Duration: 3:59

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While watching any Star Wars movie, I highly doubt that anyone thought that Stormtroopers would stand a chance against... well... anything.

However, they are well trained by The Empire (and First Order), and should be more than a match for any military squad short of Halo Spartans or 40k Adeptus Astartes.

The United States Military has had a few decades to improve their technology since A New Hope first came out. Can they stand a chance against the Empire's Finest or Vader's Fist?

#starwars #nerd #army

0:00 Intro
0:10 Stormtrooper squad
0:30 United States Army squad
0:50 POWER (fire power)
1:10 Star Wars armor vs Modern ballistic armor
1:30 SPOILERS
1:53 Traveller RPG is related
2:30 Basic training
2:45 Stormtroopers always miss
3:07 Communication is good
3:33 Borderlands is related
3:45 Never Tell Me The Odds

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**script**

Hey, Marcus here. Sword and sci-fi guy
A squad of Star Wars Stormtroopers vs a squad of US Army soldiers, who wins?
Let's break down the components of each. A storm trooper squad consists of nine soldiers. Eight with semi-auto E-11 blaster rifles, two of those with SE-4 pistols as sidearms, and one heavy with just a T-21 light repeating blaster. Each trooper carries about 5,000 rounds with them because blasters hold a lot of ammo.
On the other hand, a US army squad usually consists of also nine soldiers. Their weapons consist of seven M4 assault rifles, two m320 underbarrel grenade launchers, and two M249 squad automatic weapons.
So they're dead even on size, but what about that firepower?
Storm Troopers have predominantly semi auto weapons, so would have a slower rate of fire. Army M4s are burst capable, and they have grenade launchers, and machine guns. US military can put more fire downrange hands down.
But they all wear different armor. Would the rounds be lethal?
Storm trooper armor is made up of BLANK and doesn't really protect them from blasters. And given the scene in the Mandalorian with... Spoilers? Boba Fett lives. Well... With the Book of Boba Fett coming out soon, I guess it's not a spoiler. But his tusken cycler rifle fires a round similar to a modern sniper rifle, so yeah the armor doesn't protect much.
As for blasters on modern military armor, I'm going to go out of the box a bit and pull from some sci-fi tabletop RPGs. In settings like traveler, ceramics offer good protection from laser weapons because they disperse the energy. So while a shot from an M4 to any part of trooper armor would go through, a blaster bolt to the chest, back, or sides of modern military armor would not penetrate. Consecutive shots would, and blasters are essentially one shot stops, but their slower rate of fire really bites them here. Point for modern military.
What about training? I've gone through modern military training complete with heavy weapons and combat drills, and it's pretty intensive, but not really more than a once a month to once a year thing.
Jokes about storm trooper accuracy aside, many of them are either clones, trained from childhood, or recruited from the top of the Imperial army. Then drilled daily. It sure doesn't seem like it, but each soldier could very well be better than our special forces.
So point to them.
In addition, storm Troopers have an inbuilt communications system and have trained as a unit for likely years. Army soldiers have probably one radio between them, and, while they likely know each other, do not have that level of intimacy.
So right now it's tied, firepower vs training.
Training is great, but I think that up until a certain point, if you don't have the weapons to back that up... In the words of another Marcus, "you don't have to be a better shooter. You just need to shoot more bullets."
So I'd give the modern US Army at least 60-70% odds.
An interesting case of what was impressive sci-fi in the 70's getting beaten by what's modern half a century later.