NATO would have air superiority and not need as many stingers.
So many politicians blathered on about the peace dividend but the bear was hibernating, not dead. I was repeatedly ridiculed for saying so. Fortunately, it turns out the bear rotted from within pretty badly during it's hibernation.
A week of not hearing anybody actually use the only official language of the country, that Russian would conclude that Ukraine is mostly fake.
Of course that led Russians to underappreciate the willingness of Ukraine citizens to actually fight for it.
Now, yes, of course.
This is Russian propaganda and not even true all Ukraine did was introduce a bill to make all offical communications be provided in Ukrainian.
Nothing stopping people providing it in Russian too.
The bill does a lot more than that, and is quite obnoxious actually.
Can you provide a link all I’ve seen from sources is that it required all offical information to be in Ukrainian.
If they have the social and political awareness of a 12 year-old, perhaps.
Nobody actually talks in Ukrainian around them.
Absolutely not true for (and a very weird thing to say about) Kyiv.
In Odesa/Kharkiv Russian is clearly dominant, but it's not like you'll never hear Ukrainian spoken.
NATO is first and foremost a military alliance setup to contain the western expansion of the USSR. It’s a strategic alliance. It’s defensive in as much as a military alliance can be.
What the US is using NATO for now that the USSR is no more and what is the EU getting out of it are actually very valid questions.
They were very valid questions up until the Ukraine invasion revealed Russia to be the mustachioed villain we were always told they were. Now nobody questions the need for NATO. Good job, Mr. Putin, your "Recruiter of the Year" plaque is on the way.
Countries still need protecting from the remnants of the USSR's aggression, mainly Russian aggression.
If NATO didn't exist you can be sure that Russias ambition would not stop at countries like Ukraine.
Countries don’t need protecting. Countries should aim to protect themselves. The EU doesn’t need the US for its protection and should have invested in a proper army decades ago.
It’s obvious that the main benefit for the USA is that NATO dissuades the EU to actually be a power. That some countries in the east are happy to play lapdogs is a major issue.
It's simply not possible from some countries to protect themselves for other larger aggressive countries (such as Russia) that can both out spend them and have many more bodies to throw at the problem.
A collective defensive alliance in this cases makes sense as both a deterrence to any possible belligerents and as a practical measure if someone does try something.
I am not very keen on having American protectorates part of the EU personally (I think every EU extension from 2004 was a terrible and probably fatal mistake and have serious doubt about the 1995 ones) but I don’t think we are going to agree on that. I view it as one of the reason the current EU is so uninspiring.
Politically I despise the current EU. It has no ambition. Its social and economic policies are misguided and ineffective, its strategic vision sorely lacking, its ability to reform inexistant. It’s entirely possible that I’m projecting my utter disgust for my own country political life on the EU here however.
No one is NATO is a 'protectorate' this is absurd on the face of it.
Why do you think its bad that smaller countries in Europe that have historically been invaded and dominated by Russia should not be in a alliance that allows themselves to effectively protect themselves from threats like Russia?.
If you can’t defend yourself and have to rely on a foreign power to do so, you are de facto a protectorate like it or not. That’s the case of at least the Baltic states in Europe and could probably be extended to other former USSR republics in the east.
This implies that _anyone_ who receives any military aid is a protectorate which imply that states like Russia are a protectorate of Iran
I don’t mind the fairly honest debate and disagreement we are having. I understand your view on NATO even if I think it’s wrong and fail to acknowledge the actual effect the alliance has on its members. Still there is little point in going further if you are not interested in a modicum of intellectual honesty.
> I don’t mind the fairly honest debate and disagreement we are having but there is little point in going further if you are not interested in a modicum of intellectual honesty.
I feel like you are the one being intellectually dishonest. To claim someone is a protectorate because they enter into a defensive alliance for their defence is absurd and does not follow.
No one is entirely reliant on NATO for survival but theres plenty of armies that wouldn't survive an insane from Russia without the extra material.
Not to mention that Russia has had a land border with NATO since 1948.
NATO is absolutely zero threat to Russia, and Russia knows it. Finland joined and Russia shrugged, and has since even removed many troops from that border because it knows NATO will not attack.
What matters is the national security interests of Ukraine.
Russia is a massive threat to the national security interests of Ukraine, and Ukraine really wants to join NATO to be safe from Russia. Russia knew that if it wanted to invade and conquer Ukraine, a souvereign country, it would have to do soon because it would not be possible anymore after Ukraine joined NATO.
Russian security interests, fuck off. Neither Ukraine nor NATO is a threat to Russia.
Ukraine's security interests, those are very obviously threatened.
They've removed them because they need to avoid any possibility of a provocation. The merest hint of a wrongful look at Finland will not go well for them.
We’re talking about the US here, not Ukraine.
Yes, if you are a third-party citizen and observe a woman as well as a group of men who you suspect to be absolutely predatory scumbags, you can make predictions about what might happen.
Yes, if you are a third-party citizen and observe ...
This is just spin and narrative to suggest that the war isn't really Putin's fault.
Mhm.
The whole topic here is about how America could/couldn’t have anticipated the invasion. The very comment that you replied to says “The Pentagon should have”… that’s not Ukraine.
Not my problem that you are off-topic.
The topic here, at least where it started to veer way off course from the original thread, is the essentially pro-Kremlin narrative in the GGGP comment and its GP ("The proxy war started in 2014 with Euromaidan"). In this context - US calculations as such are a red herring. What matters here is the clear (and basically rather crass) implication in these comments of core Western responsibility for Russia's military actions.
Which implication your words definitely seemed to be (if obliquely) echoing and supporting. Or at least playing footsie with, for some reason known only to you.
I’ll note that you can’t even accuse me of doing anything even remotely concrete. “Seemed to.” “If obliquely.” “Playing footsie.” All just accusations of association. Not a leg to stand on at all.
Take your control round over who is batting for the correct team elsewhere.
> US calculations as such are a red herring.
Then just say that. My God. No one cares.
Probably because you're throwing up such an ink cloud that it's difficult to see what point you're trying to make. Let along for which "team".
> The Pentagon should have recognized that the Eastern expansion of NATO
This is your mock-quote:
> "The so-called victim must have realized that going out dressed like that
Clearly you are mocking this statement on what the Pentagon “should have realized”.
Then I come along and point out that the mock-quote doesn’t apply since The Pentagon is not the victim in this war.
It’s not my fault that you want to find my spooky ulterior motives.
What matters as far as planning is concerned is analyzing likely outcomes given your own actions. We can for the sake of the argument just take as a given that the Russian government is bloodthirsty and expansionist and wants Ukraine.
Event: Euromaidan
Likely long-term outcomes: ?
There’s not more to it than that. No need to moralize over who did what or who is culpable. This is all about one entity (America) analyzing likely outcomes given a series of events.
No, actually. I do not think it should have been taken for granted that Russia would be stupid enough to do this invasion.
The fact that they were willing to make such insane strategic bludders is a bit of a surprise.
Should have been: given any kind of event.
Considering Us behavior when the Soviet Union installed assets on Cuba, there isn’t a whole lot of ethical ground to be found here. Just Great Power politicians playing stupid games with innocent lives.
If the US had put nukes in Ukraine and pointed them at Russia, and did so before the Crimean invasion, your comparison might be more fair.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-protest_laws_in_Ukraine
No one in Ukraine believes this narrative. Why do you?
None of this is true, what happened in reality and not in the fever dreams of FSB, GRU and SVR agents is that there where protests when Yanukovych went back on a number of election promises and started aligning himself with Russia instead of joining the EU Like he promised he would.
After that happened he was removed from his seat of power by the parliament and he fled back to his handlers in Russia.
How, exactly?
Then jets like the F-22[3] would be used to establish command of the airspace.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_military_parachu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor
It doesn't need to be singularly successful since it's part of a collective of redundant systems[2]. Air isn't working then increase missile strikes, missiles can't attain good effect on target then increase covert operations with local insurgencies, etc.
That's just some of the possible angles of attack. There's leaving out things like drones and cyber attacks that would also be employed to some effect.
Eventually the enemy loses the ability to fight since it's critical points are weakened to such a point it can no longer wage an effective resistance.
Another example: why attack heavily defended artillery positions when you can blow up the logistical route and starve them of rounds to attack with?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare
How is Russia establishing air superiority over Ukraine now? Or is going to change the tempo of the war into their favor?
How does this pertain to them denying NATO+allies from probably eventually attaining air superiority in a hypothetical full conflict?
How many helicopters can Russia sustain to lose? They've lost several over the last few weeks.
Supply routes have be successfully attacked by Ukraine with estimates of slowing logistics by 50% in certain areas.
And again how many AA batteries can they sustain to lose?
Meanwhile Ukraine has made slow but steady advances forward gaining ground.
Where's Russia changing the direction? Is that by terrorizing civilian targets (your bombing campaign) and blowing up hydroelectric dams? So essentially they're just using the tactics of terrorists.
Yet they still can't freely fly over Ukraine because they still lack control over the skies.
When's Russia regaining the momentum in their favor? Last week one of their best units tried to storm Moscow and hang their top military leaders.
AND now Russia is more weakened to a full confrontation with NATO than they were before starting their war in Ukraine. So all the more likely to lose air superiority to NATO+allies.
I dunno know about this part of the statement, the fact that we are still seeing long range deep strikes into important Russian territory (sometimes killing hundreds of soldiers at a time), tells me that maybe Russias EW and AA against semi modern cruise missiles isn't as good as people think.
Yeah but these missile strikes have been hitting high value targets like air fields and troop barracks.
Regardless of if they can’t defend these areas because they don’t have the systems or the systems cannot intercept them it doesn’t bode well.
I guess they might have been Russia's best airborne units, but both at Hostomel and in other engagements, they've been shown to be overrated. Then again, Hostomel was a shitshow of poor planning/intel. I bet the VDV would have loved to know that there was a UKr unit right next door with heavy artillery before they kicked off the assault.
What happens when the enemy has exhausted it's supply of AA ammo?
Or lost use of its radar?
HALO is for opponents lacking AD and radar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Invasion
Edit: If you're objecting to HALO insertion as a measure against AA then fine but even describe as a way around AA:
"The technique is used to airdrop supplies, equipment, or personnel at high altitudes, where aircraft can fly above surface-to-air missile (SAM) engagement levels through enemy skies without posing a threat to the transport or load. In the event that anti-aircraft cannons are active near the drop zone, the HALO technique also minimizes the parachutist's exposure to flak...
... The combination of high downward speed, minimal forward airspeed, and the use of only small amounts of metal helps to defeat radar and reduces the amount of time a parachute might be visible to ground observers, enabling a stealthy insertion."
1. Round the clock bombing. We saw how F-117, flying the same route day after day in Serbia was shot down by an S-75 Dvina (first deployed in 1957) in optical mode. You will never see a B-2 flying in daylight any more than you would see an AC130.
2. What US artillery can outrange an S300/S400? US artillery is already outranged by Russian artillery.
3. Missile strikes are the only thing you list that are even doctrinal against a modern A2AD system. And those are limited, as NATO found out when several members ran out of smart munitions when overthrowing Qaddafi. But yes, that's what we'd use. JASSM, Tomahawk, SCALP, etc.
4. Using Iraq as a measure of how we'd fight a near peer opponent is ridiculous. While Iraq had a large standing army, it was never a match for the US in 1991, much less 2003. There are numerous things we did in Iraq that we'd never have attempted in the Fulda Gap.
5. Finally, back to HALO. Sure the operator jumping out using HALO might have a minimized signature, but remember that big, lumbering transport that he's jumping out of? The one with the ginormous radar signature? Flying high (so the H in HALO) can occur, meaning every radar in the world can spot it? BOOM. Shot down as soon as it's in range of an S400. Which is roughly between 300 and 400KM. So if you're expecting a team dropping in by HALO to survive, you're delusional.
So you can’t refuel, your home runways are trashed and the carriers are sunk. Then what.
Range and logistics matters and the Ruskies have it in that neck of the woods.
Stingers are inexpensive comparatively cheap surface-to-air missiles that allow an individual soldier on the ground to pick off an aircraft that happens to fly sufficiently low; it's useless if air superiority is actually being contested or if aircraft are bombing away from high altitude and mainly functions to whittle down the size of the edge the opposing force's air superiority gives in the ground combat.
These are questions the US has been working on since Vietnam - they’ve gotten pretty good at it by now.
From what I can tell based on western sources, Russia is running circles around NATO tech when it comes to EW, integrated air defense and missile offense.
The US lost in Vietnam, btw. Especially after the MiGs and Russian artillery showed up.
So no, other than one old missile, they're not using US gear, nor US tactics, nor US ISR for SEAD/DEAD.
They don't have the modern aircraft, or missiles that would make SEAD missions against modern Russian AA effective.
Despite the narrative most of the stuff Ukraine is getting is super old.
- Leopard 1's. - M113 APC's - Mig 29's - Sukhoi 24's - Mi-28's - Mi-8s
The HARM's that you speak off, we don't know what variant they are but they won't be super effective because they cannot be effectively integrated with the aircraft Ukraine has so they are probably older variants using pre programmed fixed coordinate attack modes.
That should hopefully change once the F-16's arrive and they can start more effectively using more modern air borne weapons especially for SEAD.
The air defences are probably some of the most modern pierces of equipment that Ukraine has.
HIMARS are a good example of modern equipment with relatively modern munitions but they still haven't gotten any PrSM's or ATACMS.
Where are the F-16s going to take off from (they need pristine runways)? Who will maintain them? How will they refuel without airtankers (they don't have enough range to make it to Donbas and back). How will they avoid the R37M (300km range) when the AMRAAM is not even 200km? And what about Russian SAMs and EW?
> Where are the F-16s going to take off from (they need pristine runways)?
Probably relatively far from the action.
> Who will maintain them?
Ukrainians its one of the reasons why its taking so long for them to get them.
> How will they refuel without airtankers (they don't have enough range to make it to Donbas and back).
They don't have to fight at the front line, they can be used effectively as missile trucks to throw long range weapons like Storm Shadow and other long range weapons at Russian lines.
If a SU25 and Mig29 can survive doing that a F-16 will have no problem.
> How will they avoid the R37M (300km range) when the AMRAAM is not even 200km? And what about Russian SAMs and EW?
The same way that the SU25 and Mig29 do, the F-16 will survive much better.
And how is Russia going to pummel NATO airbases? This isn't 1985 when the Soviet VVS had thousands of fighter bombers tasked with taking out the airfields. They're not next door to Germany/France/UK anymore since NATO has expanded East. The RuAF might have 500 flying aircraft for their entire nation. They have no stealth aircraft in service (the Felon isn't in production yet if ever).
While behind with aircraft, Russia has objectively outclassed the West with missile tech (and defense).
Do yourself a favor and read this book:
Let's just look at AA gear. Pantsir has been shown to be ineffective against most drones, Storm Shadow, etc. Same with BUK. S300 and S400 have really good range, but I think that Patriot and SAMP stand up well in comparison. The Ukrainians are using older Patriot missiles and are successfully engaging Khinzal and any cruise missile the Russians can throw at it. NATO has THAAD and better versions of Patriot in their arsenal, so even being generous, I think this is a draw.
For offensive weapons, the Russians have nothing in the class of SCALP/Storm Shadow, much less JASSM/LRASM. They would even have a hard time coping with Tomahawk.
So what weapon system are the Russians going to use against Lakenheath and Mildenhall? A Kalibr is going to have a very hard time making it across the Baltics to the UK, and I doubt any aircraft doing a suicide mission would make it either. How about Aviano? Same problem. Ramstein and Spangdahlem as well.
And Russia sure has done a great job "pummeling" Ukrainian airbases, right? I mean, they've utterly failed at this. The Ukrainians are still flying Fencers, Fulcrums and Frogfoots from their bases.
Indeed it is and the proof shows that Ukraine intercepts a large number of Russian missiles with air defence.
Whilst Russia intercepts a lot of Ukrainian weapons with the intended targets.
The Russians have maybe shot down a single stormshadow out of all the ones that have been fired.
They don’t seem so good at intercepting modern western cruise missiles.
This all ignores that Ukraine managed to get TU141 drones that look like they have the radar signature of a truck past Russian air defence to hit targets within Russia.
Your true believer enthusiasm is endearing, but it doesn’t win wars.
They have a single photo of a single storm shadow.
Because they haven't shot down anymore, I presume they will move it to 100 different sites to try and claim they have shot down more like they did earlier with the downed drones.
And all I'm saying is, plan to be able to start the dang factories again.
A broad section of Americans, from the 1970s (roughly post peak Soviet power) through today (albeit declining), has called for dismantling our military-industrial complex. That production capacity is the military-industrial complex. The peace dividend of the 90s was a direct result of reörienting military production to civilian use, making fewer guns and more butter.
Crucial electronic components for a piece of equipment designed in 1978 and last manufactured in 1987 are no longer manufactured, and replacing them will require a redesign and a requalification? Who could have understood that, besides anyone with a EE degree.