Has the side with better equipment and worse logistics ever won?
Upvote:0
The vast majority of invasions & foreign wars. Whenever you choose to fight on foreign soil, you invoke a fairly dramatic handicap in logistics. If we limit the examination to conflicts where technology and equipment are roughly par, then distance to conflict becomes a significant discriminator in logistics. Defenders can count on frequent, if not ubiquitous resupply.
Rome - Conquest is the definition of poor logistics. Concentrate on the Eastern wars, or the frequent internal civil wars.
War of 1812 the UK trounced us from across the ocean. All logistics devoted to the USA had to be diverted from an existential conflict against an entire continent. Although the UK had equipment superiority, they were forced to fight us with their "C" team because the A team and the B team were busy fighting off everyone else in Europe.
Battle of the Nile - Nelson fought in the Mediterranean, near the coast of France. Nelson had lost his scout squadron and relied on luck to find the French. Their equipment wasn't radically different, but Nelson destroyed the French fleet. (the deciding factor was neither equipment nor logistics but boneheaded tactical decisions).
Vietnam - (arguably we didn't "lose", but I think that is outside the scope of this question.). US and French equipment was clearly superior, but their logistics were vastly inferior to the locals who lived among their supplies.
Falklands - The UK had a long logistic tail; the Argentine's could resupply locally.
Every carrier deployment in history. Carriers are about logistics.
The dichotomy you're drawing also assumes that the soldiers, sailors, airmen & marines are all fungible. They're not. The quality of the warriors decides many battles.
Upvote:1
No single factor determines the outcomes of all battles and wars, this is true even for the most important one, logistics.
Usually when a side fights on home territory, can field bigger armies that are better equipped and fed, then have they have better logistics. Yet we can still find plenty of examples of such sides losing, like Agincourt:
The English had very little food, had marched 260 miles (420 km) in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery, and faced much larger numbers of well equipped French men at arms.
More post
- 📝 How possible was it for Japan to convert her naval aircraft to land uses?
- 📝 Could h*m* erectus have migrated to North America?
- 📝 Why didn't Alexander invade India?
- 📝 Did B-17 crews run into difficulty releasing their bombs and does data exist on this?
- 📝 What was the primary reason for the rise and success of the Roman republic / empire?
- 📝 Did the Czech Legion bring POWs to Czechoslovakia? And if so, why?
- 📝 How long would it have taken to get to the Poconos in the early 1900s?
- 📝 When did Harvard give its last entrance exam?
- 📝 What was the main food source in old California?
- 📝 What are the dates of these panoramas of Paris?
- 📝 Did Muslim women in colonial India before 1939 have to become Christian to divorce?
- 📝 Are these Houthi Rebels in Yemen the same people who ran the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen?
- 📝 Did the German Enigma machine use multiple encryption keys?
- 📝 Is the Sandracottus genus of beetles named after Chandragupta Maurya?
- 📝 How would residents of Central Slovakia travel to seaports in 1880's?
- 📝 What was the contemporary reaction to Dante's Divine Comedy?
- 📝 Is the Kalashnikov Automatic Rifle 1947 still in production?
- 📝 What exactly were the religious beliefs of Gemistus Plethon?
- 📝 Why was ancient Christianity more successful than the Roman pantheon and Judaism in gaining followers?
- 📝 How far did climate affect civilisation development in the Americas?
- 📝 Why did the southern states have to be readmitted?
- 📝 Why couldn't bastards inherit titles?
- 📝 Was the option of setting up a Jewish state in defeated Nazi Germany ever considered?
- 📝 Was the Volga really Russia's last line of defense before the Urals?
- 📝 Who is 'Ebinichibel' mentioned in the Borgia Map?
- 📝 Rules to correctly write an ancient Roman date
- 📝 Did teenagers in the USA in the 1960s and 1950s really engage in dangerous, reckless driving to this extent?
- 📝 Was the title "Democratic-Republican" really used?
- 📝 Why were blacks still victimized in the Northern states after slavery's abolition?
- 📝 What book on liberty did Lord Acton not write?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Has the side with better equipment and worse logistics ever won?
- 📝 Has the side with less artillery ever won?
- 📝 Has any war in recorded history ever resulted in the complete annihilation (civil and military) of an enemy - all of them killed with no survivors?
- 📝 Has there ever been a society with impartial distribution of privilege and punishment where all members of the society have equal status.
- 📝 Has there ever been a case when a traitorous military commander took command again for the side he betrayed?
- 📝 Has there ever been a cold war other than between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.?
- 📝 How to identify this coin with a bust on one side and the letters S and C on the other side?
- 📝 Has a major war ever occured and a map before the war looked exactly the same after?
- 📝 Has there ever been a case where a country adopted the currency of another country with a smaller economy?
- 📝 Has the UK ever used the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987 to enter an embassy without approval?
- 📝 Has Morocco ever claimed ownership of the Canary and Madeira islands?
- 📝 Was there ever any co-existence solution to peace with Israel that the Arab Palestinian side proposed or said would accept?
- 📝 Was there ever a single collection of the Corpus Juris Civilis and has it survived?
- 📝 Was it ever possible to see students with burka/paranji having education at the schools and universities of the Uzbek Soviet Republic?
- 📝 Has a government ever been elected with the full 100% of the votes?
- 📝 Has a sovereign Communist government ever run, and conceded loss, on a fair election?
- 📝 Has the United States ever had a non-Christian President?
- 📝 Was there ever a treaty between 2 entities with significantly different translations to the detriment of one party?
- 📝 Has an heir ever made the country believe the current ruler died in order to take over the throne?
- 📝 Has there ever been a battle with only a single survivor?
- 📝 Has there ever been a major migration from the New World to the Old World? If not, why?
- 📝 Where did the “vikings wear helmets with horn” stereotype come from and why?
- 📝 Why did Italy abandon its alliance with Germany in WW1 and join the Allied side?
- 📝 Has there ever been anything like the oil boom we see today?
- 📝 Has there ever been a true kidnapped princess from anywhere in the world?
- 📝 Has there ever been an archbishop or bishop younger than the 16-year-old James of Nicosia?
- 📝 Has chattel slavery ever been used as a criminal punishment in the USA since the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment?
- 📝 Has there ever been a serious effort to reform the US Electoral College system?
- 📝 Has there ever been a truly bilingual country prior to the contemporary period?
- 📝 Is there any instance of part of a country successfully seceding and then unifying with a neighbouring country in the last century?