Quote Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander View Post
The sheer number of irregular and guerilla forces (some of them waaay too young) armed with AKs would seem to argue against that. Now, I'll grant you, such irregular troops are not up to the standard of professional soldiers trained in modern combat, head for head, but then again, neither are Wizards (seeing as how they have less knowledge of muggles than three-years olds and have to be told what "guns" are.) Wizards don't seem to do "cover" much either, but that's more a failing of sci-fi/fantasy in general (see: Star Wars especially the Clone Wars...)
Cynicism suggests that child soldiers are more useful as a distraction or as a decoy than as a fighting soldier. Child soldiers are probably all very well if you just need some bodies to look intimidating or when you need some young and stupid people to clear a minefield by running through it (happened during the Iran-Iraq war), but if you want to do house-to-house clearing, you need grown adults.

The Council on Foreign Relations answers the question this way:

Are Child Soldiers effective?


Yes. Trusting, vulnerable, and often intimidated, children can easily be manipulated, experts say. In combat, children can be daring and tenacious, particularly when under the influence of drugs—a common practice—or when compelled by political or religious zeal. Child units can greatly add to confusion on battlefields, slowing opposing forces' progress. Children have also been used as scouts, messengers, minesweepers, bomb-makers, and suicide bombers. Child units are also effectively used as advance troops in ambush attacks.
"Greatly slowing an opponent's progress" in essence means to provide the enemy with a lot of targets to kill before they advance, essentially a speed bump made with human bodies. Same with "advance troops" -- that's providing a wall of bodies to shield the real soldiers. The other tasks are all minor tasks that don't require the ability to kick down a door and physically fight. But if you really want to fight and win, you still need grown adults.

I frankly find the subject distasteful. Regardless of how old a wizard has to be to be effective, they are still a vanishingly small minority of humans, and a smaller minority will be able to use a killing curse, and an even smaller minority will actually be effective soldiers with them. As Vaarsuvius would say, "being proficient with a bow is not the same thing as being good with it".

By contrast, you can make a mediocre soldier out of any average 17-year-old with a few weeks training, and some of them will be excellent. So I think Muggles have an advantage in that they have a much larger recruitment pool. Muggle militia may not be at the level of wizards, but they can still be pretty lethal and they can be trained fairly quickly.

But I think it's beside the point. I'm trying to remember the quote, but ISTR something along the lines of it's pretty close to an even chance if an armed muggle takes on a wizard. But if a wizard is fighting a muggle head-to-head, the wizard's already doing something wrong. A wizard war would probably be an intelligence war, one in which massive armies and nuclear weapons et al would be out of place.


Respectfully,

Brian P.