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@Killkrazy: If we are viewing the Modern Day Army as the fairly competent US Military, it's only fair to compare them with an equally competent IG Regiment.

If you are looking at the dregs of IG regiments (and they certainly exist in numbers ) then they should be compared to whatever would constitute the dregs of Modern Militaries.

sourclams wrote:I think the 'leadership' factor is getting a bit underplayed here. I don't mean leadership in terms of who's got better sergeants, etc, but rather in terms of 'we lost 8/10 men and we're still charging with bayonets fixed'.

It's been a long, long time since two militaries of roughly equivalent technology level faced each other in open combat. By our standards, IG infantry are probably very near to fearless. Losses that we'd consider a horrific disaster (30%+) are probably within IG acceptable tolerances.

For 100 guys on each side, facing across an open field, with roughly equivalent kit, I have to think that IG win through willingness to lose more bodies.

This is actually an advantage to us, wars are won on logistics, a fighting force that minimizes casualties just flat out lasts longer.

In pure crunch terms, modern military would kick the crap out of the Imperial Guard. Autogun beats lasgun every time.

Mordoskul wrote:In pure crunch terms, modern military would kick the crap out of the Imperial Guard. Autogun beats lasgun every time.

Wrong on several counts.

1) The lasgun is more powerful than the autogun, the lasgun has shown the ability to blast limbs off human beings. It is at least equal to autoguns in terms of damage, and more than likely more powerful than the lasgun.

2) Logistics. The lasgun is easy to repair, easy to build, and easy to maintain, and even easier to resupply. An autogun requires constant supplying of bullets to rearm, while a lasgun can just as easily be recharged from solar power or a small fire.

3) Irrelevant. In war, small arms fire is not the big killer. The big killer is usually artillery, or heavy crew operated weapons.

More importantly, than the weapon itself are the people carrying them. Guardsmen have more experience in battle, even the greenest Guardsman is hardened just by the type of life he has had to live to get to this point. His armor has a decent chance of stopping shrapnel or small arms fire, and he will follow orders to the death.

The Imperial Guard won't just curbstomp a modern military, but the Imperial Guard WILL come out victorious.

Requia wrote:

sourclams wrote:I think the 'leadership' factor is getting a bit underplayed here. I don't mean leadership in terms of who's got better sergeants, etc, but rather in terms of 'we lost 8/10 men and we're still charging with bayonets fixed'.

It's been a long, long time since two militaries of roughly equivalent technology level faced each other in open combat. By our standards, IG infantry are probably very near to fearless. Losses that we'd consider a horrific disaster (30%+) are probably within IG acceptable tolerances.

For 100 guys on each side, facing across an open field, with roughly equivalent kit, I have to think that IG win through willingness to lose more bodies.

This is actually an advantage to us, wars are won on logistics, a fighting force that minimizes casualties just flat out lasts longer.

Unless the one with that doesn't care about casualties has a reason for not caring, like outnumbering you 100:1

EDIT: VV my bad VV

Equal numbers where mentioned by the person I quoted. Also, factor in the training cost for that 100 to 1.

Requia wrote:Equal numbers where mentioned by the person I quoted. Also, factor in the training cost for that 100 to 1.

Is probably less that the cost of us training our one. Training for an Imperial Guardsman is basic and cheap. Follow your orders, here's how to fire and take care of your lasgun, here's some range practice, done! Next please. Compare that to cost of arming and equipping a US Army soldier. More importantly...the Imperium doesn't CARE about cost, so it's moot. The only thing the Imperium cares about is whether or not they won in the end.

NOt to mention, your post about how wars are won and lost on logistics can only apply on a larger scale, and in any larger scale the IG would outnumber the human defenders of Earth. In any scale where it'd be an equal fight, logistics wouldn't be a concern.

Which is why Russia outnumbered the enemy in Afghanistan 100 to 1 and mopped up there in a few weeks right?

Difference being, the Soviet soldiers lost because the political will keeping them there broke. That will not happen to the Imperial Guard. They will stay here, and will keep sending more ment until they win.

Requia wrote:Which is why Russia the US outnumbered the enemy in Afghanistan 100 to 1 and mopped up there in a few weeks right?

Fixed your typo.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Captain Shrike wrote:One thing you are forgetting is that if an Ig force showed up on earth facing the U.S. we probably wont just use 100 soldiers, and modern diterrants (missile strikes, the BIG BOY, stealth bombers, etc) seem far more advanced than what is represented in the game/fluff.

Are you being serious or are you just trolling? How anyone could argue that modern-day tech is "more advanced" than the tech of the IG is beyond me. Deathstrike Missiles ARE "big boys" in their NORMAL configuration, then there's the Vortex payloads etc. As for missile strikes, I give you... the Cyclonic Torpedo, magna-melta warhead!


But really, what on EARTH do you think stealth bombers would do to the IG? Their BEST case scenario is they get all their bombs away, get shot down and crash into something useful. Nuclear missiles would just prompt the IG to go back to orbit and laugh at us as they turn all life on Earth to cinders.

In the hypothetical 100 vs. 100 scenario the IG would probably prevail, as other posters have pointed out in the thread. Flak Armour stops our bullets, lasguns shoots holes through stone. Not to mention autocannons, heavy bolters, mortars, anti-personell missile launchers and lascannons.

I was kinda being sarcastic.......

To be fair, in both cases they steamrolled any formal resistance, but got bogged down in dealing with untrained, poorly equipped irregulars who could vanish without a trace into the mountains. The Imperium wouldn't have that problem, as they'd have long since reduced the entire country to a blasted, flattened wasteland from orbit, or annihilated the population (which the soviets tried to do...) and occupied the territory for the resources.

Guardsmen have more than enough manpower to spare in carrying out any sort of long term occupation. But that isn't what this thread is about.

Now this point comes to me, Modern militaries seem to be trained as elite fighting forces that specialise in lightning strikes and winning the war by capturing key positions, rather than steamroll an entire area. If this is true, the Imperial Guard do not specialise in these kinds of operations, but rather thier 9 feet tall, non-human brethren. But thats beside the point.

I still think the IG would win, it is probably the army that has more battle experience that would prevail when it comes to similiar strengthed weapons in a controlled environment.

Conservationist wrote:Now this point comes to me, Modern militaries seem to be trained as elite fighting forces that specialise in lightning strikes and winning the war by capturing key positions, rather than steamroll an entire area. If this is true, the Imperial Guard do not specialise in these kinds of operations, but rather thier 9 feet tall, non-human brethren. But thats beside the point.

I think you've seriously mixed up the US Marines with the US Military.

I still think the IG would win, it is probably the army that has more battle experience that would prevail when it comes to similiar strengthed weapons in a controlled environment.

With IG you don't know. We could be talking about the hardbitten veterans of scores of battlefields, men who have encountered every evil feth in the 40k galaxy and walked over them...or we could be talking about the greenies from 15 hours.

Emperors Faithful wrote:@Killkrazy: If we are viewing the Modern Day Army as the fairly competent US Military, it's only fair to compare them with an equally competent IG Regiment.

If you are looking at the dregs of IG regiments (and they certainly exist in numbers ) then they should be compared to whatever would constitute the dregs of Modern Militaries.

Oh indeed, and that's what I did.

On the subject of Flak Armour being so good: sure, if a round actually hits the armour it may be stopped. However Flak Armour only covers the torso (and not completely, at that), a helmet for the head, and shoulder, knee and elbow pads. Remember that a kill is not necessary (nor always preferred) to take a soldier out of the fight.

ChrisWWII wrote:And, it is not exactly EASY to train an army into the kind of shape where it obeys orders without question. The human instinct when facing danger is basic fight or flight, the amount of training to get them to supress that instinct and follow their superiors orders without question should not be overestimated. More importantly, Imperial Guard morale tends to not be low, unless it is in a situation when even a modern army would have low morale...from what we've seen, they're willing to continue fighting even in the worst of situations. They may be scared, but they will stick to the line and fire their lasguns to the end.

ChrisWWII wrote:

Requia wrote:Equal numbers where mentioned by the person I quoted. Also, factor in the training cost for that 100 to 1.

Is probably less that the cost of us training our one. Training for an Imperial Guardsman is basic and cheap. Follow your orders, here's how to fire and take care of your lasgun, here's some range practice, done! Next please.

Chris, you seem to be contradicting yourself there: first you say it takes a lot of effort (and therefore time and money) to train to blindly obey orders, then apparently it's boot-camp-while-u-wait.

100 vs. 100 I think a well-trained modern military would come out on top - IG have to stay in circa-10' unit coherency at all times, otherwise they freak out and don't know what to do; modern soldiers are able to act cohesively at greater distances and act independently if required. And yes, IG blindly obey orders - so snipers take out their officers, then there's no orders being issued - "crap sarge, what do we do now?" "Er...."

Equipment-wise: there's been a big swing to unmanned aerial vehicles in recent years, and UGVs have seen some action with a likelihood of more use in the next few years. The US could theoretically destroy the IG without ever presenting a human target to them.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:@Killkrazy: If we are viewing the Modern Day Army as the fairly competent US Military, it's only fair to compare them with an equally competent IG Regiment.

If you are looking at the dregs of IG regiments (and they certainly exist in numbers ) then they should be compared to whatever would constitute the dregs of Modern Militaries.

Oh indeed, and that's what I did.

You still haven't responded to my concern regarding the equal range of Assualt rifles and Lasguns.

I don't understand why the OP has restricted this to 100 men. Might as well make it 10...or 1. There's no real way to discern what the outcome will be on equal grounds between equally human foes. If this was Imperial Campaign vs Modern Earth, the discussion would be more exciting. It's not like the OP has even gone with a Military force vs IG regiment/company, he's just picked a random number (100) and gone with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ulver wrote:Equipment-wise: there's been a big swing to unmanned aerial vehicles in recent years, and UGVs have seen some action with a likelihood of more use in the next few years. The US could theoretically destroy the IG without ever presenting a human target to them.

The Machine Spirit is amused.

Ulver wrote:On the subject of Flak Armour being so good: sure, if a round actually hits the armour it may be stopped. However Flak Armour only covers the torso (and not completely, at that), a helmet for the head, and shoulder, knee and elbow pads. Remember that a kill is not necessary (nor always preferred) to take a soldier out of the fight.

Except modern soldiers are trained to aim for the center of mass in the torso, and wounds from artillerry tend to be to the head. NOt to mention it's only Cadians who have that kind of armor. Valhallans have a full flak coat going for them.

Chris, you seem to be contradicting yourself there: first you say it takes a lot of effort (and therefore time and money) to train to blindly obey orders, then apparently it's boot-camp-while-u-wait.

It does take a lot of training to be able to blindly obey orders, but it's also cheaper than the equivalent training of modern day soldiers.

100 vs. 100 I think a well-trained modern military would come out on top - IG have to stay in circa-10' unit coherency at all times, otherwise they freak out and don't know what to do; modern soldiers are able to act cohesively at greater distances and act independently if required. And yes, IG blindly obey orders - so snipers take out their officers, then there's no orders being issued - "crap sarge, what do we do now?" "Er...."

Where the hell did that come from? 10' unit coherency? Where did you here that? ANd besides, the Imperial Guard have a contingency plan in case the officers die. 'Keep moving forward!' in most cases, and if not 'Hold the position!'. An IG army may be halted temporarily through such tactics, but it won't be stopped.

Equipment-wise: there's been a big swing to unmanned aerial vehicles in recent years, and UGVs have seen some action with a likelihood of more use in the next few years. The US could theoretically destroy the IG without ever presenting a human target to them.

Well, UAVs would be easy enough to swat from the sky with Hydras. I'd much rather face 1000 Predator Drones with Hydras than 20 F-22s with the best SAM launcher anyones ever built. Besides, an unmanned battlefield? Seriously? There are several things wrong with this.

1) You NEED foot grunts. I don't care how advanced your weapons are, or how fancy your unmanned vehicles are, you can not fight a ground war without infantry.
2) Artillery. Something the Imperial Guard is in love with, and more than willing to use indiscriminantly. Your fancy UAVs and UGVs have to be commanded from somewhere, and that somewhere will easily be in range of the big guns.
3) Since when has the Imperial Navy cared about civillian targets or collateral damage? If they needed to, a nice wing of Marauder bombers could be dropping from orbit over any major city they want, and unleash carpet bombing that hasn't been seen since the Second World War. Just because you have limited personell on the battlefield doesn't mean your population is safe.

Captain Shrike wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Captain Shrike wrote:One thing you are forgetting is that if an Ig force showed up on earth facing the U.S. we probably wont just use 100 soldiers, and modern diterrants (missile strikes, the BIG BOY, stealth bombers, etc) seem far more advanced than what is represented in the game/fluff.

Text

I was kinda being sarcastic.......

Just how do you figure that anyone would know that you were being sarcastic? There's no indication of sarcasm anywhere in that post!

For the fourth time, this discussion is about 100 guys vs 100 guys in afield.

However, if drones are included, they are usually piloted from hundreds of miles away. Modern communications technology is greatly superior to IoM.

I do believe the fluff says that the standard vox caster has an intercontinental range, not to mention the Imperium has decently reliable FTL interstellar communication (something we lack). I seriously doubt that the Imperium's radios are somehow less advanced than current Earth ones. The only communication advantage we might have would be in the electronic warfare front, but even that wouldn't be as effective against the Imperium as it would against another human enemy.

Kilkrazy wrote:Modern communications technology is greatly superior to IoM.

There's very little evidence to support this claim.

Chapter Master Aeneas wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Well, it'd be logical to assume that lasguns are lighter, easier to aim (by virtue of being lighter), and stronger than your average military rifle (at full power, a lasgun can blow limbs off). They're also much more accurate, by virtue of being laser weaponry.

Armour for the average gaurdsman is probably somewhat better than modern military armour. Either stronger or lighter, or a combination of both.

That's what I say but he wants to know in more detail why for example how the lasgun works and what flak ar
Our is made of

Don't know about other country's armor plates, but ours is made of a ceramic. It can defeat up to three 7.62x39 (ak rounds) in the same spot. Our helmets are not meant to stop bullets, but deflect them. Obviously this would stand no chance against lasguns. However, I think IG are just issued flak armor. Flak vests are just light kevlar paddings to defeat small caliber rounds, like handgun rounds. But I seriously doubt their flak armor is similar to the flak armor used by our soldiers in Nam. So I'd venture to say their armor may be like Dragon Skin which is an experimental body armor that is light weight and uses disks to displace the impact of a round.

With that being said, if I used a M14 against a guardsman, he'd go down for sure. I've shot mine at steel plates and even the cheapest Russian bi-metal rounds punch straight through it.

From what I can see, the IG's main strategy is "Throw bodies at it!!" The US Infantry standard for engagements is 3 of us to 1 of them. Especially us in the 82nd, we don't take unnecessary risks.

The Imperium is more than capable of strategic bombing. It would be more advantageous for a wing of Marauder bombers to bomb specific targets like factories and military bases than civilian populations.

The Imperium would be based in orbit and although this seems like an impossible target, Earth could just launch its nukes towards it. Doing this would take longer to go through all the legislation and legal procedures than the Imperium to order a bombing run.

well just my opinion would be that a modern military force of 100 soldiers fighting a 100 Imperial guard would be roughly a company vs. company strenth engagement for purposes of support equipment and gear.
That being said the IG would have acess to artillery support from the master of ordnance ( esentially a 155 artillery tube ) and 3 heavy weapon squads (for sake of discussion one anti-personal, one anti- tank and a mortor squad), with six line squads and command squads for each of three platoons it would come to arround 100 troops with inclusion of a special weapon team or two.

And a average light infantry company of the U.S. Army is remakably simular to the above formation, with a few exceptions, artillery support is available on a squad/platoon level and far more versitile than represented in the rules and fluff of the 40k IG, and since the simple armor of orcs is sufficent to have a chance to stop las-guns I would be likely to believe that our top of the line armor would at least be equal to a 6+ save .

But the big decider would be time of battle if its a daytime battle it would be a toss up, with my money leaning towards the modern earth army due to its support assets and flexible command structure.

If fought at night the modern earth troops would dominate the IG as per codex, since they have no night vision upgrades or wargear options ( I am sure somebody will cite a novel or story where they did but i am merely going off the codex.) Since every American soldier is equiped with a NODS system that is quite efficent for night operations with minimal decrease in efficency.
The only reason I chimed in on this is I felt i could contribute a semi-informed opinion on the combat abilites of a modern light infantry company since I have served with one in Afghanistan as a 13F and seen first hand how we fight

You know if we are comparing US troops to IG then it should probably be cadians, both being some of (debatably the) best. And considering that in Cadian Blood a guy got a shoulder wound that threw off him aim, causing him to miss twice in a row and got reported to the captain for it I'd give it to the IG over the US (idk much about US marine training but I'd assume they would accept that a shoulder wound would throw off your aim). Plus there is the whole 8 year olds stripping and re assembling lasguns and running what other regiments consider basic training.

ChrisWWII wrote:

100 vs. 100 I think a well-trained modern military would come out on top - IG have to stay in circa-10' unit coherency at all times, otherwise they freak out and don't know what to do; modern soldiers are able to act cohesively at greater distances and act independently if required. And yes, IG blindly obey orders - so snipers take out their officers, then there's no orders being issued - "crap sarge, what do we do now?" "Er...."

Where the hell did that come from? 10' unit coherency? Where did you here that? ANd besides, the Imperial Guard have a contingency plan in case the officers die. 'Keep moving forward!' in most cases, and if not 'Hold the position!'. An IG army may be halted temporarily through such tactics, but it won't be stopped.

It came from game rules: 2" ~= 10'; I don't recall reading that it was fluff-IG not game-IG

ChrisWWII wrote:

Equipment-wise: there's been a big swing to unmanned aerial vehicles in recent years, and UGVs have seen some action with a likelihood of more use in the next few years. The US could theoretically destroy the IG without ever presenting a human target to them.

Well, UAVs would be easy enough to swat from the sky with Hydras. I'd much rather face 1000 Predator Drones with Hydras than 20 F-22s with the best SAM launcher anyones ever built. Besides, an unmanned battlefield? Seriously? There are several things wrong with this.

1) You NEED foot grunts. I don't care how advanced your weapons are, or how fancy your unmanned vehicles are, you can not fight a ground war without infantry.
2) Artillery. Something the Imperial Guard is in love with, and more than willing to use indiscriminantly. Your fancy UAVs and UGVs have to be commanded from somewhere, and that somewhere will easily be in range of the big guns.
3) Since when has the Imperial Navy cared about civillian targets or collateral damage? If they needed to, a nice wing of Marauder bombers could be dropping from orbit over any major city they want, and unleash carpet bombing that hasn't been seen since the Second World War. Just because you have limited personell on the battlefield doesn't mean your population is safe.

True about the hydras, although unmanned battlefields are plausible:

1) Why not? Can you explain where they are needed in battle?

2) Why do they have to be in range? With satcomms there is no limit to signal range. Also, assuming they are in range, the artillery need to know where to target - if the control centre is in a hidden, undisclosed location the artillery can only take pot-shots and hope. It may be in an underground nuclear bunker, so even a direct hit will be ineffective.

3) Well then you can get the F22s out again


People aren't taking this seriously, are they?

I say, the modern army wins the 100 vs 100 encounter and the IG doesnt care and wins the war instead.

The modern army does not have the big guns, neither does it have the material.
IG has the worse individual skills, but much better logistics and the damn REAL big guns...

L_Dawg wrote:The Imperium would be based in orbit and although this seems like an impossible target, Earth could just launch its nukes towards it. Doing this would take longer to go through all the legislation and legal procedures than the Imperium to order a bombing run.

Not to mention that those nukes would do diddly-squat against the ships of the Imperial Navy, considering the magnitude of firepower their void shields can absorb before failing.