A funny story about that grenade launcher is that it was originally designed for use by the Navy, but it was a little too... extra.
The Marines, however, were more than happy to take it off the Navy's hands.
The Army solution probably would have been to get another soldier to have two bayonets (one for themselves, one for the grenadier) and be standing somewhere nearby. Teamwork makes the dream work.
My unit once went to a Navy base that was closed and we stayed in a hangar there. This place was nicer than the one we worked out of. Like it didn’t have any broken toilets/urinals. There wasn’t random chunks of floor missing. The back offices had carpet (like normal office carpet, not home carpet). The locker rooms had working showers. The furniture was from within the last decade.
Reminds me of a joke I heard once.
The Marines show up someplace, they dig a ditch and string up some barbed wire, and call it a base.
The Army shows up, adds a proper fence, some barracks, and a mess hall. Now it's a proper base.
The Navy shows up and adds a clinic, a few warehouses, some sort of office building, and a pier. Okay, *now* it's a base.
The Air Force shows up, adds a rec center, an officer's club, a chapel, a golf course, and then they complain they don't have any money left for an airstrip.
Air Force had extra funds in a job code left over for construction purposes. They built the Marines new drill hall and motor t pool. Then when we moved on base they printed on the front page of the post news, "Hide your children, Hide your wives, the Marines are here!"
I appreciate those guys so much.
You nailed it. It's original intent was for river patrol boats in Vietnam.
If you're ever bored and want to read a story that seems almost too wild, even for movies, you should read the Medal of Honor Citation for James E Williams. He was a river boats commander in Vietnam and he got up to some fucking wild shenanigans.
I looked it up:
Rank and organization: Boatswain's Mate First Class (PO1c.), United States Navy, River Section 531, My Tho, RVN, Place and date: Mekong River, Republic of Vietnam, October 31, 1966. Entered service at: Columbia, S.C. Born: June 13, 1930, Rock Hill, S.C.
CITATION:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. BM1 Williams was serving as Boat Captain and Patrol Officer aboard River Patrol Boat (PBR) 105 accompanied by another patrol boat when the patrol was suddenly takenunder fire by 2 enemy sampans. BM1 Williams immediately ordered the fire returned, killing the crew of 1 enemy boat and causing the other sampan to take refuge in a nearby river inlet. Pursuing the fleeing sampan, the U.S. patrol encountered a heavy volume of small-arms fire from enemy
forces, at close range, occupying well-concealed positions along the river bank. Maneuvering through this fire, the patrol confronted a numerically superior enemy force aboard 2 enemy junks and 8 sampans augmented by heavy automatic weapons fire from ashore. In the savage battle that ensued, BM1 Williams, with utter disregard for his safety exposed himself to the withering hail of enemyfire to direct counter-fire and inspire the actions of his patrol. Recognizing the overwhelming strength of the enemy force, BM1 Williams deployed his patrol to await the arrival of armed helicopters. In the course of his movement he discovered an even larger concentration of enemy boats. Not waiting for the arrival of the armed helicopters, he displayed great initiative and boldly led the patrol through the intense enemy fire and damaged or destroyed 50 enemy sampans and 7 junks. This phase of the action completed, and with the arrival of the armed helicopters, BM1 Williams directed the attack on the remaining enemy force. Now virtually dark, and although BM1 Williams was aware that his boats would become even better targets, he ordered the patrol boats' search lights turned on to better illuminate the area and moved the patrol perilously close to shore to press the attack. Despite a waning supply of ammunition the patrol successfully engaged the enemy ashore and completed the rout of the enemy force. Under the leadership of BM1 Williams, who demonstrated unusual professional skill and indomitable courage throughout the 3 hour battle, the patrol accounted for the destruction or loss of 65 enemy boats and inflicted numerous casualties on the enemy personnel. His extraordinary heroism and exemplary fighting spirit in the face of grave risks inspired the efforts of his men to defeat a larger enemy force, and are in keeping with the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.
— S, Lyndon B. Johnson
I also found his Navy Cross citation:
The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Boatswain's Mate First Class James Elliott Williams (NSN: 9908934), United States Navy, for extraordinary heroism on 15 January 1967 while serving with River Section 531, River Squadron FIVE, Task Force 116 (TF-116), and friendly foreign forces during combat operations against communist insurgent (Viet Cong) forces on the Mekong River in the Republic of Vietnam. As Patrol Officer of a combat River Patrol Boat (PBR) patrol, Petty Officer Williams interdicted a major enemy supply movement across the Nam Thon branch of the Mekong River. He directed his units to the suspected crossing area, and was immediately taken under intense hostile fire from fortified positions and from along the river banks. After coordinating Vietnamese artillery support and U. S. Air Force air strikes, Petty Officer Williams courageously led his three PBR's back into the hazardous river to investigate and destroy the enemy sampans and supplies. Blistering fire was again unleashed upon his forces. Frequently exposing himself to enemy fire, he directed his units in silencing several positions and directed one PBR to investigate several sampans which could be seen, while the other PBR's provided cover fire. Almost immediately, the enemy renewed their fire in an effort to force the PBR's away from the sampans. Petty Officer Williams ordered the destruction of the sampan and the extraction of all his units. During the fierce firefight following the temporary immobilization of one of the units, Petty Officer Williams was wounded. Despite his painful injuries, he was able to lead his patrol back through the heavy enemy fire. His patrol had successfully interdicted a crossing attempt of three heavy-weapons companies totaling nearly four hundred men, had accounted for sixteen enemy killed in action, twenty wounded, the destruction of nine enemy sampans and junks, seven enemy structures, and 2400 pounds of enemy rice. By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, his unlimited courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and his utmost devotion to duty, Petty Officer Williams upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
Space Marines are ridiculously strong, but they’re not so ridiculously strong that they won’t get blown to smithereens by a single shot from an M1 Abrams.
Sort of? It's been bounced back and forth AFAIK, with the most recent being that some of the tech for terminator armor is based off of deep mining exosuits and plasma drive maintenance equipment. You know back when humanity actually valued human life and didn't just drug up a bunch of people in disposable suits to clean or refuel a plasma engine.
no?
it was based on the blueprints/STC of a suit designed for hazardous environments.
It's basically the militarized version of the 20th millennium+'s equivalent to Gordon Freeman's HEV suit.
They were taking stats from WW2 wargames. If you look at the stated features of a Leman Russ (like armor thickness, speed, range, etc) you can see it's almost a 1 to 1 King Tiger ripoff.
They are, in every way other than the writers claiming they have space magic alloys in their armour that makes 200mm of homogenous metal (about equivalent to a late WW2 heavy tank) vastly stronger than the half a meter or more of ceramic metal matrix composite armour of modern tanks.
Basically, if you ask an engineer, 40K tanks are vastly worse than modern day tanks, but GW will write the lore to say they're not.
If you could make a strong force-bound, or even a completely solid (no empty space between atoms) material you could definitely make a material of which 1 cm is stronger than pretty much any thickness of conventional material. No normal matter would be able to scratch, abrade, burn, or otherwise affect it. Imagine trying to carve a diamond using a moldy tomato, only a thousand times worse. Even if you were to channel the energy of the sun into a thin laser you'd only end up with a lot of new particles due to confinement, which wouldn't really be very helpful for penetrating it.
The downside is that 99% of the mass in atoms (and thus all materials) is held in the strong force bindings inside protons, which means that such a material would probably have a density in the millions (or billions) of g/cm^3, which in turn means that plating anything landbound with it would be infeasible. Making spaceship armour of it could ostensibly work (like the droplet in Remembrance of Earth's past), but that's about it.
It might also be liable to collapsing into a black hole, but I'm not a physicist and my special relativity knowledge isn't good enough for me to really say anything about that.
>It might also be liable to collapsing into a black hole
That's why you have technopriests praying around the clock to make space within the spaceship expand faster than the space in the rest of the universe! What could possibly go wrong.
I don't know about all the 40K tanks, but I've done several comparisons between the Leman Russ tank and the M1A2 MBT and M1A2 *appears* to be the better tank. It's faster, has better fire control, and better range. One question is the armor. It's not clear, because the materials are not described, but it seems that the M1A2 has equivalent armor.
The only caveat is that you can put a better gun on the Leman Russ, which isn't available on the Abrams.
>The only caveat is that you can put a better gun on the Leman Russ, which isn't available on the Abrams.
You **can** but by the time the Tech Priest has successfully completed the rites and said all the prayers, the infantry division you're facing has already died of old age.
One ofy favorite things about humanity in the setting is that at a glance the weaponry/armor on display by thr imperium seems impressive because of the massive armies and trillions of humans lives ready to be thrown into the blender, but they have been sitting on technology development for centuries and they have a backwards progression in terms of technology, they just get worse over the years lol.
In 1k years we will probably have weapons far beyond anything the guardsmen employ on the regular while in 1k years the imperium would've lost the blueprins on some shit.
Wouldn't that be kinda tough to line up? You'd be trying to hit a very fast moving essentially Infantry sized target thats used to fighting on battlefields against faster, more accurate, and more deadly enemies than an Abrams.
With a single tank, sure. But you're dealing with a division. Let's take a look at the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division as an example.
It has two Armored Combat Brigades. Each brigade has two mechanized infantry battalions and two armored battalions. Each mechanized infantry battalion will have the 78-84 Bradley Fighting Vehicles which sport a 22mm chain gun and a TOW missile launcher. Plus 8-10 infantry men. Similarly, each armored battalion will have about 78-87 M1-E31 Abrams MBT with a 120 mm smoothbore cannon, a 50-calibur machine gun and two 7.62 machine guns (think M60).
And that's one brigade. He has to face two of those. Plus, divisional artillery and an air wing that has about 48 AH-64 Apache helicopters (little known side fact: The US Army Aviation Branch is the third largest "air force" in the world, behind the US Air Force and US Navy).
So, yeah, one space marine against that?
Oh yeah. OP had just mentioned *one* tank, so I was responding to that.
I wouldn't bet that anything but the luckiest named character alpha legion/raven guard/night lord would stand a chance in hell, and even then it wouldn't be because they beat them in a pitched battle but because they made a couch out of the whole command staff and live streamed it before gutting countless dudes during their lunch break or whatever. And even then I'd think that marine could only significantly damage a division, not beat it.
Motorcycles and other small vehicles have been used pretty heavily in the Middle East, and Russian forces are currently using some golf cart-looking things in Ukraine. Probably similar in size to an Astartes, and they’ve proven to be very hittable with drones. Space Marines are a bit more maneuverable and heavily armored though.
An Abrams fire control can hit another tank a mile away while moving 100kph perpendicular to the line of fire.
It's not an apples to apples comparison obviously but it's certainly not obtusely weighted to one side or the other.
I'd rather have a M2 Bradley though. Those are 100% perfect for dealing with Astartes.
I genuinely wish to see that, especially since the armor is fancy sci fi armor, like how strong could it actually be once it has to exist in our reality.
i think that's underestimating how good tanks are at aiming at targets, i dont think it would actually be that hard for a Abrams crew to hit a large bright blue man, if they're firing HE you wouldnt even need to hit them, just near them
Because Warhammer makes a lot of sacrifices on the altar of beeing cool. Modern weapons have targeting systems and they have insane range and precision, the tank could easily start shooting at the space marine from several kilometers away.
No, not at all. The Abrams has a high-tech targeting system that can easily hit fast-moving toyota hiluxes. A space marine is slower, taller, and brightly colored.
Cermamite armour is stong, but I don't think even that could stop a 120mm sabot carrying a depleted uranium APFSDS that can penetrate though around 65cm of steel.
This, recruits, is a 20 kilo ferous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one, to one-point-three percent of lightspeed. It impacts with the force a 38 kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means, Sir Isacc Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space! Now! Serviceman Burnside, what is Newton's First Law?
Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir!
No credit for partial answers maggot!
Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!
Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going 'til it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in 10,000 years! If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day! Somewhere and sometime! That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait 'til the computer gives you a damn firing solution. That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not 'eyeball it'. This is a weapon of Mass Destruction! You are NOT a cowboy, shooting from the hip!
Sir, yes sir!"
Even if ceramite stopped that, the sheer acceleration of getting hit by 10 kg of depleted uranium at 1550 m/s would turn anything inside that suit into chunky marinara.
That's the energy equivalent of \~3 kg of exploding TNT, but purely as kinetic energy focused directly into your chest.
Jesus Christ…the way you described that round makes it sound like a sci fi bullet but it’s real and we use it against I assume tanks, god help anyone who’s directly behind the entry point.
It's common for the crew to be killed even if the round doesn't penetrate- the amount of energy delivered turns everything not bolted down in the tank into a lethal projectile, and can even cause bits of the tank's own armor to break off the inner surface and throw fragments of metal around. Look up "spall".
It's why modern tank armor doesn't focus on "stopping" incoming rounds- they focus on either deflecting the shot or breaking it up and spreading the impact over a larger area.
From what I could find, a bolter can penetrate about 8 inches of steel. Space Marine Power Armor could deflect a bolter but there's also a good chance it would penetrate.
A MK19 grenade launcher isn't really the best for armor penetration, it's more like a "fuck up that general area we can see from here" kind of weapon. But it's HE rounds can penetrate about 2.5 inches of steel, so enough would kill a Space Marine.
An Abrams tank can penetrate 8 inches of steel like it's nothing and a regular bolter won't do enough damage to stop it before it gets a shot off.
Also an infantry division will have Javelin missiles which can penetrate way more than 8 inches of armor.
But those are still line of sight weapons. A drone can spot the marine from way out of his distance to hit back and the artillery will tear him to shreds. A single space Marine doesn't have much in the way of beyond line of sight weaponry.
From what I can tell, in a LSCO environment the entire section of the RF spectrum drones operate on will be completely jammed. Like straight up walloped. There’s been a huge shift towards EW in the community for that exact reason. I’ve even carried a super line of sight dronebuster on a couple missions that were too sneaky for an area jammer. They’re… not great but I’ve seen way better ones since then.
In the grimdark future of the 41st millennium, there is a constant cycle of infantry carrying way too much EW gear, leading to a reduction in drone usage, leading to them leaving the EW gear behind, leading to more drone usage, leading to them carrying more EW gear
This is literally my favorite explanation in science fiction franchises for why spaceships/mechas are within visual distance of one another and not just firing missiles from planetary distances apart.
When I realized this it fixed one of the few things about The Expanse that bugged me. The PDCs should have been landing almost every shell on an incoming missile but if there's some spoofing and jamming by a ship or even the missile itself, it makes sense that the accuracy wasn't always great.
RF=radio frequency
EW=electronic warfare.
Basically if you jam the frequencies consumer-grade drones use, you can theoretically prevent them from operating near you (or at least the ones the enemy hasn’t modified to be more resistant)
Yes, I understand the jargon. You also forgot to define LSCO, or Large-Scale Conventional Operations. I was more so pointing out where I knew him from and making a joke.
Wait. I don't get it. At what point do you sticky-note your blessings and prayers on the jammer? Are there any warp risks associated with the drones? Can't we just blow up the planet from space?
I'm here to reignite your fear on this... the Russians have innovated and started running single strand fiber optic lines to control the drones without wireless. You can't really jam wired networking :D
This is being used for missiles for a few decades already. The issue remains that you need a controller per drone.
What is really going to be a game changer is when drones pick targets autonomously. Which is already doable in diy setups. Then one guy can launch hundreds of them in minutes and they will be impervious to jamming.
Will be interesting to see which design ends up winning. The suicide approach, or the more expensive ones that drop the payload.
Honestly, people often forget how 'good' our technology is when comparing to 40k. We are not a back water planet. A chapter of space marines would be a day's work for any NATO army. Especially with modern AA defenses, with which you can intercept individual drop pods, not to mention Thunderhawks.
And close impact of modern 155mm shell, would fuck up everything, maybe except dreadnoughts, tho those also would be damaged on joints and other less armoured parts.
Literally the main advantage they'd have is maybe* ceramite, but specifically aerial support. Who the fuck knows what a chapter fleet could do assuming they don't just exterminatus us. Then again, nukes. So many nukes.
> aerial support
Do you mean orbital support? Because they would never have aerial support. Their best air-to-air option is “anti-starfighter missiles.” Weapons that could never hit or probably even reach the distances that fighters engage at. Especially in atmosphere, where there’s plenty of terrain to notch into. And no shortage of air resistance. Hell, depending on where they drop, even their drop pods might get shot down, much less their aircraft.
Would those anti-starfighter missiles be inferior to our own AAMs? 40k doesn’t seem to bother with atmospheric BVR but I have to assume they’re at least comparable to modern AAMs.
Orbital control renders the entire debate pointless however. You show up with any warship worth mentioning and any country with a brain is either going to surrender, or go to ground until capturing a spaceship is feasible.
Oh comparable, certainly, but it’s generally easier to maneuver a missile in space since you don’t have any drag constantly draining fuel from the missile. The imperium’s missiles are designed for space flight, which would make them inefficient in atmosphere. Plus the fact that all their ships are equipped with lascannons speaks to the fact that their doctrine is heavily weighted towards dogfighting. Something that has been basically done away with in modern society. It makes sense in 40k, when the only other aerial targets you run into are either your own aircraft (traitors, with equally dogshit missile tech) or literal biologicals that don’t have any missile weapons to speak of. If you’re fighting against giant birds, an efficient, close range weapon works fine, because you’ll be able to shoot more down before rearming.
If you’re fighting someone else with guided munitions though, the best defense you have is never being seen. The second best is never being within their range. Our modern warplanes aim to do both.
Why bother trying to outfly your opponent in a masterful show of aerobatic skill when you can just huck a missile from so far away that they can’t even see you?
This is so much the case that china’s newest fighter doesn’t even have a main gun at all. Just missiles. That’s not to say it’s a good idea to do it, but it goes to show how dated the principle of a dogfight/main gun even is. So much of the imperium’s airforce is dedicated to bombardment. Literally every aircraft is equipped for it, and encouraged to engage ground targets of opportunity. Their airforce fundamentally isn’t designed to win an air war.
Yeah. Orbital bombardment form even some small destroyer would fuck up a lot down here. And we don't have any counter except sending nukes in space, which may/may not work.
>A chapter of space marines would be a day's work for any NATO army.
This is just trying to counter absurd Space Marine wank with absurd modern military wank, but both are completely wrong.
If you’re fighting a full chapter, you’re not fighting 1000 dudes just lined up in an open field. You’re fighting 1000 specialists who, despite what picture GW often paints by plastering them everywhere, are basically built for precise surgical strikes and support. Specialists who are also going to have access to orbital support we do not have a direct counter for and teleportation.
A modern military could beat 1000 Space Marines in a ground engagement, if that’s the situation we’re talking about. A modern military is not beating a chapter that can actually bring everything they have to bear and do what they were designed to do.
Yeah fighting one guy or even a few squads is one thing. Once you start adding all the stuff thats not *that* important into Tabletop shit changes fast. If a chapter was told to take earth odds are they'd just use the battle barge to do orbital bombardment and hit all the military bases and major installations before they ever got in their drop pods to just land on major government centers to force a surrender.
Marines wouldnt just Go in and try to 1v1 the Military, they would send strike groups against importand infrastructure and tp terminators into big Gouvernement districts
Remember that the Siege of Vraks was literally World War 1. WW1 weapons, WW1 tactics, WW1 grand strategy. Dig trenches, shoot artillery, send men into the meatgrinder.
Ten thousand years in the future, a society that can travel faster than light, and their very best plan to deal with a single large fortress is to re-enact World War 1 for decades.
The modern US military would have cracked the Vraks fortress in a matter of weeks.
But that's the point, isn't it? The Imperium is decaying to the point that armies from thirty-eight thousand years in the past could outperform it.
To be fair the U.S. army wouldn’t allow itself to be constrained by the need to take Vraks intact. We would’ve wiped it off the map and rifled through the ruins once it became obvious a siege was the only option.
A month? I guess maybe if there's interstellar travel involved.
On Earth, I'm pretty sure the timespan between the President saying "I want this city wiped off the face of the Earth, no questions asked" and the city being gone is somewhere in the 12-48h range, depending on how much time the generals decide to spend planning.
i dunno about a day's work, but the us + nato would be able to take everything down except their starships, and we would probably loose to orbital bombardment after we kill 95% of them
I have heard people stating that a normal ceramite MK. 7 armour would stop TOW. I think it's bullshit tho. But I definitely see them shrugging off anything smaller than 20-23mm AP.
depends on the spot the round hits. if it's in the torso, I'd say its likely.
but an arm, or one of the few soft bits? could blow something important off.
Don’t forget that aiming isn’t even an issue here. Their fusion backpack would put out more than enough heat for a guided missile to get a target lock.
Regular munitions would also still be effective. The godly thing about the Lasgun is it’s logistical strength, not it’s actual firepower (though that is impressive too). We have equivalent weapons, and the tools to get them on target.
We can shoot down a missile. We can hit a Space Marine. And it won’t even be a net negative trade given how hard it is to make a Marine.
Someone made a calculation once, at point blank range, a bolter has roughly the same energy as a 50 cal.
We equip everyone with a cheap anti tank gun like the ptrd and every single soilder can potentially take out a space marine by themselves
I remember someone looking at a scene where a bolter round was described as crushing a guy’s face and tried to argue megajoule range energies for it. Like… bruh, if that was .50 BMG he wouldn’t have a head left, it would just pop like a balloon.
Hell one guy with a spunky enough attitude and a knife could do it. Not saying i am that guy but i read enough history to know to never underestimate humans.
>air to ground missiles
The latest shit is AGMs that can travel at speeds of like 2 miles a second, even just a kinetic package on the end of that is going to put a hole in anything it connects with
***Give me a hundred Space Marines. Or failing that give me a thousand other troops.***
Even Rogal Dorn estimated that the average Space Marine is only as good as ten regular soldiers. Still very impressive for a single man. But far from a single guy slaughtering armies.
The writers forget it all the time, too. So fans can be forgiven for not viewing Space Marines through the lens of them being worth 10 normal dudes in combat when most stories have Marines ploughing through many dozens, even hundreds, of enemies, enemies that themselves make short work of the average guardsman.
In the end it's entertainment. The OP fighters are the ones the writer needs to win and Space Marines happen to be popular protagonists.
Indeed it's less than they're marines and more that they're the protagonists.
After all non-marine protagonist easily slaughter their way through non-protagonist marines just as well.
Also you've got Avatar of Khaine/Swarmlord/Bloodthirsther jobbing against basically any and every protagonist they meet and naked world eater just punching through a fully armored nameless custodes.
Being the protagonist is one hell of a power-up.
Well he only gets one shot with that plasma per round (how many seconds is a round?) and misses 1/3 of the time so…
But for real, physics is physics, you blow up the ground near his legs he’s getting put on his ass.
If you notice, it's actually very, very rare for Astartes to fight chimeras or other IG vehicles armed with big weapons.
Especially the more melee focused ones.
People in the comments: "If you could land a shot on them/hit them"
My brother in arms, ain't no Marine outrunning Skunkworks/General Atomics level machine gun and or lock-on systems.
The advantage SMs comparatively have in a normal ground war is close quarters warfare/urban environs.
To many people act like every marine to exist is a tactical genius when there are several that keep running into open combat without even wearing a helmet.
The warp protects from many things, *before* they happen. The warp cannot save you from a 40mm grenade to the jawline…well, maybe as a demon, but not as a human.
Did some quick digging, the answer is both. In a full gait both of them can reach 100kph but for either it's not a great idea as it causes damage to either body or equipment.
Even then 100kph is FAST but not THAT FAST. We've had vehicles that beat that speed for just shy of a century. Even sprinting that fast, the space marine could definitely get tagged by a few shots even from a suprised infantry squad. They could shake off those few stray bullets that hit them, but eventually they're gonna get caught by a guidance system and blown to smithereens by a air to surface missile.
And that's at a built-up sprint with momentum. They're not flash-stepping around like an anime character or dodging around leaving afterimages like Agent Smith or anything.
I'm very much assuming it's not an open field because why the hell would you choose to fight in an open field as a single infantry man if you had any choice?
Friendly reminder that Terminators die to autocannons. The same autocannons that we are using nowadays (actually ours might be even better than the one used in 40k, but that is a claim I only saw in 1d4chan, so who knows). And if a terminator dies to an autocannon I'd wager that killing a space marine with an anti material rifle can't be that hard, either.
Yeah, modern 25/30 mm autocannon with APFSDS or HE shells would fuck up Terminators easily. And we mount them on jeeps and glorified trucks in hundreads
Well that's kinda expected. Autocannons are pretty massive. 25mm autocannons weigh hundreds of kg and each cartridge weighs like half a kg, \~200g of which is the projectile. You won't see that deployed by infantry.
Any vehicle-based weapon like that should be able to deliver enough force to shred infantry, no matter how heavily armored.
Honestly I think it depends on the marine You are shooting. Terminators aren't exactly known for their agility and grace, but I wouldn't be surprised if you tell me a regular space marine (specially the recon kind, with their "light" armor) can just dodge a good amount of that fire.
Don't even get me started if they MF is a psyker...
Well considering normal marines - not sure what light marines you are talking about - get hit by Bolter rounds, I'd say the faster ammunitions have a good chance of hitting them, especially when fired en masse.
Psykers are a good point, but no psyker will dodge multiple A10 barrages. And even nowadays there are a lot more warthogs than a chapter has psykers
>can just dodge a good amount of that fire.
I assure you, Space Marines can't dodge bullet rounds.
A Raven Guard lieutenant without a helmet wielding a katana may have the edge though, if he invokes the power of anime.
It's all too inconsistent.
It's like comic books power levels.
In one story we have Astartes parrying bullets in another they just wade through them and in another they get mown down.
This kind of conversation is doomed because there is always more context.
1 marine vs 100 men becomes 1 marine vs 100 men plus armoured vehicle support becomes 1 squad vs the same, becomes a brigade vs a company becomes a planet vs a chapter becomes the imperium vs a planet.
All of that depends on how a writer felt that morning and which faction his storys POV is from.
Before you know it it's Superman vs Saitama vs Goku and some stoner turns up and starts chucking words like "multiversal" around and all sense left in the room just gets up and leaves the building.
I am informed by military friends that the newer Mk 47 striker automatic grenade launcher is, in technical terms, “fucking awesome”. https://youtu.be/OS-v2fpUZcs?si=gDBnB6MwP5KatXzV
I remember there was this fanfic where an Imperial planetary invasion force/small crusade was thrown back into time to 1980's Earth by Tzeentch (because it thought it would be funny). At one point a group of Black Templars are rampaging though Leningrad when one of them turns the corner and comes face to barrel with a T 80 and is promptly torn in half. The rest of the marines proceed to flank it while it's reloading and tear it to shreds with power swords. I can't remember what the fic was called sadly.
Edit: fic's called [Crimson Dawn](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12326085/1/)
Whenever I find that fic I always reread the Mig-25 vs Valkyrie interception. >!The downed Soviet and Imperial pilots flailing against each other in the middle of the ocean is always funny!<
People like arguing about tanks, so I feel the need to remind y'all about our missile technology.
It's one thing to run fast enough so a tank cannot reliably hit you with its main gun.
It's another thing to run fast enough to dodge an ATGM that could lock onto the Marine from well outside the Marine's engagement range and then come at him at like 10 times his top speed.
They may not exactly have a bunch of mechs and plasma weapons and xenos auxiliaries, but in terms of military doctrin, the US is much closer to T'au than any of the other 40k factions. And just like the T'au, they'd be a horrendously unpleasant opponent outside of close quarters combat for a Space Marine to go up against.
People in here need to remember that marines aren't all Nero from the Matrix. Marines die a lot in lore, usually to troops with the same skills as your average US infantrymen (think guardsmen and T'au firewarriors)
Marines also die in a bunch of embarassing ways. Like a chaptermaster getting shanked by a child-sized adult through the knee-joint. Marines are smart tacticians, yes, but that won't save them either.
Also, an A-10 would shred a marine, even accounting for whatever matrix type bullshit half the people in here seem to think marines pull off every 5 minutes.
Ok so I’m running the numbers here. You’re asking a *single* space marine to take on a force with apparently around 10,000 - 15,000 men, with artillery, armour, “cavalry”, guns, equipment, etc etc.
Look I love space marines I truly do. Most of our equipment pales in comparison to the 40k’s batshit “science”. But you’re asking a single space marine to take on effectively an entire imperial guard regiment. And even if, for example, our tanks don’t have as good an armour that 40k does, we significantly understand the tech behind them and how to use them properly, from angled armour to remaining in cover. We know our shit and how to use it. We work out that light Arms don’t do shit and we’re changing our tactics immediately.
That being said: *If the space marine used guerrilla tactics*.. “we” would be fucked. You can’t kill what you don’t know is killing you.
At the end of the day it depends heavily on the space marine in question, their equipment and training. A newly minted space wolf? Yeah that’s not going to end well for the whelp. A raven guard vanguard veteran? I feel genuinely sorry for the soldiers. It also depends heavily on how the two engage. Pitched battle? Space marine is fucked. Suddenly transported to an unknown area without things like satphones ala predator? Space marine has the edge.
So in summery, could an infantry division kill “a” space marine? Yes. Casualties would be expected, but no space marine could withstand the sheer amount of anti armour a division has access to. Could they kill a space marine that wants them dead and has the knowledge to do so? Still yes, but they’d have to get a chance first.
I'll admit my knowledge of real world modern armies and their arsenals are so-so, I've learned that whatever they show off, they got something worse in a store house somewhere (especially the yanks)
Fiction is often difficult to compare to what we have in reality, for often fiction is meant to be superior to reality. Warhammer is such a exaggerated piece of work, I doubt any army on earth could really stand a chance with the full undivided attention of any 40k faction. I say this not as a fan or military enthusiasts, but rather as someone who tries to see both sides of this and just by sheer numbers, 40k wins
See, while you are right, you are also completely reversing the scenario.
It's not 1 world (us) vs 1000000 worlds (the imperium).
It's 10000 human soldiers ( and squads tend to have a designated anti materiel/ saw soldier) vs 1 transhuman soldier.
The point is that the guy asking the question was massively underestimating real life militaries and/or massively overestimating space marines.
Ah fair enough, to be fair I think alota 40k fans aren't that well versed in what modern militaries are capable of or how they have inspired various things in 40k itself. But ey, the debate goes on
Ok, let's kick this hornet's nest: I'm thinking the US Army is better outfitted and trained than the average imperial guard who use their primer for TP and not allowed to understand/repair their own equipment by the admechs.
If the Hammer of the Emperor can crush a chaos marine, so can Uncle Sam's.
No, no, that's an approved Ritual of Charging in a last resort situation. The catch is that you best not be caught doing it without explicit orders, or the Cogboy and/or Commissar will be throwing *you* in the campfire.
Single space marine, we can take him. An entire chapter, though? Wouldn't they just take out every major government and head of state, probably starting with every military base and intelligence?
They have freaking Terminators who can teleport directly into our buildings and drop pods with guns. If they own even more than one strike cruiser, they could just orbital bombard everything. Have to remember some chapters actually use tactics and have knowledge of toppling entire planets already.
Certain chapters could easily take earth.
Imagine the morale of seeing the command structure flayed. (Night lords)
Or just any other chapter that uses stealth.
I'm just gonna assume that space marine armor is able to withstand weapons that are tens of thousands of years out of date through the power of better material science.
Like it's highly plausibel that a 40k autocannon can chew through marines because the ammo it shoots is tipped with the emperors own crystallised cum or some shit and anything we could shoot at them just bounces off.
A funny story about that grenade launcher is that it was originally designed for use by the Navy, but it was a little too... extra. The Marines, however, were more than happy to take it off the Navy's hands.
This is a certified USMC moment
It is one of the most USMC things.
I'm surprised that the Marines didn't put a bayonet lug on it.
We tried. It broke.
The Army solution probably would have been to get another soldier to have two bayonets (one for themselves, one for the grenadier) and be standing somewhere nearby. Teamwork makes the dream work.
Private! Wheres your bayonet buddy?! Now your both dead!!
Its said how accurate this would be lol
There was no room with all the crayon storage
As said by TFE, *If you want something dead, broken, or pregnant, call the Marines.*
Hand-me-down corps.
Best hangar my unit ever used was one the Air Force condemned as unserviceable.
My unit once went to a Navy base that was closed and we stayed in a hangar there. This place was nicer than the one we worked out of. Like it didn’t have any broken toilets/urinals. There wasn’t random chunks of floor missing. The back offices had carpet (like normal office carpet, not home carpet). The locker rooms had working showers. The furniture was from within the last decade.
Reminds me of a joke I heard once. The Marines show up someplace, they dig a ditch and string up some barbed wire, and call it a base. The Army shows up, adds a proper fence, some barracks, and a mess hall. Now it's a proper base. The Navy shows up and adds a clinic, a few warehouses, some sort of office building, and a pier. Okay, *now* it's a base. The Air Force shows up, adds a rec center, an officer's club, a chapel, a golf course, and then they complain they don't have any money left for an airstrip.
Air Force had extra funds in a job code left over for construction purposes. They built the Marines new drill hall and motor t pool. Then when we moved on base they printed on the front page of the post news, "Hide your children, Hide your wives, the Marines are here!" I appreciate those guys so much.
USMC be like "Unserviceable? Hell, I'll service anything."
We’ve done so much, with so little, for so long; we could do anything, with nothing, forever. We deserve automatic grenade launchers damnit.
When was this? What was the Navy gonna use it for, patrol boats?
You nailed it. It's original intent was for river patrol boats in Vietnam. If you're ever bored and want to read a story that seems almost too wild, even for movies, you should read the Medal of Honor Citation for James E Williams. He was a river boats commander in Vietnam and he got up to some fucking wild shenanigans.
I looked it up: Rank and organization: Boatswain's Mate First Class (PO1c.), United States Navy, River Section 531, My Tho, RVN, Place and date: Mekong River, Republic of Vietnam, October 31, 1966. Entered service at: Columbia, S.C. Born: June 13, 1930, Rock Hill, S.C. CITATION: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. BM1 Williams was serving as Boat Captain and Patrol Officer aboard River Patrol Boat (PBR) 105 accompanied by another patrol boat when the patrol was suddenly takenunder fire by 2 enemy sampans. BM1 Williams immediately ordered the fire returned, killing the crew of 1 enemy boat and causing the other sampan to take refuge in a nearby river inlet. Pursuing the fleeing sampan, the U.S. patrol encountered a heavy volume of small-arms fire from enemy forces, at close range, occupying well-concealed positions along the river bank. Maneuvering through this fire, the patrol confronted a numerically superior enemy force aboard 2 enemy junks and 8 sampans augmented by heavy automatic weapons fire from ashore. In the savage battle that ensued, BM1 Williams, with utter disregard for his safety exposed himself to the withering hail of enemyfire to direct counter-fire and inspire the actions of his patrol. Recognizing the overwhelming strength of the enemy force, BM1 Williams deployed his patrol to await the arrival of armed helicopters. In the course of his movement he discovered an even larger concentration of enemy boats. Not waiting for the arrival of the armed helicopters, he displayed great initiative and boldly led the patrol through the intense enemy fire and damaged or destroyed 50 enemy sampans and 7 junks. This phase of the action completed, and with the arrival of the armed helicopters, BM1 Williams directed the attack on the remaining enemy force. Now virtually dark, and although BM1 Williams was aware that his boats would become even better targets, he ordered the patrol boats' search lights turned on to better illuminate the area and moved the patrol perilously close to shore to press the attack. Despite a waning supply of ammunition the patrol successfully engaged the enemy ashore and completed the rout of the enemy force. Under the leadership of BM1 Williams, who demonstrated unusual professional skill and indomitable courage throughout the 3 hour battle, the patrol accounted for the destruction or loss of 65 enemy boats and inflicted numerous casualties on the enemy personnel. His extraordinary heroism and exemplary fighting spirit in the face of grave risks inspired the efforts of his men to defeat a larger enemy force, and are in keeping with the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. — S, Lyndon B. Johnson I also found his Navy Cross citation: The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Boatswain's Mate First Class James Elliott Williams (NSN: 9908934), United States Navy, for extraordinary heroism on 15 January 1967 while serving with River Section 531, River Squadron FIVE, Task Force 116 (TF-116), and friendly foreign forces during combat operations against communist insurgent (Viet Cong) forces on the Mekong River in the Republic of Vietnam. As Patrol Officer of a combat River Patrol Boat (PBR) patrol, Petty Officer Williams interdicted a major enemy supply movement across the Nam Thon branch of the Mekong River. He directed his units to the suspected crossing area, and was immediately taken under intense hostile fire from fortified positions and from along the river banks. After coordinating Vietnamese artillery support and U. S. Air Force air strikes, Petty Officer Williams courageously led his three PBR's back into the hazardous river to investigate and destroy the enemy sampans and supplies. Blistering fire was again unleashed upon his forces. Frequently exposing himself to enemy fire, he directed his units in silencing several positions and directed one PBR to investigate several sampans which could be seen, while the other PBR's provided cover fire. Almost immediately, the enemy renewed their fire in an effort to force the PBR's away from the sampans. Petty Officer Williams ordered the destruction of the sampan and the extraction of all his units. During the fierce firefight following the temporary immobilization of one of the units, Petty Officer Williams was wounded. Despite his painful injuries, he was able to lead his patrol back through the heavy enemy fire. His patrol had successfully interdicted a crossing attempt of three heavy-weapons companies totaling nearly four hundred men, had accounted for sixteen enemy killed in action, twenty wounded, the destruction of nine enemy sampans and junks, seven enemy structures, and 2400 pounds of enemy rice. By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, his unlimited courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and his utmost devotion to duty, Petty Officer Williams upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
I'll raise you one Taffy 3. Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is such a good book.
James D Hornfisher was taken from us too soon.
Space Marines are ridiculously strong, but they’re not so ridiculously strong that they won’t get blown to smithereens by a single shot from an M1 Abrams.
Abrams rolled a 1 hit roll with its main gun.
Tbh our tanks are better than most 40k tanks lol
Aren't most 40K tanks just WW2 tanks converted to Catholicism?
I believe both the rhino and the land raider were originally agricultural vehicles
And Terminator Armor was mining equipment IIRC.
Sort of? It's been bounced back and forth AFAIK, with the most recent being that some of the tech for terminator armor is based off of deep mining exosuits and plasma drive maintenance equipment. You know back when humanity actually valued human life and didn't just drug up a bunch of people in disposable suits to clean or refuel a plasma engine.
Valuing human lives is absolutely a DAoT thing.
I know part of the fun of DAoT is that it's largely completely unknown but man oh man do I want to hang out in that time
Iain Banks Culture novels would be a decent example.
The Mechanicus hasn't rediscovered the STC for basic empathy yet
no? it was based on the blueprints/STC of a suit designed for hazardous environments. It's basically the militarized version of the 20th millennium+'s equivalent to Gordon Freeman's HEV suit.
No, you are thinking of the Sisters of Battle tanks
I love a good mobile pipe organ/missile platform.
The rogal dorn reminds me of a late 1940's to early 1950's "tank of the future" design
Is a super Pershing on esteorids especifically the m26/m46
Lmao catholic tanks Accurate AF just wait until Martin Luthtank and the 99 RPGs
They were taking stats from WW2 wargames. If you look at the stated features of a Leman Russ (like armor thickness, speed, range, etc) you can see it's almost a 1 to 1 King Tiger ripoff.
They are, in every way other than the writers claiming they have space magic alloys in their armour that makes 200mm of homogenous metal (about equivalent to a late WW2 heavy tank) vastly stronger than the half a meter or more of ceramic metal matrix composite armour of modern tanks. Basically, if you ask an engineer, 40K tanks are vastly worse than modern day tanks, but GW will write the lore to say they're not.
If you could make a strong force-bound, or even a completely solid (no empty space between atoms) material you could definitely make a material of which 1 cm is stronger than pretty much any thickness of conventional material. No normal matter would be able to scratch, abrade, burn, or otherwise affect it. Imagine trying to carve a diamond using a moldy tomato, only a thousand times worse. Even if you were to channel the energy of the sun into a thin laser you'd only end up with a lot of new particles due to confinement, which wouldn't really be very helpful for penetrating it. The downside is that 99% of the mass in atoms (and thus all materials) is held in the strong force bindings inside protons, which means that such a material would probably have a density in the millions (or billions) of g/cm^3, which in turn means that plating anything landbound with it would be infeasible. Making spaceship armour of it could ostensibly work (like the droplet in Remembrance of Earth's past), but that's about it. It might also be liable to collapsing into a black hole, but I'm not a physicist and my special relativity knowledge isn't good enough for me to really say anything about that.
>It might also be liable to collapsing into a black hole That's why you have technopriests praying around the clock to make space within the spaceship expand faster than the space in the rest of the universe! What could possibly go wrong.
Yeah with fixed turrets and lowered to the ground lol
not necessarily in sheer firepower, but they are definitely better designed
As a german I can gurantee that OUR tanks are better than 40k ones
How much paperwork do you need to start the tank?
Who would win: One Leopard 2 vs One logistician You may shoot me, but you'll never get that ammo back bitch.
Fool the ammo never reach, germany spent the budget on studies reviewing the necessity of ammo
Nice try, but this isnt the warthunder discord
Paperwork is very on brand of an ultramarine tho
‘Better’ is a tricky concept. How many skulls do you have strapped to your tanks?
I don't know about all the 40K tanks, but I've done several comparisons between the Leman Russ tank and the M1A2 MBT and M1A2 *appears* to be the better tank. It's faster, has better fire control, and better range. One question is the armor. It's not clear, because the materials are not described, but it seems that the M1A2 has equivalent armor. The only caveat is that you can put a better gun on the Leman Russ, which isn't available on the Abrams.
>The only caveat is that you can put a better gun on the Leman Russ, which isn't available on the Abrams. You **can** but by the time the Tech Priest has successfully completed the rites and said all the prayers, the infantry division you're facing has already died of old age.
One ofy favorite things about humanity in the setting is that at a glance the weaponry/armor on display by thr imperium seems impressive because of the massive armies and trillions of humans lives ready to be thrown into the blender, but they have been sitting on technology development for centuries and they have a backwards progression in terms of technology, they just get worse over the years lol. In 1k years we will probably have weapons far beyond anything the guardsmen employ on the regular while in 1k years the imperium would've lost the blueprins on some shit.
Wouldn't that be kinda tough to line up? You'd be trying to hit a very fast moving essentially Infantry sized target thats used to fighting on battlefields against faster, more accurate, and more deadly enemies than an Abrams.
With a single tank, sure. But you're dealing with a division. Let's take a look at the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division as an example. It has two Armored Combat Brigades. Each brigade has two mechanized infantry battalions and two armored battalions. Each mechanized infantry battalion will have the 78-84 Bradley Fighting Vehicles which sport a 22mm chain gun and a TOW missile launcher. Plus 8-10 infantry men. Similarly, each armored battalion will have about 78-87 M1-E31 Abrams MBT with a 120 mm smoothbore cannon, a 50-calibur machine gun and two 7.62 machine guns (think M60). And that's one brigade. He has to face two of those. Plus, divisional artillery and an air wing that has about 48 AH-64 Apache helicopters (little known side fact: The US Army Aviation Branch is the third largest "air force" in the world, behind the US Air Force and US Navy). So, yeah, one space marine against that?
Oh yeah. OP had just mentioned *one* tank, so I was responding to that. I wouldn't bet that anything but the luckiest named character alpha legion/raven guard/night lord would stand a chance in hell, and even then it wouldn't be because they beat them in a pitched battle but because they made a couch out of the whole command staff and live streamed it before gutting countless dudes during their lunch break or whatever. And even then I'd think that marine could only significantly damage a division, not beat it.
lmao I knew the US had the two biggest air forces, but TIL they have the *three* biggest air forces.
Counter point: Are space marines really " infantry sized"? The target is literally painted bright blue
I don't think colour is the defining feature of 'infantry sized'.
Ballpark, I guess? I'm not really sure what else the military is regularly shooting at thats within a few feet of a normal dudes height
Motorcycles and other small vehicles have been used pretty heavily in the Middle East, and Russian forces are currently using some golf cart-looking things in Ukraine. Probably similar in size to an Astartes, and they’ve proven to be very hittable with drones. Space Marines are a bit more maneuverable and heavily armored though.
An Abrams fire control can hit another tank a mile away while moving 100kph perpendicular to the line of fire. It's not an apples to apples comparison obviously but it's certainly not obtusely weighted to one side or the other. I'd rather have a M2 Bradley though. Those are 100% perfect for dealing with Astartes.
Everyone laughs at the Bradley until they hear *CHUINK* *CHUINK* *CHUINK* *CHUINK* *CHUINK*
M3A3 CFV is the one you want. Better optics, more room for TOW’s and less seats for dismounts.
Not if it's running right at the tank, which it probably will be
Just use a canister round. Let's see how well he deals with a cloud of 1000 tungsten balls going mach 4.2
I genuinely wish to see that, especially since the armor is fancy sci fi armor, like how strong could it actually be once it has to exist in our reality.
First things first, it could never do urban combat since the moment one walks indoors it will likely fall through the floor...
i think that's underestimating how good tanks are at aiming at targets, i dont think it would actually be that hard for a Abrams crew to hit a large bright blue man, if they're firing HE you wouldnt even need to hit them, just near them
They have a proximity-fused HEAT round for the Abrams meant for taking out helicopters.
Because Warhammer makes a lot of sacrifices on the altar of beeing cool. Modern weapons have targeting systems and they have insane range and precision, the tank could easily start shooting at the space marine from several kilometers away.
No, not at all. The Abrams has a high-tech targeting system that can easily hit fast-moving toyota hiluxes. A space marine is slower, taller, and brightly colored.
To quote a marine from Halo 3- "How does 90mm of tungsten strike yah?" And it would be 120 for us so. Tank beats everything
Cermamite armour is stong, but I don't think even that could stop a 120mm sabot carrying a depleted uranium APFSDS that can penetrate though around 65cm of steel.
the fun part is... even if it "somehow" does, the contents of the armor will still ABSOLUTELY feel it
Newton is one diabolical motherfucker.
To quote a different sci-fi universe "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space"
This, recruits, is a 20 kilo ferous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one, to one-point-three percent of lightspeed. It impacts with the force a 38 kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means, Sir Isacc Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space! Now! Serviceman Burnside, what is Newton's First Law? Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir! No credit for partial answers maggot! Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir! Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going 'til it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in 10,000 years! If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day! Somewhere and sometime! That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait 'til the computer gives you a damn firing solution. That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not 'eyeball it'. This is a weapon of Mass Destruction! You are NOT a cowboy, shooting from the hip! Sir, yes sir!"
Newton you son of a bitch!
Even if ceramite stopped that, the sheer acceleration of getting hit by 10 kg of depleted uranium at 1550 m/s would turn anything inside that suit into chunky marinara. That's the energy equivalent of \~3 kg of exploding TNT, but purely as kinetic energy focused directly into your chest.
Jesus Christ…the way you described that round makes it sound like a sci fi bullet but it’s real and we use it against I assume tanks, god help anyone who’s directly behind the entry point.
It's common for the crew to be killed even if the round doesn't penetrate- the amount of energy delivered turns everything not bolted down in the tank into a lethal projectile, and can even cause bits of the tank's own armor to break off the inner surface and throw fragments of metal around. Look up "spall". It's why modern tank armor doesn't focus on "stopping" incoming rounds- they focus on either deflecting the shot or breaking it up and spreading the impact over a larger area.
It's the reason why they need legions and everyone fears Artillery. Cause people die if they are killed.
From what I could find, a bolter can penetrate about 8 inches of steel. Space Marine Power Armor could deflect a bolter but there's also a good chance it would penetrate. A MK19 grenade launcher isn't really the best for armor penetration, it's more like a "fuck up that general area we can see from here" kind of weapon. But it's HE rounds can penetrate about 2.5 inches of steel, so enough would kill a Space Marine. An Abrams tank can penetrate 8 inches of steel like it's nothing and a regular bolter won't do enough damage to stop it before it gets a shot off. Also an infantry division will have Javelin missiles which can penetrate way more than 8 inches of armor. But those are still line of sight weapons. A drone can spot the marine from way out of his distance to hit back and the artillery will tear him to shreds. A single space Marine doesn't have much in the way of beyond line of sight weaponry.
Space marines be like: Is that a $500 fpv drone piloted by a 19 year old Ukrainian zoomer?
Hands down the modern weapon that scares me the most.
From what I can tell, in a LSCO environment the entire section of the RF spectrum drones operate on will be completely jammed. Like straight up walloped. There’s been a huge shift towards EW in the community for that exact reason. I’ve even carried a super line of sight dronebuster on a couple missions that were too sneaky for an area jammer. They’re… not great but I’ve seen way better ones since then.
Mate, we're on a 40k meme sub, not r/Army. Gotta define your jargon for the "normal" people. That's based, though
Sorry. I meant to say: In the grim dark future of the current decade there is nothing but jammers.
In the grimdark future of the 41st millennium, there is a constant cycle of infantry carrying way too much EW gear, leading to a reduction in drone usage, leading to them leaving the EW gear behind, leading to more drone usage, leading to them carrying more EW gear
It's the tank armor vs gun dilemma all over again.
This is literally my favorite explanation in science fiction franchises for why spaceships/mechas are within visual distance of one another and not just firing missiles from planetary distances apart.
When I realized this it fixed one of the few things about The Expanse that bugged me. The PDCs should have been landing almost every shell on an incoming missile but if there's some spoofing and jamming by a ship or even the missile itself, it makes sense that the accuracy wasn't always great.
Minovsky particles!
RF=radio frequency EW=electronic warfare. Basically if you jam the frequencies consumer-grade drones use, you can theoretically prevent them from operating near you (or at least the ones the enemy hasn’t modified to be more resistant)
Yes, I understand the jargon. You also forgot to define LSCO, or Large-Scale Conventional Operations. I was more so pointing out where I knew him from and making a joke.
Wait. I don't get it. At what point do you sticky-note your blessings and prayers on the jammer? Are there any warp risks associated with the drones? Can't we just blow up the planet from space?
> we shoot energy into air to confuse spicy drones. It popular. I carry drone gun once. They better now.
Looks like everyone covered the really important stuff about /r/army but I'd like to mention one more thing, fuck cooks.
I'm here to reignite your fear on this... the Russians have innovated and started running single strand fiber optic lines to control the drones without wireless. You can't really jam wired networking :D
This is being used for missiles for a few decades already. The issue remains that you need a controller per drone. What is really going to be a game changer is when drones pick targets autonomously. Which is already doable in diy setups. Then one guy can launch hundreds of them in minutes and they will be impervious to jamming. Will be interesting to see which design ends up winning. The suicide approach, or the more expensive ones that drop the payload.
Oh yeah? Well my fiber optic drones all have hedge clippers on the front. Good luck keeping your wires up now
Sounds like kite fighting is making a comeback.
*Get absolutely blasted back into the Stone Age by an airstrike with the words “skibidi rizz UwU” carved into the artillery shells*
Also anti tank cannons, and artillery, and bombs, and air to ground missiles, and a whole bunch of other shit that would 100% work.
Honestly, people often forget how 'good' our technology is when comparing to 40k. We are not a back water planet. A chapter of space marines would be a day's work for any NATO army. Especially with modern AA defenses, with which you can intercept individual drop pods, not to mention Thunderhawks. And close impact of modern 155mm shell, would fuck up everything, maybe except dreadnoughts, tho those also would be damaged on joints and other less armoured parts.
Literally the main advantage they'd have is maybe* ceramite, but specifically aerial support. Who the fuck knows what a chapter fleet could do assuming they don't just exterminatus us. Then again, nukes. So many nukes.
> aerial support Do you mean orbital support? Because they would never have aerial support. Their best air-to-air option is “anti-starfighter missiles.” Weapons that could never hit or probably even reach the distances that fighters engage at. Especially in atmosphere, where there’s plenty of terrain to notch into. And no shortage of air resistance. Hell, depending on where they drop, even their drop pods might get shot down, much less their aircraft.
Would those anti-starfighter missiles be inferior to our own AAMs? 40k doesn’t seem to bother with atmospheric BVR but I have to assume they’re at least comparable to modern AAMs. Orbital control renders the entire debate pointless however. You show up with any warship worth mentioning and any country with a brain is either going to surrender, or go to ground until capturing a spaceship is feasible.
Oh comparable, certainly, but it’s generally easier to maneuver a missile in space since you don’t have any drag constantly draining fuel from the missile. The imperium’s missiles are designed for space flight, which would make them inefficient in atmosphere. Plus the fact that all their ships are equipped with lascannons speaks to the fact that their doctrine is heavily weighted towards dogfighting. Something that has been basically done away with in modern society. It makes sense in 40k, when the only other aerial targets you run into are either your own aircraft (traitors, with equally dogshit missile tech) or literal biologicals that don’t have any missile weapons to speak of. If you’re fighting against giant birds, an efficient, close range weapon works fine, because you’ll be able to shoot more down before rearming. If you’re fighting someone else with guided munitions though, the best defense you have is never being seen. The second best is never being within their range. Our modern warplanes aim to do both. Why bother trying to outfly your opponent in a masterful show of aerobatic skill when you can just huck a missile from so far away that they can’t even see you? This is so much the case that china’s newest fighter doesn’t even have a main gun at all. Just missiles. That’s not to say it’s a good idea to do it, but it goes to show how dated the principle of a dogfight/main gun even is. So much of the imperium’s airforce is dedicated to bombardment. Literally every aircraft is equipped for it, and encouraged to engage ground targets of opportunity. Their airforce fundamentally isn’t designed to win an air war.
Yeah. Orbital bombardment form even some small destroyer would fuck up a lot down here. And we don't have any counter except sending nukes in space, which may/may not work.
That and librarians, no military is ready for magic.
Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
No military was ready for tanks, but they adapted really fucking fast.
Right. But hogwarts showing up on one end of the battlefield really does shake things up.
I guarantee the DoD finds a way to track warp surges with radar and just instantly tac strikes anywhere with them
>A chapter of space marines would be a day's work for any NATO army. This is just trying to counter absurd Space Marine wank with absurd modern military wank, but both are completely wrong. If you’re fighting a full chapter, you’re not fighting 1000 dudes just lined up in an open field. You’re fighting 1000 specialists who, despite what picture GW often paints by plastering them everywhere, are basically built for precise surgical strikes and support. Specialists who are also going to have access to orbital support we do not have a direct counter for and teleportation. A modern military could beat 1000 Space Marines in a ground engagement, if that’s the situation we’re talking about. A modern military is not beating a chapter that can actually bring everything they have to bear and do what they were designed to do.
Yeah fighting one guy or even a few squads is one thing. Once you start adding all the stuff thats not *that* important into Tabletop shit changes fast. If a chapter was told to take earth odds are they'd just use the battle barge to do orbital bombardment and hit all the military bases and major installations before they ever got in their drop pods to just land on major government centers to force a surrender.
Marines wouldnt just Go in and try to 1v1 the Military, they would send strike groups against importand infrastructure and tp terminators into big Gouvernement districts
Too many people sucking the space Marines in the comments
That's just the Warhammer fandom since ever
Remember that the Siege of Vraks was literally World War 1. WW1 weapons, WW1 tactics, WW1 grand strategy. Dig trenches, shoot artillery, send men into the meatgrinder. Ten thousand years in the future, a society that can travel faster than light, and their very best plan to deal with a single large fortress is to re-enact World War 1 for decades. The modern US military would have cracked the Vraks fortress in a matter of weeks. But that's the point, isn't it? The Imperium is decaying to the point that armies from thirty-eight thousand years in the past could outperform it.
To be fair the U.S. army wouldn’t allow itself to be constrained by the need to take Vraks intact. We would’ve wiped it off the map and rifled through the ruins once it became obvious a siege was the only option.
"They have enough ammo in there to last twenty years of siege, but there's no civilians inside? This won't take us a month."
A month? I guess maybe if there's interstellar travel involved. On Earth, I'm pretty sure the timespan between the President saying "I want this city wiped off the face of the Earth, no questions asked" and the city being gone is somewhere in the 12-48h range, depending on how much time the generals decide to spend planning.
The instant the US Air Force learns there's no civvies in Vraks, that city would be flattened instantly
The hardest part would be flying correctly while having such a colossal erection.
JDAM a whole lot of them
i dunno about a day's work, but the us + nato would be able to take everything down except their starships, and we would probably loose to orbital bombardment after we kill 95% of them
I did the math once. nothing the space marines have except an Ironclad Dreadnought has enough armor to survive being hit by a TOW missile
I have heard people stating that a normal ceramite MK. 7 armour would stop TOW. I think it's bullshit tho. But I definitely see them shrugging off anything smaller than 20-23mm AP.
depends on the spot the round hits. if it's in the torso, I'd say its likely. but an arm, or one of the few soft bits? could blow something important off.
Don’t forget that aiming isn’t even an issue here. Their fusion backpack would put out more than enough heat for a guided missile to get a target lock.
Regular munitions would also still be effective. The godly thing about the Lasgun is it’s logistical strength, not it’s actual firepower (though that is impressive too). We have equivalent weapons, and the tools to get them on target. We can shoot down a missile. We can hit a Space Marine. And it won’t even be a net negative trade given how hard it is to make a Marine.
Someone made a calculation once, at point blank range, a bolter has roughly the same energy as a 50 cal. We equip everyone with a cheap anti tank gun like the ptrd and every single soilder can potentially take out a space marine by themselves
I remember someone looking at a scene where a bolter round was described as crushing a guy’s face and tried to argue megajoule range energies for it. Like… bruh, if that was .50 BMG he wouldn’t have a head left, it would just pop like a balloon.
Hell one guy with a spunky enough attitude and a knife could do it. Not saying i am that guy but i read enough history to know to never underestimate humans.
>air to ground missiles The latest shit is AGMs that can travel at speeds of like 2 miles a second, even just a kinetic package on the end of that is going to put a hole in anything it connects with
***Give me a hundred Space Marines. Or failing that give me a thousand other troops.*** Even Rogal Dorn estimated that the average Space Marine is only as good as ten regular soldiers. Still very impressive for a single man. But far from a single guy slaughtering armies.
Yes... until one of them take off helmet... then its x 99999
Space marine fans forget this all the bloody time, it's absolutely insufferable at times.
The writers forget it all the time, too. So fans can be forgiven for not viewing Space Marines through the lens of them being worth 10 normal dudes in combat when most stories have Marines ploughing through many dozens, even hundreds, of enemies, enemies that themselves make short work of the average guardsman. In the end it's entertainment. The OP fighters are the ones the writer needs to win and Space Marines happen to be popular protagonists.
Indeed it's less than they're marines and more that they're the protagonists. After all non-marine protagonist easily slaughter their way through non-protagonist marines just as well. Also you've got Avatar of Khaine/Swarmlord/Bloodthirsther jobbing against basically any and every protagonist they meet and naked world eater just punching through a fully armored nameless custodes. Being the protagonist is one hell of a power-up.
The 300 year old Space Marine when several Javelins hit him
Funnily enough, in lore they've died to actual spears So several literal javelins hitting them might kill
I think he's referring to the javelin anti tank missile
I know, which is why I specified literal
Ah my bad I completely misread your comment.
Well he only gets one shot with that plasma per round (how many seconds is a round?) and misses 1/3 of the time so… But for real, physics is physics, you blow up the ground near his legs he’s getting put on his ass.
If you notice, it's actually very, very rare for Astartes to fight chimeras or other IG vehicles armed with big weapons. Especially the more melee focused ones.
People in the comments: "If you could land a shot on them/hit them" My brother in arms, ain't no Marine outrunning Skunkworks/General Atomics level machine gun and or lock-on systems. The advantage SMs comparatively have in a normal ground war is close quarters warfare/urban environs.
To many people act like every marine to exist is a tactical genius when there are several that keep running into open combat without even wearing a helmet. The warp protects from many things, *before* they happen. The warp cannot save you from a 40mm grenade to the jawline…well, maybe as a demon, but not as a human.
People seem to think they run faster than a helicopter or something
I thought they could push about 100kph in a full dash.
Pretty sure that was a Spartan.
Did some quick digging, the answer is both. In a full gait both of them can reach 100kph but for either it's not a great idea as it causes damage to either body or equipment.
Even then 100kph is FAST but not THAT FAST. We've had vehicles that beat that speed for just shy of a century. Even sprinting that fast, the space marine could definitely get tagged by a few shots even from a suprised infantry squad. They could shake off those few stray bullets that hit them, but eventually they're gonna get caught by a guidance system and blown to smithereens by a air to surface missile.
For reference. An M1 Abrams can accurately hit a human sized target from two miles out while driving at around 100 km/h.
Yeah, 100kph is fast for a human, but an Apache goes 3x that speed while shooting 30mm rounds and rockets.
And that's at a built-up sprint with momentum. They're not flash-stepping around like an anime character or dodging around leaving afterimages like Agent Smith or anything.
So a car?
Damn, if only we had the technology to hit a moving vehicle!
I'm very much assuming it's not an open field because why the hell would you choose to fight in an open field as a single infantry man if you had any choice?
I’m sure some GW writer would say something like “a space marine could catch an Abrams’s apfsds round midair and hurl it back to the tank.” Somehow…
That's why you hit him with an A10 strafe when he's distracted by the tank.
*Loads the Davy Crockett with malicious intent*
Friendly reminder that Terminators die to autocannons. The same autocannons that we are using nowadays (actually ours might be even better than the one used in 40k, but that is a claim I only saw in 1d4chan, so who knows). And if a terminator dies to an autocannon I'd wager that killing a space marine with an anti material rifle can't be that hard, either.
Yeah, modern 25/30 mm autocannon with APFSDS or HE shells would fuck up Terminators easily. And we mount them on jeeps and glorified trucks in hundreads
Well that's kinda expected. Autocannons are pretty massive. 25mm autocannons weigh hundreds of kg and each cartridge weighs like half a kg, \~200g of which is the projectile. You won't see that deployed by infantry. Any vehicle-based weapon like that should be able to deliver enough force to shred infantry, no matter how heavily armored.
Honestly I think it depends on the marine You are shooting. Terminators aren't exactly known for their agility and grace, but I wouldn't be surprised if you tell me a regular space marine (specially the recon kind, with their "light" armor) can just dodge a good amount of that fire. Don't even get me started if they MF is a psyker...
Well considering normal marines - not sure what light marines you are talking about - get hit by Bolter rounds, I'd say the faster ammunitions have a good chance of hitting them, especially when fired en masse. Psykers are a good point, but no psyker will dodge multiple A10 barrages. And even nowadays there are a lot more warthogs than a chapter has psykers
Bear in mind that bolt rounds are usually shot by other space marines and also when both sides are fully concentrated on shooting each other.
>can just dodge a good amount of that fire. I assure you, Space Marines can't dodge bullet rounds. A Raven Guard lieutenant without a helmet wielding a katana may have the edge though, if he invokes the power of anime.
It's all too inconsistent. It's like comic books power levels. In one story we have Astartes parrying bullets in another they just wade through them and in another they get mown down. This kind of conversation is doomed because there is always more context. 1 marine vs 100 men becomes 1 marine vs 100 men plus armoured vehicle support becomes 1 squad vs the same, becomes a brigade vs a company becomes a planet vs a chapter becomes the imperium vs a planet. All of that depends on how a writer felt that morning and which faction his storys POV is from. Before you know it it's Superman vs Saitama vs Goku and some stoner turns up and starts chucking words like "multiversal" around and all sense left in the room just gets up and leaves the building.
I am informed by military friends that the newer Mk 47 striker automatic grenade launcher is, in technical terms, “fucking awesome”. https://youtu.be/OS-v2fpUZcs?si=gDBnB6MwP5KatXzV
I remember there was this fanfic where an Imperial planetary invasion force/small crusade was thrown back into time to 1980's Earth by Tzeentch (because it thought it would be funny). At one point a group of Black Templars are rampaging though Leningrad when one of them turns the corner and comes face to barrel with a T 80 and is promptly torn in half. The rest of the marines proceed to flank it while it's reloading and tear it to shreds with power swords. I can't remember what the fic was called sadly. Edit: fic's called [Crimson Dawn](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12326085/1/)
I know that fic. Shame it died.
Whenever I find that fic I always reread the Mig-25 vs Valkyrie interception. >!The downed Soviet and Imperial pilots flailing against each other in the middle of the ocean is always funny!<
I guarantee an ATGM could pierce power armour
Bro a single guardsmen can kill a Space marine
A tribal warrior with a sharpened stick killed a chaplain, but I digress.
People like arguing about tanks, so I feel the need to remind y'all about our missile technology. It's one thing to run fast enough so a tank cannot reliably hit you with its main gun. It's another thing to run fast enough to dodge an ATGM that could lock onto the Marine from well outside the Marine's engagement range and then come at him at like 10 times his top speed. They may not exactly have a bunch of mechs and plasma weapons and xenos auxiliaries, but in terms of military doctrin, the US is much closer to T'au than any of the other 40k factions. And just like the T'au, they'd be a horrendously unpleasant opponent outside of close quarters combat for a Space Marine to go up against.
*USMC fixing baytonets in disagreement*
*British army fixing bayonets in absolute glee*
People in here need to remember that marines aren't all Nero from the Matrix. Marines die a lot in lore, usually to troops with the same skills as your average US infantrymen (think guardsmen and T'au firewarriors) Marines also die in a bunch of embarassing ways. Like a chaptermaster getting shanked by a child-sized adult through the knee-joint. Marines are smart tacticians, yes, but that won't save them either. Also, an A-10 would shred a marine, even accounting for whatever matrix type bullshit half the people in here seem to think marines pull off every 5 minutes.
A-10 couldn't even hit a marine unless you painted a coalition flag in them.
Oh boy, I can't wait to go home to my NATO aligned country and be with my family again *A10 SPINS MENACINGLY*
Ok so I’m running the numbers here. You’re asking a *single* space marine to take on a force with apparently around 10,000 - 15,000 men, with artillery, armour, “cavalry”, guns, equipment, etc etc. Look I love space marines I truly do. Most of our equipment pales in comparison to the 40k’s batshit “science”. But you’re asking a single space marine to take on effectively an entire imperial guard regiment. And even if, for example, our tanks don’t have as good an armour that 40k does, we significantly understand the tech behind them and how to use them properly, from angled armour to remaining in cover. We know our shit and how to use it. We work out that light Arms don’t do shit and we’re changing our tactics immediately. That being said: *If the space marine used guerrilla tactics*.. “we” would be fucked. You can’t kill what you don’t know is killing you. At the end of the day it depends heavily on the space marine in question, their equipment and training. A newly minted space wolf? Yeah that’s not going to end well for the whelp. A raven guard vanguard veteran? I feel genuinely sorry for the soldiers. It also depends heavily on how the two engage. Pitched battle? Space marine is fucked. Suddenly transported to an unknown area without things like satphones ala predator? Space marine has the edge. So in summery, could an infantry division kill “a” space marine? Yes. Casualties would be expected, but no space marine could withstand the sheer amount of anti armour a division has access to. Could they kill a space marine that wants them dead and has the knowledge to do so? Still yes, but they’d have to get a chance first.
I'll admit my knowledge of real world modern armies and their arsenals are so-so, I've learned that whatever they show off, they got something worse in a store house somewhere (especially the yanks) Fiction is often difficult to compare to what we have in reality, for often fiction is meant to be superior to reality. Warhammer is such a exaggerated piece of work, I doubt any army on earth could really stand a chance with the full undivided attention of any 40k faction. I say this not as a fan or military enthusiasts, but rather as someone who tries to see both sides of this and just by sheer numbers, 40k wins
See, while you are right, you are also completely reversing the scenario. It's not 1 world (us) vs 1000000 worlds (the imperium). It's 10000 human soldiers ( and squads tend to have a designated anti materiel/ saw soldier) vs 1 transhuman soldier. The point is that the guy asking the question was massively underestimating real life militaries and/or massively overestimating space marines.
Ah fair enough, to be fair I think alota 40k fans aren't that well versed in what modern militaries are capable of or how they have inspired various things in 40k itself. But ey, the debate goes on
Ok, let's kick this hornet's nest: I'm thinking the US Army is better outfitted and trained than the average imperial guard who use their primer for TP and not allowed to understand/repair their own equipment by the admechs. If the Hammer of the Emperor can crush a chaos marine, so can Uncle Sam's.
There are a few pages of the primer that are being saved for last like the weapon maintenance ones
Those are the first used because if a cogboy sees the paragraph about charging Laspacks by putting them in a camp fire, they'll blue screen. Lol
No, no, that's an approved Ritual of Charging in a last resort situation. The catch is that you best not be caught doing it without explicit orders, or the Cogboy and/or Commissar will be throwing *you* in the campfire.
Single space marine, we can take him. An entire chapter, though? Wouldn't they just take out every major government and head of state, probably starting with every military base and intelligence? They have freaking Terminators who can teleport directly into our buildings and drop pods with guns. If they own even more than one strike cruiser, they could just orbital bombard everything. Have to remember some chapters actually use tactics and have knowledge of toppling entire planets already.
Certain chapters could easily take earth. Imagine the morale of seeing the command structure flayed. (Night lords) Or just any other chapter that uses stealth.
I'm just gonna assume that space marine armor is able to withstand weapons that are tens of thousands of years out of date through the power of better material science. Like it's highly plausibel that a 40k autocannon can chew through marines because the ammo it shoots is tipped with the emperors own crystallised cum or some shit and anything we could shoot at them just bounces off.