USA vs USA

a reply to: seagull

My ATS has been "broken" the last few days, with not being able to post or edit posts, I realised as soon as I posted that the nature of a US civil war or a crackdown on civilians would be complex.

No, I honestly don't think most Americans in uniform would comply with orders that have them engaged against their own civilians.

I was watching a documentary about Kim's older brother yesterday, the one who was groomed for leadership but deemed unfit, anyways. Apparently he often sent civilian goods to North Korea, things like smartphones... It was insinuated that they back engineer these items and/or use parts in their more advanced weaponry.

If that's true then it's more than possible that clever Americans could do so too, just another angle I'd like to throw out.
a reply to: yuppa

Isolating a tank, it would still have multiple machine guns, grenades and the long gun, each with their own ammunition types.

Wasn't there a case where a Abrams tank was hit with 14 RPGs and an anti-tank gun?

After digging, I've found out it was a Challenger MKII, but my point still stands, an immobilised tank is still a tank, with composite armour and other defence measures, it really isn't easy knocking out a modern main battle tank.

Infra-red is just a method of detection, if I was stuck in a tank and couldn't detect an enemy I'd resort to cluster munitions, smoke and explosive grenades. A fire-retardant suit wouldn't help much against that.

Advanced munitions is key to defeating a tank, so with respect the USA would be in a similar situation as the British if our governments went rogue, most of our troops wouldn't follow orders to kill civilians either.

Till sides are drawn and military equipment is acquired by civilians, I'm afraid those civilian would be in very similar boats, you don't just acquire or build advanced munitions over night.

I mean, how many successes did the taliban have against coalition main battle tanks or any other mobile hardware for that matter?

They had military equipment, albeit heavily outdated.