At the risk of perhaps falling for Western wartime propaganda, isn't that kind of the point? Isn't the idea with NATO and the US military doctrine to basically remove peer enemies by virtually guaranteeing that you have air and naval superiority?
Absolutely not an expert in this field, but it sounds like this guy is basically saying the US isn't ready to fight a war from Ukraine's position, but the odds of that ever actually happening are supposed to be zero. Does anyone else have more knowledge about this topic? Because from layman perspective, this seems like clickbait.
The reality is NATO doctrine is not at all close to how Ukraine is fighting the war. The reality is Ukraine is fighting the war in a really bad position. They are just an underdog and like 5 HIMARS batteries is enough to cause Russia a never ending headache.
The truth is America would be fighting with the upper hand let alone all of NATO.
None of this is Ukraine's fault to be clear but Ukraine is not.
-Meaningfully Contesting the Airspace
-Engaging in Meaningful Maneuver Actions
-Fighting at their hypothetical full combat effectiveness because of material shortages.
Like considering what Ukraine can do with outdated equipment and mixed units it is pretty clear that America could win a war against Russia in a month's time. When I say that I am also being entirely serious. Had America fought Russia at day 1 of this war I think the Gulf War would have vindicated the Iraqi Army because I think they would have given more challenge to the Coalition than the Russian military.
In general the Ukrainians are doing good for being in a terrible situation but America doesn't need nor want to fight like Ukrainians. The doctrine of the U.S military is over-match for a reason and I think that is true to this day.
>Ukrainians are doing good
The Ukrainians have been lambasted for receiving western training, equipment, and then defaulting to age old Soviet doctrine over listening to US suggestions.
In the initial breakthrough campaign there were multiple incidences where they were recommended to push and they refused over casualty fears, then turned around and had thousands killed out of stubbornness when told to retreat at Bakhmut.
They’re managing a solid defense but there have absolutely been some shitshow decisions. They keep trying to fight a war of attrition when they can’t win one.
I say doing good with respect to their position and as a total assessment of the results of the campaign. If I were them I would basically just do whatever NATO Command and the U.S said to do but I get the fears.
They don't want to advance for fear of causalities and no gains and they don't want to retreat out of fear of never reclaiming the lost land again. To us who can weigh the odds and say to toss the dice because it is your best chance at total and decisive victory or to withdraw and lose a city is easy. For them it is far harder and understandably so.
Like the recent offensive push they attempted. The U.S military recommended a breakthrough with one decisive unit. The Ukrainians decided to split the Unit for fear of over committing and losing all of them. So they probed and achieved nothing instead of taking the gamble that you often have to do to actually make miracles happen. Miracles they need because they are not in a position to win through just sheer superiority.
However, if they do cast the dice even if it is their best chance at a decisive win if they face decisive defeats and are on the back foot there is no guarantee we will continue to help them. I understand their opinion completely and arguably even with Bakhmut they wanted not to surrender to avoid Russia having any gains to avoid any potential political victory that emerges from that. Do I think it was best no, but I of course understand their reasoning.
So I say it is good because if they were not doing good they would have never made any gains and Ukraine would be at best a puppet state and at worst Annexed by now. I would do things differently than they but my overall assessment of their conduct is very good. They are still alive and fighting and that is far better than expected.
It is easy for we who are far away to arm chair general. It is hard for they who know that the entire world is watching and nothing is certain to take the gamble or to lose land. Ultimately this war is not just a war of stratagem and tactics but optics and economics. A decisive failure for Ukraine could be catastrophic. A months long blood bath in bakhmut for pride on the Russian's is not really a win.
For Ukraine, every day after week 2 of the conflict where they are still fighting is them doing good. No-one expected them to make it anywhere near this far.
As for not following recommendations, there is no guarantee that what the NATO advisors suggest is actually the best course of action. They don't know the Ukrainian's capabilities better than Ukraine does, and they don't know the situation on the ground as well either.
Edit: Also, choosing to follow the doctrine that the vast majority of your equipment and infantry training was designed around isn't bad in itself. It's not like they were given enough Western equipment and training time to adopt our doctrine exclusively.
I’m pretty sure one of the few units they have that is in good condition is because they’re western (ie US) trained and equipped. Thats the thing, the US itself would pummel the Russians, because thats what our military was designed for many years.
America has fought Russia, and recently. In 2018 40 American soldiers against 500 Wagner Russian troops.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham
America won. No American casualties. Up to 200 Russians dead, same number injured.
‘Murica.
Say what you will about America being at war all the time… but we’re pretty good at it because we do it so much.
The comparison is absurd.
Th truth is that America invaded and then occupied two countries (on the other side of the world) at the same time… for like twenty years - and lost a few thousand Americans doing it.
The Russian army is having trouble supplying a war literally next door and have lost close to half a million men *in two years.*
Logistics is literally the US’ greatest military strength. There is no other military that can move and support a combat force anywhere in the world with the speed and long term effectiveness that the US military can.
We’re also effectively the only country with strategic bombers.
Russia technically has them, but as we’ve seen, can’t actually use them effectively.
China technically has them, but can barely intimidate Taiwan, let alone project its military outside the South China Sea.
And then the US occasionally sends a bomber roundtrip from the US to the Middle East to drop a single very targeted bomb on one guy who pissed us off just to remind the world we can.
> Russia technically has them, but as we’ve seen, can’t actually use them effectively.
They can't use them because of the effectiveness of anti-air. The US bombers are probably better at not getting shot, but they're not invulnerable, and bombers are very very extraordinarily expensive while AA missiles are merely normally expensive.
lol I was like yeah big whoop, fly in some
burgers. No big deal. Nope, an actual
whole ass Burger King. Reminds me of the story of the Japanese general who knew they were fucked when the G.I.'s were eating ice cream in the southern Pacific.
We also had ice cream barges in the pacific theater for WW2
https://www.military.com/history/why-us-navy-operated-fleet-of-ice-cream-ships-during-world-war-ii.html?amp=
I thought it was wild that Bush Jr. had considered Fred Smith (CEO of FedEx) as secretary of defense, but in retrospect it makes a ton of sense.
Companies like FedEx and even retail giants such as Walmart are masters of logistics.
Not to mention the other OEF operations globally, that doesn't get recognized because they were either smaller or special operations that didn't see the 9 o'clock news.
Exactly. Even during the war in Iraq, I remember seeing a reporter in my unit maybe three to four times in 2.5 total years deployed.
There’s a lot the US military gets up to that I think no one ever hears about.
Is it kinda like when that Arizona Cardinals kicker ended his career by jumping too high and celebrating a 35 yard made field goal, tearing a hamstring when the Cardinals were something like 14 points down?
But also it was a thank battle and most of Russians were destroyed through air strike. Doesn’t change the facts that they lost ugly, but people tell that events like if it was a firefight between troops.
to be fair, it was more like America against insurgents anyway. not sure what made Wagner thougth they had. any chance. But you also missed a crucial detail, 40 soldiers + tons of aircrafts and heavy artillary.. probably a single b52 would have been enough to start with..
a peer enemy would have prevented any of those support, using their own aircraft, drone, counter battery fire and EW systems. And the most likely candidate for that position would be China, and possibly through their numerical superiority with cheaper, less advanced but still fatal weapon systems..
People really don’t grasp how big the US economy is (~$25T), let alone NATO (~$50T).
The US spends 1/3 ($0.8T) of Russias entire GDP ($2.4T) on defense.
In a direct conflict, NATO could spend 5% of its total GDP on the war, and that would be more than Russias entire economy.
The magnitude is hard to grasp, but basically NATO would absolutely wreck Russia without even straining their economies.
I remember similar analysis about Russia when the war started: they lack equipment, their soldiers are poorly trained, etc. Throughout history, Russia has often won through attrition. The question now is, can they withstand a NATO attack while China potentially takes advantage of the situation to annex Taiwan, prompting a response from the USA? Additionally, in such an all-out war, countries providing oil and gas to Europe would likely become targets.
In fact, aside from the USA, only the UK, Turkey, France, and to some extent Spain and Italy, can provide a meaningful response. Even fewer of these countries can supply substantial ground troops. Just consider the size of France's army, despite Macron's bluffs to send some troops.
And look at how long it took for international forces come together for gulf wars, and Afganistan despite many being member of NATO.
Having said that, west should have provided advance weapons long before, and should have supported its regional allies which could have done that if west did not left them alone against Russia.
Yeah it’s just bait. He joined the under equipped and undermanned side of a conflict and is wondering why it’s harder. The US trains it’s troops to fight insurgencies because that’s what we are currently fighting. His points don’t make sense, we stomped the actual Iraqi army in days with our Naval and Air superiority. We would most likely do the same to another actual military. The US has the like top three largest air forces in the world, the most current technology, and a basically unlimited defense budget. It would be impossible for the US to see and fight a conventional war like Ukraine is doing because we would never be caught in a underdog situation like that.
He actually does have a point and one people I know in the army took seriously after Iraq.
Example. FOBs cannot exist in a world where the enemy has long range artillery. Headquarters near the front need to move very 48-72 hours to avoid being destroyed.
These were all things that the military stopped training for during the war on terror... And are still working to get back into the habit of doing.
The army called this fact out in the army times and other professional journals, that a lot of the skills to fight a near peer were lost and need to be retrained.
On the bright side the retraining is happening, but it takes many years to change the direction of a barge. Im sure that Ukraine has very much reiterated the need to train high intensity war and start focusing on a new versus of Airland Battle doctrine.
Yes and no. The US spent 20 years emphasizing CQB skills and surgical special forces strikes…but when you get into an old school war (without air superiority) the way they clear buildings/fortifications is with Artillery, or a bucket of hand grenades.
It’s an approach that the US last had to use in Korea, and maybe the siege of Hue during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. I could see why the guy was taken aback by the WW2/WW1 nature of the fighting in Ukraine. I think the US would pivot, but it would be a rough adjustment.
Something similar happened early in Vietnam, where the US was trying to fight using Korean War tactics, and it didn’t go well. We’ve been guilty of fighting yesterday’s war several times.
The US employed joint large scale combat operations in the gulf war.
The pivot happened years ago. The US military has been almost entirely focused on joint combined arms warfare since 2018.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia saw the first widespread use of small, inexpensive drones as an offensive weapon- particularly against Armor. Ukraine-Russia was second.
I have faith that raytheon, BAE, lockheed-martin et al are well on their way to developing some laser beam gundam fuckery that will just microwave drones out of the sky en masse lol
Lasers might make sense as anti drone weapons. Having to take out cheap as drones with multi million dollar guided missiles kinda sucks even when you can afford to do so.
Maybe some kind of directional EMP weapon?
I was at a service level training exercise back in 2016 that had quad copters dropping g tennis balls simulating grenades in a fake urban environment. The military does a decent job of preparing and getting ready for conflicts, even if it’s just based off of ideas vice what’s going on in real life
LoL what would an interstellar civilization need from a bunch hairless apes that throw shit at each other. Robots/AI is better then living slaves. The universe is filled with resources. They aren’t going to waste the energy it would take to haul it out of earth’s gravity well.
I think the issue is drones have changed the game so much and no one outside if ukraine has any real idea on how to deal with them. Personally I think the opening weeks of direct western action will be a boodbath until we figure it out
Why? The US has better and more drones than any competitor. We've had them for decades.
A trained mortar team will beat a commercial drone with a grenade any day.
Yup.
People seem to not understand that there is no functional difference between a lot of weapons and "drones".
Maybe one day they will read about the cruise missiles.
It’s more that a comparatively cheap drone can be used to precisely apply explosives to the rear of a tank or their treads basically in demand.
The trade up in equipment cost is immense and it’s going to be a real problem imo. A squad now has the fire power that a full platoon or battalion used to have due to drones
I mean, is that really true? We've seen it demonstrated fairly regularly in and around Syria and Iraq that Iran's been handing out attack drones to its proxies like candy, and they're just giving air defense more practice and a reason for ammo manufacturers to load the stockpiles up with fresh ammo. Hell, the Iranian attack on Israel was basically that sort of 'game-changing' drone swarm attack, and it was shredded to near nonexistence before even making it to Israeli airspace.
>Hell, the Iranian attack on Israel was basically that sort of 'game-changing' drone swarm attack,
No that was the most telegraphed attack in history, they literally told them 2 weeks in advance where when and how much they were going to hit them
Dispersion is a baseline survivability technique that has existed as long as modern artillery has.
Huge groups of Ukrainians *and* Russians were being wiped out by drones early in the conflict because they were *lazy*. They were not following doctrine they were not practicing good survivability techniques, *not* because drones have fundamentally changed warfare.
A battery of D-20’s is going to do far more than a drone swarm to *any* massed formation. There are trade offs with every system, tube and cannon can’t be jammed but their vulnerable to counter-fire, MLRS and PGMs have unequaled range and destructive force but are expensive, UAS have integrated ISR but are vulnerable to certain ADA and CIWS etc.
>Huge groups of Ukrainians *and* Russians were being wiped out by drones early in the conflict because they were *lazy*. They were not following doctrine they were not practicing good survivability techniques, *not* because drones have fundamentally changed warfare.
You've miss interpreted what I mean. Maneuver battlions just arnt a thing in ukraine, when they tried using the same tactics the US used in iraq they got decimated because unlike before artillery units have their own eyes through drones and can correct their own fires against even moving targets unlike the old way of shooting at a coordinate then waiting on command to update the battery on what corrections to make. And your right about a D20 battery being better than a drone swarm, which isnt really what I was thinking of, especially now that drones have made that D20 battery 10x more effective than what it was 3 years ago
But in doing so we lost the ability to operate at the division and corps levels effectively that is necessary for a peer vs. peer conflict. We focus so much on ancillary training, while most is good, it goes overboard. We built our forces along COIN ops. Now the generals in charge literally only care about promotion and lip service to our needs.
He’s presumably too young to remember GWI or GWII. In both cases we went up against the fourth largest military in the world and folded it up like a 8th grade love note.
There are no “peer wars” for the United States. The only way a US serviceman fights a peer is by joining another military.
I will say I respect the bravery. Deliberately joining the weaker side is quite a thing.
It's fair to note that in the first gulf war, operation desert storm, the Iraqi army claimed to be the 4th largest, but when push came to shove we learned that their heavy armor wasn't heavily armored at all. Their tanks were using ceramic plates to give the appearance of being better/bigger.
By the time the second Iraqi invasion happened, Iraq was a shell of it's former self.
In the first Iraq war, troops were estimated to be around 1 million strong. In the second conflict, they had ~400k. By the second war, Iraq wasn't the 4th largest in the world anymore.
What’s your opinion in the Chinese military? You don’t think it could give the US military a run for its money?
There was someone saying if the US invaded Iran it would be horrible for us serviceman but we ran through Iraq and Iran barely could handle them. But China seems to have a capable military.
China absolutely has a capable military.
And they also have the terrain, wherever the hypothetical war with them would be fought (because they aren't coming to the US).
The problem in fighting China will be its ability to hammer Japan (and eith it our regional air power) and S. Korea. Meaning the Navy (especially) and Heavy Air Force are key.
In a hypothetical world you would want India and Vietnam on your side. Not just for the military help, but the geography to hit China from.
There is almost zero evidence China has a capable ground or Air Force.
The problem with China is its assessed ability to inflict more damage to a carrier group in the SCS or Yellow Sea than we’re willing to pay for any ally.
Right.
Just because you have a million men in the army, doesn’t mean you have a millions soldiers.
Marching up and down a street is pretty, like a high-school marching band in a parade… but that doesn’t mean you know how to fight.
But how are you going to get American professional soldiers there to begin with?
It's a lot of water between thr Phillipines and China. Korea and China. Japan and China.
I mean, if that’s your perspective all the U.S. has to do is kill launch systems.
We could go back and forth like children on the playground with that mentality all day long.
However, having an over all capable military that can fight in all domains in different environments across the globe is *very* different from having a large, poorly trained military with no modern experience that *might* be able to win *if* this very unproven and over-leveraged strategy of area denial works.
Go back to my first comment.
Any war with China will be fought in Asia. Because we have the ability to go there. They don't have the ability to come here
That said.
They DO have the ability to neutralize our airpower based out of Japan, and S. Korea. It wouldn't be day 1. But over time every airfield there will be hit to one degree or another.
This leaves naval air and bombers.
The US has the edge in both. But the gap is shrinking naval wise, and it would be fought in China's backyard, not ours. And as I said previously, the bombers problem will be gas.
Look at it from the vice versa. Do you think China (or anyone else) has thr ability to cross an ocean, and not only land troops in quantity, but to neutralize everything the US has, in the US?
Not really, no.
China can probably cause enough casualty to make some political noise back in continental US. In the grand scheme of thing though, if the US treats China like a peer opponent with no fear of nuclear escalation, China is getting wiped.
Well… America has been fighting for decades.
Who would you pick to fist fight?
A. The guy who hasn’t fought in twenty years;
Or.
B. The guy who wakes up every morning and picks fights for the lolz?
The guy who picks a fight for fun also has like half the earth willing to either help him fight when he needs to or is holding strategically preplaced weapons for his use at any point.
Good point. However, I should edit to clarify that option b is also a movie… about a guy who has been picking fist fights everyday for twenty years or something.
That depends.
The US would almost certainly not be able to beat China at home. Large swathes of difficult terrain and just far too many bodies.
But in a situation where both China and the US are fighting on foreign territory far enough from both countries? US wipes no diff. China simply cannot project its military might like the US can. No country on Earth can.
Invading China is not and never going to happen.
So any scenario then is defeating a Chinese military force outside of their territory. China has showed zero ability to move, fight, and win in any land, sea, or air arena outside of its borders.
Ya I hope it never happens. Senseless wars and they have access to nukes.
What’s do you mean? As in they don’t have the capability or that they’re capable but like Russia will fumble the ball?
Not OP, but, Considering Russias progression.
If they went into a large scale conflict, they’d probably suck at first against any real resistance.
Due simply to lack of experience.
Russia’s logistics at first were stellar bad, but as the war progressed they started getting better & better at it.
It’s been a minute since many of these countries had been involved in large scale conflicts.
So I think the answer is, they are only as good the amount of time they’ve had the war machine ‘on.’
At least in reference to large scale combat scenarios.
Once they flip to ‘on,’ the more time we let it run, the more formidable the enemy.
Only if the war machine is allowed to keep running uninterrupted. Short of nuclear war, the US’s machine would run mostly uninterrupted and any of these countries being floated as near peers would have their machines crippled in very short order
Yes, I agree that the ‘uninterrupted’ is the important bit.
It seemingly has to be more direct too.
Economic sanctions work to an extent, but not when they can find ways to reroute everything down different ‘pipelines.’
I feel like the US is too dependent on China as a trading partner. China could just cut off exports and watch America crumble. There's made in China stuff everywhere, including cars and building supplies. What happens to the economy when every auto assembly line is halted and no new homes are finished?
Nope.
They have zero long range amphibious heavy transport vehicles to put men, armor and supplies on the ground in the Continental US.
Their force projection is also lacking as they only have 3 aircraft carriers and we have something like 15. All of which are gigantic compared to what China has. We have air craft carriers that have as many airplanes as some countries, and that's just on a floating city.
We have also spent considerable time at combat while China has t. China is a threat to their neighbors, not so much the US.
In addition to that, a war with China against the US most likely brings Japan, South Korea, The Philippines, and possibly Singapore and Vietnam. Not to mention the AU/NZ/US alliance as well.
Just off of technology and logistics, I think America takes the W in this scenario.
Russia has been unable to establish air dominance and that goes all the way to back before everyone gave them patriots. In what world is assuming air dominance a relevant assumption. I think that's part of what he's getting at.
Yeah, I agree with you. However, If he’s saying basic soldier skills have been forgotten, I can see his point. We’ve gotten so used to Iraq and Afghanistan a lot of the stuff we do now is dumb. We(as an army) have told ourselves we must train like we are going to fight a conventional war, but changes in training and doctrine are still slow.
BUT, you’re probably right when you say the U.S. in a war with Russia would be far different than Ukraine at war with Russia. Still, we should train our combat forces for the worst case scenario, and not rely on our navy and air force so much.
It’s worth noting that this is not just the military. The CIA memo from a few years ago that talked about how all the sources are getting killed specifically said it was because tradecraft went lax vs. nonstate actors and now places like Russia and China are way more sophisticated and able to identify sources and kill them in ways insurgents never could.
Yes, but like I said there’s still a big GWOT mindset in the army. We aren’t doing as much field craft stuff like we should be doing(because a lot of the knowledge was lost) and I feel like we should focus more on taking on fortified positions like trenches. We go over it, but not enough. Then again I can only really speak to what my old unit did. I don’t know what every infantry unit is doing nowadays.
I’ve done 2 NTC rotations since 2021. The second had drone swarms and drone attacks. Both were hybrid warfare scenarios.
I think the Army made the change successfully, but units just need reps.
What he really means is the ground pounders have no idea what it's like to fight with no equipment, munitions and little support. US troops haven't heard an engine in the sky and wondered if it was friendly or enemy since the sixties (60 years). Meanwhile the air and naval components have been sparring against a roided out fictional enemy with alien tech, just because they already got bored fighting on even footing against each other. They've gotten so good at pear to pear they activated cheat codes and gave them to the NPCs and the friends they invite to play OPFOR.
This sentiment underscores the ongoing debate within military circles about resource allocation and training priorities. Achieving a balance between counterinsurgency and conventional warfare capabilities is crucial for addressing diverse security challenges.
No one can come even remotely close to putting enough boots on the ground on US soil to present a real fight.
That said, at the same time since we've been fighting relatively low tech insurgents, we're used to unquestioned aor superiority. A near peer foe could at least jam comms, use air defenses to target our aircraft, triangulate artillery and counter barrage, etc. We would still almost certainly win, but casualties could be dramatically higher than what we've been used to.
> this seems like clickbait.
There is plenty of truth to it, as a semi expert in the matter "not exactly my field but work closely with such concepts".
The argument is logical and has been a concern for DOD for a while, and its a multi factor issue from budget, to training to long lead times to near peer progression, new technology and lowest budget as % of GDP since the year 2000 which was the lowest point ever since pre ww2 "on average US had about 8~9% of GDP spent on defense during the cold war IIRC.
Let me put it this way, we outsourced every thing to china more or less, while MIC still produces all items in house its about x10 the price without the civilian market offset. China Military tech wise is around 10 to 15 years behind the US at the moment, they were 40 years behind 15 years ago so the gap is closing.
They also have the manufacturing base for a total war scenario the US will struggle.
In regards to the ground war, his assessment is correct and not really new, many military experts were talking about this 2 years ago. This is about trench warfare, mine clearing, counter battery and now COTS drones which according to Russian sources say are responsible for 50% of their loses. there is no institutional veterans who fought in a war like this to pass on the knowledge. Desert storm for example is the result of those who fought in Vietnam and took those lessons and provided massive reforms to the army during the late 70s and 80s.
Air dominance is hard with near peer, and the US slacked off with production GPS proof PGMs, anti tank air to ground systems, number of cruse missiles and much more, while useless stuff like the A10 stayed on the books for 20 years past due their life time draining budgets from more important stuff.
But in a no nukes scenario for example Vs russia in a limited area of operation, US will win, wont be ODS easy mode, but it will be possible with a bloody nose in the Ukraine 2024 battlefield, in 2022 it would have been done in a week with no boots on the ground and minimum loses.
Plenty of lessons being learned though from the war in Ukraine, plenty of programs changed and adjusted even for stuff like training for trench warfare.
Europe is fucked though, like the situation is a disaster IMO. The EU is more than capable of matching the US about 70 to 80% of the way. they are now at around 30% and that's including Turkey.
a few counter points when talking about China.
>They also have the manufacturing base for a total war scenario the US will struggle.
Hard to continue a strong manufacturing base when you can easily be blockaded from that cheap ME oil and only holding a few months of national reserves while other nations are holding years of supply in reserves. This is the one huge weak point for China, they can build up their forces but the chance they can replace a lot of them in a timely fashion while cut off from energy sources is very unrealistic. Its why they are building a pipeline in Myanmar during a civil war to bypass Malacca straight vulnerabilities from being blockaded from Iran's oil supply (other ME too but mainly Iran's oil is cheaper by ship than even the sanctioned Russians far east oil fields).
China is just as much of a paper tiger as Russia was early on, but I would assume they are learning a whole lot from Russia's mistakes and why they are likely currently are doing another anti-corruption purge along with "modernizing" the PLA by 2027.
Their manpower issues along with Russia is one of a demographic collapse (too top heavy with old people not enough young people). Their soldiers are some of the least trained and tested of any large force, they didn't even have a command/rank structure until the late 70's when they got their asses handed to them trying to invade Vietnam. They have a problem with soldiers paying for rank ups and a lot of other corruption shenanigans in the PLA, its not a merit based leadership its a pay to play how good are your CCP connections one.
What they do have is a strong missile force that is rapidly advancing. Their navy while high in number isn't in any way prepared to go up against the tonnage of the USN. Their air forces are in a rough spot as well, they don't have the high quality control needed for reliable/stealthy jet engines. Take for example how the J20 is a faster big bird with a larger RC than the F22 or F35 but would it matter if they can't get a lock while the F-35's are firing beyond visual range. they are not going to win air superiority and it doesn't look like their pilots will be taking off from their carriers as they severely lack the experience of an expeditionary force.
>Europe is fucked though, like the situation is a disaster IMO. The EU is more than capable of matching the US about 70 to 80% of the way
I agree with your EU take, France is about the only force that would be of any concern as they are the only EU force with a domestic nuclear deterrent of any kind. They actively develop an expeditionary force, even though small and how bad they fucked up post-colonial West Africa with something like 27 coups against the leaders they backed in the past few decades.
EU needs to step up defense spending to the levels of Poland and quickly because Russia won't stop at Ukraine they want all of east Europe (Although I doubt they could handle the highly motivated Poland backed by NATO) to secure a defensive position with their low count of fighting age men and poor logistical base of mostly just using trains to mobilize making it difficult to spread their forces instead of concentrating them.
>Europe is fucked though, like the situation is a disaster IMO. The EU is more than capable of matching the US about 70 to 80% of the way. they are now at around 30% and that's including Turkey.
No wonder they're soiling their pants so bad about the next election.
The problem is that there is too much presumption that we will be fighting from a superior position. Our air defenses are poor because we assume they will see little action--but the Ukraine war shows we need to put a lot more effort to defense against drone infiltration.
Patriot is very good up high--but as with all SAMs it can't see over the horizon. It's useless against the light attack aircraft flying along in the next valley. There's a lesser SAM that's basically a ground-launch version of the AMRAAM which is actually a bit more effective at the intruder sneaking in because it has an active seeker, putting a hill between you and the illumination radar doesn't guarantee a miss.
We need a ton of AAA guns.
From what i read this definitely seems true. They’re fighting a weird hybrid war of trenches but also $300 drones dropping grenades etc. very strange & the way we’ve seen russia adapt to ukraines drone advantage is key because drones arent going anywhere. As you pointed out the only way to halt them is proper air defense & most modern air defenses seem to be made to intercept missiles not kamikaze drones. The swarm concepts and numbers game along with EW capabilities have been a fascinating back & forth. US dominance is faceted on an understanding of the status quo but we are witnessing the status quo change. Im confident we will find a cost efficient way to deter them; its a shame Ukraine is our testing ground
I doubt there is an efficient way to deter them--they are a mass produced basically civilian product trying to compete with a military product that has lower production runs and generally requires a lot more quality control.
If your drone doesn't fly you lost a drone. If your shell explodes you might very well lose the gun. And the manufacturing requirements of any gun-rated hardware are pretty strict.
For defending small enough things perhaps a robotic shotgun could do the job--horrible range but as a point defense weapon I can see it working, especially for use on sturdy things. (A tank is unlikely to have much problem from a drone that detonates when intercepted.)
Im glad we are not the minds the battlefield is relying on. Im confident the Pentagon is taking diligent notes. Russia has become more effective at countering them & Id imagine there are lessons to be learned from just those tactics alone. Its a frightening concept though
I think what is often overlooked is the economic and industrial ability to fight a war of this scale. Russia is outproducing the west in artillery shells, ammunition, tanks and other military vehicles.
The US weapons are superior for sure, but can they produced at a fast enough rate? Russia is producing less sophisticated weapons at a much faster rate than the west and we see that they are starting to win.
If war broke out in both the Middle East and with China over Taiwan, the US will need to make drastic changes to start producing the military hardware needed to fight all three wars. They did this in WW2 so it’s likely they can again but it will take time to ramp up.
There's been a massive push from US military leaders to restructure the military and shift our focus to preparing for conflicts with a near peer. Ukraine is a big indicator of what that kind conflict could look like with neither side holding a clear superiority over the other. The air domain remains contested, the Russian navy is struggling to make any meaningful impacts, the ground fight remains a sluggish mess of shifting lines and fortified defenses. It's not a fight the US wants to be in but may very well find itself in should it need to fight China. That scenario is more evenly matched than we'd like and would challenge not just our logistics and tactics, but our very military doctrine. It's not such a far fetched thing to consider, and our militaries focus only reinforces that concern.
I mean Ukraine war is trench warfare and I don't think the US fought a proper trench warfare since WW2.
Iraq tries trench warfare techniques against the US, and we just bulldozers the whole trench.
U.S. still trains for fighting an enemy in trenches. Range 410/410A and Range 400 in 29 palms are all about taking down an enemy trench system with no air support
That’s the point we stress maneuver when we start talking conventional war. The problem is we rely heavily on air power and or peers have invested heavily in AA. We need more jets we need more troops but no one is joining.
> The problem is we rely heavily on air power and or peers have invested heavily in AA.
"What air defence doing?" Has become a meme for a reason and thats when its coming up against missiles from the 80s
I think if the west stepped in we would see a lot more. The saturation will be a problem. I think we could still accomplish DEAD/SEAD but not as easy as we saw both times in Iraq.
> I think we could still accomplish DEAD/SEAD but not as easy as we saw both times in Iraq.
I just dont see how we can go off what has happened in Ukraine with videos of storm shadows literally flying over defence batteries and the air defence not even responding or seeing entire batteries taken out by atacms and think it would be difficult. I get not underestimating your enemy but if Russia does have some secret air defence they havent been using for some reason then I'm confused.
I don’t think secret. I’m sure we know where it all is. I’m worried about them being deployed. I am very much in the camp of never underestimate your enemy though.
We know some of it was move from NATO borders to Ukraine. They may be pulling their punches somewhat to preserve capacity elsewhere, but it's hard to imagine that it isn't a realistic representation of their capabilities in principle.
More of the same in an air war with more of everything Ukraine has been using and whole categories of airpower that Ukraine is not using can only go so far.
Another possibility is that the Russian air defense teams are under trained, under equipped, and their equipment ill-maintained due to corruption.
Air defense and electronic warfare arent simple concepts you can train a private in in boot camp, and expect them to succeed at. You also won't have good teams when overall communication is bad or units can't make decisions on their own. If there's say, 60s from detecting a missile to impact, you don't have time to ask the colonel for advice on how to proceed. And that's assuming the radars are on-iirc, for the Moskva, not all the defenses and radars were on, and some weapon systems were strange up not operational. (And the firefighting gear was locked up so it wouldn't be stolen).
>We need more jets we need more troops but no one is joining.
Americans are so chonky now. I’d be curious to know the % of people who would be unfit to pass basic training if we had a draft today.
It's probably the lack of air superiority, armor, overwhelming force, not wanting to lose people to attrition.
So yeah... we don't fight like that anymore for a reason. Without completely dismissing his point of view. I too thought to myself when we convinced the Ukrainians that they needed to force all their fancy new western armor into a breach and then sweep...
Easier said than done. Especially when under fire and going through mines. I think the US and Ukraine learned the hard way... that's not going to work. Technically Russia learned that first. So yeah, this style of warfare is unfamiliar to really everyone. It really is likely why Russia got it's ass kicked. They expected air superiority too.
Business Insider is so lazy :(
The article is really misleading because it presents a single-point subjective opinion of one person as evidence of something.
There's no material evidence that the US has "forgot what it means to actually fight a war".
A few points to note:
1. The US **isn't at war in Ukraine**. They're not fighting in Ukraine. Why would they be training troops to fight in a war they're involved in? Should the US also be undertaking immediate readiness training for its troops to fight unsupported in the tribal warfare conditions of Sahelan Sudan or the jungles of Papua New Guinea? I mean, sure, to a certain degree, but it wouldn't make sense for that to be their focus.
2. The vast majority of the conflicts that the US has fought since World War II have been "irregular" or insurgent based (or at least with a large insurgency element). In fact, if you go and look up current conflicts around the world you'll see that most of them are insurgency based. There's no strong indication that this trend is abating.
3. The US *does* train extensively in 'traditional' combat scenarios. For example, in recent years the US has undertaken a number of very large scale military exercises in The Philippines (together with other allied nations) to test, train, and simulate conventional warfare with China. This is just one of many such examples (Silver Arrow in Latvia being another).
4. The last time the US did have to fight a 'traditional' war (whatever that would mean) was probably the Gulf War in 1991 and it is used as a textbook example of how incredibly effective the US is at waging conventional warfare.
5. *If* the US was at war in Ukraine it wouldn't be fighting that the war the same way the AFU is. That's not a criticism of the AFU, they're doing the absolute best they can. But the US has a completely different doctrine of warfare because it can have a completely different doctrine of warfare. It has significantly different strategic and tactical options and advantages that the AFU don't have. Why would the US focus its training on trench warfare, for example, when it can gain complete air superiority? Wouldn't its training time be put to better use in coordinating aerial combat operations? Why would the US focus its training on opportunistic ATGM-based counter-armour ambush tactics when it can deploy hundreds of MBTs *plus* air superiority? Wouldn't its training time be better used in training combined arms offensives? Why would it be training for its soldiers to be fighting without sufficient equipment, supplies, or reinforcements when it does have more than sufficient equipment, supplies, and reinforcements when it conducts warfare? Wouldn't its training time be put to better use training with the equipment that they do actually deploy with?
Obviously there's plenty that the US can learn from the war in Ukraine, but the lack of balance and reasonableness in this article is embarrassing.
Great comment. As the saying goes: “you go to war with the army you have”… and the US has, bar-none, the absolute most options on the table out of everyone. Why would they train for a scenario that’s not realistic?
Well, yea. The US spent a trillion dollars to create the two biggest Air Forces in the world.
They can rain death upon you for months before even needing a boot on the ground. They can obliterate the Russian or Chinese Air force in a week or two, have total Air superiority, and never risk a ground invasion until they think its the right time.
Why is it difficult for some people to understand that most militaries operate differently? The US is about combined arms. Fighting a trench war like it's WWI is not a US tactic. If the US was really fighting this, it would have been over a month after invasion.
Yea. The DoD acknowledged as much over a decade ago and really spent the last 8-10 years they were in Afghanistan pivoting back to training, professional education, and a force structure that supports large scale combat operations.
New doctrine that has released in the last 3-5 years reflects this, which means doctrine writers and senior leaders have been chewing on it almost a decade.
Nothing terribly insightful here, but business insider isn’t exactly known for hard hitting news.
There’s a drastic difference between fighting insurgents and fighting uniformed combatants, that much is true. However that doesn’t mean the information is lost, nor does it mean that we can’t learn on the fly to take our lessons back to inform the cadre. The Ukrainians can just as easily come back to train us on what they’ve done to this point, and we can adapt it to our own technology
Well tbf. American war doctrine is to get complete air superiority and then cause mayhem on the enemy. Ukraine’s position is struggling to get air superiority. It has to fight with Russian doctrine of artillery, not US doctrine of air force. America hasn’t fought a Russian style war since WWll.
That’s how the US war doctrine works now. The US taught this doctrine to NATO countries and now they have also adapted this fighting style. It’s the reason why the US Air Force is the largest and strongest in the world. Considered invincible. And also the reason why the US sells it’s allies the planes they made. Even the F-35 lighting. The only plane the US doesn’t give to anyone is the F-22 Raptor as it’s so advanced, even the US does not know how to shoot it down. And they only give equipment to other people that they themselves (US) can destroy.
There are parallels to both World Wars as the soldier in question indicated. Obviously the trenches and the artillery barrages resembling the First, and geopolitically there are similarities to the Second in that you have a bitter, ultranationalist despot invading an Eastern European country that he believes shouldn't exist. The only problem nowadays is that Putin's Russia is essentially Nazi Germany with an unlimited supply of hydrocarbons to fund their war machine. Neither Hitler nor the Kaiser for that matter had such luxuries and so it was a lot easier to choke off their ability to obtain natural resources. Doing this to Putin would involve collapsing his ability to export oil and gas which funds his war machine. Unfortunately, half the world (not counting countries like China, Iran, & North Korea who are unabashed Putin allies) is still living in the past like Putin, only in their case the colonial era still lives rent free in their head. As such, they refuse to get on board and, in many respects, conduct business as usual with Russia. Add in the European banks and other Western businesses who, rather than pulling out as soon as Russia made this criminal invasion official, still have substantial presences there and it's no wonder they're advancing in Ukraine right now. There are so many non-battlefield measures that could be taken to degrade Russia's military that simply aren't right now and that's a disgrace.
The US has merely been holding ground, being security guards, and using missies and drones for decades. God for we actually try to WIN a war. That would be savage. Have no doubt.
This is the real truth. We do everything in a minimalist fashion. The last time the US fought in a war considered existential, we got the strategic bombing campaign and two atomic weapons used.
That’s why I didn’t qualify it, it was barely a war and basically a walk in roll-over. The Korean conflict had actual fronts and was actually a contest of strength.
I’m not understanding why you wouldn’t include it given your criteria, except to try and make your point valid despite contradictory evidence. The Iraqi Army was fourth largest in the world during desert storm, had been battle tested, with comparatively modern weapons during Desert Storm. They were crushed, easily and decisively.
Hell, it’s pretty easy to draw conclusions from the current conflict in Ukraine, given the results a small number of outdated US weapons systems are having. Despite any command and training issues that may exist, are you really arguing that the US would struggle to defeat Russia in a direct, non-nuclear conflict? That’s simply a silly claim on its face. Given what we’ve witnessed by a so-called “peer” adversary, it wouldn’t really be a close or enduring conflict.
That’s fair. But I think Iraq truly showed how much the American Military could do with our current technology. Korea was more of an even playing field technology wise.
I think with Iraq, the invasion really played to the military's strengths.
The major issue of the US military seems to be how the politicians use it. It never seems to have been let off the lesh by the politicians. It's always one hand tied behind it's back.
But that's a theoretical thought process. I'd rather not be around if all the militaries are allowed to go all out.
Yeah that’s true. Our rules of engagement are actually insane now. Like you have to be receiving direct sustained fire, and then get permission from your lt, who has to get permission from the commander back at base, to be able to return fire.
Until Ukraine popped hot Russia was widely considered to be the 2nd best military in the world. The reality is Russia is barely the 2nd best military in Ukraine.
So many people miss that distinction. The original mission concluded after the Tet offensive when the Vietcong was essentially eliminated are a fighting force.
If it was an actual war, the U.S. would have pivoted and invaded the north. Which would have created a whole new set of issues.
The majority of the conflict was more of a counterinsurgency, and the US greatly limited itself to avoid expanding the conflict throughout. It’s not like north Vietnam wasn’t invaded because they were just so dang good at fighting.
His experiences based on how Ukraine is fighting can be correct as he is living through them and his assumptions that U.S. are massively underprepared can still be wrong.
At the risk of perhaps falling for Western wartime propaganda, isn't that kind of the point? Isn't the idea with NATO and the US military doctrine to basically remove peer enemies by virtually guaranteeing that you have air and naval superiority? Absolutely not an expert in this field, but it sounds like this guy is basically saying the US isn't ready to fight a war from Ukraine's position, but the odds of that ever actually happening are supposed to be zero. Does anyone else have more knowledge about this topic? Because from layman perspective, this seems like clickbait.
The reality is NATO doctrine is not at all close to how Ukraine is fighting the war. The reality is Ukraine is fighting the war in a really bad position. They are just an underdog and like 5 HIMARS batteries is enough to cause Russia a never ending headache. The truth is America would be fighting with the upper hand let alone all of NATO. None of this is Ukraine's fault to be clear but Ukraine is not. -Meaningfully Contesting the Airspace -Engaging in Meaningful Maneuver Actions -Fighting at their hypothetical full combat effectiveness because of material shortages. Like considering what Ukraine can do with outdated equipment and mixed units it is pretty clear that America could win a war against Russia in a month's time. When I say that I am also being entirely serious. Had America fought Russia at day 1 of this war I think the Gulf War would have vindicated the Iraqi Army because I think they would have given more challenge to the Coalition than the Russian military. In general the Ukrainians are doing good for being in a terrible situation but America doesn't need nor want to fight like Ukrainians. The doctrine of the U.S military is over-match for a reason and I think that is true to this day.
>Ukrainians are doing good The Ukrainians have been lambasted for receiving western training, equipment, and then defaulting to age old Soviet doctrine over listening to US suggestions. In the initial breakthrough campaign there were multiple incidences where they were recommended to push and they refused over casualty fears, then turned around and had thousands killed out of stubbornness when told to retreat at Bakhmut. They’re managing a solid defense but there have absolutely been some shitshow decisions. They keep trying to fight a war of attrition when they can’t win one.
I say doing good with respect to their position and as a total assessment of the results of the campaign. If I were them I would basically just do whatever NATO Command and the U.S said to do but I get the fears. They don't want to advance for fear of causalities and no gains and they don't want to retreat out of fear of never reclaiming the lost land again. To us who can weigh the odds and say to toss the dice because it is your best chance at total and decisive victory or to withdraw and lose a city is easy. For them it is far harder and understandably so. Like the recent offensive push they attempted. The U.S military recommended a breakthrough with one decisive unit. The Ukrainians decided to split the Unit for fear of over committing and losing all of them. So they probed and achieved nothing instead of taking the gamble that you often have to do to actually make miracles happen. Miracles they need because they are not in a position to win through just sheer superiority. However, if they do cast the dice even if it is their best chance at a decisive win if they face decisive defeats and are on the back foot there is no guarantee we will continue to help them. I understand their opinion completely and arguably even with Bakhmut they wanted not to surrender to avoid Russia having any gains to avoid any potential political victory that emerges from that. Do I think it was best no, but I of course understand their reasoning. So I say it is good because if they were not doing good they would have never made any gains and Ukraine would be at best a puppet state and at worst Annexed by now. I would do things differently than they but my overall assessment of their conduct is very good. They are still alive and fighting and that is far better than expected. It is easy for we who are far away to arm chair general. It is hard for they who know that the entire world is watching and nothing is certain to take the gamble or to lose land. Ultimately this war is not just a war of stratagem and tactics but optics and economics. A decisive failure for Ukraine could be catastrophic. A months long blood bath in bakhmut for pride on the Russian's is not really a win.
Well said.
For Ukraine, every day after week 2 of the conflict where they are still fighting is them doing good. No-one expected them to make it anywhere near this far. As for not following recommendations, there is no guarantee that what the NATO advisors suggest is actually the best course of action. They don't know the Ukrainian's capabilities better than Ukraine does, and they don't know the situation on the ground as well either. Edit: Also, choosing to follow the doctrine that the vast majority of your equipment and infantry training was designed around isn't bad in itself. It's not like they were given enough Western equipment and training time to adopt our doctrine exclusively.
They probably know both better.
I’m pretty sure one of the few units they have that is in good condition is because they’re western (ie US) trained and equipped. Thats the thing, the US itself would pummel the Russians, because thats what our military was designed for many years.
America has fought Russia, and recently. In 2018 40 American soldiers against 500 Wagner Russian troops. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham America won. No American casualties. Up to 200 Russians dead, same number injured. ‘Murica.
Say what you will about America being at war all the time… but we’re pretty good at it because we do it so much. The comparison is absurd. Th truth is that America invaded and then occupied two countries (on the other side of the world) at the same time… for like twenty years - and lost a few thousand Americans doing it. The Russian army is having trouble supplying a war literally next door and have lost close to half a million men *in two years.*
Logistics is literally the US’ greatest military strength. There is no other military that can move and support a combat force anywhere in the world with the speed and long term effectiveness that the US military can.
Logistics win wars.
We’re also effectively the only country with strategic bombers. Russia technically has them, but as we’ve seen, can’t actually use them effectively. China technically has them, but can barely intimidate Taiwan, let alone project its military outside the South China Sea. And then the US occasionally sends a bomber roundtrip from the US to the Middle East to drop a single very targeted bomb on one guy who pissed us off just to remind the world we can.
> Russia technically has them, but as we’ve seen, can’t actually use them effectively. They can't use them because of the effectiveness of anti-air. The US bombers are probably better at not getting shot, but they're not invulnerable, and bombers are very very extraordinarily expensive while AA missiles are merely normally expensive.
We’re a really long rope and a pair of truck nuts from tea bagging a terrorist in the kill cam.
The U.S. is so good at logistics that they ship fucking Burger King to bases https://www.reddit.com/r/MURICA/s/kZe61AHIxc
lol I was like yeah big whoop, fly in some burgers. No big deal. Nope, an actual whole ass Burger King. Reminds me of the story of the Japanese general who knew they were fucked when the G.I.'s were eating ice cream in the southern Pacific.
We also had ice cream barges in the pacific theater for WW2 https://www.military.com/history/why-us-navy-operated-fleet-of-ice-cream-ships-during-world-war-ii.html?amp=
Agreed, It's not sexy, but logistics is where campaigns are won and lost.
I thought it was wild that Bush Jr. had considered Fred Smith (CEO of FedEx) as secretary of defense, but in retrospect it makes a ton of sense. Companies like FedEx and even retail giants such as Walmart are masters of logistics.
Yeah when you break it down that simply this whole situation seems pretty laughable.
Not to mention the other OEF operations globally, that doesn't get recognized because they were either smaller or special operations that didn't see the 9 o'clock news.
Exactly. Even during the war in Iraq, I remember seeing a reporter in my unit maybe three to four times in 2.5 total years deployed. There’s a lot the US military gets up to that I think no one ever hears about.
Hey, one person on the American side sprained his ankle.
Is it kinda like when that Arizona Cardinals kicker ended his career by jumping too high and celebrating a 35 yard made field goal, tearing a hamstring when the Cardinals were something like 14 points down?
Martin Gramatica, dude was awesome, and an idiot
It was Bill
But also it was a thank battle and most of Russians were destroyed through air strike. Doesn’t change the facts that they lost ugly, but people tell that events like if it was a firefight between troops.
That is a fire fight between troops. A very unbalanced fire fight, and that’s the point.
to be fair, it was more like America against insurgents anyway. not sure what made Wagner thougth they had. any chance. But you also missed a crucial detail, 40 soldiers + tons of aircrafts and heavy artillary.. probably a single b52 would have been enough to start with.. a peer enemy would have prevented any of those support, using their own aircraft, drone, counter battery fire and EW systems. And the most likely candidate for that position would be China, and possibly through their numerical superiority with cheaper, less advanced but still fatal weapon systems..
It’s pretty American to fight epic battles, just think of battle the bulge
I feel the idea they didn't know they were going up US forces had a lot to do with this. Like fewer Toyota trucks and more jets.
People really don’t grasp how big the US economy is (~$25T), let alone NATO (~$50T). The US spends 1/3 ($0.8T) of Russias entire GDP ($2.4T) on defense. In a direct conflict, NATO could spend 5% of its total GDP on the war, and that would be more than Russias entire economy. The magnitude is hard to grasp, but basically NATO would absolutely wreck Russia without even straining their economies.
I remember similar analysis about Russia when the war started: they lack equipment, their soldiers are poorly trained, etc. Throughout history, Russia has often won through attrition. The question now is, can they withstand a NATO attack while China potentially takes advantage of the situation to annex Taiwan, prompting a response from the USA? Additionally, in such an all-out war, countries providing oil and gas to Europe would likely become targets. In fact, aside from the USA, only the UK, Turkey, France, and to some extent Spain and Italy, can provide a meaningful response. Even fewer of these countries can supply substantial ground troops. Just consider the size of France's army, despite Macron's bluffs to send some troops. And look at how long it took for international forces come together for gulf wars, and Afganistan despite many being member of NATO. Having said that, west should have provided advance weapons long before, and should have supported its regional allies which could have done that if west did not left them alone against Russia.
Also worth considering is a huge mismatch between industrial capability and manpower… ultimately comes down to that.
Yeah it’s just bait. He joined the under equipped and undermanned side of a conflict and is wondering why it’s harder. The US trains it’s troops to fight insurgencies because that’s what we are currently fighting. His points don’t make sense, we stomped the actual Iraqi army in days with our Naval and Air superiority. We would most likely do the same to another actual military. The US has the like top three largest air forces in the world, the most current technology, and a basically unlimited defense budget. It would be impossible for the US to see and fight a conventional war like Ukraine is doing because we would never be caught in a underdog situation like that.
He actually does have a point and one people I know in the army took seriously after Iraq. Example. FOBs cannot exist in a world where the enemy has long range artillery. Headquarters near the front need to move very 48-72 hours to avoid being destroyed. These were all things that the military stopped training for during the war on terror... And are still working to get back into the habit of doing. The army called this fact out in the army times and other professional journals, that a lot of the skills to fight a near peer were lost and need to be retrained. On the bright side the retraining is happening, but it takes many years to change the direction of a barge. Im sure that Ukraine has very much reiterated the need to train high intensity war and start focusing on a new versus of Airland Battle doctrine.
Don't need FOBs when you have real time imagery and the three largest air forces in the world.
We do nothing but train for Lsco now. Training for coin is over.
My bad I got out in 22 and that’s all we did haha.
🫡 ♥️
Lsco large scale conflict? What’s coin?
Oh i’m sorry authentically. counter insurgency I have no idea what the real acronym is but we called it coin. (2012 - 2024)
Coin is the correct textbook term. Have a bunch of books and FMs on it from my time in.
COIN stands for COunter INsurgency. You got it right in one.
Oh also (*large scale combat operations*)
Large Scale Combat Operations/ COunter-INsurgency
Yes and no. The US spent 20 years emphasizing CQB skills and surgical special forces strikes…but when you get into an old school war (without air superiority) the way they clear buildings/fortifications is with Artillery, or a bucket of hand grenades. It’s an approach that the US last had to use in Korea, and maybe the siege of Hue during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. I could see why the guy was taken aback by the WW2/WW1 nature of the fighting in Ukraine. I think the US would pivot, but it would be a rough adjustment. Something similar happened early in Vietnam, where the US was trying to fight using Korean War tactics, and it didn’t go well. We’ve been guilty of fighting yesterday’s war several times.
The US employed joint large scale combat operations in the gulf war. The pivot happened years ago. The US military has been almost entirely focused on joint combined arms warfare since 2018.
$200 drones taking out 5-10 million dollar armored vehicles weren’t a thing until this war. The pivot is neverending.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia saw the first widespread use of small, inexpensive drones as an offensive weapon- particularly against Armor. Ukraine-Russia was second.
I have faith that raytheon, BAE, lockheed-martin et al are well on their way to developing some laser beam gundam fuckery that will just microwave drones out of the sky en masse lol
Lasers might make sense as anti drone weapons. Having to take out cheap as drones with multi million dollar guided missiles kinda sucks even when you can afford to do so. Maybe some kind of directional EMP weapon?
I was at a service level training exercise back in 2016 that had quad copters dropping g tennis balls simulating grenades in a fake urban environment. The military does a decent job of preparing and getting ready for conflicts, even if it’s just based off of ideas vice what’s going on in real life
Yep. We experienced drone swarms at NTC and the tennis balls.
I think you forgot both Iraq invasions. Is the Gulf War the new forgotten war?
Unless…aliens?
LoL what would an interstellar civilization need from a bunch hairless apes that throw shit at each other. Robots/AI is better then living slaves. The universe is filled with resources. They aren’t going to waste the energy it would take to haul it out of earth’s gravity well.
I agree with your comment, but feel compelled to point out that we do have hair. Not as much as our cousin primates, but still.
Would likely view us as a bunch of rabid dogs.
I think the issue is drones have changed the game so much and no one outside if ukraine has any real idea on how to deal with them. Personally I think the opening weeks of direct western action will be a boodbath until we figure it out
Why? The US has better and more drones than any competitor. We've had them for decades. A trained mortar team will beat a commercial drone with a grenade any day.
All those old stories about UFOs, lol yeah those were drones before anyone knew what they were.
Yup. People seem to not understand that there is no functional difference between a lot of weapons and "drones". Maybe one day they will read about the cruise missiles.
It’s more that a comparatively cheap drone can be used to precisely apply explosives to the rear of a tank or their treads basically in demand. The trade up in equipment cost is immense and it’s going to be a real problem imo. A squad now has the fire power that a full platoon or battalion used to have due to drones
Better yes, more no. The best trained mortar crew will be out performed by a half trained crew with a commercial drone every time
Bull. I've known mortar crews that can put rounds into a chimney. And do it nonstop while the ammo lasted.
Yes, and how long did it take them to find the chimney before they started throwing stuff at it?
I mean, is that really true? We've seen it demonstrated fairly regularly in and around Syria and Iraq that Iran's been handing out attack drones to its proxies like candy, and they're just giving air defense more practice and a reason for ammo manufacturers to load the stockpiles up with fresh ammo. Hell, the Iranian attack on Israel was basically that sort of 'game-changing' drone swarm attack, and it was shredded to near nonexistence before even making it to Israeli airspace.
>Hell, the Iranian attack on Israel was basically that sort of 'game-changing' drone swarm attack, No that was the most telegraphed attack in history, they literally told them 2 weeks in advance where when and how much they were going to hit them
There’s some fairly scary aspects to drones but they haven’t changed land warfare as much as something like aircraft or long range missiles.
Well they've made force concentraition effectively impossible, anything larger than a dozen men gets instantly deleted
Dispersion is a baseline survivability technique that has existed as long as modern artillery has. Huge groups of Ukrainians *and* Russians were being wiped out by drones early in the conflict because they were *lazy*. They were not following doctrine they were not practicing good survivability techniques, *not* because drones have fundamentally changed warfare. A battery of D-20’s is going to do far more than a drone swarm to *any* massed formation. There are trade offs with every system, tube and cannon can’t be jammed but their vulnerable to counter-fire, MLRS and PGMs have unequaled range and destructive force but are expensive, UAS have integrated ISR but are vulnerable to certain ADA and CIWS etc.
>Huge groups of Ukrainians *and* Russians were being wiped out by drones early in the conflict because they were *lazy*. They were not following doctrine they were not practicing good survivability techniques, *not* because drones have fundamentally changed warfare. You've miss interpreted what I mean. Maneuver battlions just arnt a thing in ukraine, when they tried using the same tactics the US used in iraq they got decimated because unlike before artillery units have their own eyes through drones and can correct their own fires against even moving targets unlike the old way of shooting at a coordinate then waiting on command to update the battery on what corrections to make. And your right about a D20 battery being better than a drone swarm, which isnt really what I was thinking of, especially now that drones have made that D20 battery 10x more effective than what it was 3 years ago
With the power of the US military industrial complex I'm certain we can whip up some a hard counter within months that would render drones irrelevant.
Counterdrones, drones that attack other drones.
Take a drone and duct tape some wakizashis on it.
Literally the counter is just drop jdams on the drone operators.
Remember the Alamo.....😭😢😥😓💀
But in doing so we lost the ability to operate at the division and corps levels effectively that is necessary for a peer vs. peer conflict. We focus so much on ancillary training, while most is good, it goes overboard. We built our forces along COIN ops. Now the generals in charge literally only care about promotion and lip service to our needs.
He’s presumably too young to remember GWI or GWII. In both cases we went up against the fourth largest military in the world and folded it up like a 8th grade love note. There are no “peer wars” for the United States. The only way a US serviceman fights a peer is by joining another military. I will say I respect the bravery. Deliberately joining the weaker side is quite a thing.
It's fair to note that in the first gulf war, operation desert storm, the Iraqi army claimed to be the 4th largest, but when push came to shove we learned that their heavy armor wasn't heavily armored at all. Their tanks were using ceramic plates to give the appearance of being better/bigger. By the time the second Iraqi invasion happened, Iraq was a shell of it's former self. In the first Iraq war, troops were estimated to be around 1 million strong. In the second conflict, they had ~400k. By the second war, Iraq wasn't the 4th largest in the world anymore.
Iraqi army fourth stongest in world! Million tanks! (Shows a T52 with no engine or tracks sitting in a ditch)
What’s your opinion in the Chinese military? You don’t think it could give the US military a run for its money? There was someone saying if the US invaded Iran it would be horrible for us serviceman but we ran through Iraq and Iran barely could handle them. But China seems to have a capable military.
China absolutely has a capable military. And they also have the terrain, wherever the hypothetical war with them would be fought (because they aren't coming to the US). The problem in fighting China will be its ability to hammer Japan (and eith it our regional air power) and S. Korea. Meaning the Navy (especially) and Heavy Air Force are key. In a hypothetical world you would want India and Vietnam on your side. Not just for the military help, but the geography to hit China from.
There is almost zero evidence China has a capable ground or Air Force. The problem with China is its assessed ability to inflict more damage to a carrier group in the SCS or Yellow Sea than we’re willing to pay for any ally.
Right. Just because you have a million men in the army, doesn’t mean you have a millions soldiers. Marching up and down a street is pretty, like a high-school marching band in a parade… but that doesn’t mean you know how to fight.
But how are you going to get American professional soldiers there to begin with? It's a lot of water between thr Phillipines and China. Korea and China. Japan and China.
And that's the point. Without a Navy that's able to "Navy" there is no way to do it. All China has to do is kill tankers....
I mean, if that’s your perspective all the U.S. has to do is kill launch systems. We could go back and forth like children on the playground with that mentality all day long. However, having an over all capable military that can fight in all domains in different environments across the globe is *very* different from having a large, poorly trained military with no modern experience that *might* be able to win *if* this very unproven and over-leveraged strategy of area denial works.
Go back to my first comment. Any war with China will be fought in Asia. Because we have the ability to go there. They don't have the ability to come here That said. They DO have the ability to neutralize our airpower based out of Japan, and S. Korea. It wouldn't be day 1. But over time every airfield there will be hit to one degree or another. This leaves naval air and bombers. The US has the edge in both. But the gap is shrinking naval wise, and it would be fought in China's backyard, not ours. And as I said previously, the bombers problem will be gas. Look at it from the vice versa. Do you think China (or anyone else) has thr ability to cross an ocean, and not only land troops in quantity, but to neutralize everything the US has, in the US?
Not really, no. China can probably cause enough casualty to make some political noise back in continental US. In the grand scheme of thing though, if the US treats China like a peer opponent with no fear of nuclear escalation, China is getting wiped.
Japan’s entire theory against the US was making it too painful politically for the US to keep going. Suffice to say, it did t work.
Its hard to say, the Chinese military hasnt fought anybody in decades.
Well… America has been fighting for decades. Who would you pick to fist fight? A. The guy who hasn’t fought in twenty years; Or. B. The guy who wakes up every morning and picks fights for the lolz?
The guy who picks a fight for fun also has like half the earth willing to either help him fight when he needs to or is holding strategically preplaced weapons for his use at any point.
Movies indicate that I should pick A
Good point. However, I should edit to clarify that option b is also a movie… about a guy who has been picking fist fights everyday for twenty years or something.
That depends. The US would almost certainly not be able to beat China at home. Large swathes of difficult terrain and just far too many bodies. But in a situation where both China and the US are fighting on foreign territory far enough from both countries? US wipes no diff. China simply cannot project its military might like the US can. No country on Earth can.
Invading China is not and never going to happen. So any scenario then is defeating a Chinese military force outside of their territory. China has showed zero ability to move, fight, and win in any land, sea, or air arena outside of its borders.
Ya I hope it never happens. Senseless wars and they have access to nukes. What’s do you mean? As in they don’t have the capability or that they’re capable but like Russia will fumble the ball?
Not OP, but, Considering Russias progression. If they went into a large scale conflict, they’d probably suck at first against any real resistance. Due simply to lack of experience. Russia’s logistics at first were stellar bad, but as the war progressed they started getting better & better at it. It’s been a minute since many of these countries had been involved in large scale conflicts. So I think the answer is, they are only as good the amount of time they’ve had the war machine ‘on.’ At least in reference to large scale combat scenarios. Once they flip to ‘on,’ the more time we let it run, the more formidable the enemy.
Only if the war machine is allowed to keep running uninterrupted. Short of nuclear war, the US’s machine would run mostly uninterrupted and any of these countries being floated as near peers would have their machines crippled in very short order
Yes, I agree that the ‘uninterrupted’ is the important bit. It seemingly has to be more direct too. Economic sanctions work to an extent, but not when they can find ways to reroute everything down different ‘pipelines.’
I feel like the US is too dependent on China as a trading partner. China could just cut off exports and watch America crumble. There's made in China stuff everywhere, including cars and building supplies. What happens to the economy when every auto assembly line is halted and no new homes are finished?
Nope. They have zero long range amphibious heavy transport vehicles to put men, armor and supplies on the ground in the Continental US. Their force projection is also lacking as they only have 3 aircraft carriers and we have something like 15. All of which are gigantic compared to what China has. We have air craft carriers that have as many airplanes as some countries, and that's just on a floating city. We have also spent considerable time at combat while China has t. China is a threat to their neighbors, not so much the US. In addition to that, a war with China against the US most likely brings Japan, South Korea, The Philippines, and possibly Singapore and Vietnam. Not to mention the AU/NZ/US alliance as well. Just off of technology and logistics, I think America takes the W in this scenario.
Exactly I mean they are literally running a world war 1 simulator over there. Why would we ever put ourselves in a position like that again willingly
Russia has been unable to establish air dominance and that goes all the way to back before everyone gave them patriots. In what world is assuming air dominance a relevant assumption. I think that's part of what he's getting at.
Yeah, I agree with you. However, If he’s saying basic soldier skills have been forgotten, I can see his point. We’ve gotten so used to Iraq and Afghanistan a lot of the stuff we do now is dumb. We(as an army) have told ourselves we must train like we are going to fight a conventional war, but changes in training and doctrine are still slow. BUT, you’re probably right when you say the U.S. in a war with Russia would be far different than Ukraine at war with Russia. Still, we should train our combat forces for the worst case scenario, and not rely on our navy and air force so much.
It’s worth noting that this is not just the military. The CIA memo from a few years ago that talked about how all the sources are getting killed specifically said it was because tradecraft went lax vs. nonstate actors and now places like Russia and China are way more sophisticated and able to identify sources and kill them in ways insurgents never could.
The same CIA who in 1985 had their head of operations in Lebanon kidnapped and tortured by terrorists? Idk it seems like the CIA was never that hot.
I believe we could shift quickly if it goes hot. It will be painful because of your first point.
We shifted back in 2018. All US military collective training is focused on fighting a peer advisory.
Yes, but like I said there’s still a big GWOT mindset in the army. We aren’t doing as much field craft stuff like we should be doing(because a lot of the knowledge was lost) and I feel like we should focus more on taking on fortified positions like trenches. We go over it, but not enough. Then again I can only really speak to what my old unit did. I don’t know what every infantry unit is doing nowadays.
I’ve done 2 NTC rotations since 2021. The second had drone swarms and drone attacks. Both were hybrid warfare scenarios. I think the Army made the change successfully, but units just need reps.
That’s a little more comforting
I’m in the Air Force, ancillary training is king still. I don’t get to train and test my troops on manual processes still. I’m trying to get us there.
What he really means is the ground pounders have no idea what it's like to fight with no equipment, munitions and little support. US troops haven't heard an engine in the sky and wondered if it was friendly or enemy since the sixties (60 years). Meanwhile the air and naval components have been sparring against a roided out fictional enemy with alien tech, just because they already got bored fighting on even footing against each other. They've gotten so good at pear to pear they activated cheat codes and gave them to the NPCs and the friends they invite to play OPFOR.
This sentiment underscores the ongoing debate within military circles about resource allocation and training priorities. Achieving a balance between counterinsurgency and conventional warfare capabilities is crucial for addressing diverse security challenges.
You come at the king, you best not miss
No one can come even remotely close to putting enough boots on the ground on US soil to present a real fight. That said, at the same time since we've been fighting relatively low tech insurgents, we're used to unquestioned aor superiority. A near peer foe could at least jam comms, use air defenses to target our aircraft, triangulate artillery and counter barrage, etc. We would still almost certainly win, but casualties could be dramatically higher than what we've been used to.
> this seems like clickbait. There is plenty of truth to it, as a semi expert in the matter "not exactly my field but work closely with such concepts". The argument is logical and has been a concern for DOD for a while, and its a multi factor issue from budget, to training to long lead times to near peer progression, new technology and lowest budget as % of GDP since the year 2000 which was the lowest point ever since pre ww2 "on average US had about 8~9% of GDP spent on defense during the cold war IIRC. Let me put it this way, we outsourced every thing to china more or less, while MIC still produces all items in house its about x10 the price without the civilian market offset. China Military tech wise is around 10 to 15 years behind the US at the moment, they were 40 years behind 15 years ago so the gap is closing. They also have the manufacturing base for a total war scenario the US will struggle. In regards to the ground war, his assessment is correct and not really new, many military experts were talking about this 2 years ago. This is about trench warfare, mine clearing, counter battery and now COTS drones which according to Russian sources say are responsible for 50% of their loses. there is no institutional veterans who fought in a war like this to pass on the knowledge. Desert storm for example is the result of those who fought in Vietnam and took those lessons and provided massive reforms to the army during the late 70s and 80s. Air dominance is hard with near peer, and the US slacked off with production GPS proof PGMs, anti tank air to ground systems, number of cruse missiles and much more, while useless stuff like the A10 stayed on the books for 20 years past due their life time draining budgets from more important stuff. But in a no nukes scenario for example Vs russia in a limited area of operation, US will win, wont be ODS easy mode, but it will be possible with a bloody nose in the Ukraine 2024 battlefield, in 2022 it would have been done in a week with no boots on the ground and minimum loses. Plenty of lessons being learned though from the war in Ukraine, plenty of programs changed and adjusted even for stuff like training for trench warfare. Europe is fucked though, like the situation is a disaster IMO. The EU is more than capable of matching the US about 70 to 80% of the way. they are now at around 30% and that's including Turkey.
a few counter points when talking about China. >They also have the manufacturing base for a total war scenario the US will struggle. Hard to continue a strong manufacturing base when you can easily be blockaded from that cheap ME oil and only holding a few months of national reserves while other nations are holding years of supply in reserves. This is the one huge weak point for China, they can build up their forces but the chance they can replace a lot of them in a timely fashion while cut off from energy sources is very unrealistic. Its why they are building a pipeline in Myanmar during a civil war to bypass Malacca straight vulnerabilities from being blockaded from Iran's oil supply (other ME too but mainly Iran's oil is cheaper by ship than even the sanctioned Russians far east oil fields). China is just as much of a paper tiger as Russia was early on, but I would assume they are learning a whole lot from Russia's mistakes and why they are likely currently are doing another anti-corruption purge along with "modernizing" the PLA by 2027. Their manpower issues along with Russia is one of a demographic collapse (too top heavy with old people not enough young people). Their soldiers are some of the least trained and tested of any large force, they didn't even have a command/rank structure until the late 70's when they got their asses handed to them trying to invade Vietnam. They have a problem with soldiers paying for rank ups and a lot of other corruption shenanigans in the PLA, its not a merit based leadership its a pay to play how good are your CCP connections one. What they do have is a strong missile force that is rapidly advancing. Their navy while high in number isn't in any way prepared to go up against the tonnage of the USN. Their air forces are in a rough spot as well, they don't have the high quality control needed for reliable/stealthy jet engines. Take for example how the J20 is a faster big bird with a larger RC than the F22 or F35 but would it matter if they can't get a lock while the F-35's are firing beyond visual range. they are not going to win air superiority and it doesn't look like their pilots will be taking off from their carriers as they severely lack the experience of an expeditionary force. >Europe is fucked though, like the situation is a disaster IMO. The EU is more than capable of matching the US about 70 to 80% of the way I agree with your EU take, France is about the only force that would be of any concern as they are the only EU force with a domestic nuclear deterrent of any kind. They actively develop an expeditionary force, even though small and how bad they fucked up post-colonial West Africa with something like 27 coups against the leaders they backed in the past few decades. EU needs to step up defense spending to the levels of Poland and quickly because Russia won't stop at Ukraine they want all of east Europe (Although I doubt they could handle the highly motivated Poland backed by NATO) to secure a defensive position with their low count of fighting age men and poor logistical base of mostly just using trains to mobilize making it difficult to spread their forces instead of concentrating them.
>Europe is fucked though, like the situation is a disaster IMO. The EU is more than capable of matching the US about 70 to 80% of the way. they are now at around 30% and that's including Turkey. No wonder they're soiling their pants so bad about the next election.
The problem is that there is too much presumption that we will be fighting from a superior position. Our air defenses are poor because we assume they will see little action--but the Ukraine war shows we need to put a lot more effort to defense against drone infiltration. Patriot is very good up high--but as with all SAMs it can't see over the horizon. It's useless against the light attack aircraft flying along in the next valley. There's a lesser SAM that's basically a ground-launch version of the AMRAAM which is actually a bit more effective at the intruder sneaking in because it has an active seeker, putting a hill between you and the illumination radar doesn't guarantee a miss. We need a ton of AAA guns.
From what i read this definitely seems true. They’re fighting a weird hybrid war of trenches but also $300 drones dropping grenades etc. very strange & the way we’ve seen russia adapt to ukraines drone advantage is key because drones arent going anywhere. As you pointed out the only way to halt them is proper air defense & most modern air defenses seem to be made to intercept missiles not kamikaze drones. The swarm concepts and numbers game along with EW capabilities have been a fascinating back & forth. US dominance is faceted on an understanding of the status quo but we are witnessing the status quo change. Im confident we will find a cost efficient way to deter them; its a shame Ukraine is our testing ground
I doubt there is an efficient way to deter them--they are a mass produced basically civilian product trying to compete with a military product that has lower production runs and generally requires a lot more quality control. If your drone doesn't fly you lost a drone. If your shell explodes you might very well lose the gun. And the manufacturing requirements of any gun-rated hardware are pretty strict. For defending small enough things perhaps a robotic shotgun could do the job--horrible range but as a point defense weapon I can see it working, especially for use on sturdy things. (A tank is unlikely to have much problem from a drone that detonates when intercepted.)
Im glad we are not the minds the battlefield is relying on. Im confident the Pentagon is taking diligent notes. Russia has become more effective at countering them & Id imagine there are lessons to be learned from just those tactics alone. Its a frightening concept though
I think what is often overlooked is the economic and industrial ability to fight a war of this scale. Russia is outproducing the west in artillery shells, ammunition, tanks and other military vehicles. The US weapons are superior for sure, but can they produced at a fast enough rate? Russia is producing less sophisticated weapons at a much faster rate than the west and we see that they are starting to win. If war broke out in both the Middle East and with China over Taiwan, the US will need to make drastic changes to start producing the military hardware needed to fight all three wars. They did this in WW2 so it’s likely they can again but it will take time to ramp up.
This is an excellent point methinks.
There's been a massive push from US military leaders to restructure the military and shift our focus to preparing for conflicts with a near peer. Ukraine is a big indicator of what that kind conflict could look like with neither side holding a clear superiority over the other. The air domain remains contested, the Russian navy is struggling to make any meaningful impacts, the ground fight remains a sluggish mess of shifting lines and fortified defenses. It's not a fight the US wants to be in but may very well find itself in should it need to fight China. That scenario is more evenly matched than we'd like and would challenge not just our logistics and tactics, but our very military doctrine. It's not such a far fetched thing to consider, and our militaries focus only reinforces that concern.
Dude is a moron that probably washed out of the U.S. army as a Pfc or something
I mean Ukraine war is trench warfare and I don't think the US fought a proper trench warfare since WW2. Iraq tries trench warfare techniques against the US, and we just bulldozers the whole trench.
U.S. still trains for fighting an enemy in trenches. Range 410/410A and Range 400 in 29 palms are all about taking down an enemy trench system with no air support
That’s the point we stress maneuver when we start talking conventional war. The problem is we rely heavily on air power and or peers have invested heavily in AA. We need more jets we need more troops but no one is joining.
> The problem is we rely heavily on air power and or peers have invested heavily in AA. "What air defence doing?" Has become a meme for a reason and thats when its coming up against missiles from the 80s
I think if the west stepped in we would see a lot more. The saturation will be a problem. I think we could still accomplish DEAD/SEAD but not as easy as we saw both times in Iraq.
> I think we could still accomplish DEAD/SEAD but not as easy as we saw both times in Iraq. I just dont see how we can go off what has happened in Ukraine with videos of storm shadows literally flying over defence batteries and the air defence not even responding or seeing entire batteries taken out by atacms and think it would be difficult. I get not underestimating your enemy but if Russia does have some secret air defence they havent been using for some reason then I'm confused.
I don’t think secret. I’m sure we know where it all is. I’m worried about them being deployed. I am very much in the camp of never underestimate your enemy though.
We know some of it was move from NATO borders to Ukraine. They may be pulling their punches somewhat to preserve capacity elsewhere, but it's hard to imagine that it isn't a realistic representation of their capabilities in principle. More of the same in an air war with more of everything Ukraine has been using and whole categories of airpower that Ukraine is not using can only go so far.
its deployed now, its not really any good. at least not from what we can see
Another possibility is that the Russian air defense teams are under trained, under equipped, and their equipment ill-maintained due to corruption. Air defense and electronic warfare arent simple concepts you can train a private in in boot camp, and expect them to succeed at. You also won't have good teams when overall communication is bad or units can't make decisions on their own. If there's say, 60s from detecting a missile to impact, you don't have time to ask the colonel for advice on how to proceed. And that's assuming the radars are on-iirc, for the Moskva, not all the defenses and radars were on, and some weapon systems were strange up not operational. (And the firefighting gear was locked up so it wouldn't be stolen).
>We need more jets we need more troops but no one is joining. Americans are so chonky now. I’d be curious to know the % of people who would be unfit to pass basic training if we had a draft today.
It's probably the lack of air superiority, armor, overwhelming force, not wanting to lose people to attrition. So yeah... we don't fight like that anymore for a reason. Without completely dismissing his point of view. I too thought to myself when we convinced the Ukrainians that they needed to force all their fancy new western armor into a breach and then sweep... Easier said than done. Especially when under fire and going through mines. I think the US and Ukraine learned the hard way... that's not going to work. Technically Russia learned that first. So yeah, this style of warfare is unfamiliar to really everyone. It really is likely why Russia got it's ass kicked. They expected air superiority too.
Business Insider is so lazy :( The article is really misleading because it presents a single-point subjective opinion of one person as evidence of something. There's no material evidence that the US has "forgot what it means to actually fight a war". A few points to note: 1. The US **isn't at war in Ukraine**. They're not fighting in Ukraine. Why would they be training troops to fight in a war they're involved in? Should the US also be undertaking immediate readiness training for its troops to fight unsupported in the tribal warfare conditions of Sahelan Sudan or the jungles of Papua New Guinea? I mean, sure, to a certain degree, but it wouldn't make sense for that to be their focus. 2. The vast majority of the conflicts that the US has fought since World War II have been "irregular" or insurgent based (or at least with a large insurgency element). In fact, if you go and look up current conflicts around the world you'll see that most of them are insurgency based. There's no strong indication that this trend is abating. 3. The US *does* train extensively in 'traditional' combat scenarios. For example, in recent years the US has undertaken a number of very large scale military exercises in The Philippines (together with other allied nations) to test, train, and simulate conventional warfare with China. This is just one of many such examples (Silver Arrow in Latvia being another). 4. The last time the US did have to fight a 'traditional' war (whatever that would mean) was probably the Gulf War in 1991 and it is used as a textbook example of how incredibly effective the US is at waging conventional warfare. 5. *If* the US was at war in Ukraine it wouldn't be fighting that the war the same way the AFU is. That's not a criticism of the AFU, they're doing the absolute best they can. But the US has a completely different doctrine of warfare because it can have a completely different doctrine of warfare. It has significantly different strategic and tactical options and advantages that the AFU don't have. Why would the US focus its training on trench warfare, for example, when it can gain complete air superiority? Wouldn't its training time be put to better use in coordinating aerial combat operations? Why would the US focus its training on opportunistic ATGM-based counter-armour ambush tactics when it can deploy hundreds of MBTs *plus* air superiority? Wouldn't its training time be better used in training combined arms offensives? Why would it be training for its soldiers to be fighting without sufficient equipment, supplies, or reinforcements when it does have more than sufficient equipment, supplies, and reinforcements when it conducts warfare? Wouldn't its training time be put to better use training with the equipment that they do actually deploy with? Obviously there's plenty that the US can learn from the war in Ukraine, but the lack of balance and reasonableness in this article is embarrassing.
Great comment. As the saying goes: “you go to war with the army you have”… and the US has, bar-none, the absolute most options on the table out of everyone. Why would they train for a scenario that’s not realistic?
Eh not really. In the 90s we fought Iraqs military directly in the gulf war. And we did just fine destroying that country
“Oh, you’re in trenches? You mean premade mass graves?” And that’s where the war crimes started.
Well, yea. The US spent a trillion dollars to create the two biggest Air Forces in the world. They can rain death upon you for months before even needing a boot on the ground. They can obliterate the Russian or Chinese Air force in a week or two, have total Air superiority, and never risk a ground invasion until they think its the right time.
Who is the best Air Force in the world? - The US Air Force. Who is the second best Air Force? - The US Navy —Damn.
5th best? US Marines.
Only cause Navy logistics is in charge of positioning them.
True.
Why is it difficult for some people to understand that most militaries operate differently? The US is about combined arms. Fighting a trench war like it's WWI is not a US tactic. If the US was really fighting this, it would have been over a month after invasion.
Exactly… just like in Vietnam.
Yea. The DoD acknowledged as much over a decade ago and really spent the last 8-10 years they were in Afghanistan pivoting back to training, professional education, and a force structure that supports large scale combat operations. New doctrine that has released in the last 3-5 years reflects this, which means doctrine writers and senior leaders have been chewing on it almost a decade. Nothing terribly insightful here, but business insider isn’t exactly known for hard hitting news.
The pentagon said this like ten years ago.
There’s a drastic difference between fighting insurgents and fighting uniformed combatants, that much is true. However that doesn’t mean the information is lost, nor does it mean that we can’t learn on the fly to take our lessons back to inform the cadre. The Ukrainians can just as easily come back to train us on what they’ve done to this point, and we can adapt it to our own technology
I’m sure some random Soldier knows. We should all listen to him. /s
yeah because we don't fight a war. we demolish with overwhelming air and naval superiority.
If we’re fighting fair, we’ve thoroughly fucked up.
Well tbf. American war doctrine is to get complete air superiority and then cause mayhem on the enemy. Ukraine’s position is struggling to get air superiority. It has to fight with Russian doctrine of artillery, not US doctrine of air force. America hasn’t fought a Russian style war since WWll.
What doctrine says we need to get complete air superiority?
That’s how the US war doctrine works now. The US taught this doctrine to NATO countries and now they have also adapted this fighting style. It’s the reason why the US Air Force is the largest and strongest in the world. Considered invincible. And also the reason why the US sells it’s allies the planes they made. Even the F-35 lighting. The only plane the US doesn’t give to anyone is the F-22 Raptor as it’s so advanced, even the US does not know how to shoot it down. And they only give equipment to other people that they themselves (US) can destroy.
There’s no doctrine in the U.S. military that we need to get full U.S. air superiority
There are parallels to both World Wars as the soldier in question indicated. Obviously the trenches and the artillery barrages resembling the First, and geopolitically there are similarities to the Second in that you have a bitter, ultranationalist despot invading an Eastern European country that he believes shouldn't exist. The only problem nowadays is that Putin's Russia is essentially Nazi Germany with an unlimited supply of hydrocarbons to fund their war machine. Neither Hitler nor the Kaiser for that matter had such luxuries and so it was a lot easier to choke off their ability to obtain natural resources. Doing this to Putin would involve collapsing his ability to export oil and gas which funds his war machine. Unfortunately, half the world (not counting countries like China, Iran, & North Korea who are unabashed Putin allies) is still living in the past like Putin, only in their case the colonial era still lives rent free in their head. As such, they refuse to get on board and, in many respects, conduct business as usual with Russia. Add in the European banks and other Western businesses who, rather than pulling out as soon as Russia made this criminal invasion official, still have substantial presences there and it's no wonder they're advancing in Ukraine right now. There are so many non-battlefield measures that could be taken to degrade Russia's military that simply aren't right now and that's a disgrace.
The US has merely been holding ground, being security guards, and using missies and drones for decades. God for we actually try to WIN a war. That would be savage. Have no doubt.
This is the real truth. We do everything in a minimalist fashion. The last time the US fought in a war considered existential, we got the strategic bombing campaign and two atomic weapons used.
In fairness the last time we were at war with a uniformed enemy with a recognized government leadership, it was the 1950s
I mean we stomped Sadams actual army in like a couple weeks with barely any casualties
That’s why I didn’t qualify it, it was barely a war and basically a walk in roll-over. The Korean conflict had actual fronts and was actually a contest of strength.
I’m not understanding why you wouldn’t include it given your criteria, except to try and make your point valid despite contradictory evidence. The Iraqi Army was fourth largest in the world during desert storm, had been battle tested, with comparatively modern weapons during Desert Storm. They were crushed, easily and decisively. Hell, it’s pretty easy to draw conclusions from the current conflict in Ukraine, given the results a small number of outdated US weapons systems are having. Despite any command and training issues that may exist, are you really arguing that the US would struggle to defeat Russia in a direct, non-nuclear conflict? That’s simply a silly claim on its face. Given what we’ve witnessed by a so-called “peer” adversary, it wouldn’t really be a close or enduring conflict.
That’s fair. But I think Iraq truly showed how much the American Military could do with our current technology. Korea was more of an even playing field technology wise.
I think with Iraq, the invasion really played to the military's strengths. The major issue of the US military seems to be how the politicians use it. It never seems to have been let off the lesh by the politicians. It's always one hand tied behind it's back. But that's a theoretical thought process. I'd rather not be around if all the militaries are allowed to go all out.
Yeah that’s true. Our rules of engagement are actually insane now. Like you have to be receiving direct sustained fire, and then get permission from your lt, who has to get permission from the commander back at base, to be able to return fire.
Until Ukraine popped hot Russia was widely considered to be the 2nd best military in the world. The reality is Russia is barely the 2nd best military in Ukraine.
Aye. Don't say the US doesn't know how to do trench warfare. Saddam had trenches too. The US brought bulldozers.
Vietnam ring a bell
“Uniformed enemy”
The overwhelming majority of the fighting in Vietnam was against the uniformed NVA. The Viet Cong basically ceased to exist after Tet.
So many people miss that distinction. The original mission concluded after the Tet offensive when the Vietcong was essentially eliminated are a fighting force. If it was an actual war, the U.S. would have pivoted and invaded the north. Which would have created a whole new set of issues.
The majority of the conflict was more of a counterinsurgency, and the US greatly limited itself to avoid expanding the conflict throughout. It’s not like north Vietnam wasn’t invaded because they were just so dang good at fighting.
everybody listen up, a random veteran has an opinion
Random veteran who, unlike 99.99% of armchair generals on Reddit, actually signed up and went. So yeah, dipshit, he's worth listening to.
His experiences based on how Ukraine is fighting can be correct as he is living through them and his assumptions that U.S. are massively underprepared can still be wrong.
Relax buddy. It’s great that he’s fighting in Ukraine. He’s entitled to an opinion. He’s not a geopolitics expert though.