Aerial superiority helps a lot, but ground to ground the locals have the upper hand just by knowing the area and their neighbors. The attackers may still win, but they’ll need more advantages and lots of good intel.
Never fight a land war in Asia. I heard that once in a documentary, “The Princess Bride”.
My 2nd favorite documentary, after “The Highlander”
but ground to ground the locals have the upper hand just by knowing the area and their neighbors
If they are being invaded, they also have the “advantage” of being a fucking ton of people.
Maintaining an invading army has completely different economic and social restrictions than just existing.
Vietnam had an air force, air defenses, and actually acquitted themselves fantastically against the US in the air. They had armor, they were a modern army. The VC was important, but less so than the NVA.
See war of 1812.
The US army got utterly humbled by a bunch of cold rednecks a tenth their population.
This lady has an american rifle. Was it taken from dead americans or is she a south vietnamese fighter?
Dead Americans (or South Vietnamese troops, or looted military storage)
Pyrrhus of Epirus has entered the chat.
You can be victorious … doesn’t always mean you can win the war
Angry farmers are fighting for their lives at home. Soldiers who aren’t KIA get to go home.
Plus it was guerrilla fighting by the Vietcong combined with an actual standing army decently supplied, well trained and hugely experienced in asymmetric warfare.
Plus Hồ Chí Minh was a clever strategist and leader, him pressing the Politburo to accept China’s help translated into 320k “volunteers”. Iirc he read T.E. Lawrence like it was the Bible.
