> My intuition is that no, soldiering involves a lot of learning-by-doing, you need hours of practice stripping and reassembling your Kalashnikov, and amateurs will quickly get killed by professionals.

I think this entertaining video of 2 Ex British army soldiers playing against 50 Airsoft players nicely supports your intuition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNhFMjhpp7I