re: 1990 US Desert Storm armed forces vs 2025 US armed forces: Who wins?

Today's military is to Desert Storm as Desert Storm is to the Korean War. The tech and gear is magnitudes more capable.

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The F14's from then have something called the Phoenix Missile.You remember it I'm sure.

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The AIM-54D has been retired for 21 years, 2 years before the the final F-14 cruise, the AIM-120D outclasses the Phoenix in every way.

The Tomcat itself was already functionally obsolete for CAP by 1990 so the Navy modified the Phoenix pallets to hold bombs so the F-14 could fill the gap left by the A-6 retirement in 1997. While the F-14 has an outsized reputation they ultimately were mud moving hangar queens in OEF and OIF and were overdue for retirement by 06.

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The national guard was heavily involved in the 1990s conflict, I had friends and coworkers who were deployed when normally this never happened like that.W Bush dodged Vietnam by joining the guard then used the guard to fight his invasion. That never sat well with me.

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Not nearly as involved as in the GWOT. In the First Gulf War, there were some combat support Guard units deployed, mostly transportation battalions, and some Air Guard squadrons deployed as well. As far as combat arms units, I think the only Guard unit to actually deploy to the ME was a field artillery brigade. Most of the Guard combat arms units that were activated for Desert Storm mustered to stateside posts but never shipped overseas.

That was not the case in the GWOT. There were numerous Guard brigades and even divisions that had multiple deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Yep. But guy didn’t add any of them to his inventory. Just some AWACs and stealth planes.

I especially liked how he felt -135s weren’t needed.

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man i was just saying...we just used the E-2 and growlers along with other f18s in the dust up with the russians back in july.

we would want to use our stealth to get air superiority.

i havent been in for close to 20 years so im not exactly up on every combined arms doctrine we use now. not dumb on it, but not up to date with the latest strategies either.

I wonder too,,how good the early SPY radars on the TICO cruisers were. If you got close enough to the coast they could become a threat.

You still had Belknaps various other cruisers destroyers and the Perry frigates, a lot of ships that could put a lot of missiles in the air.

The answer to your question was given by the 1990 desert storm. The 90's military went against an military that was 20 years behind it and routed the Iraqis. The same would happen if the 25 army went against the 90's

The force multipliers that today’s modern military has gives them an overwhelming advantage.

We’ve also learned a lot after being at war for 20 years straight.

That’s a very fair point. I’ve heard a lot of people say we’ve completely abandoned our training for conventional peer to peer warfare. Of course, it makes sense in the fact that you have to train for the current war you’re fighting.

I’m curious to know how much the Ukraine war will shape how our military trains. No one really expected a drone-and-artillery-heavy trench warfare but, then again, that’s likely because they’re isn’t much of an air capability on each side.

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All that not including the 9 or so RCT equivalents + armor support that the crayon eaters have.

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The USMC has no armor support. That dipshit Commandant several years back got rid of Marine tanks.

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It’ll be a lot closer than what folks here give it credit for.

Drones were a thing even back in 1990. A group of Iraqis famously surrendered to one. So it’s not like most areas have been improved by orders of magnitude, with sweeping functionality that was gained.

The one place where this is not true is with the dramatically improved datalinks between units.

Military today is a lot more high tech, but I don’t think it’s enough to automatically overcome the count difference. Army is half the size it used to be, and we carried 4 times as many top of the line (for the era) main battle tanks.

Quantity has a quality all of its own.

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Switchblades with Reaper coverage would render any armor without anti-UAV capabilities wrecking hulks within a very short period of time. The Gulf War forces had exactly 1 platoon of Pioneers at their disposal and no anti-UAV capability other than 1990's era signal jamming.

Networked warfare (which you referenced) is also something that didn't really exist then in any material way and is also a truly strategic advantage. You are viewing a dynamic 3D version of the battlefield whereas your enemy is looking at it in black and white.

There's also the targeting systems, which are eons better than they were then.

All that wouldn't even matter because what the NSA and CYBERCOM can do in 2025 to 1990's era tech in a true peer to peer conflict would be tragic. Things like anything beyond basic communication would be severely degraded to the point that it'd be difficult to do anything beyond small unit maneuvering.

We really are talking the technological difference between the U.S. military in Korea (really, WWII era tech + the first generation of jets) vs. the U.S. military in the first Gulf War. The gap is that big.

I am a 2000's / early 2010's era combat vet, so I understand the nostalgia, but I am 1000% confident today's military would absolutely wipe the floor and quickly with what we even fielded. The advances in drone warfare by themselves are revolutionary - equivalent to nuclear propulsion subs or networked communications or jet-powered fighters - and we are two generations beyond what we had when I was in.