Army composition help please

If I were to be constructing a military to defend a (landlocked) nation primarily composed of terrain like this and a population of roughly 7 million people, what would I be looking at?
First world economy but defence not a priority, two or three cities of about 350,000 each and the rest of the population rural towns and villages

Light infantry w/ some independent armour companies using CVR(T) alikes?
Plenty of 105s and some chinooks to haul them about?
A squadron or two of f16 analogues or F20s?

I was thinking 2 regular infantry brigades, 1-2 reserve infantry brigades w/ necessary support troops (regular and reserve).

I don't think anything more than a couple of squadrons of armoured cars are needed armour wise, but am I wrong?

ATGM spam

You've just said you're some sort of boggy version of Luxembourg.

Just look at how Singapore handles her defence, although you don't have the operational depth to actually to defend your country.

Fucking Singapore? That's a densely populated urban island state, you blithering imbecile. He's a landlocked rural country, which you in fact just acknowledged. Christ.

I guess Singapore isn't prepared for jungle combat.

This is what you'll pretty much be limited to when it comes to anti-tank duties.

ATGMs are allot cheaper than tanks which is pretty obvious, you can have a few tanks if you can handle the cost, but you'll want ATGM equipped IFVs and APCs along with infantry-issued ATGMs.

Being rural and fairly boggy, bridges will be a key component to any invasion, which means you'll need to have a good solid engineer corps to destroy the bridges as you fall back, same with the dams.

Vehicle wise, again, you want small, fast little tikes to help with moving your limited forces around.

Helis are really going to be in short supply but I'd suggest faster helicopters that can also double as improvised attack helicopters. However I'd have a small fleet of dedicated attack helicopters.

Aircraft are for trying to keep control of the airspace. You want some kind of light fighter, not sure about costs, but the Saab JAS 39 Gripen is pretty nice for its size.

You're biggest constraint will be cost, unless you can woo your populace into a big military budget.

Well, not having to pay for a Navy will help moneywise.

And thanks for the engineering tip, hadn't thought of that.

Also, would battle rifles be a good idea?

FN FAL.

This.





Can we pretend R&C didn't post those two posts in this thread, and not have a flame war pzl?

Depending on how many rivers you have investing in a river navy might be a good idea. Furthermore, since you are obviously a small country any land you give up will hurt. So you might want to consider having some sort of partisan force to stay behind or infiltrate behind enemy lines. Also, are the CRV(T) amphibious? Because if you have a lot of swampy terrain that is going to be a must.

Fine.

On a far more serious note, look at the armies of Finland and Switzerland.

Tanks are very much still relevant.

In theory, he wouldn't even need to have the best tank in the world, something like the Al-Khalid (to name an RL example) could work out for him.

Would the Centauro be a better idea thank a straight out tank? As heavy armour would be restricted to operating near roads anyway? It would also be less likely to damage the (quite important) roads when at speed.

Centauro is mostly good for supporting infantry (not to mention that the gun on the Centauro is a LOW recoil, and thus less powerful gun). You'll still need tanks. One of the nice things about tanks like the Al-Khalid... it is light as far as tanks go (48 tonnes).

If you're planning on holding defensive lines, I'd say either Stridsvagen or Sprut-SD. Sprut-SD is light as hell and mounts a full-size anti-tank gun, while S-tank was made for defensives.