Top Ten Armies of today

If you try to make a similar list of occasions where the numerically larger but qualitatively worse force won the battle, you'll probably come up short, though. I think the British army needs to be thought of as a powerful army for this reason.

 

Notice that I did not try to make such a list...

 

One comes to mind immediately; the US War between the States.
Some would say WWII in Europe and Russia also(open to debate I know).

Interesting issue that I hadn't much considered before.

 

Um, wasn't the North more industiralised & (fractionally) better equipped than the South?

I did indeed deliberately not use WW2 as an example!

Most examples of larger armies winning are from a long time ago, before the huge firepower of 'modern' armies evened out the balance.
If you are fighting hand-to-hand with sword & spear, numbers will always overwhelm, because you get too tired...

 

numbers help alot...if you have the right equipment, adequate training, and a good command, then numbers is the only thing determining a whether or not you gain a victory

 

Not to mention terrain, position, weather, and sheer dum luck...

 

Swiss Pikemen and Roman Legionnaires come to mind as pre-gunpowder soldiery who were still able to defeat greatly superior numbers.

 

Roel wrote:

Indeed it was. As to quality of forces though historians generally agree that the southern troops were natural infantrymen, better led, more motivated and superior troops overall.

 

That was Ricky...

 

Very true. And given the power of today's conventional weapons, I often wonder why anyone would even want weapons of mass destruction (aside from terrorists, of course; I know why those fruitcakes want them!). :-?

 

actually the israelis should have been higher on the list , there extremely professional and organized , i guess they would be , how many times has there survival been threatened

 

And given the amount of recent combat experience they have.

 

We are being to Euro Centric here..

No mention of South korea?

 

Well, they basically have one purpose - to hold back North Korea. Their equipment is basically good enough and in enough numbers to stop the (generally) 2nd/3rd rate ex-Soviet equipment that the North has, with US help, of course.
Plus there is the news that their latest MBT seems to be made of aluminium composite...

Do the South Koreans ever join in UN missions? Iraq? Peacekeeping stuff?
How do they fare?

And what about Japan?

 

I could almost go along with you on this, however, I don't think they have good arctic warfare training and not too sure about urban warfare, the British do have the Gurkhas who I would personally put at the top of jungle warfare. To compare man to man and in all aspect of warfare you must look deeper than just one theatre. Warfare has many theatres, jungle, urban, arctic, mountain, amphibious, etc. I don't believe there is one army that has the best troops in all disciplines but overall I do believe that the British do have very good troops in all forms of warfare, this coupled with the quality of troops (most modern armies that I have seen are very similar) makes it the best in the world. other armies may have better units which specialise in one discipline or another but with equipment and training and depth of quality of training makes the difference.

 

UN didnt beat China
Germany didnt beat Russia
actually russia best germany in the end..

 

On the field of battle, the UN Forces (after the initial rout) prevailed.
Germany vs Russia in WW1 - The Germans won battle after battle, and kept advancing.

 

What were the inital russian strenghts?

 

In the field they did. Only a lack of (political) will halted the US/UN forces at the 38th parallel.

 

South Korea sent troops to fight in the Vietnam War, as did Australia. Japan's constitution forbids their Self-Defense Forces from being deployed to fight in foreign wars, IIRC.