Success without air assets

[remnant]

I have followed many wars and battles in different areas of the world where insurgents or rebel forces mount successful military campaigns in spite of massive bombardment from the air as well as as from the ground. In other circumstances, missiles are launched from the sea yet these insurgencies manage to retain their integrity and conventional capabilities to hold territory and launch offensives. A case of brilliant strategy or coordination?

 

[vash]

Or rather, the news of bombardment against them were not true. There are so many different militia groups in each conflict zone. Each of them is backed by a different foreign force. So when one foreign military claim they had successfully launched air strike against a militia group, it might not be the same one that is gaining on the ground.

Then again, most of these militia groups do not have uniforms. Once throw down the weapon, they can easily fit into the civilian crowd. It is hard to chase them down.

 

[John Snort]

There could be a reason why airplanes or drones might not be used in a conflict or used ineffectively as the allied coalition bombing of ISIS proved to be. In any case unlike in the past when it was easy to get away with bombing militias and civilians right now it's much harder because the international community won't like it.

When it's hard to target militias only, air raids and strategic bombings have to be ruled out.

 

[vash]

Actually success without air assets had been done in the past on a much larger scale.

I just thought about it. In Chinese Civil War (1945~1949), the Chinese communists had 0 air force, and 0 navy. All they had were infantry. They had only 900,000 regulars and about 3 million militias in 1945. The Chinese nationalist party (KMT) actually had more than 3~4 million regular troops with much better weaponry, and they had both air force and navy. Somehow the Chinese communists won the civil war and took over entire China in just 4 years. Although by the time they took over the mainland from the old regime (old regime Republic of China is still holding onto Taiwan), some of the navy and air force switched sides. At the beginning, they were completely outnumbered, outgunned, and were constantly bombarded from the air and sea. Weird, how they won the war, isn't it?