Stan187

Are those figures inflation adjusted?

__________________
In Iran people belive pepsi stands for pay each penny save israel. -urmomma158
The Russian Navy is still a threat, but only to those unlucky enough to be Russian sailors.-highsea

omon

no, that is how it was, straight up.

you can do us all a favor and adjust them.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" B. Franklin

gunnut

I partially agree.

Al Queda and various terrorist organization are not any less deadly than Nazi soldiers or IJA soldiers. The difference is we are so much more superior in technology that we made them appear to be less deadly. I bet if we fought them with WW2 technologies then this would be a totally different fight. For one thing, they would have much larger equipment like tanks and even an air force. Right now we can bomb anything that we can spot from miles away, thus detering the ownership of tanks.

As what Bluesman said once, if they can bomb us from 30,000 ft they would do it. Suicide and roadside bombs are weapons of losers. We made them go that route.

__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

braindead

In the 1940s, a GI went to war with little more than a uniform, weapon, helmet, bedroll and canteen. He carried some 35 pounds of gear that cost $170, according to Army figures.


viewing the original post , one thing came to my mind - according to William Manchester , after WWII had ended a civilian clerk at Quartermaster Corps did some math and discovered a startling thing - average US soldier in WW2 was the heaviest burdened infantryman in all known history - he had carried 84.3 pounds each day . That figure startled apparently many (amongst them some US generals too).
That equipment was - uniform, steel helmet, M1 rifle, knife, canteen , entrench.tool, bayonet, first-aid pouch, web belt , 2 bandoliers of extra ammo , hand grenades , suspender harness + his pack , in pack - poncho, fuses, mess kit, cigarettes, zippo, writing paper, C,K-rations . Plus he had to carry parts of units weapons : BAR or tripod,Browning heavy or med. MG, mortar or its base or their ammo .
Plus he was supposed to carry gas mask , blanket , puppy tent and extra socks but those were thrown away/not issued or not enough for everybody .
AFAIK nowadays only ones to hump this today´s full equipment are the men in A-stan . I wonder how much they like their backpacks ...

__________________
....

gunnut

Sir I see your point. However, we can also look at it this way. There were way more soldiers back in WW2 so the money is spread out. We have fewer soldiers to equip today so we can lavish them with expensive gear.

How about this one? As a percentage of GDP, and maybe even household income, the difference between a WW2 soldier and a OIF soldier.

Shek

I'm not arguing against equipping folks better. If you look at it as a percentage of GDP per soldier equipped just in terms of individual equipment, I'm pretty sure that OIF will be cheaper.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

HistoricalDavid

Come on... the United States devoted at least forty percent of its GDP to the military during WWII. Compare that to something like 4.5% or perhaps 5% now.

Frankly I don't know why I got involved in this thread. A direct comparison is totally impossible since the US military, and indeed all first-world militaries, are more capital-intensive for the same mission now than they were 50 years ago. (Would Operation Overlord even be possible now?) Add to that the calculating difficulties with inflation and it's a curiously impossible exercise. It's like analysing Hamlet, except without the linguistic splendour.

I was not referring to just their pysches, obviously. They're probably even more motivated than the Germans (especially the international pan-European and young boy/old man hodepodge of soldiers towards the end of the war) and just as motivated as the Japanese. However, as a fighting force they obviously do not stack up and people who do compare them to the Nazis and Imperial Japan, accusing Democrats of being Neville Chamberlains, are really exaggerating for dishonest purposes of smearing.

Stan187

That's a strange question to ask. It was necesarry at the time, that's why it was done. We can do more with less ships/folks now. Force multipliers, anyone?

HistoricalDavid

That's my point. Would we have the men for that scale of amphibious assault? (Would we tolerate the same casualties?) No, because war has changed and the average serviceman is going to be MUCH more expensive.

Army5339

I think that the advancement in medical procedure and technology has done more to decrease the amount of deaths than anything else. Troops get emergency care much quicker than they did previously. All the way up to Vietnam, many simply bled out from lack of proper care or immediate care. A soldier today can sustain much more serious wounds and survive than in previous wars.

Army5339

The nature of amphibious assault has changed. We don't need to saturate the location with ground troops, as our naval artillery and air based weapons are much more accurate than when we had to do that. Strangely, tactics have changed since the mid-20th century. Plus, our ground soldiers are much more qualified and trained than soldiers from 60-70 years ago.

As for if we could do it again? The military could, but the media wouldn't allow it. If the media had been present at Omaha Beach, they would have declared it a disaster, and that the war had already been lost.

Expat Canuck

I wonder how functional that suit of armour is?

-{SpoonmaN}-

Now, not very from what I know. Although US Troops are supposed to be carrying a lot more armour to combat IED blasts, although simply by watching the news one can see that different units and indeed different individual Soldiers seem to wear it all in different configurations. I see a lot of Marines in stuff that looks similar to PASGT (of course with the new MARPAT Digital Camo), but Army personnel seem to be wearing the big, heavy Interceptor gear, one thing I notice in particular is the big shoulder pads because you can see them wearing them while doing interviews. UK Troops seem to be cruising around in the same MK6/Osprey Armour combination as they did at the start of the war, whether this comes down to budget or the luck of having a relatively friendly sector (emphasis on the word relatively) I don't know.
As for the super-suits, I think the long-term goal is to have a full head-to-toe armour/hazard suit package by 2032 or something like that. There's all this crap about liquid-state body armour and stuff on the wiki page on Future Force Warrior, sounds like pie in the sky for the forseeable future but you never know.

__________________
"I have this to say to the people of Australia: Kick me, I'm different."

Stan187

You missed my point. Force mutliplier means more with less. We can achieve the same type of beachhead without as big of a fleet of ships and men. Battalions nowdays have more power than a lot of divisional formations of 50 years ago. Not to mention the precision with which we can hit an enemy.

You're asking could we do Overlord again in numbers. I'm saying that we could achieve a similar breakthrough, without the numbers.

Stan187

Not to mention that a lot less of those soldiers are getting severly wounded in the chest and vital organs because of advances in body armor.