Lurb
6174
Ukrainians just can’t stop beating anyone with a Z on him
Houngan
6175
I’m certainly of a different mind watching Russia vis-a-vis our military capability. I have no informed reason to be so, but Russia being so much worse than I anticipated does make me worry that we’re also well below perceived caliber. That video above explaining their railway reliance and that translated document suggest that it would be trivial, if Europe or NATO or the US were to engage, to completely cut the head off the snake or the body from the head, pick your analogy. Which leads my worrying brain back to brinksmanship, if you come to the table with nothing but a low pair and a flamethrower, how long before you reach for the nozzle?
You’re aware that there’s pretty fairly recent evidence for the efficacy of the US armed forces to conduct military operations in hostile theaters, right?
We’re fairly shit at what comes after, but for the actual invasion and combat bits…by all evidence we handle that part fairly well.
Grifman
6178
Someone pointed out something I’d never really thought about. They said that they had never really understood the Russian military. Russia has a GDP less than Canada, and a per capita GDP less than
Turkey, Greece or Croatia. Yet they maintain a large army, navy, Air Force and nuclear deterrent. What looks to be happening is that they are fundamentally overstretched economically and incapable of truly doing all of that - they are a paper tiger.
Houngan
6179
Ha, good point, where I’m coming from is the question around our fancy stuff, it feels like we should be able to utterly destroy Russia’s current campaign without ever leaving our chairs. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were a different beast, enemy-wise, where it wasn’t about cutting supply lines in a contested airspace, etc. I don’t feel that two AAA forces butting heads (though maybe Russia doesn’t deserve that rating) hasn’t been tested at all.
Some of those withering analyses, e.g. the one about the failure of Russia’s air forces, make direct contrasting comparisons with the US / NATO. Russia has few precision guided munitions and little experience with them while NATO has tons; Russia has no experience managing large numbers of aircraft running large numbers of sorties while NATO has tons. And so on.
On logistics, NATO formations have logistics components a unit size larger than does Russia. So Russian logistics platoons are set against NATO logistics companies; Russian companies against NATO battalions; Russian battalions against NATO brigades. Many more trucks, fewer round trips needed, etc.
And with a certainty, NATO doesn’t have the maintenance and training failures that Russia does.
Houngan
6181
Thanks, and those are usually order-of-magnitude differences or thereabouts? My headspace says (not that we will or should engage given the current situation) if we engaged it would be drones destroying supply lines, cratering roads and cutting bridges, and lasering in cruise missiles, Hellfires fired from below the horizon, etc. Until we roll back to the border, then repeat again and again until the roads and rails are effectively gone 500 miles from Kyiv rather than 120. I do assume we have the material, I was just wondering if the ability of the material was that good.
Yeah. Here’s a discussion on map visualizations and an example of a more informative one.
Bellingcat exec director seems to think it’s authentic:
The problem, as I see it, is that any engagement would start with a fight to achieve air supremacy. NATO would achieve air supremacy IMO, which would make Russia’s entire position untenable and unsupportable, and that would lead to the deployment of (at least) tactical nuclear weapons, some directed at NATO airbases outside of Ukraine, to counter. Then we are in the other thread.
But what do I know? I’m just a retired hotel IT guy.
Dejin
6184
Yeah, I’m thinking they are going to have serious problems restocking their equipment from the losses they are taking. They are chewing up men and material at a very high rate and with their economy heading to ruin, their military is going to be in even worse shape after this.
For folks worried that Russia was going to swallow Ukraine and then turn around and attack NATO, they are going to be in no shape to do anything of the sort.
Even before the sanctions, they were having trouble getting the resources to build equipment for their army. Their new T-14 tank is apparently very good, but they just couldn’t get the resources to build it:
This invasion is clearly a complete disaster for Russia, even if they take Ukraine (but probably can’t hold it) it’s still a disaster for Russia. Unfortunately either way it’s a disaster for Ukraine.
Houngan
6185
Right, and to reiterate, at no point was I suggesting we DO anything, just that the shockingly bad state of the Russian military made me raptor-consider that we may also have been oversold on our smart weapons.
We need to guard against over-certainty & jingoism IMO. Sure, we might dominate the skies and the Russian armies with a no-fly-zone. But then we might also start World War III.
Putin held Europe hostage by purposely shooting at the continent’s largest functioning nuclear plant for fucks sake. Do we trust that guy not to use nukes if he gets shoved into a corner?!
Diego
Dejin
6187
If Russia takes Ukraine, it’s going to move on to the stage we were facing in Afghanistan and Iraq — where the territory is taken, but the population is still willing to fight. The military experts I’ve been following expect if it gets to that point (and unfortunately many of them think it will get to that point), they expect the Russians will have serious trouble maintaining control, especially if the West continues to provide weapons to an insurgency. The one thing in Russia’s favor though is Ukraine doesn’t have as friendly terrain for guerrilla warfare as Afghanistan did.
I think you’ve badly misread Houngan’s comments, for what it is worth. He’s not advocating any of that.
Houngan
6189
Right, and it’s a nothingburger, I’m just continually shocked at how badly Russia is showing up, so I pondered whether our military story might be, certainly not AS flawed, but flawed. Complete pie-in-the-sky, not worth continuing discussion.
The driving thing is frustration because the Russians are doing so badly, so stupidly, that it feels like modern NATO engagement would utterly seal the deal on this whole thing rather than let it percolate and turn into something radioactive. But of course UKR isn’t NATO and isn’t EU and doesn’t have the same toys, though they do have a country-wide set of brass balls.
That’s fair and I apologize @Houngan if so! Think my initial reading (when combined with some comments others have made over the last day) made me think that folks might reacting too quickly for intervention.
I understand why we want to stop Putin of course. But I’m not feeling lucky today, punk.
Diego
Houngan
6191
100% agreed! Intervention is off the board so far, and hopefully will remain so. I mean, it would be great if we could sneak in a couple of percent of our military capability and devastate the Russian attack, but I’m also very much in the camp that there’s no way to do that without causing massive escalation. UKR is sadly on it’s own as much as it has to be while maintaining the right diplomatic stances. Truck in weapons that get fired by a Ukrainian, all good. Send in a weapon that UKR doesn’t have or couldn’t have in the amounts demonstrated, start WWIII.
Well, that’s what @Grifman referenced without sourcing it. For some reason, he posted a response to the Tweet instead of the Tweet itself.
-Tom
