They saw in 2014 that the international community will just ignore a fucking invasion if they simply remove the insignia from their uniforms and pretend Russia has nothing to do with it. Phew, thank God this invasion happening in plain view is just some big misunderstanding and we don’t actually have to go help our ally defend themselves from unprovoked expansionist agression
Doesn't matter when he threatens to nuke you if you fight back. He's banking on using nuclear deterrence offensively, hoping that neither the UK nor France would really risk mutual destruction over some eastern European states. And the US is probably gonna elect Trump again and solidify their downfall.
I wonder what everyone’s thoughts are on this. Personally I think Russia is spent and would need at least 5 years to train new troops, build new tanks, etc to the point of waging an effective war at any scale, let alone against NATO. Could easily be 10 with continued sanctions. By that time Putin could easily be dead and I see nothing structural that could lead to the next Russian President wanting to wage a war. Just have to wait out Putin with sanctions.
You are right in that way, but Russia is now in war economy and that can’t stop quickly. They will gain weapons and troops and the ability to deploy them effectively. They won’t attack NATO directly, but they didn’t attack Ukraine directly either, at first. First they sent unmarked troops to stir troubles, then marked “to solve” the troubles. They are more than able to sustain paramilitary groups in various border areas for decades. No such activity will be enough to create an article 5 situation and all of it will degrade NATO and resolve of the members.
Only if NATO agrees it happened. Nations just have to find pretext or plausible deniability to avoid escalation -- which they will when the alternative is inevitably nuclear escalation.
Russia is proving that the systems of NATO are highly vulnerable to a bad faith and cynical actor's aggression. NATO needs to change to prove Russia wrong. And the USGOP, among others, are proving him highly right.
How? They will deny it, there will be no marks. It will start gradually. Likely NATO nations wont support article 5, really a nuclear war, if they think there are only some small border skirmishes on an unimportant border.
And that is it. This will bring divide and distrust into nato. That’s exactly what Russia wants. They don’t want to occupy Poland, they know that’s impossible.
Because it doesn’t matter if Russia admits it or not.
If "unknown“ saboteurs are doing things aligned with Russian interests in areas of Russian interest it won’t take long until western intelligence determines that Russia is sending military and covert ops into a nato country‘s territory. That is a clear act of aggression.
Simply denying that they are doing it isn’t worth shit behind the scenes.
That by itself not. But doing it slowly by creating arming and supporting paramilitary groups can absolutely work. No doubt. Getting rid of NATO is their primary goal. Our at least reducing effectiveness.
Europe’s main worry is that the USA pulls out of NATO. Without the USA, NATO becomes a lot weaker and may have issues projecting power on Europe’s frontier for an extended period of time.
And as we’ve seen with Ukraine, Putin seems to have a decently firm grasp of Russia.
I always find this odd that people think that European Nato is weak and couldn’t take on Russia, especially when one of the poorest countries in Europe (Ukraine) fought them into a stalemate.
It doesn’t matter if Europe only NATO is weak or not. It would look weak. For better or worse the US is at least half it not more of NATO’s effective force. The loss would embolden Russia and friends.
Ukraine has also had significant support from NATO, both in materiel and in intelligence. A lot of that support came from the USA and a lot of the means to refill strategic reserves are mainly American owned and run.
A European only NATO has diminished command and control capabilities and defense industry.
I wonder if Taiwan is looking into these boat-drones considering their successes. Could be extremely useful in keeping any Chinese ships from ever landing.
Every single military in the world will be watching the usage of all sorts of drones in this conflict. Even if you're America or China you need to learn how to defeat them cost-effectively
Even simple unarmed $300 drones with an IR camera are proving to be extremely effective. The level of live battlefield information and situational awareness they are bringing to commanders on the ground is at least equivalent to what a platoon of recon troops can offer.
Next up are the drones capable of carrying light loads like air dropped grenades or explosives than can take our expensive vehicles like aircraft. The return on investment for these systems are insane.
The US Army literally just cancelled its FARA Helicopter program because of drones.
““We are learning from the battlefield – especially Ukraine – that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief of Staff General Randy George said in a press release.”
But attack helis just seem so fragile. They’re relatively easy targets and don’t add all that much extra. Transport heli’s are way more useful. Hell, even in civilization games heli’s are weak.
Because we don’t need multiple versions of helicopters to do the same thing. Most of our recent Apache use is against people using AKs and RPGs then running into caves - ironically enough, probably the same level as its main use-case in 1975.
For few hundred $ you get capability that formerly was only provided by ATGMs, and it’s several times lighter as well, not to mention increased situational awareness. Every military worth their salt will have to study it and countermeasures
for comparison Stugna-P costs $20k per missile, entire system is 100kg but in return it gets to target much faster and has enough penetration to drill through frontal armour of most tanks, basically guaranteeing mission kill in single hit. drones get to the target in minutes, not seconds and have to find weak spots, but greater maneuverability allows for this
I think drones overwhelming advantage is the range and terrain they are effective in. The ability to find and destroy a target that is moving behind cover is a huge advantage.
How many videos have we seen of assaults moving up behind a tree line for cover. Artillery can stop these but hitting a moving target from miles away takes a lot of shells. Air support can take them out but they are vulnerable on today’s battlefield. Weapons like the Stugna-P require line-of-sight on the ground so they have to let them get closer.
I'm pretty opinionated, and some of them aren't popular. I'm fairly certain I get a few accounts down voting everything I put out there.
Good news, is that I see evidence from other instances, but not a lot on my home.
For sure, hasnt the whole world learned that heavy expensive vehicles can be countered by relatively cheap munitions?
Even without air superiority Ukraine has made MBT’s basically useless.
To be fair, the fact that so many MBTs are still being lost suggests that they are still useful enough to be used. However, some militaries have been trialled lasers as a sort of lightweight CIWS to protect such vehicles from the likes of incoming missiles, and while that's expensive to add on in the first place the cost per shot is virtually nothing. Turkiye has supposedly already tried one out in live combat, and against UAVs no less
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