NATO return to Cold War force structure

[glenn239]

6 hours ago, Martineleca said:

 I guess there still are a lot of people that believe this finally will be the war to end all war and reject the notion that our continued conventional weakness will invite further aggression from the east...

The idea that NATO and the USAF is 'conventionally weak' in Europe is a pretty thin supposition.  I think what you actually  mean is that the West is politically not willing to go to nuclear war over Ukraine?

The United States has never been able to deter powers much weaker than Russia from fighting, when the scrap is in their backyard.  China, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine.  Syria and Iran as well.  (The USSR was deterred in Cuba in 1962, but the distance to Cuba from the USSR demostrates the rule that proximity is key).  It is infeasible to argue that given this track record, that NATO can deter jack from shit in Ukraine or anywhere else in this area.  

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by glenn239

[Martineleca]

8 hours ago, glenn239 said:

The idea that NATO and the USAF is 'conventionally weak' in Europe is a pretty thin supposition. I think what you actually  mean is that the West is politically not willing to go to nuclear war over Ukraine?

The only country constantly talking up nuclear weapons like they're going out of style is Russia, so no I don't mean that. Post-Korea only around 15% of NATO forces in Western Europe were from the US, each of other larger countries took on an equal share of the burden for their own security, with France and the UK also providing part of the nuclear deterrent. The completely opposite situation exists today, It's maddening how nations that in the very recent past could field several mechanised corps, are now scraping by anything they can find for a functional division. Before last year there weren't even any US troops permanently stationed in the eastern region, nothing but Ukraine's military would resist Russia pushing up to the border with NATO, they interpreted that as weakness and moved to see how far they could get, it would have been the same for Sweden or Finland until the mutual defence pacts were signed.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Martineleca

[Martineleca]

On 3/13/2023 at 7:43 PM, BansheeOne said:

The plan is to turn the three existing divisions into fully equipped and deployable formations, which they currently aren't. Progressive capability levels to be reached by 2025, 2027 and 2031 respectively.

The French are already working on force expansion. From SLDinfo: The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the use of troops, armor, and artillery barrages to seize the Donbass region, point up the significance of high intensity warfare, said Charles Beaudouin, a retired general who led Scorpion in the army technical section. Heavy armor in the French Titan network will follow on from Scorpion’s focus on medium vehicles, although the latter includes upgrade of 200 Leclerc main battle tanks. - What is certain is that the enemy will use the equalizing power of technology and we must imperatively regain mass-symmetry to inflict strong human and material attrition on the enemy.

[seahawk]

Increasing the budget is one way, you could also make more of existing budgets. One of the first steps would be to simply start buying systems off the shelf and buy "good enough" and not some "best" vapourware.

[Martineleca]

2 hours ago, seahawk said:

Increasing the budget is one way, you could also make more of existing budgets. One of the first steps would be to simply start buying systems off the shelf and buy "good enough" and not some "best" vapourware.

Isn't that the current issue though, capacity at any price, you can offer KMW twenty million per unit, they can't produce 500 Leopards by the end of the year. This is due to decades of underinvestment by both the company and the state, it also creates an opening for another manufacturer, which is why Rheinmetall has been pushing the new Panther tank so hard lately.

[glenn239]

7 hours ago, Martineleca said:

The only country constantly talking up nuclear weapons like they're going out of style is Russia, so no I don't mean that. 

Since 1945, the United States has been singularly unable to deter countries using military means whenever the dispute is nearby to the enemy and considered to a vital to its national interest.   It didn't work with a weak and isolated Iraq, it sure has hell is not going to work with nuclear armed Russia.

Quote

The completely opposite situation exists today, It's maddening how nations that in the very recent past could field several mechanised corps, are now scraping by anything they can find for a functional division.

No disagreement on that.  I have been unpleasantly surprised to discover what I thought that what was Canada's deterioration in capability in all branches of the armed forces seems actually to be a NATO wide problem. 

[Martineleca]

48 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

No disagreement on that.  I have been unpleasantly surprised to discover what I thought that what was Canada's deterioration in capability in all branches of the armed forces seems actually to be a NATO wide problem. 

Didn't Canada use to have an entire division stationed in West Germany, complete with its own mechanised brigade, artillery and light aviation units?

Edited March 23, 2023 by Martineleca

[Stuart Galbraith]

At the end of the cold war, that was post 1985 IIRC. Most of the time it was 'just' a brigade, albeit quite a strong one.

[seahawk]

5 hours ago, Martineleca said:

Isn't that the current issue though, capacity at any price, you can offer KMW twenty million per unit, they can't produce 500 Leopards by the end of the year. This is due to decades of underinvestment by both the company and the state, it also creates an opening for another manufacturer, which is why Rheinmetall has been pushing the new Panther tank so hard lately.

Logically the first step is to buy something, the second step is to buy something that is proven to work, the third step would to be to increase the budget, if you can not get enough if the things you need.

KMV could build 200-300 Leopards each year by the end of 2024, if there would be binding orders for 1500 Leopards.

[Martineleca]

1 hour ago, seahawk said:

KMV could build 200-300 Leopards each year by the end of 2024, if there would be binding orders for 1500 Leopards.

I don't think it's realistic any country would order that many Leopards at once, perhaps split into separate orders that arrive just before the previous batch is complete. Analysis done for Rheinmetall sees the European tank market heating up with demand for anywhere from 5000 to 8000 MBTs, surprisingly few manufacturers are in a position to meet even half that. KMW is still clearing a backlog of existing orders, Hanwha will be busy with the large Polish contract, General Dynamics seems concerned of overextending themselves with the Abrams, there's room for at least two new players.

[DB]

Wouldn't need to be a single order, just Off-The-Shelf purchases of that total by a number of client countries. There's be overheads for each country, for sure, but those are admin and support tasks, not manufacturing, and many of those issues could be cleaned up during production, rather than before it.

[R011]

12 hours ago, Martineleca said:

Didn't Canada use to have an entire division stationed in West Germany, complete with its own mechanised brigade, artillery and light aviation units?

We had a single brigade group oif three manouver battalions (one  tank with Leopard ! and two infantry with M113A1 )and an atillery battalion (M109A1) plus a small squdrtom of Kiowa and Twin Huey helicopters.  There was  also a wing of three fighter squadrons assigned to a differnt command.

Supposedly, we'd add another brigade group with armoured cars and towed 105 mm howitzers  instead of tanks and SP 155 mm to make up a divison as well as another lightly equipped brgade group to Norway.

 

[Martineleca]

3 hours ago, R011 said:

We had a single brigade group of three maneuver battalions (one  tank with Leopard ! and two infantry with M113A1 )and an artillery battalion (M109A1) plus a small squadron of Kiowa and Twin Huey helicopters.  There was  also a wing of three fighter squadrons assigned to a different command.

It's interesting this Canadian formation moved from a component of BAOR to supporting German and US corps in the south, is this because it was downsized for a time or due to its adoption of the Leopard?

[R011]

41 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

It's interesting this Canadian formation moved from a component of BAOR to supporting German and US corps in the south, is this because it was downsized for a time or due to its adoption of the Leopard?

It happened well before the Leopard was adopted and done for cost reasons. Not only a reduction of troops by almost half, but a relocation  to where the reduced in half fighter force was based.  We also dropped the nuclear role and turned out Starfighters into conventional ground attack planes - a role for which they hadn't been designed.

The original intention was to make it air portable and replace the Centurions with Scorpions.  The negative reaction from other Nato members meant the reduced force stayed mechanized but with only 32 tanks and Scorpions were not acquired.

[seahawk]

13 hours ago, Martineleca said:

I don't think it's realistic any country would order that many Leopards at once, perhaps split into separate orders that arrive just before the previous batch is complete. Analysis done for Rheinmetall sees the European tank market heating up with demand for anywhere from 5000 to 8000 MBTs, surprisingly few manufacturers are in a position to meet even half that. KMW is still clearing a backlog of existing orders, Hanwha will be busy with the large Polish contract, General Dynamics seems concerned of overextending themselves with the Abrams, there's room for at least two new players.

It is really very simple. Without orders the industry will not, should not and can not increase the production capabilities, as hiring and training the additional workers in the whole production chain, if you go from a single shift to a 3 shift system, costs a lot of money.

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 hours ago, R011 said:

It happened well before the Leopard was adopted and done for cost reasons. Not only a reduction of troops by almost half, but a relocation  to where the reduced in half fighter force was based.  We also dropped the nuclear role and turned out Starfighters into conventional ground attack planes - a role for which they hadn't been designed.

The original intention was to make it air portable and replace the Centurions with Scorpions.  The negative reaction from other Nato members meant the reduced force stayed mechanized but with only 32 tanks and Scorpions were not acquired.

You got armoured cars with Scorpion turrets IIRC?

[Martineleca]

1 hour ago, seahawk said:

It is really very simple. Without orders the industry will not, should not and can not increase the production capabilities, as hiring and training the additional workers in the whole production chain, if you go from a single shift to a 3 shift system, costs a lot of money.

Then how do you see this playing out, say Germany, Italy and Sweden do a joint order for a thousand tanks to get the supply chain going, with some guarantees in place that additional orders will follow?

[Martineleca]

4 hours ago, R011 said:

It happened well before the Leopard was adopted and done for cost reasons. Not only a reduction of troops by almost half, but a relocation  to where the reduced in half fighter force was based.

The original intention was to make it air portable and replace the Centurions with Scorpions.  The negative reaction from other Nato members meant the reduced force stayed mechanised but with only 32 tanks and Scorpions were not acquired.

That's the low point during the initial drawdown, a NATO source shows that in their final form Canadian Forces Europe had both an armored and artillery regiment deployed at Lahr.

[Martineleca]

On 3/23/2023 at 3:43 PM, Stuart Galbraith said:

At the end of the cold war, that was post 1985 IIRC. Most of the time it was 'just' a brigade, albeit quite a strong one.

Through the POMCUS program the US had by the late 1980s prepositioned equipment for three divisions in Europe, with plans for a further three with full complement of support equipment and ammo storage. Some of that infrastructure remains and is used when units not permanently stationed on the continent arrive for exercises, more is reportedly being set up in Poland but do you know if it's anywhere near its original scale?

[seahawk]

6 hours ago, Martineleca said:

Then how do you see this playing out, say Germany, Italy and Sweden do a joint order for a thousand tanks to get the supply chain going, with some guarantees in place that additional orders will follow?

They can easily do a framework contract with 1000 fixed tanks and options on additional ones, but first they need to actually order those tanks in meaningful numbers. Because at the moment the current production capability is sufficient for the actually signed orders.

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, Martineleca said:

Through the POMCUS program the US had by the late 1980s prepositioned equipment for three divisions in Europe, with plans for a further three with full complement of support equipment and ammo storage. Some of that infrastructure remains and is used when units not permanently stationed on the continent arrive for exercises, more is reportedly being set up in Poland but do you know if it's anywhere near its original scale?

America pulled ALL its Tanks out of Europe at the time of Bush the Youngers wobbler over old Europe.

Last I heard they had a Battalionof Pomcus stock in Lithuania iirc. They may be planning one on Pgoland. But short of equipment already with Units, you are witnessing the wisdom of the pivot to Asia.

[Josh]

8 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

America pulled ALL its Tanks out of Europe at the time of Bush the Youngers wobbler over old Europe.

Last I heard they had a Battalionof Pomcus stock in Lithuania iirc. They may be planning one on Pgoland. But short of equipment already with Units, you are witnessing the wisdom of the pivot to Asia.

Honestly it doesn’t seem like more is necessary.

[Stuart Galbraith]

16 minutes ago, Josh said:

Honestly it doesn’t seem like more is necessary.

You miss my point. If they had been there, its entirely  possible this war would not have occurred at all. At the very moment America signalled the pivot to Asia and withdrawal from Europe, Putin started to throw his weight about. Look at the timing, very same year he put the squeeze on Yanukovich.

https://www.stripes.com/us-army-s-last-tanks-depart-from-germany-1.214977

So as far as I'm concerned, back they need to come, because it's only by parking tanks in Eastern Europe will peace endure. Don't think of them as there to fight, its just deterrence by other means.

[R011]

8 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

You got armoured cars with Scorpion turrets IIRC?

Starting in the very late seventies.  Canadian made the Cougar, a six-wheel LAV officially intended as a tank trainer.  There were also an APC, Grizzly, with an MG turret, and a recovery vehicle, Husky.

We were told that once trained on Cougar, we could transition to a real tank on the ride from the depot in Europe where we hoped the Americans or Germans would give us some to the front line.

[R011]

7 hours ago, Martineleca said:

That's the low point during the initial drawdown, a NATO source shows that in their final form Canadian Forces Europe had both an armored and artillery regiment deployed at Lahr.

Organizational structure remained the same until the end of the Cold War and numbers never returned to the pre-1970 levels.  There had always been an artillery regiment as part of the brigade group and the armour component was regimental size since the late fifties.  The artillery and APCs had all been bought in the mid sixties before defence was slashed.