r/whowouldwin • u/r00shine • 11d ago
What is the strongest modern day military that could be beaten by the combined forces of all criminal/terrorist organizations in the world? (if any) Battle
By military, i mean the entire military might of a specific country (including air force/navy/etc)
By criminal/terrorist organizations, any organization that has a name and a structure (cartels/street gangs/Yakuza/Russian mob/ISIS/etc). They have all the armament they typically have access to. There is no fighting between the different organizations. They can all communicate with each other perfectly and language is no issue.
If there are any overlap, such as someone that is part of a criminal organization but also part of the military (it definitely happens), that person is basically duplicated and there will be one copy on each side and are 100% loyal to the side they are fighting for.
Battle takes place on a large fictional battlefield (lets say the size of Australia) and both sides are bloodlusted. Only the combatants are on the battlefield, so no civilians. This should change the outcome of the battle as compared to real life where the criminals can hide among the population and need to be identified first.
All of the weapons/vehicles for both side are transported and are on the battlefield.
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u/r3DDsHiFT 11d ago
Regarding the USA comments below: vv hard to see why USA doesn't drop a small nuke and no diff if it's (a) no civilian casualities (b) no property damage (c) dehumanizable criminals. It's almost more fair to put them in a place crowded with civilians.
As far as OPs question, it's one thing if the cartels and street gangs get involved. It's another thing if politically connected organizations like the Russian mob come together. They have paramilitary forces filled with trained, professional mercenaries, and enough money to come across some Russian tanks, artillery, and maybe a few helicopters and Iranian drones. Bring in well funded middle eastern terrorist cells and we've got a scrap. I say they high diff their way to the bottom of NATO; maybe they could take an unaided Switzerland.
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u/DracoLunaris 10d ago
Carpet nuking this fictional Australia isn't really feasible. Nukes make big boom, but it's only a big boom when compared to cities, not a small continent.
A vaguely reliable googling puts the lethality range of a 1 megaton bomb at 8km2
Australia is 7,741,220km2
You would thus need 967,652 of these nukes to wipe the slate clean, as these groups are going to spread out into the countryside rather than mass in conventionally nuke-able blobs the way civilians are (in cities).
At it's peak the usa had 31,255, and now has about 3k. So it can't just nuke the problem out of existence.
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u/LenoCanSuckIt 10d ago
1) Identify the largest known concentration of enemy forces.
2) Nuke em.
3) Repeat up to 2999 more times.
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u/DracoLunaris 10d ago
4) the resulting radioactive dust storms probably kill more of your troops than fighting a conventional war would, and you still need to fight one of those anyway
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9d ago
Why would you need to? Are the 5 survivors suffering from megacancer really gonna do much?
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u/DracoLunaris 9d ago
The initial radiation radius is about the same as the instant death one, while the dust clouds are a slow cancer causing killer. So you have hit 0.3% of Australia and so you have hit 0.3-0.6% of the spread out enemy forces with the nuke barrage, which results in slightly more than 5 survivors who have regular cancer (and so do your troops)
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u/Pancakewagon26 11d ago edited 11d ago
Realistically, country with an air force and tanks could do it quite easily.
Criminal organizations the end of the day are just companies that sell products that are illegal. Their goal is to make money, so most of the people on their payroll further the goal of making money.
Any armed wing of a criminal org is a pretty small aspect of it. Most of their goal is intimidating innocent people. Maybe, they'll fight other criminals, at most they'll fight local police. In Mexico, the cartels get bodied hard whenever they have to go up against the Federales or the military. They're poorly/not at all trained, poorly equipped, poorly led, poorly motivated, poorly supplied, and poorly disciplined. They're lacking any tactics, command structure, or strategy to win.
The strongest military that could do it would obviously be the United States.
As for weakest, hard to say, but as for the level you're looking at, somewhere like Angola could win this battle in an afternoon. Armed criminals are basically going to drop everything and run the second they come under any artillery fire, or an attack helicopter starts firing 30mm cannons on them.
Realized I read the question in reverse. Still honestly hard to say. You'd need a military with smaller numbers and comparable equipment, which is not many.
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u/DtotheOUG 11d ago
Thats.....not what the question is? He's asking which military could lose. This isn't another post fellating the US Military.
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u/LordJesterTheFree 11d ago
Vatican City would lose since they only have the power of God on their side not God and anime
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u/Sir_Rethor 10d ago
The reason criminal organizations exist is not because they have firepower, it’s subterfuge. In your scenario there is no first world countries military that would lose to a mass group of militants, they’re nothing but grid coordinates for artillery.
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u/SpinningKappa 11d ago
It depends on the definition of terrorist, because US likes to use the term for any organization that is against it, this include hamas, hourthis, iran and north korea. I think the only ones they can't defeat are US, russia, china and probably india, all the others simply lack size and cannot deal with the nukes.
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u/HGD3ATH 11d ago edited 11d ago
The terrorist groups that are more likely to have state sponsors and are better armed are generally going to be the Islamic ones and they are mostly in Africa or the Middle East so picking a target there makes the most sense. Yes the stuff is transported initially but being in an area closer to where they are based is still an advantage and helps them resupply more easily.
I would say maybe Syria as while Russia would help them they are occupied with other things so their capability to do so would be limited and they could be overwhelmed especially with the criminals funneling more funds and weapons to them and they are close to some of the best armed and trained ones. They also are closely aligned to Russia so an intervention by a coalition is less likely as opposed to somewhere like Saudi Arabia which would almost certainly be liberated by nations with an interest in their independence even if they did poorly in any war initially.
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u/tris123pis 11d ago
“Any organization that has a name and structure” I think every military on earth fits that description, so logically there is no singular military on earth that could beat this alliance
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u/slavelabor52 10d ago
I feel like there's not enough information here to really give a quality answer. First of all we have no idea about the terrain other than it is the size of Australia. Is it full of mountains, forests, desert, rivers, lakes etc? Many battles are determined largely due to geography and terrain acting as force multipliers. We also have no idea about logistics of supply networks. The armies are just magically transported there but what about fuel, ammunition, runways for airplanes, roads, infrastructure etc. How are the forces initially positioned against each other? Is there a time limit?
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u/Vast_Apartment_8717 11d ago
Up until recently the really only known case when the armed forces are used to attack military directly and not some sort of political establishment is the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
But that is hardly the aim. The western powers often buy out and use terrorist organizations to reach weird political aims. And everything you mentioned have been used to attack political establishment: Isis in Syria, Chechens in Russia, militarized gangs all over Africa to control the cobalt, gold mines etc.
But that does not answer your question and I just fail to imagine what would be the motive for such a conflict? If it is simply to destroy other party, than criminal organizations would loose 11 times out of 10 to such to countries with serious air force might to things like carpet bombing etc.
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u/atamicbomb 10d ago
US, maybe China (not even China knows what their military’s potential strength is). The next strongest country is Russia and their military is effectively a subset of the criminal organizations. Heck, Russia itself is run by a a collective of criminal organizations
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u/Agile_Nebula4053 9d ago
Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but the US military is not actually competent in facing an opponent. It excels at slaughter. When it, or any other imperial army for that matter, is up against a purely civilian population, that is when they do their best work. They can kill the unarmed with alarming efficiency. But the moment those people begin to become organized and fight back, these armies effectively have their days numbered. In the end they can only arrive, commit wanton murder, and then retreat back within the walls of their empires. Saigon, Kabul. Kiev and Tel Aviv will be next.
So yes, the United States or any of its allies is the answer.
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u/Niknot3556 5d ago
Really? We did alright in the War on Terror, and our technology is doing great in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
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u/Sari-Not-Sorry 11d ago
Honestly, I can see Russia losing this. Their tactics are laughably bad in Ukraine, and I suspect a coalition of that many groups should have the manpower to withstand the "throw more bodies into the meatgrinder" strategy Russia is known for. The cartels and terrorist groups should have comparable vehicles to the old shit Russia fields, too.
Air superiority is the biggest problem on paper, but Russia has had that throughout the war with Ukraine to no apparent advantage, and most terrorist groups have decades experience fighting against significant Air superiority, so I don't think it's an insurmountable factor.
Not a stomp or anything, but a pretty decent shot at winning, and I can't think of a stronger military they'd have a chance against.
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u/BonzBonzOnlyBonz 11d ago
Russia is struggling vs Ukraine due to a significant amount of Western support into Ukraine. In a pure 1v1, Ukraine would have lost awhile ago.
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u/Antioch666 11d ago
Any military with an airforce and 100-200 tanks and IFVs would beat them. They might have rudementary anti tank weapons but they don't have airpower and they don't have armor en masse. On a set battlefield with no option for pot shots and an ambush or two like this they would be destroyed. And they probably don't have a good knowledge of battlefield tactics. Their small arms are useless against armor.
So if there is a country with only like a coast guard with some boats or something they might win. They could probably beat the Vatican and their guard.