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

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US SOF suffered 100 casualties >70% rate in 24 hours fighting a horde of guerilla insurgents with little to no training/coordination in an urban firefight, so yes I would say that's laying waste and is highly relevant to this thread as it demonstrates what can happen when tech/air superiority is neutralized/negated. Many of the Somali belligerents didn't even know how to properly fire a weapon, how would you value an SNA "soldier" relative to a counterpart in the US special forces, yet they achieved what was borderline unconditional surrender given the UN's retreat and near immediate evacuation of the region thereafter

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To be fair, at some point, numbers matter. If you have 10,000 untrained militia who aren’t very good at shooting concentrated on a small area, they don’t need to be that good. Slinging 10s or 100’s of thousands of poorly aimed rounds, especially at close range will hit something. A poorly aimed round will kill just as much as a well aimed one.

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once again, if the mission had been to wipe out 10,000 untrained militia concentrated in a small area, there would have been 10,000 dead Somalis and no American casualties. i dont understand why this battle is even being discussed in this thread, it is entirely irrelevant.

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Not only does it make no sense in the context of this discussion but it would be a bad take in a thread specifically about Mogadishu. Air superiority (which we had) doesn't allow you to bomb or deliver effective CAS in densely populated civilian areas on what's supposed to be a 'humanitarian' mission.

Most of the mistakes that led to the battle and how it played out were institutional: mission creep from 'peacekeeping' to aggressive enforcement, denial of requested assets (AC-130's, tanks, armored vehicles) needed for aggressive enforcement for fear of political blowback, almost zero contingency planning (specifically in regards to a downed aircraft and QRF), and a severe lack of respect for both the size and experience of a militia which had already been engaged in urban combat in the same area for months (which he ironically does himself by referring to them as a street gang).

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once again, if the mission had been to wipe out 10,000 untrained militia concentrated in a small area, there would have been 10,000 dead Somalis and no American casualties. i dont understand why this battle is even being discussed in this thread, it is entirely irrelevant.

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My bad. I kinda got you mixed up with the idiot who said they “laid waste” to the US forces

Well said

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i said win not wipe out .reading is fundamental

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My statement stands