America has only recently started reorienting from Rumsfeld's "light footprint". There have been many tens of thousands of MRAPs (from about 0) but 0 new tanks (I don't mean newly produced tanks of old types, I mean there was nothing actually new since the M1A2 which is a 20th-century model).
The Abrams has been continually upgraded, with the M1A2 SEPv3 being deployed in 2020. The Trophy APS is being added. The SEPv4 is under development now.
It's inherently difficult to design a military to conduct a counter-insurgency in general unless you're prepared to engage in genocide to pacify the enemy. If you have to operate under "nice guy" rules like Americans do, it's an extremely difficult uphill battle that the US was only able to pull off in Iraq and Afghanistan because we were so superior to the insurgents there.
But now change the insurgents to Americans, many of them veterans, with 100x more money, resources, and firepower? The US military wouldn't have a chance. Simply because the insurgents would be civilians and safe from attack 99% of the time, and only convert to combat mode in limited ambush situations where expert veterans would know the military convoys to be vulnerable.
You'd have the Blues basically trapped in their bases, afraid to go out, needing to rely on heavily armed convoys which would get lit up with IEDs and Javelins and such constantly.
America has only recently started reorienting from Rumsfeld's "light footprint". There have been many tens of thousands of MRAPs (from about 0) but 0 new tanks (I don't mean newly produced tanks of old types, I mean there was nothing actually new since the M1A2 which is a 20th-century model).
The Abrams has been continually upgraded, with the M1A2 SEPv3 being deployed in 2020. The Trophy APS is being added. The SEPv4 is under development now.
It's inherently difficult to design a military to conduct a counter-insurgency in general unless you're prepared to engage in genocide to pacify the enemy. If you have to operate under "nice guy" rules like Americans do, it's an extremely difficult uphill battle that the US was only able to pull off in Iraq and Afghanistan because we were so superior to the insurgents there.
But now change the insurgents to Americans, many of them veterans, with 100x more money, resources, and firepower? The US military wouldn't have a chance. Simply because the insurgents would be civilians and safe from attack 99% of the time, and only convert to combat mode in limited ambush situations where expert veterans would know the military convoys to be vulnerable.
You'd have the Blues basically trapped in their bases, afraid to go out, needing to rely on heavily armed convoys which would get lit up with IEDs and Javelins and such constantly.