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Comment by peppermint_gum | Hacker News Reader

>Ukraine’s arsenal was formidable. It started the war with over 1,000 barrel artillery systems (those with long tubes) and 1,680 multiple-rocket launchers—more than Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Poland put together

This is a very important point. We love making fun of the Russian army, but I doubt that any of the Western countries (other than the US) would've survived the invasion if they swapped places with Ukraine. European land forces are small and severely underequipped.

The good news is that the war prompted the European governments to increase their military spending. The most notable example of that is Poland with their unprecedented shopping spree (among other things, over 1000 tanks, 48 fighter aircrafts, 600 howitzers and 500 MLRS). Of course, it will take years until those investments result in a meaningful increase in military capabilities.

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Western countries don't have so much hardware, but they have much better hardware. Simply put, if NATO entered the war, Russian air force and land bases would get eradicated from safe distance, thanks to aviation and missiles Ukraine doesn't have.

The interesting thing is that Russia has been preparing their military doctrine for war with NATO since the beginning of NATO. Russia has operational hypersonic missiles capable of penetrating NATO air defenses. They also have the S-400 anti-aircraft system that can track and shoot down even F22/F35s at long distance. These weapons are useless against Ukraine.

Hypothetical capabilities of Russian weapon systems, that have never been proven in practice, cannot be taken seriously at this junction. Moreover, even the existence of such systems, like the Armata tank and hypersonic missiles, is in doubt.

When was the last time the US fought a peer rather than bullied around an underdeveloped opponent? Who knows how our equipment and doctrine would hold up against a similarly capable adversary.

Our war games don't seem to paint a very rosy picture, and we barely have any manufacturing capability left.

Sink a carrier or two and what are we left with? Nukes, long range bombers, airbases... could we even mobilize enough to defend and hold Europe if the reds invade?

“Sink a carrier” is, in terms of how hard it is, somewhere around “bomb White House”. It’s absurdly hard to do even for a well-equipped nation state.

Also, a huge problem with modern Russian hardware is that it’s largely vaporware. That’s why they are using all that USSR-era equipment.

In Syria a few years back, a group of hundreds including Russian paramilitary attempted to seize an oil rig where 20 US soldiers were stationed. The entire Russian paramilitary group was decimated while not a single US soldier was wounded.

We are producing 150 F35s a year.

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