What if? Roman Army vs. USMC MEU

[ArmchairGeneral]

The marines have severla advantages as well that won't go away when the toys get broken- universal literacy in a language the Romans don't speak, effective field sanitation procedures tp prevent disease, a list of a whose who in Roman military abilities. Going up against Scipio, Sula, Marius, Julius Caesar, Agrippa etc vs much less capable consuls makes a big difference. Go up against one of the gods of war and the battle will be decided by a sniper- you don't dare let the great captains learn. Go up against a half rate consul and you have the snipers sit it out.

All very true.

[1979]

C'mon, ACG, you're making the same mistake 1979 did and thinking every city block have to be taken one by one and every Roman army have to be dealt with.

We're not talking about leveling a city.

Just a decapitation of the decision makers and a powerful demonstration of the power available to the aggressors will be enough to topple most cites, even in modern times.

It's something a MEU will easily be able to accomplish.

The Native Indians and the Zulus were able to give their technically superior enemies a rough time because their leaders were never harmed.

Honestly, even with the vast technical superiority enjoyed by the Marines, there won't be all that many deaths on the Roman side.

There won't be a tank convoy headed up Basra and Fallujah fighting their way through mobs and soldiers trying to reach Baghdad.

the roman general Agrippa fought a 10 year counterinsurgency campaign in Spain and won, he is not going to line his soldiers in tight rows and march them against machine guns.

[YellowFever]

An exchange between the MEU commander and one of his Lieutenants:

MEU commander: Lieutenant, one of my Helo scouts reports a large body of soldiers forming 20 miles from here. Who are they?

Lieutenant: Sir, our historians and analysts are in agreement that it's Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa leading an army to counter-attack our position in hopes of taking Rome back.

MEU Commander: Is he good?

Leutenant: Sir, our historians tells us that he is one of their best.

MEU Commander: Send a team of snipers out there and back them up with a helo or two armed with an FAE device just in case the snipers fail.

Lieutenant: Yes sir. Sir, will the commander require one slave woman tonight or two?

[Mihais]

the roman general Agrippa fought a 10 year counterinsurgency campaign in Spain and won, he is not going to line his soldiers in tight rows and march them against machine guns.

Yes he did,but you missed how he did.He surrounded villages and towns with soldiers lined up in tight rows and he marched them forward.That they killed everybody need not be said.

[Mihais]

Lieutenant: Yes sir. Sir, will the commander require one slave woman tonight or two?

Notice you're getting in slave girls bussiness as well.I take your earlier attacks on my tastes were just (poor) efforts to remove competition.

[YellowFever]

Well, yeah, if you're going to ravage a land and proclaim yourself the king, you might as well diddle a slave chick to two.

It's the prudent thing to do.

[1979]

Yes he did,but you missed how he did.He surrounded villages and towns with soldiers lined up in tight rows and he marched them forward.That they killed everybody need not be said.

The sides had changed , the Romans have millions of square km to play and the marines are 2000. the aviation fuel is going to be the first thing that goes.

[Mihais]

What you're doing right now is guerilla warfare of arguments.Yours are as weak as can be given the context,but you hope I'll be bored and quit the fight.My marines still have enough fuel to evacuate Saigon,keep in mind

[USSWisconsin]

3495
3496
Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU? (self.AskReddit)
submitted 4 months ago by The_Quiet_Earth

So I've been watching HBO's Rome and Generation Kill simultaneously and it's lead me to fantasize about traveling back in time with modern troops and equipment to remove that self-righteous little twat Octavian (Augustus) from power.

Let's say we go back in time with a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), since the numbers of members and equipment is listed for our convenience in this Wikipedia article, could we destroy all 30 of Augustus' legions?

We'd be up against nearly 330,000 men since each legion was comprised of 11,000 men. These men are typically equipped with limb and torso armor made of metal, and for weaponry they carry swords, spears, bows and other stabbing implements. We'd also encounter siege weapons like catapults and crude incendiary weapons.

We'd be made up of about 2000 members, of which about half would be participating in ground attack operations. We can use our four Abrams M1A1 tanks, our artillery and mechanized vehicles (60 Humvees, 16 armored vehicles, etc), but we cannot use our attack air support, only our transport aircraft.

We also have medics with us, modern medical equipment and drugs, and engineers, but we no longer have a magical time-traveling supply line (we did have but the timelords frowned upon it, sadly!) that provides us with all the ammunition, equipment and sustenance we need to survive. We'll have to succeed with the stuff we brought with us.

So, will we be victorious?

I really hope so because I really dislike Octavian and his horrible family. Getting Atia will be a bonus.

Edit - In my head the magical resupply system only included sustenance, ammo and replacement equipment like armor. Men and vehicles would not be replaced if they died or were destroyed. I should have made that clear in my OP. Okay, let's remove the magical resupply line, instead replacing it with enough equipment and ammo to last for, say, 6 months. Could we destroy all of the Roman Empire in that space of time before our modern technological advantages ceased to function owing to a lack of supplies?

Edit 3 - Perhaps I've over estimated the capabilities of the Roman forces. If we remove the tanks and artillery will we still win? We now have troops, their weapons, vehicles for mobility (including transport helicopters), medics and modern medicine, and engineers and all the other specialists needed to keep a MEU functional.

Sounds like they chipped away at the forces, took their artillery, planes and ships, attack helo's and their tanks - left them with transport helos, vehicles and 6 mon supplies sitting on the ground?

Link to the initial reddit thread:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/co...empire_during

[USSWisconsin]

I copied the first two days


DAY 1

The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes.

The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber River. Without substantially prepared ground under it, the concrete begins sinking into the marshy ground and cracking. Colonel Miles Nelson orders his men to regroup near the vehicle depot - nearly all of the MEU's vehicles are still stripped for air transport. He orders all helicopters airborne, believing the MEU is trapped in an earthquake.

Nelson's men soon report a complete loss of all communications, including GPS and satellite radio. Nelson now believes something more terrible has occurred - a nuclear war and EMP which has left his unit completely isolated. Only a few men have realized that the rest of Bagram has vanished, but that will soon become apparent as the transport helos begin circling the 35th's location.

Within an hour, the 2,200 Marines have regrouped, stunned. They are not the only moderns transported to Rome. With them are about 150 Air Force maintenance and repair specialists. There are about 60 Afghan Army soldiers, mostly the MEU's interpreters and liaisons. There are also 15 U.S. civilian contractors and one man, Frank Delacroix, who has spoken to no one but Colonel Nelson.

Miraculously, no one was killed during the earthquake but several dozen people were injured, some seriously. All fixed-wing aircraft and the attack helicopters were rendered inoperable by the shifting concrete, although the MEU did not lose a single vehicle or transport helicopter.

As night falls, the MEU has established a perimeter. A few locals have been spotted, but in the chaos no one has yet established contact. Nelson and his men, who are crippled without mapping software and GPS to fix their position, begin attempting to fix their location by observing stars. The night is cloudy. Nelson orders four helicopters back into the air at first light, to travel along the river in hopes of locating a settlement.

DAY 2

Nelson's helos launch at dawn. As they rise into the air, one crew spots a distant pillar of smoke and excitedly begins bearing down on this sign of life.

Meanwhile, the mysterious appearance of the Marines has not gone unnoticed. Peasants have fled to the home of the land's owner, Senator Aulus Terentius Varro Murena. It is 23 BC, and Murena is about to form a Republican conspiracy against Augustus Caesar. He and other Senators are deeply suspicious of the Imperator and fear that he will swamp their ancient order with newly minted Senators from his swelling armies. The appearance of a small but apparently competent armed force - with a vast array of what appears to be bizarre siege machinery - on his land makes him fear the worst. He dispatches several spies to monitor the visitors and orders his retainers to avoid the camp. He also sends messengers to his co-conspirators in the Senate.

At noon, two Sea Knight helicopters roar over Rome at 12,000 feet. Stunned, the pilots swoop in lower and lower. After a half-hour of sightseeing, coming in as low as 1,000 feet, they can no longer deny the evidence of their eyes - this is not the place or time they had occupied the day before. They leave to report. Behind them, they leave a city in chaos, as terrified Romans flee the awful creatures in the sky. Sacrificial pyres fill the city with smoke, and priests of every religion shout in the streets.

Imperator Augustus Caesar observes all of this, first as the Senate empties in the middle of a speech and then on horseback as he grimly follows the creatures to the city's borders at the head of a growing body of horsemen. As they recede into the distance, Augustus whirls and begins snapping orders. The horsemen vanish, and soon the city militia is calling for order. The three cohorts of the Praetorian Guard march from their barracks. 1,000 men take up station on the western edge of the city, while 2,000 more restore order, cracking heads where necessary.

Caesar returns to the Senate, where Murena and a few men exchange knowing glances. "My fellow Romans," he says simply, "those were machines, not creatures. I've seen enough campaigns to know the difference." Grizzled military veterans in his audience are smart enough not to dwell long on the difference between their field experience and his.

"It appears, gentlemen of the Senate, that we have a war on our hands."

So there are 226 non-marines too - discipline troubles? Freelancers?
150 Airforce maintenance personel (repair specialists)
16 civilians
60 Afgan soldiers

[Chogy]

Just a technical question, chogy.

What would the difference be in effective range if a sidewinder was launched from a Zero traveling at 300 mph as opposed to a Tomcat launching the same missile from high subsonic speed?

All else being equal (altitude especially) the velocity boost from the subsonic fighter would probably increase the range 10% to 15%... not enough to really affect your tactics in employing the weapon vs. a slower foe.

A slap-dash patching of the AIM-9L to a normally incompatible platform is exactly what they did with the Harriers for the Falklands campaign. The normal interface includes min and max range cues on the HUD, steering cues, seeker cage and uncage, seeker boresight symbology, and audio tone. With the harriers, they patched the audio from the missile to the jet, and that was it. No visual cues at all. The Harriers were told "If the tone sounds correct, and the guy looks to be in range, shoot the missile." The result was, IIRC, 22 hits out of 24 firings.

[Doktor]

I copied the first two days


DAY 1


DAY 2


So there are 226 non-marines too - discipline troubles? Freelancers?
150 Airfirce maintenance personel (repair specialists)
16 civilians
60 Afgan soldiers

Are there any females?

[YellowFever]

Wow, OK under the conditions outlined by Whiskey above, it's going to be much harder for the MEU to succeed in their objectives.

Still, mount some mini guns on all the transport helos and it could be done.

And there is no way the Romans are going to figure out how to stop even troop carrier, nevermind the Abrams.

[YellowFever]

All else being equal (altitude especially) the velocity boost from the subsonic fighter would probably increase the range 10% to 15%... not enough to really affect your tactics in employing the weapon vs. a slower foe.

A slap-dash patching of the AIM-9L to a normally incompatible platform is exactly what they did with the Harriers for the Falklands campaign. The normal interface includes min and max range cues on the HUD, steering cues, seeker cage and uncage, seeker boresight symbology, and audio tone. With the harriers, they patched the audio from the missile to the jet, and that was it. No visual cues at all. The Harriers were told "If the tone sounds correct, and the guy looks to be in range, shoot the missile." The result was, IIRC, 22 hits out of 24 firings.

Did not know that wrt the Harriers in the Falklands.

I don't know if that speaks for the Brit's can do atttude or if they were just that desperate for some AAMS.

Thanks again, chogy.

[1979]

Wow, OK under the conditions outlined by Whiskey above, it's going to be much harder for the MEU to succeed in their objectives.

Still, mount some mini guns on a transport and it could be done.

And there is no way the Romans are going to figure out how to stop even troop carrier, nevermind the Abrams.

In the forest roads cut down trees, in the plains dig a ditch, in the mountains the gradients are steep enough as it is.