Europe, Boring Until it's Not

[Smitty-48]

Thing about the Russians; it's not the Soviets circa 1945, they're nothing like that anymore, they don't have the strategic depth, politically, financially, economically, diplomatically, to fight a prolonged and costly campaign, so even if deterrence fails, you can fall back on asymmetrical spoiling action to grind them to a halt, at which point they're going to run out of steam and have to sue for an exit strategy pretty quick, if they can't smash and grab you quick and dirty with little to no resistance, they're pretty much stymied right out of the gate.

The greatest threat from the Russians, is to the United States; launch on false warning countervalue nuclear exchange, in terms of conventional war, they're not that scary.

[Viktorthepirate]

Wow - No response from the ground pounders? Man, they are slack....

Don’t know nothing bout the Finnish Army so I can’t say anything either way. Hell, I don’t know much about Finland period.

I can say that its probably safe to assume they got the winter warfare thing figured out however.

Wouldn’t call the US Army average though. Lot of trigger time (budget), verteran NCOs and officers...

We are also pretty good at the guns and butter thing, our logistical capability far exceeds anyone else’s.

But whatevs man, let’s talk about if Batman or Superman would win a fight.

[Smitty-48]

Guns & butter logistics, seapower, airpower, firepower, those are the things that set the US military apart, but a knife fight in a frozen phone booth on the Finnish Lappland, is not a place where America's advantages could be brought to bear, and as I said, you can't win in a contest of firepower with the Russians, because that will simply spiral into a nuclear standoff, and you can't take it there over Finland, and you wouldn't.

[Smitty-48]

Bear in mind, an overt Russian attack on an EU member state is way above the threshold of tactical engagements, the Pentagon would probably send the Green Berets to assist the Finns, but theater wide the US military would have much bigger problems to deal with, that would be a major Russians strategic move, just short of crossing the Article V line, but the Article V line would be over the next hill, so the US response is going to be big, it's going to be theater wide, and the primary engagement is more likely to be in the G-I-UK Gap with submarines, not on the Lappland with tanks.

If you have to get to tank against tank with the Russians, get down in your bomb shelters, because that is the brink right there right thur.

[Viktorthepirate]

Guns & butter logistics, seapower, airpower, firepower, those are the things that set the US military apart, but a knife fight in a frozen phone booth on the Finnish Lappland, is not a place where America's advantages could be brought to bear, and as I said, you can't win in a contest of firepower with the Russians, because that will simply spiral into a nuclear standoff, and you can't take it there over Finland, and you wouldn't.

Yea, we got like 1.5 Divisions worth of troops that would probably do ok there. Certainly not enough to make a serious impact.

Russians would fuck us up, Fins would hold the line as long as they could. Similar to what happened to the BEF in the beginning of WW1 I think, good first show and then the casualties grind us down.

Depends on the scale of the war I guess.

[Smitty-48]

Guns & butter logistics, seapower, airpower, firepower, those are the things that set the US military apart, but a knife fight in a frozen phone booth on the Finnish Lappland, is not a place where America's advantages could be brought to bear, and as I said, you can't win in a contest of firepower with the Russians, because that will simply spiral into a nuclear standoff, and you can't take it there over Finland, and you wouldn't.

Yea, we got like 1.5 Divisions worth of troops that would probably do ok there. Certainly not enough to make a serious impact.

Russians would fuck us up, Fins would hold the line as long as they could. Similar to what happened to the BEF in the beginning of WW1 I think, good first show and then the casualties grind us down.

Depends on the scale of the war I guess.

Any head to head war with the Russians plays out at sea, World War Three is not going to be a land war, and it gets to DEFCON 2 before it gets to tank gun range, the Russians aren't going to fight you tank to tank, if they reach the threshold of direct fire on you, it will be torpedoes going under keels.

[Smitty-48]

When thinking war with the Russians, you've have to think strategic, there is no tactical solution between nuclear superpowers, and America's center of gravity is at sea, so if it reaches the point where the Russians feel like it has come to the brink and they have to strike, it's not going to be on the ground in Europe, it's going to be at the maritime strategic choke points, Panama, Gibraltar, Suez, Hormuz, Malacca, etc.

It will be torpedoes and smart mines, and they will be sinking merchant ships. Sever the SLOCs, without inciting a nuclear exchange, fire on US Navy only if fired upon, otherwise go after the lifelines on the sea lanes.

No tank battles, no direct attack on the CONUS, they attack asymmetrically at sea, and defy you to fight a nuclear war over it.

[ssu]

The Russian war machine has it's ebbs and flows. All armed forces perhaps have good times and bad ones, but in the case of Russia the differences are huge.

The Army that my country confronted in 1939 was an utter disaster. This can be seen from the fact that during the Winter War the Russians had far more tanks, aircraft and men fighting a smaller and far worse armed Finnish Army than they had during the summer offensive in 1944. In the summer of 1944 it was still a cumbersome unimagitive army, but an effective fighting force and something totally different from 1939-1941.

History repeats itself: in the First Chechen war the machine had deteriorated again to be a total disaster and a lot of people were writing the Russian armed forces off. Russo-Georgian war was managed barely thanks to Georgian incompetence, but it succeeded. Now the force that occupied Crimea and is fighting in Syria is a totally different force from the one that sent columns without maps into Grozny.

It may not be the perfect army and likely will have it's weaknesses, but it has improved a lot, that's for sure.

[C-Mag]

ssu, does anyone talk about Finland saving Russia and Europe from Nazi Collectivism ?

Had the Soviets not failed so badly, they would never have been prepared to turn back the Germans in the Winter of 41-42. Oddly enough IMO, a Democratic system probably would not have reformed their war machine fast enough.

[ssu]

ssu, does anyone talk about Finland saving Russia and Europe from Nazi Collectivism ?

Had the Soviets not failed so badly, they would never have been prepared to turn back the Germans in the Winter of 41-42. Oddly enough IMO, a Democratic system probably would not have reformed their war machine fast enough.

What if-scenarios are interesting, but from history you never can know what might happened. Because on the other one hand the low performance of the Russian army during the Winter War made the Germans more confident that Russia was a pushover and easily winnable in the short time they thought it was possible.

If something the Germans had bad it was their intel. Not only were they ignorant about Russia, but also they were very ignorant about the war potential that the US had. After all, wasn't the US Army smaller than the army of Belgium prior to WW2? The Interwar US didn't seem at all to have a military capability that it potentially had.

Besides, who knows what kind of army Russia would have if it was (had been) a democracy. I'm sure they would still have a will to defend their motherland irrelevant of the system.