Can you win a war with only light infantry in the 21st century?

bajingan said:

If recent history is to be referenced combined arms has a bad track record against light infantry, they always lost the war, obviously in battle they won most of the engagements due to their superior firepower, but in the long term they always lost the war and had to be withdrawn, recent examples: US combined arms vs north vietnamese light infantry, soviet combined arms vs mujahideen/taliban light infantry, the inevitable US/NATO defeat in afghanistan against taliban light infantry (its just a matter of time before US withdraw and kabul will be back in taliban hands) the only success the US combined arms had was in iraq and that is just a very limited success to say the least

all of this is due to the glaring weaknesses of combined arms, they simply dont have the staying power, the financial and human burden is too detrimental to the country's economy and political system, the enemies can simply just absorb the casualties and "wait them up" especially if they dont have the support of the local population. and in afghanistan what happened recently is that the taliban are able to inflintrate the afghan army and inflict casualties on NATO troops, further deteriorating the relationship and trust between coalition forces and afghan army ready to be exploited further by the taliban, if i am not wrong this was never happened to the south vietnamese army There is no such thing as defeating groups who can always recruit more members to fight the invaders.

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Sounds like you're not accounting for the combined arms side taking over the country of the infantry side, whenever a war happens on your home turf (not to mention being completely overrun) you are always the loser, it is just a matter of losing by how much. The infantry side has no chance whatsoever of returning the favor to really invade the combined arms side, occasional infiltrations and terrorist actions don't count.

You also failed to note that the ability of the infantry sides in all these conflicts to carry on the fight are directly related to how much third party/external help they receive. The infantry sides were able to inflict significant losses on the combined arms side and eventually won in the Vietnam-US and Afghanistan-USSR scenarios because they received immense aid. In the current Taliban-US and Iraqi-US scenarios the infantry sides are/were pretty pathetic (in the Iraqi scenario they aren't even infantry only from the outset, they were a combined arms force reduced to infantry only).

solarz said:

Well the original intent of my post was to explore whether we currently have military technology that would allow a light infantry force to overcome an army with armor, artillery, air, and mechanized support.

Specifically, I was wondering about tactical engagements. Can a light infantry force overrun a more advanced army's fortified position? What is the numerical superiority needed for this to occur?

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In that very specific scenario there is a slim chance for the light infantry force to come out on top if:
1) They make it a close quarters battle so that any combined arms support for the enemy will entail significant friendly fire losses.
2) They disable, destroy, or steal and use significant amounts of on-site enemy equipment.
3) They manage to gain access to the fortification at key points, quickly, and in enough numbers without being noticed.
It's not so much about numbers and technology as it's about tactics!

A good recent example would be the Taliban raid on Camp Bastion. If hundreds of that type of raid happened at the same time all over the base then the attackers would have a chance of actually overrunning the base. But most likely the surprise factor would have been compromised... etc.

bajingan said:

If recent history is to be referenced combined arms has a bad track record against light infantry, they always lost the war, obviously in battle they won most of the engagements due to their superior firepower, but in the long term they always lost the war and had to be withdrawn, recent examples: US combined arms vs north vietnamese light infantry, soviet combined arms vs mujahideen/taliban light infantry, the inevitable US/NATO defeat in afghanistan against taliban light infantry (its just a matter of time before US withdraw and kabul will be back in taliban hands) the only success the US combined arms had was in iraq and that is just a very limited success to say the least

all of this is due to the glaring weaknesses of combined arms, they simply dont have the staying power, the financial and human burden is too detrimental to the country's economy and political system, the enemies can simply just absorb the casualties and "wait them up" especially if they dont have the support of the local population. and in afghanistan what happened recently is that the taliban are able to inflintrate the afghan army and inflict casualties on NATO troops, further deteriorating the relationship and trust between coalition forces and afghan army ready to be exploited further by the taliban, if i am not wrong this was never happened to the south vietnamese army There is no such thing as defeating groups who can always recruit more members to fight the invaders.

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what you pointed out here is the inherent cost and danger, i.e. "the financial and human burden", involved with invading another nation. As an invader, you will be facing these dangers no matter if you are a light infantry or a combined force. These burdens, however, are NOT only associated with a combined force when facing a light infantry.

About the ants analogy, I don't see how you can see ants as winners. Human is now sitting on the top of the food chain. And ants? Well... ants are ants. They are simply annoyance and do not present much of a threat to human. As for your claim that ants can be considered winners simply because they survive, it has never been human's objective to completely kill them off. Thus, being still alive cannot be seen as a sign of them defeating our objective. Our main goal has always been to keep ants away from us far away enough so that they don't bother us as much. For the most part, we have achieved that. So they lose and we win.

solarz said:

Well the original intent of my post was to explore whether we currently have military technology that would allow a light infantry force to overcome an army with armor, artillery, air, and mechanized support.

Specifically, I was wondering about tactical engagements. Can a light infantry force overrun a more advanced army's fortified position? What is the numerical superiority needed for this to occur?

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Superior intelligence can massively alter the balance. If light forces work more as special forces and support, including combat inflation numbers, you get a force that can tenaciously defend themselves under current rules of engagement. If you get worse than the Nazis and wage a Mongol type conquest the balance might shift more rapid and unstable either way - making it more of a gamble that might be won.
How did successful conquerors get Afghanistan? Alexander and Tamerlane come to my mind. The problem with that kind of warfare is the inhumanity and the backlash such a darkness will have on any system at home by introducing these thoughts as rightful acts. The increasing US-sanctions for torture and now assassinations based on spurious evidence in the drone "wars" are already enough problems to fight.
If you look at the losing side they always have an imbalance of capability to counter light infantry with something similar. This will persist until the infantrymen gets individual combat mechanisation via an exoskeleton with increased awareness, speed and firepower as force multiplyer or/and is better integrated with his UAV close support firepower.

Double post deleted.

Intelligence can definitely be game changing. Supposed the combined arms army has access to satellite surveillance, what would be some of the ways for the light infantry army to defeat it?

A mechanized infantry needs to follow roads on an approach. A light infantry can go cross country. A light infantry force can scatter too far and wide for satellites to realize something is amiss. The biggest problem with this approach is communication. Radio comm can be easily intercepted by the enemy. Still, the Taliban routinely organizes attacks with hundreds of fighters, so there must be a way to hide from satellite surveillance.

Another issue is the strategic objective an the light infantry. It would be suicide for a light infantry force to hold a position against an army with air and artillery support. Therefore, a light infantry force must always be on the attack. It needs to be able to gather to strike at an isolated element of the enemy forces, and then scatter and vanish before the enemy can respond with heavy firepower.

Since the light infantry cannot hold any position, then the taking of strategic locations become meaningless. Their bases of supply must be secret, either hidden in mountains or amidst civilian populations. As such, the only strategic objectives that make sense to a light infantry force is to destroy enemy supplies and enemy forces.

As the light infantry cannot stand toe-to-toe with the combined arms force, they *must* draw the combined arms force into a theatre where they have to be spread thin.

These are some of my thoughts for the moment.

Well... although combine arms forces had the advantages of technological advancement, such as satellites and stuff like that. A light infantry unit can beat it with primitive weaponries... and in my opinion, the primitive weaponries or equipments are what actually beat advance surveillance equipments.

Sometime in a populous environment, the use of cell phone can be very useful, in the sense that the commanders of a light infantry regiment could coordinate his troops using cell phone contacts, speak in codes and stuff like that. And it would be hard press for intelligence to pin point them when there are tens of thousands of people using cell phones at that time.

Also it would do well for the light infantry units to be communicating to each other personally, using transport most commonly found in those area such as motorcycles, etc. because normally those involved in this type of actions had the time and space and they have no rush to get the enemy out of their country. In actual fact, the more they drag the war, the better it is for them, whereras those that employed multi-million or billion dollar equipments would be hard press.

However if the invasion force comprised mainly of light infantry units and the defender are using combine arms, then the story will be reversed, as the light infantry units will be in an unfamiliar location and would gaining support in these places are difficult.

Some suggestions for the light force on transport and communications.
Hidden electric gnerator power stations that can be transported on a pick up truck because all kind of sophistication will need electric energy supply and resupply of suspicious equipment close to the civilian grid will be a core espionage target.
With electricity you can power computers and recharge batteries. Batteries can power e-bikes for very mobile cross-terrain transport (doubling as heavy duty transports), communication and surveillance equipment. Surveillance will greatly profit if gliders with cameras or small airships can be employed. The more sophisticated enemy has a problem of expensive targeting solutions to eliminate such items. Webcams can help to reduce manpower requirements for 24h surveillance of key spots and a combination of webcams and human observers will give the hardest to eliminate security system.
Communication is the paramount problem. Fiberoptics, as employed by the Serbians are one solution. Wireless communication with one-time pad encryption only is self-evident and possible to create with the help of just a dice or a coin for Laplace encryption. s will be a most important backbone of mobile communications that doesn't alert enemy SIGINT (employed for this reason among modern warships), at night they can work with carbid powered lights.
Other than bikes, blend in with the local transport customs because every modern enemy will search for divergent patterns with much data processing aid by computers and visible transport will be more complicated by the requirements to make moves opaque. Transports and weapon platforms that stick out, like for example a gyrocopter (as elevated small unmanned observer from a driving car or as weapons and troops transport without much runway requirements) or something like Malmö MFI-9 MiniCOIN (Biafran War) have to be carefully evaluated as for logistics and hiding, but offer much needed force multipliers.

PanAsian said:

Sounds like you're not accounting for the combined arms side taking over the country of the infantry side, whenever a war happens on your home turf (not to mention being completely overrun) you are always the loser, it is just a matter of losing by how much. The infantry side has no chance whatsoever of returning the favor to really invade the combined arms side, occasional infiltrations and terrorist actions don't count.

You also failed to note that the ability of the infantry sides in all these conflicts to carry on the fight are directly related to how much third party/external help they receive. The infantry sides were able to inflict significant losses on the combined arms side and eventually won in the Vietnam-US and Afghanistan-USSR scenarios because they received immense aid. In the current Taliban-US and Iraqi-US scenarios the infantry sides are/were pretty pathetic (in the Iraqi scenario they aren't even infantry only from the outset, they were a combined arms force reduced to infantry only).

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Indeed a light infantry could never hoped of retaking the territory lost by the attacking combined arms in the short time of course, battles may last just couple days or even hours, but wars can last decades, therefore the defending light infantry side on their home turf have a superior commanding general called "general time" just like the soviets have their general winter during ww 2 thats why i disagree with you saying that infiltrations and terror attacks does not count, if you do that often enough, the combined arms force will feel the pain and the folks back home will grow tired and the national deficit will keep piling up it is a vital asymetric warfare strategy.

I remember one of the north vietnamese general saying (i forgot his name) he said "you may kill ten of my soldiers for every soldier i kill of yours, but in the end i will still win"

In my opinion can infantry force defeat a combined arms force? in a head on battle obviously no, but can infantry force defeat a combined arms force? in a protracted, asymetrical warfare over long term the answer is yes.

I think a more interesting question is how can an invading combined arms outlast a guirella force of lighty armed opposition (taliban style) in their home turf

Seems like no one mentioned the First Chechen War, where Chechen rebels repelled a Russian ground invasion. I guess an important element is how "advanced" the combined arms army is. The Russian army during the First Chechen war would be considered an combined arms army as the operated tanks, APCs, artillery, helos etc. And the article from Wiki also mentions that Chechen rebels were able to advance and retake lost territory from the Russian defenders.