RDA vs North Koreans

[Sarevok]

Due to an act of ROB the entire RDA forces on Pandora are teleported to a deserted island. On other end of the island are following North Korean forces. The North Koreans have =>

10 T-72 tanks

5 ZSU-23 Shilkas

A small airstrip with a pair of Mig-21 fighters

And 100 infantry with the expected North Korean weapons ranging from kalashnikov rifles to RPGs and SA-14 missiles.

Both forces are told by the ROB that the winning forces gets sent back home.They commence battle.

Who wins ?

[Star Wars 888]

RDA probably wins. Iirc they have the numerical advantage and their gunships would rip apart the Norh Korean ground troops. The migs would run out of ammo before they can take the gunships down.

[Shroom Man 777]

I agree. The RDA probably take this. While the MiG-21s can down a few VTOLs, the remaining RDA aircraft can lay waste to the North Korean armor and infantry while the RDA infantry with mech support can probably handle themselves as well. Then the VTOLs can blow up the Nork airbase, and the MiG-21s can't do shit by virtue of their airways being ruined and their weapons/fuel supplies being blown up. Where can the MiGs land? Where can they take off? Oh no, I bet they wish they had VTOL capacity now! Hahahahaha.

Unless if the RDA VTOLs' missiles do not have HEAT warheads and instead just have frag warheads since there are no tanks on Pandora and just animals (undoubtedly Sarevok will bitch about this because, lol mercenaries operating in complicated conditions, with conflicting ROE re: company hesitation for war conflicting with Quarritch's psychopathic tendencies, and with 'enemies' that aren't conventional military forces, should be totally capable of waging conventional military war shit according to his skewered milwank perspective) that do not require HEAT to kill. If this is the case, if the VTOLs do not have HEAT, and if their missiles cannot penetrate tank armor, then the Norks win with their armor.

[Marcus Aurelius]

If this is the case, if the VTOLs do not have HEAT, and if their missiles cannot penetrate tank armor, then the Norks win with their armor.

Well, you can disable tanks with HE warheads or shells, especially from an aircraft or with indirect artillery. You would probably need more hits than with HEAT warheads, but even HE will eventually ruin the tracks and cause a mobility kill. Depending on the warhead size it may also penetrate the weaker top armor. For example 155/152 mm artillery, even with conventional HE shells, will ruin the day of tanks quite quickly unless they manage the escape the barrage quickly.

[keen320]

They might have HEAT, judging by how absurdly tough some of those Pandoran animals are. They might also be able to use napalm on the tank engines, did they have napalm in the movie?

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm, blowing up that Home Tree might not have worked without HEAT also.

The RDA could also use their shuttle. Without flux vortexes or floating islands, it won't have to go slow. It can drop the daisy cutter right on top of the Nork base!

[Caiaphas]

did they have napalm in the movie?

I don't believe so, though my memory's a bit fuzzy.

They might have HEAT, judging by how absurdly tough some of those Pandoran animals are.

Maybe, but for now all we've got to go on are what look to be high explosive warheads (see destruction of Hometree).

It can drop the daisy cutter right on top of the Nork base!

Boom. Heeheeheeheehee.

[Shroom Man 777]

No napalm, just explosive missiles.

So with the shuttle coming in at a high-mach bombing run, it's either they vector the MiGs to intercept the shuttle and allow the VTOLs to come in without air interception to fuck all those ground guys, or send the MiGs to intercept the VTOLs and allow the shuttle to drop the daisy cutter on top of their base. The shuttle is basically an XB-70! On steroids! The only problem is that its warhead is shit, but the Norks don't know this. And their MiGs can't touch the shuttle. Their only window to kill the shuttle is when it slows down to drop the bomb.

[Simon_Jester]

Unless if the RDA VTOLs' missiles do not have HEAT warheads and instead just have frag warheads since there are no tanks on Pandora and just animals... that do not require HEAT to kill. If this is the case, if the VTOLs do not have HEAT, and if their missiles cannot penetrate tank armor, then the Norks win with their armor.

Hmm. Some of those beast are big, and pretty tough. Like, tough enough that you're dealing with something like a Salvation War demon, where it honestly might be worthwhile to have HEAT weapons to kill them with.

[Alyeska]

RDA had something described as incendiary. So while they don't have Napalm, they have methods of lighting things on fire.

[Shroom Man 777]

I wonder if the Norks have NBC suits. The RDA could also gas them.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Hrm, blowing up that Home Tree might not have worked without HEAT also.

The RDA could also use their shuttle. Without flux vortexes or floating islands, it won't have to go slow. It can drop the daisy cutter right on top of the Nork base!

Best type of shell/warhead against something like the Home Tree would be (S)APHE or concrete piercing shell, which has some penetration but a sizable HE content. It would also work fairly well against the animals, which while tough probably do not sport armor comparable to more than an inch of armor grade steel.

About the shuttle: the OP did not specify that the Norks have high altitude radar. Without one they wouldn't even know that the shuttle is coming to drop the bomb on them. MiG-21bis (let's be generous and give them the best model they've got in real life) does have a search radar, but it's quite short ranged and with only two fighters you can't have much of a CAP going. The Shilkas have short-ranged search radars as well, but they won't see anything flying high.

[CBG]

RDA VTOL's get destroyed by stone age aliens riding on giant flying animals.
MIG-21's are supersonic fighters. RDA VTOL's get slaughtered. RDA VTOL's are inferior weaponrywise to modern assault helicopters - they are armed utility helicopters, without turret mounted cannons. Some of them have short range AA missiles, but MIG-21's can carry medium ranged ones.
The big, assault VTOL (RDA has only a few of them) has some turrets but still... MIG 21's have guided missiles, altitude advantage, speed advantage, and we haven't seen RDA aircraft displaying any sort of ECM or ECCM capabilities.
Shilkas would also slaughter these VTOL's, just like they do slaughter helicopters.
For all we have seen RDA air force has no air to ground guided anti tank missiles.
RDA on the ground also doesn't have any long range guided anti tank weaponry. It pretty much sucks against a T-72 if there is a lot of open terrain.
The shuttle is a kind of a wildcard, but on the other side, they can't go low and slow because of mig 21's and shilkas, and the "bomb" they used wasn't guided or even aerodynamically shaped, so hitting anything with it would demand a lot of luck.

[adam_grif]

I was hoping this was RDA vs North Korea from Crysis


Note: VTOL gunships and the like may not work well on normal gravity worlds. They were earth designs, but they might be kitted out to take advantage of the low gravity on pandora, i.e. heavier loads that it can't normally take and things like that.

[Shroom Man 777]

RDA VTOL's get destroyed by stone age aliens riding on giant flying animals.

F-111s get destroyed by hitting birds. Oh no. If only F-111s didn't have glass canopies and VTOLs lol. If only the Australian air force used XB-36s insteads!

MIG-21's are supersonic fighters. RDA VTOL's get slaughtered. RDA VTOL's are inferior weaponrywise to modern assault helicopters - they are armed utility helicopters, without turret mounted cannons. Some of them have short range AA missiles, but MIG-21's can carry medium ranged ones.
The big, assault VTOL (RDA has only a few of them) has some turrets but still... MIG 21's have guided missiles, altitude advantage, speed advantage, and we haven't seen RDA aircraft displaying any sort of ECM or ECCM capabilities.

Too bad there are only two MiGs. How fast can they take off, hit targets, and land and reload and refuel before the VTOLs reach them and strike them while they're on the ground?

The range and capabilities of the RDA missiles are an unknown since they got hampered by technobabble flux vortexes. There won't be flux vortexes in here.

The observation of the RDA VTOLs not even having turret chin cannons is interesting. So maybe they weren't even originally armed with guns to begin with, and bolting on guns was something they did afterwards in a jerry-rigged fashion (due to politico-bureaucratic complications, which is why people bitch about the RDA had to contend with sub-par mechas and VTOLs instead of T-34s, Shermans and MiG-17s or whatever) because the realities on the field conflicted with what their superiors on Earth wanted (i.e. don't shoot Na'vi, bad for PR, space environmentalist greenpeace hippies, grrrr arrrgh etc)?

Shilkas would also slaughter these VTOL's, just like they do slaughter helicopters.

There are only five of them. And two MiGs. The RDA has a crapload of VTOLs and the Papa Dragon. RDA mercs can play spotter, and the RDA VTOLs can pop out of the horizon or out of tree cover or terrain and shoot the Shilkas (and the tanks) from a distance. Wiki also says Shilka armoring is insufficient against HMGs, so those RDA mechas can damage them.

For all we have seen RDA air force has no air to ground guided anti tank missiles.

The RDA VTOLs were able to hit the bigass tree.

RDA on the ground also doesn't have any long range guided anti tank weaponry. It pretty much sucks against a T-72 if there is a lot of open terrain.

Yeah. Sucks for them.

The shuttle is a kind of a wildcard, but on the other side, they can't go low and slow because of mig 21's and shilkas, and the "bomb" they used wasn't guided or even aerodynamically shaped, so hitting anything with it would demand a lot of luck.

There are only two MiG-21s and five Shilkas. The RDA has many more VTOLs, plus the Papa Dragon and then the shuttle. If the MiGs chase the hypersonic shuttle, then the Shilkas will have to fend themselves against the numerically superior numbers of VTOLs that will spam missiles at them. The VTOLs can also hunt the tanks and Nork infantry. Anyway, the shuttle can make its approach when the MiGs and Shilkas are distracted by the VTOLs. Then it can drop a bomb in the Nork base and basically do whatever damage it can do.

Shilkas can be killed by the RDA mechas. Shilkas aren't heavily armored.

Anyway, the RDA's advantage is that despite the Nork's aerial and anti-air capabilities, the RDA has a significant and superior number of VTOLs. The shuttle can also act as a distractor.

I think the deciding factor will be the Nork infantry with their MANPADs. Because if the superior number of RDA VTOL can whittle down the Nork forces (spam the Shilkas and shoot the MiGs when they're on the runway), and if the RDA VTOL survive, then the RDA can win.

But if the Norks shoot the VTOLs down, then the Norks win cause the RDA has nothing left to counter the tanks.

The RDA has to do a VTOL zerg rush and hope they kill off the Nork's anti-air capabilities before the Nork's anti-air capabilities kill them.

[Ford Prefect]

How big is the island? It's noted in the Survival Guide that a Dragon with max payload could level Manhattan in six seconds.

[Shroom Man 777]

Uh, what? Obviously the Home Tree must either be bigger than Manhattan sized but due to chain reaction quantum space foldings it looks smaller than it is, or it must have neutronium-ingrained bark woods. Since if the Dragon could've blown up Manhattan in six seconds, if the Tree of Souls was smaller than Manhattan the Dragon could've done it easily but it didn't and had to have other VTOLs to help it. Either this or the Dragon lowered its firepower setting to stun and deliberately blew the Home Tree up slowly because it was part of the plan to have the Princess (Neytiri) escape and lead them to the Tree of Souls! YES!

But seriously, where are you getting that, FROD? What Survival Guide? The Zombie Survival Guide? Or is it from shitty Avatar EU? 'Cause I heard in the shitty Avatar EU, a bunch of Na'vi also found a relic of Eywa that let them use magicks to push an ISV away from the planet. Then with Na'vi magick it also blew up a sun or something. Not really, I'm joking. Too bad the stupid wiki writers really did put a stupid Doctor Lovecraft in the material because they're stupid shits. Makes me want to turn into a Doctor Hatecraft.

[Ford Prefect]

But seriously, where are you getting that, FROD? What Survival Guide?

The Avatar Survival Guide. It's a guidebook to shit in the setting of the film.

[Shroom Man 777]

If the Papa Dragon could do that, then the thinggy with the shuttle packing a daisy cutter wouldn't have mattered at all man.

[Ilya Muromets]

How many RDA VTOLs were there, anyway? Because, from what I remember, there were a lot of the things during the attack on the Hometree.

At any rate, the Norks are screwed. 100 men? 10 tanks? 5 shilkas? 2 MiG-21s? You can whine and go on and on about how the RDA suck because they got their asses kicked by giant blue savages, but there is no way a force that small can destroy all of VTOLS if they go at them in a mass spam attack. The RDA was spammed with everything the Na'vi and funky mystical life spirit thing could throw at it (essentially, a massive Zerg rush). The Norks don't have those numbers as mentioned in the OP. One thing I do remember clearly is that there were more VTOLs than the combined anti-air loadout of two Fishbeds (typical MiG-21 would have only 200 canon rounds, 2 medium-range AA missles, and 4 short-range AA missiles). Even with perfect accuracy both will run out of ammo before they can shoot down all of the VTOLs.

At which point it will be up to Shilkas and MANPADs. Even with perfect accuracy, given how these guys are on an island, the VTOLs are just minutes away. That's not enough to take down the RDA aircraft before they start spamming missiles. At which point, the Norks are fucked even if they somehow manage to down all of the remaining VTOLs before the missiles hit. And that's assuming that the RDA are coming at them from a clear line of fire. If the RDA VTOLs are smart and weave through the dense Pandoran vegetation (provided the deserted island shares the typical Pandoran foliage). How are the Shilkas going to lead their targets if simply massive Pandoran plant life keeps getting in the way? MANPADs would fare little better since 1) there's a minimal tracking distance for the seeking to properly start tracking and 2) Pandoran plant life is gonna be hell for the missile to try and navigate through to hit the VTOLs.

Whatever their approach, if even only a few VTOLs manage to do a missile spam, the Nork forces are dead. They flat out don't have the numbers to absorb casualties. And, note, I only mentioned VTOLs. Any survivors from a VTOL missile spam would then have to contend with the rest of the RDA force.

[Sky Captain]

How big is the island? It's noted in the Survival Guide that a Dragon with max payload could level Manhattan in six seconds.

It could only do that if it was armed with nuclear tipped missiles. With missiles it had in the movie it could blow up few skyscrapers and that's all.

[Shroom Man 777]

All the VTOLs have to do is to take down the tanks. Once the T-72s are killed, the ground RDA forces can handle the Nork infantry and the Shilkas on a more or less even basis and the MiGs can be killed when they're reloading and refueling. The RDA's advantage is its massive amounts of VTOLs. The Norks are their tanks (which will be tough for RDA ground forces to handle).

[Ilya Muromets]

And there's no doubt that those missiles would fuck up a T-72 nice and proper. Looking at screen caps, the Hometree is buttfucking HUGE. It's practically a small mountain in the shape of a tree. Even at the stated Pandoran gravity of 0.8G, a tree that size has to be extremely strong to hold itself up. Hitting that thing would probably be like hitting solid rock. Especially since it was leaning to one side a bit. Given that the explosions from the missiles tore huge chunks from the Hometree's trunk whenever they hit, the concusive force alone would be more than enough to mission kill a T-72, if not kill it outright.

[Ford Prefect]

If the Papa Dragon could do that, then the thinggy with the shuttle packing a daisy cutter wouldn't have mattered at all man.

It's easily and unsatisfactorily rationalised, not that I care. This thread is obviously just sarevok being weirdly annoyed at Avatar, so you might as well just level the entire battlefield and move on.

[Shroom Man 777]

So I guess they just dial up the Papa Dragon's weapons yields and vaporize the North Koreans?

BTW, how many explosions did it take to kill the Papa Dragon anyway? Did Jake Sully chuck some grenades before using that missile as a baseball bat?