Mongols bar none. They had the added advantage of serving leaders who weren't afraid to properly use them (until a Khan died, then everything went to crap).

Rhodesian Light Infantry, if we are going by kill ratio.

The problem is that in terms of KIA numbers, the tactics and strategies of leadership skew those numbers. A general that knows he has vast numerical superiority may be willing to feed more men into the meat grinder hoping to end the war soon. Conversely, Lee was brilliant at maneuvering his smaller forces to prevent contact that would have resulted in much higher casualty numbers for his forces.

I don’t think it really has much to do with the quality of the individual Union or CSA soldier except that the individual CSA soldier would have been ill-provisioned as the war progressed and the North slowly strangled the South.

But that’s actually the problem with this type of question. We want to reduce it to one soldier of type A versus one soldier of type B. But most of what we know in terms of battle prowess is determined by factors that often had little to do with the prowess of the individual soldier.

Simply put, if two guys match up and there is no technological advantage for either, the guy who knows his martial art the best, and who is strongest and fastest, is the guy that’s going to win most of the time. In other words, it’s almost impossible to isolate for the quality of the training/technique. Two guys can face off, but you’re never going to remove their inherent individual strengths and weaknesses from the equation.

That dude is a MONSTER. He would be the kind of guy to hold you down and beat you to death with his prosthetic leg.

He's big, super smart, and deadly.

Some good responses in this thread..

For shear territory seized and held the Mongols and the Romans rank up there at their peaks.

Alexander the greats armies also

More modern area

Smaller units I would go with German Paras , Monte Casino as an example , and the American Para's.

Some of the stories on the Gurkha was pretty badass as well as some of the SOG actions.

Fallschirmjager

Berserkers....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker

https://www.ranker.com/list/viking-berserker-facts/philgibbons

It's an endless debate.  Every generation, every war, has a group of men that have the ability to become great warriors.

These guys did alright all things considered.

Attached File

Chris Kyle

Nineteen double Medal of Honor Winners -

CMOH Double Recipients

The Booty Warrior.

Current U.S. Military

I would really like to know the standards and method of ranking

firepower

killratio
endurance

amount of world conquored
historic impact

as an individual the juramentado of the Moro in the south Philippines


these guys are the reason the US1911 was issued
hopped up on stimulants the tifgt bandages acted as a tourniquet to both prevent bleeding & hold the fighter up even after the blood was drained beyond belief.
there are stories of attacks in Sulu where Juramentados took 12 or ore hits from 30-40 Krag rifels and continued to hack up US troops.

yes he is in my top 5

To be fair the MOH was tossed around far easier in those times then it is today.

No ancient Romans? They started as a village/town and over time, conquered a good portion of Europe, North Africa, and some of Asia. They had some seriously brilliant generals (as well as idiotic ones).

The contemporary guys.

Mongols, Comanche, Spartans.

Germans have been formidable fighters since the days of the Roman Empire.

Simo Hayha laughs at all the other nominees.

Modern Spec-Op warriors, IMHO.

Few men of their caliber walk the Earth

The agoge in Sparta was a school meant to produce well-rounded citizens.  They taught every subject from manners to mathematics, poetry to military discipline.

It wasn't a decade-long boot camp.

ETA - as for the most "badass" fighters, add me to the list voting for modern, western special forces groups.

We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way. The choice is yours.

Or was it that if you didnt immediately drop your target the guy next to him would be hacking on you.

I'm going to throw the Comanches out there. They were some mean motherfuckers.

Huge +1!  I was fortunate to get to know him a bit when he was assigned to VMI.

Sergeant Johnson in Iraq was totally badass from what I have read.

That is complete crap. Well rounded citizen? A full Spartiate citizen was allowed to pursue no career other than warrior, the agoge was what the Spartans designed to produce them. They practiced no arts besides music and dance (both to glorify war). They had no use for mathematics or various other arts that other city states encouraged. They were the opposite of well rounded. The only manners the Spartans respected was their pre-Stoic philosophy dedicated to toughness and brevity and respect, which was a part of their discipline. Are you referring to them standing up to offer seats at the Olympics? Or when they tossed a Persian diplomat into a well?

And yes, it was essentially a decade long boot camp. It took completely untrained boys who at that point were raised by women and put them through a level of conditions that bordered on torture training them on tasks they believed soldier/warriors needed to possess, all taught by fully trained Spartiates and supervised by the elders. They lived in "barracks" among men, the pheiditia, ate and slept among other men, including the elders of their mess. Forced starvation to encourage them to steal, so they would be better at foraging on campaign. No clothing besides a single tunic to ensure they were tough as nails and adverse to climate, even in winter. Routine physical beatings, to toughen them. Military training in drill and weapons, produce a better trained soldier. Encouraging of sports, for a more athletic warrior. Music and dance, to emphasize synchronicity and expound martial concepts. Murder/terrorism against Helots, to acclimatize them to the necessities of Spartan life of cruelty in war and to continue the subjugation of the Helot slaves.

Just off the top of my head, Israelis, Rhodesians, SOG era SF, and I'll sprinkle in some old west gunfighters.

I disagree.  My dad killed a lot of them. SS and all. He said they would fight until they ran out of ammo and surrender.  Dad said they took no prisoners.  They did not have the man power to guard them.

They seem to be winning the most victories lately....  

The Irish!

God made wiskey so they would not take over the world.

And after all that they still weren’t exactly leaps and bounds ahead of other Greek hoplites. At the battle of 300 champions they didn’t even win against Argos, 1 spartan left standing and 2 from Argos.

I’m not saying they weren’t good, but they weren’t overall any better than their peers, as the mythos around them likes to claim.

All the history I have read of the Peloponnesian war said that every spring for years the Spartans would march to Athens and the Athenians would hide inside their city walls and watch the Spartans destroy their country side.  And the times they did go out to meet them they got worked.  So Athens used their Naval power to attack the Spartans and their allies instead.

The only wall Sparta had was a "wall of men".

Sparta did well against Athens...when they had material support from the Persians.

Afterward when they didn't they got their teeth kicked in by a smaller army.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leuctra

Not saying that the Spartans weren't a formidable force, but there's a lot of myth around them. Most people quote the myths as opposed to the history.

American Revolution Minute Men! Got shit done led by the idea of freedom against unsurmountable odds.

Indeed. Their adaptability and national emphasis on service to the state served them quite well.

At the time I asked I didn't include them because the main reason why they were so successful is because they employed technologies and organizations that their enemies (for the most part) didn't have.  Frankish barbarians were heavy duty fighters with their axes but when up against a shield wall they were cut down.  The revolt under Boudicca failed because on wet morning grass the Roman hobnailed sandals were superior to the barbarians' bare feet.

When the forces and arms were equal (I.E. Hannibal) they would get their butts kicked just like everyone else.   The main reason the barbarians were even able to conquer Rome was because they had caught up with them in the arms race.

But, I did say "use whatever criteria you wanted".  So, Meh.

Caroleans

It’s a bit more complicated than that. The Romans excelled even against enemies who possessed superior technology. An example would be Carthage. In an absolutely brilliant maneuver, the Romans acknowledged their disadvantage at sea and turned naval engagements to their advantage by boarding Carthaginian ships with superior infantry tactics.

There were some Rhodesians you wouldn't have wanted to fuck with.

Gallowglass the potent result of the inter-breeding of Scottish Gaels with the Norse settlers and later Irish.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/47/40/b7/4740b78d27a011aecb960fd0d7bf14b1.jpg

Wow, things have changed.  They used to force people out or into a pogue MOS.  Good for that guy, what a hardass.

I know I didn't have a choice in the matter when I got my P3 profile.  I shattered my femur a few weeks after a guy lost his leg......he was running on a prosthetic while I was still on crutches.  You can replace a limb faster than heal one, I suppose.  He was allowed to stay in as long as he reclassified and I was given the same option but elected not to because I couldn't suffer the indignity of being a leg and a pogue.

I wonder if it is because he is 18 series and they get to do their own thing or if the Army has just evolved on the matter that much in the 12 years I've been out.  I'm sure it is a bit of both as so much has changed (like the fags at West Point thread illustrates) over the years but SOCOM has always been a whole different world anyway.

Back to the subject at hand the OP named pretty much my top 3:  Samurai, Viking, Spartans.  It would be hard to pick who was the "best" as everything had its strengths.  For example the Vikings were more mobile than any of these other forces we're talking about in the ancient world.  They sailed out of Norway and raided the Mediterranean and Middle East, not just their nearby neighbors.  Who else can lay claim to that?  They may not have had the lifetime solely dedicated to war like the Samurai, or the agoge of the Spartans but they carved an existence out of a rugged land and didn't "just get by" but had quality metallurgy and advances in ship-building that let them do unprecedented things.  When I was a kid it was highly controversial that Vikings may have reached North America (kind of like at the same time, that an asteroid hit 65 million years ago and dinosaurs could have been warm blooded or birds) other than Greenland and now it is accepted as a fact.  Quite a reach, I'd say with an impact on history far above what their actual population was.

Greek culture was already warrior focused, don't let all the philosophy and "sciences" fool anyone, compared to outsiders, the Greeks were seen as nothing more than completely warlike barbarians, warriors. Among them the Spartans were the most martial, their entire culture was devoted entirely to war. Not to the science of producing a hoplite army, but to producing warriors. Spartan society wasn't designed to dominate in hoplite vs hoplite warfare, that's where the disparity comes from, the confusion. Spartiates and Spartan society wasn't geared to creating super soldiers, merely a warrior culture.

So if not for hoplite vs hoplite, why did Sparta do it? Necessity. Early on Sparta conquered its neighbor, Messenia. The population was completely enslaved by the Spartans, turned into essentially a permanent class of field hands, serfs. However, as any culture who practices large scale slavery can attest, revolts are always a pressing concern. And it was that threat, constant worry about slave uprisings, plus normal Doric martial culture, plus the freedom of no longer having to individually sow or plow or harvest, that allowed the Spartans to focus on warfare and martial training. Thus the laws of the possibly mythical Lycurgus, who the Spartans believed was the one who instituted all the reforms that transformed their society into the martial state it became.

The point that a few other successful Greek city states could be victorious in battle, later even against Spartan hoplites, while essentially doing it all as weekend warriors has some truth to it. But for many hundreds of years the Spartans were essentially unbeatable on land; so while the Athenians might be able to defeat the Persians without resorting to Spartan measures, when fighting the Spartans themselves on land they were largely losing. Even in those times when the Spartans did lose battles, it was rarely a significant loss and often there were some rather large extenuating circumstances involved. It wasn't until they were getting beat fair and square, mano e mano, that their power really started waning. But a lot of that had to do with social problems inside their own society. Land ownership issues coupled with declining number of full Spartiates. More successful slave revolts. Massive loss of life in the 5th Century BC earthquakes that they never really recovered from.

Want to see how successful Spartans were and their lifestyle? After the peace with Athens following their defeat, when the Tyrants still ran Athens and democracy was banished, the Spartans opened up the agoge to select families of the elite of Athens. And a shit load of them took it up, sending their children to Sparta to get that training. It wasn't boot camp in the sense that it was training them to fight conventional wars, it was simply the most extreme form of child rearing available to the open classes. While any Greek could independently raise their child near identically to the Spartan Agoge, the latter was state run; family WAS NOT ALLOWED TO RAISE THEIR OWN SONS. Only the state was allowed. It was the same with infanticide. Something all Greek peoples did (basically all ancient did it), with the Spartans it too was a state prerogative; the parents had zero say, the Euphors, elected officials, made the call whether or not to toss the baby into a gorge for the wolves to eat.

Spartans were the least free Greeks out there, a more miserable, son-of-a-bitch group of people in history are hard to find. The closest comparison to them are the North Koreans. While great warriors, they were horrible human beings.

Want to talk history? What material support was Persia giving Sparta that allowed them to defeat the Athenians? It had nothing to do with ground combat, it was money to build ships.

The battle of Leuctra was fought nearly 500 years after the reforms of Lycurgus. Half a millennium. And before that battle Spartan culture was already starting to collapse on itself; Leuctra was the result of that, not the start of it.