Whether this is possible or not depends not just on the weapons and men - but on the logistics. I am not a military logistician. I strive to be an armchair general and I am a senior armchair marshal with many Param Beer Bottles downed in discussions.
There is plenty of material on the net if people look for it. I will post some quotes and links and then do some jingogiri calculations. hopefully I can get jingos to think about logistics before they suggest attacking and holding a target area by talking weapons alone, without talking logistics. Let me as usual start with a (hopefully humorous) analogy. My late grandmother used to claim that when she was in college - a man in Karnataka (then Mysore) opted to sing a Tamil song in a college contest that went as follows. She may have been kidding. I don't know.
Roughly translated it means "I do not yet have a woman whom I can call my own ("Adee" being a way of referring to a woman), but I have decided to name my son "Ramakrishna." The man has the weapons, intent, training, morale etc - but not all the supplies to achieve his goal."Adee" endruthukke avale illai
Pilllai pere "Ramakrishna"
That is where logistics kicks in.
I believe it was Napoleon who said "An army marches on its stomach" . Soldiers need to be fed and armed for them to fight - and all generals know this well. One of the things that used to be mentioned in days gone by was the "teeth to tail ratio" of an army - that is the number of men required in the rear areas to support the fighting men in front. One statistic that is thrown about is that 100 men are required in the rear areas to support 65 men in front.
Here is a quote from an article:
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/co ... stics.html
Let me also quote an important point from Wiki. This is particularly important when you talk of China attacking via Myanmar or India giving military support to Fiji or AfghanistanLogistics is a relatively new word used to describe a very old practice: the supply, movement and maintenance of an armed force both in peacetime and under operational conditions. Most soldiers have an appreciation of the impact logistics can have on operational readiness. Logistic considerations are generally built in to battle plans at an early stage, for without logistics, the tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery pieces, helicopters and aircraft are just numbers on a Table of Organisation and Equipment. Unfortunately, it often seems that the high profile weapon systems have had greater priority in resources than the means to support them in the field, be it ammunition, fuel or spares. For it is logistics that will determine the forces that can be delivered to the theatre of operations, what forces can be supported once there, and what will then be the tempo of operations. Logistics is not only about the supply of matériel to an army in times of war. It also includes the ability of the national infrastructure and manufacturing base to equip, support and supply the Armed Forces, the national transportation system to move the forces to be deployed and its ability to resupply that force once they are deployed. Thus it has been said, "logisticians are a sad, embittered race of men, very much in demand in war, who sink resentfully into obscurity in peace. They deal only with facts but must work for men who merchant in theories. They emerge during war because war is very much fact. They disappear in peace, because in peace, war is mostly theory." (Foxton, 1994, p. 9)
The practice of logistics, as understood in its modern form, has been around for as long as there have been organised armed forces with which nations and / or states have tried to exert military force on their neighbours. The earliest known standing army was that of the Assyrians at around 700 BC. They had iron weapons, armour and chariots, were well organised and could fight over different types of terrain (the most common in the Middle East being desert and mountain) and engage in siege operations. The need to feed and equip a substantial force of that time, along with the means of transportation (i.e. horses, camels, mules and oxen) would mean that it could not linger in one place for too long. The best time to arrive in any one spot was just after the harvest, when the entire stock was available for requisitioning. Obviously, it was not such a good time for the local inhabitants. One of the most intense consumers of grain was the increasing number of animals that were employed by armies of this period. In summer they soon overgrazed the immediate area, and unless provision had been made beforehand to stockpile supplies or have them bought in, the army would have to move. Considerable numbers of followers carrying the materiel necessary to provide sustenance and maintenance to the fighting force would provide essential logistic support.
Now onto pure jingo wet dreams and arguments. Absolutely no real knowledge of numbers and weights is claimed by me here.Geographic distance is a key factor in military affairs. The shorter the distance, the greater the ease with which force can be brought to bear upon an opponent. This is because it is easier to undertake the supply of logistics to a force on the ground as well as engage in bombardment. The importance of distance is demonstrated by the Loss of Strength Gradient devised by Kenneth Boulding. This shows the advantage of supply that is forward based
Imagine 10000 men and 100 tanks and 50 trucks attacking some objective;
Each man will require 5 liters of water and about 500 grams of food a day - 50 tons water and 5 tons food per day. 4 supply trucks should do the trick. In the mountains, the tanks won't go - but the men will need 250 mules carrying 200 kg each per day. Or 1000 porters carrying 50 kg each per day. Just food and water, No ammunition or anything else.
Tanks drink maybe 3 liters per km and trucks 1 liter per km. In a day of fighting where they may move 50 km and keep their engines on for say 8 hours we are looking at 20 to 30,000 liters of fuel per day. Maybe another 3 trucks worth of fuel per day. Add water, oil and spares. Another 2-3 trucks per day.
And then there is that stuff - ammunition. Assume 5000 attacking men in front using 1000 rounds per day. 500,000 rounds. At 10 grams per round that is 5 tons. One truck. Add mortar, tank and artillery rounds. Add 2 trucks. Add another 2 trucks for miscellaneous items. We are looking at 15-20 trucks minimum of supplied per day to keep the men fighting. Now no army will start like this. They will build up forward dumps and stores to supply the meant for several days - let's assume supplies for one week.
That means the supply dump has 500,000 liters of water, 250,000 liters of fuel, and about 100 to 200 tons of various supplies. You need a plot that is an acre or more in size to store this and roads leading up and down. My figures are probably a gross underestimate - with me not counting cooks, medicos, recovery vehicles, cranes, bridge layers, minesweepers, radars, communication, maintenance and repair and anti-aircraft equipment. If this supply dump is taken out the attacking army will starve and run out of ammo and water in a day. If the supply routes are blocked, the attacking army cannot fight for more than a week even if their supply dump is intact. The further the attacking army moves from its supply dump the more likely that the supply route can be cut.
Keeping this in mind I would like to ask people to mull over how an army can maintain its logistics via 1000 (or even 500 km) of foreign territory - eg like Chinese troops via Myanmar. Think also of what the US is doing and what is the intensity of conflict being fought.