Originally Posted by 84RFK

I agree with you on parts of that, the old "Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum" still stands, and the people who speaks about reducing the armed forces on the grounds that "It's so peacefull now" and "It could never happen again" has obvilously spendt their history lessons sleeping on the last row.

But the idea on anyone invading the USA is still too far fetched.

An amphibious landing on US beaches is peanuts, assuming you have the strength and manpower to do so and tolerate losses, those beaches are simply impossible to defend.
And that fact wouldn't change even if you lined up every shotgun owning redneck you can manage to sniff up.
The coastline is simply too long to hold, and so are the vast landscape behind it.

But the vast landscape behind it also make it impossible to invade, at least if the invader seeks to actually gain something.
The frontline would be to wide, the forces to spread out, and the supply lines too long.
Very much the same factors that has saved Russia/Soviet Union for centuries.

There's alway a next line of defence behind the one the defenders are leaving, and there's no relief for the invaders who are short of supplies and in constant fear of being outflanked.

And for the Japs, they didn't have the manpower, even if they were crazy enough to attempt anything like it.
Only brutal force and total disregard for humanity as such left them in control of southeast Asia for the time they were.

But you better prepare for an invation of USA, if nothing else, it makes you sleep better.

Well it's similar to the issue of Australia being invaded by a near Northern neighbour (with a much bigger population). It'll be the desert that kills the invaders and the thousands upon thousands of kilometers of the desolate red centre that takes the biggest toll. Man-power wont do it, logistics wont do it and tenacity wont do it.

Originally Posted by AussieNick

Well it's similar to the issue of Australia being invaded by a near Northern neighbour (with a much bigger population). It'll be the desert that kills the invaders and the thousands upon thousands of kilometers of the desolate red centre that takes the biggest toll. Man-power wont do it, logistics wont do it and tenacity wont do it.

Thing is would any invader need to control the centre of Australia?

The population and industry is almost entirely around the coast and I imagine the desert would be just as formidable to defend as attack.

An amphibious landing on US beaches is peanuts, assuming you have the strength and manpower to do so and tolerate losses, those beaches are simply impossible to defend.
And that fact wouldn't change even if you lined up every shotgun owning redneck you can manage to sniff up.
The coastline is simply too long to hold, and so are the vast landscape behind it.

And of course this assumes that the United States Navy has already been defeated, no easy task when one considers it's by far the largest, most powerful in the world.

Originally Posted by Damien435

And of course this assumes that the United States Navy has already been defeated, no easy task when one considers it's by far the largest, most powerful in the world.

I think the point is that even if you relegate the US military to a shadow of its current capability the logistics required invading the USA still make it a massive undertaking, realistically the only way it could be done would be from Mexico or Canada and even then it would require huge amounts of infrastructure development in both countries to provide enough support material to launch a successful assault.

Think about it even if you took the US nuclear arsenal, Navy and Air force out of the picture and just made it a one on one land battle how much of a supply train would the attacking need to keep an army in the field in the USA.