Whatever the offensive capability of an army, the more powerful air force, navy, armour, artillery and what not. At the end of the day, it still will be the humble infantry foot soldier who bleeds to occupy the objective. Now don't forget that the enemy can still bring the war home to our doorsteps. The Hotel New World incident needed the entire resources of the Civil Defence over 5 days to get the last surviving casualties out.
But of course, the Civil Defence had come a long way since then in terms of experience, equipment and organisation, it have to be seen in perspective of the scenario of artillery barrages from the enemy that caused the collapse of umpteen numbers of HDB blocks along with the occupants. How effective will it then be?
Our likely battles will not be fought in deserts where you can see the enemy long before they can hurt you. That's why the Americans will never invade North Korea. The bloodbath that will accompany that would be too much for American mums and wives to take. Ours will be fought through light forest, palm plantation country and following occupation, continuing guerrilla warfare. The Americans had to date lost over 4,000 in Iraqi cities, how many do you think we will lose fighting our most likely enemy.
By the way, the US did not lose the Vietnam War, indeed they chose not to win it because of the political problems back home. They had brought the North Vietnamese nearly to their knees in Operation Linebacker IIconducted between 18th to the 29th of December 1972 thus nicknamed the Christmas Bombings that resulted in the release of all POWs including the present presidential candidate John McCain III. It also led to the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiation table in Paris whereby a peace deal was signed leading to the disengagement of US forces in Vietnam.