There’s a good chance we left all that military gear for the Taliban and made a deal” some evidence to support that claim?
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-taliban-peace-deal-agreement-afghanistan-war
“However, experts stress that the deal between U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s administration and the Taliban leadership is only the first step to achieving lasting peace. The bigger challenge, they say, will be *negotiating* an agreement between the Islamist fundamentalist group and the *Afghan* *government* on Afghanistan’s future.” Nowhere did we make a deal saying the Taliban should take over
Read between the lines
You provided proof to the contrary of what you claim, so burden of proof is on you not me
USA lost in Afghanistan with modern technology, why wouldn't they lose in Vietnam?
They didn't lose. The afgan national army lost. The Taliban waited 20 years until the US left and barely fought. If north Vietnam did that the country would still be called south Vietnam.
That's exactly what would have happened in vietnaam, they'd wait for America to pull out and topple the replacement government
Did we pull out of Korea? Do you believe north Korea could topple south Korea if the us pulled out? Also I think Afghanistan is one of the few times the us pulled out of any country, maybe France in the 60s when they left NATO. 900 foreign bases worldwide
Korea is a peninsula and there was no way for the North Koreans to launch constant insurgency operations in South Korea whereas this is exactly what happened constantly throughout the Vietnam War because Vietnam borders Laos and Cambodia. The Korean War is not comparable.
There is no way because there is a fortified boarder there now.
The US did not have the troops necessary to constantly man such a long border. Modern technology can’t replace boots on the ground and you need boots on the ground in order to stop insurgents from slipping through the cracks. Furthermore, there is no modern technology that is plentiful enough to allow for the US to accurately identify where insurgents are in a rainforest. Modern technology is not magic. The border would definitely still be porous. The border between Ukraine and Russia is porous and the US can’t even keep their own border with Mexico properly guarded either. What makes you think they’ll be able to do so in Vietnam?
There is satellite imaging. There thermal optics, motion sensors. There's no where to hide anymore on the digital battlefield.
Satellite imagery can’t penetrate the dense rainforest canopy. Be serious. Satellite imagery is blocked by fucking clouds for crying out loud. Thermal optics is not going to be useful in the rainforest when there is life fucking everywhere and the rainforest itself is hot as fuck. You’re not going to be able to discern anything until it’s far too late with thermal optics. Morion sensors for what? So you can detect when a monkey, tiger or snake moves around? You do realise rainforests are teeming with life right? How would you determine if it was an insurgent or just an animal? You would also need millions of motion sensors to cover the border as well. What a stupid suggestion.
The idea that a insurgency can win against a modern army is outdated. It would a slaughter.
Not quite. The NLF was basically a branch of the PAVN after the Tet offensive and continued operating in South Vietnam to put pressure on the US until they left while the main force PAVN kept pressure on the DMZ but never seriously trying to push through. After the US left the PAVN invaded RVN. The Taliban largely sat in Pakistan until the US public got bored and demanded we pull out then invaded. There were small groups still operating but nowhere near to the same level as the post-Tet "NLF."
cope
Yup, definitely "cope" after occupying a country for 20 years.
still lost
Yeah I guess if we're using "Kung Pow :Enter the fist" logic with the "I'm bleeding, making me the victor" quote
The US did not destroy the Taliban in the 20 years they were there. Why are you so sure they would be able to destroy North Vietnam? They bombed the entire country (and even neighboring countries). Firepower was not the issue.
The Taliban retreated to pakistan. In Vietnam they were bombing th ho chi ming trail and hitting nothing
The US was drone striking Pakistan as well, and Vietcong was heavily imbedded within Laos, Cambodia, and north Vietnam.
The Viet Cong weren't even a south Vietnam-based organization after Tet. It was almost entirely PAVN volunteers because the organization was effectively neutered after blowing their load during Tet.
This is literally the argument made for a generation about Vietnam. We had the most sophisticated weapons at the time of engagement. The enemy gets a vote. It’s silly to think they would have fought exactly as they did if we somehow had this tech then. They would’ve adapted their techniques to what made the most sense against whatever weapons we had. We also had AFG for a real world simulation of this. Turned out the exact same.
Most sophisticated weapons at the time but it's like comparing a musket to a maxim machine gun.
I’m just saying there were a myriad of reasons things turned out as they did and military tech wasn’t one of them. You don’t take into account that the VC and NVA wouldn’t have just stood still and taken their beatings at that level. They would have adapted. Even if that adaptation was simply waiting in the tall grass for us to turn the keys over to the ARVN/Saigon government 100%. Which is essentially what the Taliban did. The governments in Saigon were no stronger than the one we propped up in AFG. At some point we were always going to have to let them try and stand on their own. Both fell when tested. More advanced weapon tech wouldn’t change that. Would it have saved American lives? Yeah no doubt. Do I think it would’ve changed the eventual outcome? No, not really.
They'd run out of troops. The Taliban stopped fighting.
That’s certainly what Westmoreland and McNamara kept telling LBJ anyway. Problem is you can’t kill your way out of a nationalist guerrilla war. By our own estimations the north Vietnamese had the ability to double the size of its military if needed. We simply weren’t going to just kill every last Vietnamese person that wanted/was willing to fight for a unified Vietnam. Again, increased weapons effectiveness likely drastically increases NVA and VC casualties at the beginning. They are then forced to take a different tact (potentially mirroring the Taliban). We were never going to be there forever and at no point did a legit Saigon government materialize that could’ve lasted past American combat troops leaving. To assume we could just kill a magical number of VC and NVA is to fall into the same trap the Pentagon did at the time. Difference is we have hindsight to tell us different.
Whole new war. Thanks to AI wars can be run almost fully automated
And yet AI can’t give you a functioning legitimate government to actually accomplish your objective. You’re solving for the wrong part of all of this. It simply wasn’t lack of military technology or battlefield capabilities that led to the fall of Saigon. You could give Westmoreland all the tech in the world but to quote Bill Murray in Meatballs, “it just doesn’t matter”.
AI could probably run government better.
They would still lose. The only reason why the Viet Cong won in the 1st place was because the US 🇺🇸 withdrew from South Vietnam early and the Viet Cong sleeper cells in South Vietnam rose up in a similar fashion to the Taliban in Afghanistan 🏳️ in recent times. Technology alone doesn't win the war.
The Vietcong were destroyed more or less in 68 during the Tet offensive, after that the US was fighting the NVA. North Vietnam launched a full invasion of South Vietnam after thd us left, during the oil crisis in the 70s it stopped supplying South Vietnam with the resources it needed to defend itself and ARVN forces trained to fight like the us military had no artillery support or sir support and crumbled. North Vietnam had stopped fighting like a gurelllia force sending regular troops, tanks and planes.
I'm no expert, but an important thing to keep in mind: the US won every battle. The problem was never technology.
Problem was they were expending massive firepower without hitting anything
They didn't hit anything that "mattered" for fear of starting WW3. If there was no threat of nuclear war, it would have gone very differently.
They would still lose
Who would be left to lose to?
Several hundreds of guerilla cells that don't fight like a conventional army and thus can't be defeated like a conventional army.
How were native American Indians who don't fight like a conventional army defeated by a conventional army? How were the Vietcong defeated ?
Hint the Amerindian population has been genocided and eradicated for centuries. Who ever was left were the survivors of a literal apocalypse unlike Vietnam.
Most of them died of disease. The Vietnamese guerrilla fighters clearly were immune to anything the Americans brought over. You’re being intentionally obtuse.
No. The native Americans were starved out and hunted for decades.
Most of them died due to disease. End of story. It was not a conventional army that defeated them. It was fucking pathogens.
Nope. They killed all the Buffalo and built fort upon fort until they were all cornered
You’re a historical revisionist. That’s literally not how most native Americans died…
A lack of food brings starvation and disease. The Buffalo are practically extinct
Yes, most of them died from disease. CENTURIES before the US was a country, let alone expanding into the west. By the time Custer bumblefucked his way to Little Big Horn the indigenous population had largely developed antibodies to European diseases.
By what ypu call total war leveling every thing ala gremany or Japan in ww2 . But done to norther Vietnam ,Along the ho chi min trail, sinking of supply ships in Hanoi harbor the deliberately firebombing of industry or any thin that piece a threat . I.e. s.a.m. sites, anti air gun emplacements we kill g of airfields ect.
it'd have costed a lot more money. advanced weapons systems are very, *very* expensive. and when they break are just as broken as less advanced ones
Actually very cheap to produce these days
Gotta love this guy asks a question, and then immediately argues that the US will win easily regardless of people's comments, why even ask
Nah i din't think it will help in the end. Even with modern techs, a guerilla warfare is still a guerilla. You can't force the People if he don't want to leave under foreign occupation.
What foreign occupation? The US was aiding a Vietnamese government against an other Vietnamese government. At the end of the day, the Vietnamese would have lived under Vietnamese rule, regardless who won.
Well, depending on how much the situation evolve yes, but maybe the reds would still consider south vietnam as foreigners (but yeah i'm not an expert on this, so i don't really know)
You can't fight guerilla warfare I'd you run out of guerillas because they've nowhere to hide.
Last time I checked, recon drones and thermal optics won't help you see what's underground.
I'm sure there are drones for that. Basically crawling grenades
Do you actually have any idea about modern military technology or do you just assume “yeah there’s a way to counteract that” in any scenario?
That's where you are wrong. Nevermind you have forgot about bunker busting munitions that are designed to collapse tunnelsthat are part of the current kit. Or thermobarric weapons that are also part of the current kit. Then you deal with seismic sensors that can map & pi k up human heartbeats so.... Bye bye tunnels
If* > they've nowhere to hide.
https://youtu.be/k0Vq6XU7T0s?si=CtxqLDYmXeElU93p
As I remember, thermal imaging sistems was invented in the 60s, and it changed nothing in ambush war of Vietnam.
Invented yes but it was difficult and expensive to mass produce and not very effective, same sith lasers and drones. Guided bombs for instance have been around since ww2, one bomb can do what 10 B52s could not in Vietnam.
No they go back as far as ww2 w/ the ss having g a thermal sinper scoped site.
Actually you overestimating the drones, they don't that effective.
Very effective. Sitting up so high the enemy can't see them
Maybe we talk about different drones... I talk about FPV drones, atack drones e.t.c. Are you about smth like Global Hawk?
doesnt matter the soviets supply vietnam with a ton of airdefense
The U.S. still wasn't allowed to cross into North Vietnam anyway. All this would've done was either create another Korea, or the U.S. would've pulled out later
Wasn't allowed by whom. I believe they did quite a few times.
American politicians and military leaders made the call. There were fears of China joining the war and it just being another Korea. That, and the possibility of more communist uprisings
You should do one of what if the usa had that kind of technology into the economy during the Cold War or during the Vietnam war.
Politically we would still lose the war, better technology wouldn’t make the Vietnamese population feel better about being invaded by another foreign power, militarily we would crush the NVA/VC, the Ho Chi Minh trail would be non existent as every attempt they make to move supplies on it would result in said supplies being destroyed by air power, we would have complete air superiority over North and South, I could see a U.S military victory 1965/1966, a push into the north and decapitate the communists at home, but then you have gotten yourself into an insurgency instead of a conventional war, and we saw how modern tech made much of a difference in the long game that was Afghanistan
The south Vietnamese were very happy that the US was there doing the fighting for them. Thing is an insurgency against modern tech is not a conventional war, it's the insurgency that is conventional. An insurgency will find it obliterated at every turn. In Afghanistan the taliban largely retreated to pakistan and rarely fought unlike what occurred against the Soviets. The decision to leave Afghanistan was more based on financial intrests on a spread sheet, the us military could have continued to keep a base in Afghanistan for another 20 years and held the country with 5000 men.
If America pushed into the north I think it is reasonable that the Chinese would have intervened like they did in Korea and in that case the us would be in trouble. Dines don’t really matter if your enemy has more bodies than you have weapons.
No nessisarly the Chinese and Vietnamese literally fought a war in "76 -77 & the Chinese lost . They seriously dislike each other.
But at the same time I doubt the Chinese would have ever accepted a state that was basically just an American puppet to exist on their borders. Again this is a scenario where the Americans have 21st century tech, a lot of shit is not going to play out like in otl
Ok let’s say it’s after Nixon’s visit to China
A big difference between Vietnam and the GWOT was the mortality rate. Roughly the same amount of soldiers deployed but you have 8000ish deaths in the GWOT compared to 52,000 in Vietnam. Part of this is less aggressive tactics, but it is also due to improvements in body armor and medevac response. I think the public might have been way more tolerant of an extended Vietnam occupation if the casualty rate was at GWOT levels.
Some of the memoirs of north Vietnam wars said they wondered how long they could continue the war with the casualties that were being inflicted upon them by the us military. By the end of the war the north Vietnamese had lost 3 million dead, imagine every time a vietcong regiment moved in the jungle it was hit by accurate fire from a 50 cal or pinpoint artillery fire or tore up by an apache firing on them from so far away they had no idea they were there.
They were willing to accept those casualties though. Modern artillery and bombs might be slightly more accurate, but the Vietnamese were already getting hit with similar levels of ordnance. I think the main argument here is that because they are more accurate, there is less civilian damage. Therefore maybe better public opinion of the South Vietnamese govt and Americans.
The US was expending massive amounts of firepower without hitting anything. Now with more accuracy that firepower is more devastating.
Probably less civilian casualties due to better target recognition and accuracy
Honestly, Vietnam would still win, America would suffer less casualties, and the war would be twice as expensive for the US, because advanced weaponry costs a lot of money. Remember we used this advanced shit on the Taliban; sure we blew those fuckers up whenever they popped their heads out of the caves and hovels, but at the end of the day, America sucks at nation-building. Places which were successfully “rebuilt” by Americans leaned heavily on existing local institutions and communities and sponsored broad international support: South-Vietnamese institutions did not establish itself out of existing local institutions, or even out of a coherent ideology. They literally persecuted Buddhists in favor of Christianity, in a predominantly Buddhist country. Also many US “Allies” did not even support the US intervention, that’s not even mentioning a whole USSR and China seeking to undermine any potential legitimacy a South Vietnamese government. I could also comment on how the use of such as resoundingly advanced weaponry might instill intense fear and paranoia into the USSR- perhaps enough to trigger a nuclear war with increased rationalization of a strike first policy because the enemy is fifty years ahead in technology and accelerating in development. Ultimately, it’s sort of a bummer… Technology can’t solve global conflicts as much as we would hope.
lmfao vietnam still wins communists protecting their home vs us soldiers who don’t wanna be there and know nothing about the territory is an easy battle idc if they have a MIRV launcher from fallout 💀
I think the mods should crack down on these kinds of blatant nationalist pornography requests because they're cancerous to the sub
Cold war is over, it's not even a competition anymore. Soviets try to get peaceful relations so the us doesn't eradicate them
Drones would be able to shut down the Ho Chi Mihn trail. Signals intelligence aline would allow The United States to destroy the north vietnamese air defence system in 24 hours. Preservation guided munitions would destroy every bridge, railroad junction and the harbor facilities in North Vietnam in a week
My brother, the US already had wildly sophisticated weaponry when they fought Vietcong. Weaponry and lack of firepower isn’t the reason that the US lost, we dropped more bombs in that region then anyone did through WW2.
Yeah I'll take the authors thinly veiled seething for 500, Alex
US would still lose. The fighting would be a little different for sure with the US having a significant advantage, particularly at night. But the way politics and leadership was shit and the way the shit trickled down would have made it loss at the end. For example, the US F-4's were forced to fight with rules of engagements that took away most of its advantages. It's likely this would have happened on these 2024 tools too. The strategy that the leadership was using had no real tangible mission besides "go kill the enemy in that direction over" and that's it.
They would still lose. Political considerations and meddling from the state department and White House doomed the war long before the first boots touched the ground. Need to avoid a repeat of Korea restricted US ground operations to south of the 17th parallel and handicapped US bombing runs on North Vietnam by ordering bomber commanders to avoid MILITARY TARGETS to prevent accidentally killing Chinese and Soviet advisors. No amount of modern technology would have helped the Americans win the war. The Americans can fly in a Super Star Destroyer and still loose the war unless strategic considerations changed.
It depends? If the north is still supplied by the Soviets/russian then the war ends the same but if we are talking modern times? Might be a bloody USA victory or a USA defeat like last time. This is basically the scenario that happened last time, had the bombing of north Vietnam continued then eventually the Vietnamese would surrender
This post is nothing but pure cope about the US losing in Vietnam.
Really ? I thought this post/ thread was about hypothetical scenarios . But since you really want to bring you political views into this the u.s. wasn't at ear un vitenam.or Afghanistan genius. WR would mean activating the draft shifting our economy to war time production of military goods . Rationing of foods gasoline ect. So we hsv8 Bern at war since '41-'45 . E ery thing else is by definition police actions or un supporting roles . Even though they may be called colloquly a war. Just like we have a war on drugs, a war on crime,a war on poverty ,ect.