The Glade 4.0

Per a newly-published RAND study

NATO presently cannot expect to hold the capitals of Estonia or Latvia - NATO members - against Russia for more than 60 hours, with a week to 10 days advance warning. In other words, it isn't just that NATO can't hold off Russia from the capitals of its 2 most exposed members indefinitely, it can't hold them off for even 3 full days in the best case. The worst case is 36 hours.

Some important points from the report:

- There is not a single NATO main battle tank anywhere in the Baltics at present. The Baltic countries themselves do not own any and no such units are present from anyone else. The only thing even remotely "armored" is a single Stryker battalion.
- By contrast, ALL of the 22 Russian battalions in that theater have armor of some sort. Many are tank units, and even their airborne units have light armored vehicles that ours lack.
- The U.S. Army does not presently have a single main battle tank in Europe outside pre-positioned stocks. NONE of the cold war armored units remain
- Lack of supporting fires units outside the artillery organic to the light battalions means that the considerable rocket and heavy tube artillery available to the Russians has significant freedom to shape the battlefield and prevent NATO units from maneuvering.
- NATO airpower presents a somewhat better picture, but cannot slow the Russian advance enough to matter. Russia will still have a quick victory on the ground, enough to create a fait accompli of presenting NATO with various really bad options. Russian air power and ADA and the near-total lack of NATO ADA mean that NATO cannot expect to enjoy the type of total control of the air, or even close to it, of Desert Storm or the Iraq invasion.

The report is 16 pages, but very readable; it is not presented in highly technical or academic language.

The message is that NATO wants to still be a defensive alliance but does not want to acknowledge that it might have to actually defend anything. Russia has a recent history of invading and annexing areas with significant Russian ethnic minorities, and NATO already made the decision to accept the risk of adding the Baltics to the alliance - that ship has sailed. The insistence on believing that because the Cold War is over and no amount of defense is too small means that Russia can basically fracture the alliance any time it wants for bargain prices. If Russia were to undertake this, it would demonstrate that NATO is unwilling and unable to live up to its treaty commitments.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

File this under "duh."

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That doesn't seem right. Couldn't NATO transport lots of armored vehicles from Western Europe by rail?

We're talking about the RAND corporation. If that alternative were available, they'd have explored it. That would be like Lockheed not realizing you can use afterburners to make a jet go faster.

Anyhow, there's a number of problems:

- There aren't that many armored vehicles. The German tank force is down to about 250 vs. 2,200 during the Cold War, so under 15% of what it once was. The British tank contingent is completely gone. The U.S. has prepositioned stocks there, but it would take a week to 10 days to fly troops in, get the stocks drawn, conduct last-minute maintenance, and arming, and then begin movement. Even then we're talking 24 tanks and 28 Bradleys; about 1 battalion worth.

- Different track gauges. Poland and Western Europe use the same gauge as the U.S. but most Former Soviet Union states use Russian-gauge. Rolling stock can't cross between them, and guess who has almost all the heavy railcars for the Russian gauge?

- Vulnerability to air attack. Russia has considerable ground-attack assets in its inventory and we can hardly count on being able to completely stop Russian air power. Russia might or might not be willing to attack equipment rail-loads in NATO countries other than the Baltics, but if their plan is to fracture NATO and render it useless, they might be willing to. If the alliance can't survive the conquest of Latvia or Estonia, it's not going to be around to retaliate for an airstrike on a rail yard in Poland.

This is by no means exhaustive, but its illustrative. If your response to a study like this is "can't they just <insert simple solution here>" then they answer is almost certainly because "No, <numerous reasons why simple solution won't exactly work>"

To illustrate this:

"Couldn't NATO just threaten nuclear war?"

Yes, they could. The is also not a practical solution, and a few reasons why are in the study, if you can't figure it out for yourself.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is a map of rail networks in Europe.

Seems like everything is connected, and even if the rail gauges are different, couldn't they simply unload the vehicles from one train and put them on another? I don't see how it would take over a day to do that.

Also, it wouldn't take three days for the NATO airforce to fly to the area, where they could protect the railways. I don't see how the Russians could destroy the railways without being intercepted by NATO planes or SAM missiles. I guess it's possible but it could go either way.

Even 250 tanks (plus the thousands of supporting infantry) could probably hold off the Russians for a couple days, enough time for further reinforcements. That's a lot of tanks for the Russians to knock out in only a couple days, especially since they'd have to contend with the NATO airforce as well.

I think NATO could probably protect the capitals in the best case. It just doesn't make sense to me that the Russians could quickly blitzkrieg their way to the capitals in only a few days in the best case scenario for NATO.

Russia's per capita income is only ~$6000 per year. They're going through a terrible recession right now. A war like this could reduce their per capita income even more by an order of magnitude, putting their economy on the same level as African countries. I don't see the Russians being very successful in an offensive war.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11524

Buy that, and start playing with the toys a bit before you make any more posts about how you believe things would go. I don't think you really grasp the depth of the details that you're unaware of here.



It may seem that way, but they aren't connected just because someone made a rail map with all the rails in the same color. If everything goes right yeah, you might be able to transload from 1 train to another in 1 day but that doesn't solve the problem of availability of rolling stock and that's assuming no other problems, like the relevant rail yards not being conveniently right next to each other.



What SAMs is NATO going to position there? NATO has very limited air defense artillery. If the NATO aircraft are protecting rail yards, they're doing less A) killing Russian ground forces and B) stopping our own ground forces from getting killed. That just makes it easier for the Russians to push to Talinn and Riga.



That's 250 tanks IF Germany deploys its entire army to defend the Baltics. That makes all kinds of assumptions - that all the tanks are in good repair (they aren't), that they can all be moved into the area in a timely fashion - they can't, there's the rail problems already noted and a very limited road network of sufficient strength to bear the weight of numerous tanks passing over them, there's the logistical needs to support the tanks BEFORE moving them and so forth.

The proper thing to do is to have heavy brigades that are already stationed in the Baltics as a deterrent, not try to rush them in at the last minute to counter a Russian push.



That's because you are thinking about the problem as if it were a game of Axis and Allies and claiming it "doesn't make sense" based on your intuition. It makes no more sense, however, for you to disbelieve this based on your intuition than it would for me to try to write one of your computer programs based on what intuitively seems right to me. There's a reason RAND gets paid to study these things while you do not.



Over time, this potentially could degrade the ability of Russia to do something like this. The problem is that the weakness of NATO allows them to do this on the cheap, and if Russia needs to downgrade military capabilities it can downgrade other areas first.

The average household income of a Russian, however, has zero effect on their ability to conduct a short-term ground offensive right now, or in the short-to-mid-term. A war to invade the Baltics would not seriously affect their national economy. Modern wars between major forces will not last years or even months - weeks is a long time. It's not WWII. We're talking about a 60 hour campaign, and the defense RAND suggests is not actually stopping such an invasion dead, but that if there were a sufficient force to delay it for a few weeks, that would make it not worth the cost to Russia - not because their national economy would suffer, but because losses and degradation of their own forces would become unacceptable.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The bigger question is "So what?"

The other one is "How is this our problem?" Sure, we're a part of NATO... but most of Europe is too. If they don't want to participate when its right next door... why the **** should we care?

I liken this to a neighbor getting broken into when they can't be bothered to buy locks, security systems, or even a **** door.

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Holy shitsnacks!

To understand why the **** we should care, we need to understand a little bit about American history.

NATO was the military's excuse to have unlimited funding during the latter half of the twentieth century. NATO was how they justified spending money without having to explain to anyone what they were actually it money for. Now we've pissed money away for fifteen years **** around in third world countries. Terrorism doesn't bring in those tax dollars the way it used to. The war hawks are hoping another good old-fashioned Red Scare will get them the unfettered, no-questions-asked access to the public coffers they they became accustomed to.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Oh. **** them then. I'd much rather those dollars be spent here, rather than Europe.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Well, that's a legitimate point - why ARE we still part of NATO when the other major NATO powers can't be assed to provide for the defense of their neighbors per their treaty obligations? These countries aren't like Poland which is actually large enough to make a meaningful contribution to defense (and in the case of Poland, is one of the few NATO allies to give a **** about doing so).The alliance took the decision to add a bunch of small, very hard to defend members that can't contribute a great deal to their own defense, so it assumed an obligation to defend them. that is to say, the alliance did; it doesn't mean the U.S. takes them under its defense umbrella at our expense while everyone else provides lip service and a few token airplanes.

However, the other side of the coin is that the ship of "is it actually a good idea to add the Baltic states to NATO?" has already sailed. They ARE a part of it now, and so are we. If we're going to pull out we should do so for our own reasons and on our own terms, not after the Russians have already called our bluff.



The problem with that is that the people we can't defend are not the ones at fault here - Estonia and LAtvia are small, poor, and suffered under Soviet occupation during the 45 years when the early NATO members were economically prosperous. they cannot be blamed for trying to get help to protect against their large, scary neighbor. Who can be blamed are the Germans and British that think their militaries are endless supplies of largesse for politicians to buy votes with.

The problem with NATO is that there are 3 types of countries - Those that could contribute but don't like Germany and Britain (at least, not to the degree they should), those like Estonia and Latvia that want to but really can't, and then the U.S. and Canada both of which are special cases because of the giant ocean in the way.



To understand a bit about American history, you'd have to understand a bit about American history. First, the term "war hawk". "War hawk" is a term for a particular political group. It's proper definition is "Anyone who is, in any way shape or form, for any reason, in favor of any action of the national defense that the speaker finds uncomfortable, inconvenient, or inappropriate in any way." Much like "racist" or "misogynist" its purpose is to distract from the issues and make some vague class of scary boogeymen the issue instead.


NATO was never the military's excuse for anything; certainly not for "unlimited funding" which never occurred, and the implication that there haven't been and aren't now any threats and it's all just a "Red scare" is laughable. Why don't you go ask some people in Georgia or the Ukraine about Russian aggression? For that matter, how about the citizens of the Baltic states under discussion? You do realize that the reason they want to be in NATO is that they were occupied by Russia in 1939 and stayed that way until 1991 or so?

During the 1950s the Air Force was the only show in town; the Navy had to struggle just to get a carrier and the Army was an afterthought. It could barely hold off North Korea even before Chinese intervention due to excessive post WWII - Kennedy - notably, not a "warmongering Republican" campaigned on, among other things, adding 6 divisions to the Army because it was so badly understrength. The military in general missed an entire equipment upgrade cycle due to Viet Nam, and then missed even more under Carter. This was part of the reason for the 1980s defense binge - it was necessary because everything the military had in 1980 was obsolete, worn out, or both. The F-105 fleet for example lost almost half the production run in Viet Nam.

The fact is that Defense is the ONLY area of government spending that EVER sees significant cutbacks. The imaginary "unlimited funding" of the last 15 years came largely at the expense of the Navy and Air Force- the Navy continues to shrink and other than the F-22 and a few support planes the Air Force is flying a long list of aircraft that are mostly older than you are - the B-52, U-2, F-15, and F-16 are designs from the 1970s or earlier. The B-1B and B-2A have their origins in the 1970s as well. On the Navy side, the F-18 is in the same boat; it was originally a competitor with the F-16 in its YF-17 version; the only significantly newer form is the Super Hornet variant. The Harrier is also an aging beast. Other than the F-22, that's every major combat aircraft, and part of the reason the F-35 is in trouble is the need to make it do everything since so many aircraft were retired with no replacement. Hell even the Europeans have managed to buy new fighters in that time - the Eurofighter, Rafale, and Gripen are all decent aircraft, to say nothing of what Russia and China are coming up with.

Our nuclear capabilities are in the same boat - the MX was retired, leaving us with the Minuteman III; we have not built a strategic bomber in 25 years and only 21 of those (and pissed away the capabilities of the best of the 3 in a bad treaty) nor have we built a new SSBN in about the same timeframe, plus converting 4 of what we had to SSGNs and eliminating some of the missiles off the others. We haven't built any new warheads, either - not even one that would have been smaller, but significantly safer and more reliable.

The real fact is that since the 1970s, EVERY major combat platform has been the target of arguments that "we don't actually need it because reasons". The left, and a significant portion of those who think basic government functions like defending the country are somehow authoritarian, have never seen a defense cut they didn't like and when the reality that this means other large countries can stomp around and do as they please - thereby setting the conditions to dictate to their neighbors on economic issues, much to our detriment - is pointed out, we get this sort of nonsense about "red scares". There has never been any "no questions asked unfettered funding" - ANY defense expenditure aside from pay raises and benefits that can be dressed up as social spending has had to be some sort of struggle. We can't even build ABM systems that explicitly defend our own home territory without some idiot freaking out about them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm going to stand by my assertion that Russia currently has the most capable military in the world, mostly because the United States Armed Forces are hindered by excessively stupid politics, politicians, and are gloriously mismanaged at the moment.

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Fundamentally I agree.

I would qualify this by saying that the Russian military is probably the most capable in the world within the limits of what it's being asked to do by its political leadership. Russia is, and always has been a land power based on its geography. Putin is not asking his military to do things that do not play to its strengths. Other than demonstrating his ability to maintain a credible strategic deterrent and participate in bug-squashing like anti-piracy, he's conducting things fairly close to home, which is exactly what his military is designed for. Syria is as far afield as he's conducting anything major, and there was a long and extensive pre-existing relationship there.

By contrast, the U.S. and NATO have to deal with threats to a number of weak members that are in a weak geographical position relative to Russia. Russia does not need to be able to defeat the full might of NATO (such as it is) it just needs to be able to defeat a small slice of it in a location where reinforcing that slice is difficult, and do so rapidly enough as to force a favorable political end.

Putin has very astutely assessed his adversaries, and he is not encumbering himself with the idea that what he is doing is for the benefit of anyone but Russia. He has chosen his battles wisely indeed.

Also, I would say that the Chinese are not far behind the Russians, and for much the same reasons - their leadership ahs set clear, achievable goals for their military capability and is not asking it to do everything, nor be a social and jobs program while at the same time resenting every penny spent on it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Which is not bad, considering that recently its political leadership has annexed an economically and strategically valuable region from a sovereign country ostensibly defended by the most influential NATO signatories.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Indeed. Russia has, in terms of its own interests, acted wisely. It saw a vulnerable and valuable target and acted to secure it, and did not overextend in the process. Its leaders correctly assessed that NATO is a defensive alliance that came to believe it would never have to actually defend anything, and therefore made outsized promises it couldn't keep.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is all because most European countries prefer social programs over defense. After all, the US can always pick up the defense tab..... right?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Overall, there's 4 types of countries in NATO:

Those that try to contribute defense but find it hard to afford

Those that could afford it but don't

The U.S.

Canada, which has unique challenges all its own since its the size of the US and has a giant ocean in the way like we do, but has a much smaller population.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Honestly, I'd like for us to have a turn at social programs, and let Europe pick up the defense check for a while.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Seeing as the military is our most effective social program, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Don't hold your breath.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

How do you get to "Most Effective Social Program" from "Military"? Its a "Social Program" in that hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted on Defense Contractors jacking up prices on ridiculous contracts for stupid **** we don't need. So yeah, "Social" in that society = "Defense Contractors".

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Holy shitsnacks!

When the hell did Mus turn into Monty?

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The Dude abides.

I know right? I'm no longer filled with the immense capacity for assholishness and hatred anymore. Hence, no longer a conservative.

The other side of that is I realized the country's going to be run by the rich, for the rich. Its just a matter of which rich people are going to be favored. At least with (D)s, I can see that the social programs that are less and less Jesus oriented will take precedence. So, the more (D)s we have, the more likely we will be to get tolerance and acceptance.

I mean, either way, the rich will get richer while the middle class on down will stagnate, but at least my gay friends can marry, and get a cake made. Its progress after a fashion.

Mostly though, I'm tired of the partisan fighting over stupid bullshit that's pretty damn common sense. As the nominative "Party in Power" the (R) side has been horrible, useless and downright obstructionist. That's no way to run a railroad.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Maybe you should try reading instead of just parroting Mother Jones.

As you will see, the two largest portions of military expenditure are

Operations and Maintenance (i.e. actually training to fight, ongoing operations in case we have to fight, such as patrols, and making sure the stuff we already have keeps working) accounts for around 42% of the budget - i.e. the military being the military.

Another 25% or so is personnel costs - pay for the troops, and the costs associated with them.

Procurement is only around 16% of the budget, and even if we add research and testing it only just barely exceeds the amount spent on personnel.

So no, the military budget is not some endless contractor slush fund. Yes, military procurement is a mess, but a great deal of it is the fault of the military endlessly changing requirements on the contractor leaving them with no choice but to jack up prices, and Congress foisting things on the military that it doesn't want.

That said "**** we don't need" is the cry of every fool bewailing defense spending that he really wants to waste on social programs we need even less, so we can ignore that.

You may recall the article not long ago on Lockheed projecting having portable fusion reactors in 10 years or so. Defense contractors employ large numbers of skilled workers - people with the backgrounds in engineering, computing, science and technical skills we were talking about in the other thread. This is, in fact, why Congress fights for defense dollars in their districts - they represent good jobs for skilled workers.

Members of the military themselves learn valuable skills and gain valuable benefits from having been in - the GI Bill is probably the most successful social program in the history of this country. The VA, mess that it is, represents another source of social spending.

So yes, the military is an effective social program just by being the military. Military dollars are anything but a stream of money going into the pockets of corporate bosses - and to the degree it is, overregulation and congressional pork-barrel practices are at least as to blame as contractors.

Simply yanking away money from the military to throw it in the general direction of social programs will actively make our economic situation worse, and if done too recklessly could cripple our ability to ramp up in the future of needed. As it is, the ship-building industry - and not just military, civilian as well - is suffering from a loss of experienced workers and inability to attract replacements because of inconsistent work.

This already happened to the space program - we've basically lost the ability to build Apollo-like rockets out of neglect for 45 years.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The nature of this comment indicates that you've replaced it with self-righteousness.



lol, just **** lol if you actually think this. You've got some mighty strange ideas about "tolerance" and "acceptance". You're believing the bullshit of the party that wants to pander to the college students you're criticizing in the other thread.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Understandable, coming from the Jackbooted Warhawk of the Glade.

Yay! The Military is awesome! Every dollar we spend is totally worth it!

To the military.

People struggling to have medical insurance, food or other necessities would totally agree that we need to spend over a trillion dollars on a jet that “Can't Turn, Can't Climb, Can't Run”.

The amount of profligate waste in procurement, maintenance and other contracts needs to be stopped.

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Holy shitsnacks!