Alright in my post schedule thing I did last night I stated that I would write about this conversation I had with some gun nuts whom believed that they were armed enough to survive encounters with the United States (US) military (the most heavily funded military... on Earth...) but funding is not everything. This post is going to cover the weapons that give the military an edge over violent militia simply because its unlikely that there will be an answer to these weapons, likely because many different armed force groups do not have an answer to some of these weapons.
Figure 1: "RAF's fire and forget anti-tank brimstone missile" by Duch with CC BY-SA 3.0 sourced from Wikimedia
AGM or ATGM or ASM
AGM & ATGM: Air-to-Ground MissileASM: Air-to-Surface Missile
Though the image present is a weapon used by the United Kingdom (UK) Royal Air Foce (RAF) it doesn't change the fact that the US has many different variants of their own AGMs. Just to get in, an AGM is a missile that is fired from an aircraft towards a ground target, this means that they are usually a little heavier as they do not need to be able to fly horizontally as much and they can usually get away with a lot less for propulsion as gravity can help pull them towards the ground. This means a heavier payload. AGM's can be fired from both manned and unmanned aircraft (drones) and as you can see below in figure 2, there are a lot of variants in the US alone. The important part to note
Figure 2: Screenshot from Wikipedia Air to surface Missile by Wikimedia Foundation, Inc using CC BY-SA 3.0
about AGMs though is that they have different uses depending on the type of setup it has. Anyways my point of bringing this information up is because AGMs are extremely difficult to intercept meaning if there is a violent uprising and the US military was given a greenlight to use AGMs then it would pretty much single handedly be the weapon that would, well, it wouldn't take too many AGMs in order to get a white flag to be waved because out of all of the gun nuts, none of them are armed enough to take out AGMs with ease. Lets think about it like this, one group can fire high-precision missiles with 60-150 kg payloads (using an estimate of 1kg of payload is approximately 1kg of TNT or for each kg of payload, 4.184 kJ will be released (which is a low side estimate))
So high end of 150 kg would release 627.6 kJ of energy and produce a blast radius of roughly 60 meters, however the minimum defined distance of safety will be roughly 600 meters away meaning that anything within 600m (a little over 1/3rd of a mile) has the potential to suffer injuries which will be dependent on many factors (distance, current health, age, etc) with windows shattering at up to 150 meters away (this is all approximation).
To icing on the cake for this weapon is that once an AGM is launched, it is very effective at evading interception from Surface-to-Air missiles as it is flying down at near sonic speeds (i.e. near the speed of sound) and by changing coarse by as little as a fed degrees mid flight is enough to evade most self guided SAMs (let alone the ones that are not self guided which are more common) and most are made in such a way that bullets will just ricochet off.
AGM & ATGM: Air-to-Ground Missile
ASM: Air-to-Surface Missile
T. Krauthammer. (1999) Explosive Damage Assessment [1]
Wikipedia. (2018) "Air-to-surface missiles" [2]
Wikipedia. (2018) "C-4 (explosive)" [3]
Wikipedia. (2016) "Blast Radius" [4]
GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB)
Just going to settle this right now, it is not pronounced as MOBE but more like MOH-AB thought it is much better to use this help guide here and to look at and actually follow the IPA which is: /ˈmoʊ.æb/. So why is this in here? Well I mean it is one of those weapons that are special as it is deemed one of the largest non-nuclear weapons to exist, designed to be carried by the C130 Hercules. Now I wish I could say I had to look up this information to copy it but the truth is that due to my love of explosives, well, I have read a few books on military ordnance in my life and this bomb, being as famous as it is, is one of those that always appeared. Interestingly enough, it has only been used in combat once... in 2017 against ISIL forces. The GBU-43/B MOAB is also especially interesting because it explodes before it hits the ground. Since the payload of the bomb is C-4 (around 22,000 lbs (around 9000 kg of payload) producing a blast yield of 37.656 MJ (37,656 kJ)The interesting thing about this is the interesting thing about C-4 which is that it is extremely stable to things like fire or getting shot... so once it is dropped, it is pretty much going to take out everyone within the area... and it will.
Wikipedia. (2018) "GBU-43/B MOAB" [1]
GlobalSecurity (2018) "GBU-43/B "Mother Of All Bombs"
MOAB - Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb" [2]
Wikipedia. (2018) "C-4 (explosive)" [3]
Wikipedia. (2016) "Blast Radius" [4]
M1 Abrams Tank
and variants M1A1 and M1A2
So talking about explosives and ordnance then I will have an idea of what we are talking about, tanks... not a clue. However I include the Abrams on this list of reasons why the military has a vast edge over civilian revolution groups because most of them are outfitted with infrared jamming systems that can deflect infrared guided missiles and the composite armor is designed specifically to prevent AP rounds from harming the crew. The Abrams tanks may not be the best tanks in the world (I looked at a couple of lists and they made the top 10 in each) however with the fact that they are designed to be resilient to military grade ordnance, I wold say that it wold be difficult for them to truly get an effective countermeasure.
Military-Today (2017) "Top 10 Main Battle Tanks" [1]
Wikipedia. (2018) "M1 Abrams" [1]
Okay okay I can go on and list weapon after weapon after weapon and give reasons why, but lets just say this.
Figure 5: Screenshot from Wikipedia Contries by spending on defense budget by Wikimedia Foundation, Inc using CC BY-SA 3.0
Or roughly 37% of the total money spent, in the world, on defense comes from the US... I know its not all budget but when you put that kind of money into defense year after year...
Lets put it this way, they could take that budget and give almost $2000 to each citizen of their country, I highly doubt that any groups radical enough to start a violet revolution spend an equivalent amount each year.
I am not saying that the US military would use the weapons that I have presented, but when the argument with the person was about which group was more equipped and would win had they used their weapons, I think it is obvious that it would be the US military... and they wouldn't even need to touch their nuclear arsenal to do it. Do you agree? Want to debate and think that a violent uprising could work? Remember the US is one of the top states when it comes to, well, analyzing and cataloging the data of its own citizens. I mean yeah China and North Korea do way more but, I mean, USA is supposed to be a free state that boasts about personal freedom. Before someone starts, this is not an argument against or for communism, if you turn it into one then I will ignore your comment.
Keeping in mind breakup of Yugoslavia, war in 1999 and situation in Syria, it could be said that seriously determined people with small arms could pin down much stronger forces (on paper).
The real question is a bit different, what would be the motivation in the USA to make such uprising?
Ethics - too much mixed. Racial - very same reason. Religious - I don't see that. Strong differences in development, economy - nope again.
Next question is - what to do after the "liberation"? People need to travel, to trade... Thus the viable uprising in the USA would need to include something like North vs South or East vs West - but why?
So, could militia with small arms stop an army: yes if crazy determined and if the army has incompetent leaders and no clear goals (and the moral crumbles)
Could it happened in the USA - no way
So the reason stated by them is if the government decided to actually confiscate guns that there would be a violent uprising. However the argument of the militia holding down the military, considering their argument points were mainly that "You have no idea just how armed we are and what type of weapons we have."
Its on this point that I attack most, I guess I could have put it into context. I do agree that small arms forces could easily beat a military because there is an aspect of strategy that holds a greater value over the weapons themselves (think Al-Queda which is using the leftover weapons from the USSR regime pulling out of the region being able to stand their ground against the US military for years)
I agree that there is way more to it then just shiny toys, as you point out, but then I would also argue that there is some competence in the US military, I cannot say for certain the extent but there is some.
Fighting for ideology, nation, protection of own house/ family - those are the reasons.
Some revenge, historical chance.
But dying for the confiscation of small arms not many people would found worth.
Let's imagine. Ok, we are the "gun people (GPstan)", and we want to - what?
Follow us, give your lives and your sons for GPstan and you will - have the right to own a gun?
How many followers could they gather?
In reality, those things have great inertia, thus there will probably be some process of making it more difficult to get the guns. Or there will be some option to give the gun voluntarily.
The people who advocate the "we need our guns because gumbint" overlook the fact the people they would be fighting are their friends and neighbours, not some faceless "government".
Do they really think they could point weapons at fellow citizens (at least in great numbers)?
What would precipitate such a conflict? Do they think the army would just follow unlawful orders?
Would take something hugely disruptive ...
I don't think that the military, had this come up, would actually need to use lethal force. There are many non-lethal alternatives that the US military has been researching, or non-lethal alternative research opportunities being funded by the US military through the DARPA program,. But I agree that they overlook whom they would be fighting.
Good point, though that would mean mass-incarceration which means they would also have friends and neighbours and prison guards!