Quality Armies vs. quantity armies

xopxe1

xopxe1

Active member
both types have had victories on one another and I'm very curious what type is the preffered to all of you guys.
Here's mine - the small but elite force for it's been always nice concept to me that one man can take over a lot :twisted: :rambo: :twisted:
I hope you also share your oppinion on the pluses and the minuses of both concepts.
 
xopxe1 said:
both types have had victories on one another and I'm very curious what type is the preffered to all of you guys.
Here's mine - the small but elite force for it's been always nice concept to me that one man can take over a lot :twisted: :rambo: :twisted:
I hope you also share your oppinion on the pluses and the minuses of both concepts.
Click to expand...

I like the idea of a profesionaly trained group of volenteers as in the mold of the BEF (british expeditionary force). they fought well above there weight in ww1. And they used their knowledge of musketry tactics to even the odds when faced with larger armys.
 
I guess if I had to admire a small quality based force...Id have to admire the group known as the 1st Special Service Force or the "Devils Brigade"

The Devils Brigade" -- a combined Canadian-American Force, constituted 5 July 1942 in the Army of the United States as Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment,1st Battalion, Third Regiment,1st Special Service Force. The unit participated in the Italian campaign and saw additional action in France.

The unit was disbanded in France on 6 February 1945.

It was the grandfather to what later became the US Army Special Forces. A very special little unit.

:D
 
I once seen this bumper sticker that said "IRA Undefeated Army" LOL

I guess a small group of highly trained guys probably stands a good chance of defeating a large group of average trained guys...
 
Well, lets look at my favorit example: The Middle East. The arabs were and are superior in noumbers, but Israel has a much better trained and armed force. Maybe a force of 100000 untrained man can puch back a force of 5000 trained man, but the casualties would be high, and after that battle is over, the large force would be tired and disorgenaized. Look at 1973. The Egyptian Army crossed the Suez Canal with amazing noumbers, but took high casualties from the small regular IDF units. A few days later, the Egyptian force met the IDF reserves with much less force at its dispanse. The trained and highly experienced reserves pushed the Egyptians back across the canal, cut-off 2 egyptian Armies, and were ready o charge deep into Egypt and take Cairo if needed.
Also in the same war, but a diffrent front, the 77th Regiment of the 7th Armored brigade held on against the entire Syrian northern effort, fighting forces 15 times its own size. The 77th held on untill the Syrians gave up. Many of the Regiments man were killed and wounded, but half of the Syrian army was stopped at its tracks, and the Syrians lost thousends of men and houndreds of Tanks and AFVs.

SO, as I see it quality is superior to quantity.
 
Nice example sherman with the 77th -very impressive
still consider what the chinese said even if we have to lose 10million people each day we will win the war - so could we draw a line in what conditions the one type takes over the other - I see all of you share my liking of quality armies but consider the thought that kept drilling my brain - the loses of the quality personel are not easy to replace while the numbers aren't so difficult to.
 
I also would prefer a quality over a high quantity army, aside from the reasons others have laid out, on a personal note, a smaller, more highly trained military has a much smaller chance of getting me killed. :lol:
 
I think that just about everyone would say quality, I for one do. All the numbers in the world will not help if you arre not trained well enough to use the things you are given.
 
Old Russian Military saying: "Quantity has a quality all its own". While numbers alone will not guarantee that you will win a battle or a war, they can make things very interesting for your opponents (especially if you don't care about your own casualties :( )
 
I prefer a higher quality Army over a higher quantity Army. Just look at the Canadian Forces. We're extremely small (About half of what the US Marines are) yet we have a very well respected military throughout the world.
 
Well, I dont know about not caring about casualties. Leaders dont care much maybe, but the people do care.

As to the quantity having its own quality, well thats true, but not enough quality. Ill give to you plain. Take me, and take a bunch of 6th graders, lets say 10 of them. Ok, Im outnoumbred 10 to 1, so am i in trouble?
All they can do is maybe give me a bloody nose, if they are really tough 6th graders...Ill just kick them around, because they cant take a single punch from me and i can takedozens of theirs....Dang, that was the dumbest comparison I made in my life....Still though, if you have alot of untrained man, thats just mmore target practice for the enemy.
 
Neither Stalin (WWII) nor Mao (Korean War) really cared about friendly casulaties, nor did von Falkenhayn or Joffe (WWI). That's what I mean.
 
A good example of a small unit against a larger one would be the Spartan army in a certain war... Persian War or Peloppenisian where it was 7,000 Spartans vs. 24,000 Persians. All the Spartans died but they killed over 15,000 men. Thats skill
 
The best example of this is when spanish conquestador's beaten thousands of maya people with 400 of them(with rifles)
 
yeah but

IrishWizard said:
A good example of a small unit against a larger one would be the Spartan army in a certain war... Persian War or Peloppenisian where it was 7,000 Spartans vs. 24,000 Persians. All the Spartans died but they killed over 15,000 men. Thats skill
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yeah thats right, i aslo think that terrain has a hell of a lot to do with the force that you might choose. was that the battle of themopaly?

in ww2 the aussie govt sent 300 millita against 13,000 japanese in the highlands of new guinea as a temporary road block really they were, not expected to come back. and even though they were badly trained & armed, they managed to hold the japanese long enough for other aussie units to arrive and help. and the jungle terrain had a lot to do with it because it limited the size of attacks that the japanese could launch, which meant the battalion could rest its companys and rotate them when it had too. had it of been open country it would of been a differnet story so i also think that the type of terrain is a big factor perhaps in the type of army you might want.
 
hi everybody (my first post on this forum)

another example of quatity vs quality:
1863, battle of camerone
62 soldiers and 3officers of the french foreign legion against 2000 Mexicans (Eight hundred riders, thousand two hundred infantrymen).

During 11 hours, they resisted to two thousand enemies, killed three hundreds and wounded as much.
3 french had survived.
59 french killed, 300 mexicans killed and 300 wounded.
Every years this battle is celebrated by the french foreign legion.

The whole story here : http://www.legion-etrangere.info/site/camerone.php
in french sorry
 
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