NATO return to Cold War force structure

[Martineleca]

On 1/20/2023 at 11:07 AM, Huba said:

In other news, as this topic have more or less become about Poland

Hey glad you're back friend, now that Poland has committed to producing 1000 Borsuk IFVs and a further 400 auxiliary vehicles, is the AS21 Redback procurement idea dead?

[kokovi]

I believe current NATO ground force levels would be sufficient, if the units had enough equipment and stored supplies. USAF and NATO air forces would completely destroy road and rail infrastructure in Western Russia and Belarus with PGMs and cruise missiles in case of a Russian attack which would pretty much stop any offensive dead in its tracks.

[glenn239]

3 hours ago, kokovi said:

I believe current NATO ground force levels would be sufficient, if the units had enough equipment and stored supplies. USAF and NATO air forces would completely destroy road and rail infrastructure in Western Russia and Belarus with PGMs and cruise missiles in case of a Russian attack which would pretty much stop any offensive dead in its tracks.

Depends on China.  If China does nothing then you are correct.  If Sino-Belarussian and Sino-Russian relations deepen, then all bets are off.   

 

[Josh]

55 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Depends on China.  If China does nothing then you are correct.  If Sino-Belarussian and Sino-Russian relations deepen, then all bets are off.   

 

I don't think there's any amount of equipment China could sell Russia that would make its air forces effective in the short to medium term, assuming China was even willing to sell its best equipment.

[Sardaukar]

Considering Sino-Russian relationship, one has to be very delusional to think that China would even a moment to consider to sell their top shelf equipment to Russia.

China needs Russia for one thing only, supplier of oil and raw materials. 

That is modern neo-colonism. 

[Josh]

2 hours ago, Sardaukar said:

Considering Sino-Russian relationship, one has to be very delusional to think that China would even a moment to consider to sell their top shelf equipment to Russia.

China needs Russia for one thing only, supplier of oil and raw materials. 

That is modern neo-colonism. 

I'd argue it also has an interest in a strong conventional Russian armed forces as a means of tying up US forces and commitments in Europe, but I think that ship has sailed.

[Martineleca]

4 hours ago, Josh said:

I don't think there's any amount of equipment China could sell Russia that would make its air forces effective in the short to medium term, assuming China was even willing to sell its best equipment.

Something that this war has revealed is that with the presence of thick air defence networks on both sides, modern warfare can be successfully conducted entirely without air support that has come characterise other conflicts in the past century. The Russian Air force has lost around 300 fixed wing aircraft with nothing to show for it, Western jets though expected to be more effective will be operating in the same environment and likely suffer heavy losses as well. Which is why NATO countries are greatly increasing funding for their mechanised forces and artillery, those will continue to be the main combat elements of any war planning for the foreseeable future.

[bojan]

30 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

...The Russian Air force has lost around 300 fixed wing aircraft...

Do not smoke crack and do not trust Ukrainian numbers.

[Josh]

32 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

Something that this war has revealed is that with the presence of thick air defence networks on both sides, modern warfare can be successfully conducted entirely without air support that has come characterise other conflicts in the past century. The Russian Air force has lost around 300 fixed wing aircraft with nothing to show for it, Western jets though expected to be more effective will be operating in the same environment and likely suffer heavy losses as well. Which is why NATO countries are greatly increasing funding for their mechanised forces and artillery, those will continue to be the main combat elements of any war planning for the foreseeable future.

Yes and no. The USAF is to the VKS what Delta Force is to the Peace Corps. obviously the AD deployed by either side is far beyond anything the USAF has ever faced before, but if nothing else their inventory of stand off PGMs is vast in comparison to the VKS.

[Josh]

4 minutes ago, bojan said:

Do not smoke crack and do not trust Ukrainian numbers.

Indeed, I think the Oryx number is around a hundred only if you count helicopters. I suppose 300 could be a real number if it included every Orlan10 as well…but that’s rather a stretch of the phrase “fixed wing”….

[Martineleca]

8 hours ago, bojan said:

Do not smoke crack and do not trust Ukrainian numbers.

I don't need to smoke crack as I'm not about to mindlessly run into machine gun fire. Fact is manned Russian aircraft barely even go near the border anymore, preferring to release stand off missiles from as far away as possible. Which is an appropriate tactic mind you, but not because they like taking the scenic route, they've been seriously rattled by ex-Soviet and now Western SAMs, another Su-34 shot out of the sky just yesterday.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Martineleca

[kokovi]

9 hours ago, Martineleca said:

Something that this war has revealed is that with the presence of thick air defence networks on both sides, modern warfare can be successfully conducted entirely without air support that has come characterise other conflicts in the past century. The Russian Air force has lost around 300 fixed wing aircraft with nothing to show for it, Western jets though expected to be more effective will be operating in the same environment and likely suffer heavy losses as well. Which is why NATO countries are greatly increasing funding for their mechanised forces and artillery, those will continue to be the main combat elements of any war planning for the foreseeable future.

The combination of F-35 and AARGM-ER will make life very challenging for AD/SAM radars.

[bojan]

5 hours ago, Martineleca said:

I don't need to smoke crack...

But you quoted "300 lost fixed wing aircrafts".

I generally agree with the rest of your post, well developed and organized AD, even if dated (like Ukrainian one) is very, very hard to overcome. I think I have spoken about vulnerability of hovering helicopters to just about anything back in ~2014., and high flying fixed wing using LGBs to any kind of decent SAM network with capable high altitude missiles even before that.

[Strannik]

Btw, Colby is the guy who gave the phrase "sound like a broken record" a new meaning wrt beating the China war drums.

 

 

[Martineleca]

2 hours ago, Strannik said:

Btw, Colby is the guy who gave the phrase "sound like a broken record" a new meaning wrt beating the China war drums.

Well this is mostly correct, almost all NATO members are conventionally weaker today than a year ago, having sent so much equipment to aid Ukraine. The issue right now is that while frontline countries like Poland, Norway or the US consider this to only be temporary until the huge backlog of new arms orders is completed, Western European states still seem to reject full rearmament and are simply allowing their military capability to decline even further.

[Strannik]

27 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

 Western European states still seem to reject full rearmament and are simply allowing their military capability to decline even further.

Or just plain afraid of more guns than butter policy  (with the current inflation and new energy prices the policy for both guns and butter will likely exacerbate the situation to the critical level)

[Martineleca]

12 hours ago, Strannik said:

Or just plain afraid of more guns than butter policy  (with the current inflation and new energy prices the policy for both guns and butter will likely exacerbate the situation to the critical level)

Inflation is a serious problem worldwide, including in the nations that are ramping up military spending. Considering that Western European countries have especially been slacking off on defence issues for the last three decades, it's about time they end their "peace dividend" mindset that has resulted in nothing but regional instability.

[glenn239]

4 hours ago, Martineleca said:

, it's about time they end their "peace dividend" mindset that has resulted in nothing but regional instability.

Many in the EU seem to be of the impression that, while Russia is certainly at great fault here,  it is also fanatical neocon ideology in Washington that is driving Germany and the EU further into dangerous waters.  What do you recommend we should say to these Europeaners for them to lose the 30 or 40 IQ points necessary to come to an alternative conclusion?

 

[Martineleca]

5 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Many in the EU seem to be of the impression that, while Russia is certainly at great fault here,  it is also fanatical neocon ideology in Washington that is driving Germany and the EU further into dangerous waters.

 

The invasion and other more recent conflicts happened precisely because of the political and military weakness displayed by the West in Europe since the end of the Cold War, the excessive military capability that had successfully kept the peace for half a century is now missing. If twenty armored corps were still on constant alert to crack skulls, the calculations of loss and gain from adventurism are altered significantly. In the present day an example for lasting deterrence is on Korean peninsula, where a demilitarised zone separates gigantic conventional forces, so far it has lasted seventy years.

[Strannik]

6 hours ago, Martineleca said:

Inflation is a serious problem worldwide, including in the nations that are ramping up military spending. Considering that Western European countries have especially been slacking off on defence issues for the last three decades, it's about time they end their "peace dividend" mindset that has resulted in nothing but regional instability.

So, why didn't they start then? They had an almost whole year (presuming it took them 3-4 months to realize the ear is not stopping anytime soon)

[Martineleca]

27 minutes ago, Strannik said:

So, why didn't they start then? They had an almost whole year (presuming it took them 3-4 months to realize the war is not stopping anytime soon)

Even though they got off to a very slow start France will in fact be increasing defence spending by over 30% with most of it going towards the army, Italy, Spain and Benelux countries have also announced some increases that are still in the very early stages. Germany is the outlier in that they originally came out with a commitment to almost double their military budget, yet as you say a year later absolutely nothing has changed, let's see if their new minister can get things moving in the right direction.

[Strannik]

1 hour ago, Martineleca said:

Even though they got off to a very slow start France will in fact be increasing defence spending by over 30% with most of it going towards the army, Italy, Spain and Benelux countries have also announced some increases that are still in the very early stages. Germany is the outlier in that they originally came out with a commitment to almost double their military budget, yet as you say a year later absolutely nothing has changed, let's see if their new minister can get things moving in the right direction.

So, apart from France no country has done anything substantial and you have no explanation as to why.

On the second thought Germany declared the increase as well, so unless France has done smth. - they are in the same boat as of now.

This is not how countries afraid of their natsec act.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Strannik

[urbanoid]

On the other hand relative strength of NATO in Europe has actually increased due to Russian losses alone. Poland has a gigantic rearmament program (on a scale that is unprecedented after the Cold War) and Uncle Sam is back in Yurop as well, so... 

[seahawk]

23 minutes ago, Strannik said:

So, apart from France no country has done anything substantial and you have no explanation as to why.

On the second thought Germany declared the increase as well, so unless France has done smth. - they are in the same boat as of now.

This is not how countries afraid of their natsec act.

Everybody knows there is no reason for that. Russia is not a threat to France or West Germany.

[Martineleca]

1 hour ago, Strannik said:

This is not how countries afraid of their natsec act.

It's not about the security of one country though, it is about participating in collective defence which is the entire point of NATO. As Macron has said, having the capability to back up an ally in a modern high intensity conflict must be the guiding principle of rearmament. In that case since Poland as a front line nation will be procuring up to 1500 modern MBTs, it would be insulting if much larger economies Germany, UK and France cannot support at least a thousand each.