A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force [pdf]
press.armywarcollege.edu
press.armywarcollege.edu
Drones are a big deal but these drones would have basically no counter
Frankly I’m confused why we don’t have these things for big static targets like a drone that independently navigates to a rail line, drops a mine and leaves for the train to blow up next time it shows up.
I’m certainly tempted by this line of thinking. However, it’s important to bear in mind that the Japanese thought the exact same thing during WW2 when they initiated Pearl Harbor. It’s very difficult to predict how the public will react to war.
The crux of the matter is there are few nations on earth where life has so little value as Russia. Their leadership has no trouble sending or convincing 10's of millions to go and die. It is my belief Americans and Europeans still don't understand this and if this war was to spill over from Ukraine into Europe it would be a disaster no different than WWII. Yes, USA/Europe/NATO would win but it would cost them millions of lives. Putin has already said if I run out of men I will send Women.
>Frankly I’m confused why we don’t have these things for big static targets like a drone that independently navigates to a rail line, drops a mine and leaves for the train to blow up next time it shows up.
I think the West believed that they could just use their air power to destroy these targets but failed to realize that they have never really fought an enemy that had a serious air defense. Iraq was using systems from the early 70's that were easily defeated.The USA doesn't even have a basic drone like the Iranian Shahed drone that could be produce in mass, they also have no answer to stopping them efficiently.
America can not win a conventional war with China, that is a guarantee. The Chinese could field millions of drones and a endless supply of men and with the support of Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc, would have no problems defeating the US/West. The second Americans couldn't buy a microwave, iPhone, or video card and millions of other things, they would lose their minds and surrender......
I'm not sure if it's sarcasm or not but, academic discussion aside, Russia cannot even win the war with Ukraine, so it's hard to imagine how they would fare against a stronger enemy with powerful modern weapons.
Lets not forget what happened with the USA/NATO in Afghanistan where a a stronger force with powerful modern weapons was defeated.
Hope I'm full of shit and wrong but I don't have a lot of faith in the USA/West and their resolve and capability when faced with a formidable foe.
That's exactly why Biden has been finding it so hard to keep sending weapons - the Republicans would be more or less happy to keep sending them if they were seeing positive results from the counteroffensive but nothing has been achieved.
If weapons deliveries wind down from hereon out then Kiev is toast.
Once Russian loses most of its fighting age men, it can't engage in another one of those types of wars for another generation at least.
To take Bakhmut as an example, Ukraine kept feeding men into cauldrons long after they should have cut their losses because they had orders to make a stand and fight to the last for every inch of territory. This is where the phrase "meat grinder" originated - it described Russia's plan for capitalizing upon those orders.
Ukraine ended up suffering vastly worse casualties than Russia did as a result - their troops spent most of their time surrounded on 3 sides by a force with overwhelming artillery superiority. The Ukrainian soldiers fed into these cauldrons often died within hours from an artillery strike, usually without even seeing a Russian soldier. Russia tried to keep this process going for as long as possible.
Hence meat grinder.
This pattern of Ukraine prioritizing territorial gains over lives and falling into traps sprung by Russia as a result has been repeated elsewhere across the front line too, and is symptomatic of the failure of the counteroffensive.
Russia is the one that has seen massive attrition on its artillery and is constantly complaining about Ukrainian counterbattery capabilities are far superior.
Ukraine has been very clear that these areas were held to fix and attrite Russian forces. And it worked. The Russian offense culminated with basically nothing achieved and is now on the ropes with Ukraine getting awfully close to gaining fire control on the last train lines leading west in Tokmak.
Russia is the one that is notoriously throwing its men at senseless counterattacks rather than trying to maintain its own defensive lines
The offensive was initially supposed to reach Mariupol or Melitopol which would have been a legitimate success. It's ended with a promise to maybe get to Tokmak which will make zero difference strategically. It's failed - completely.
Melitopol being liberated would almost end the war giving fire control over all of crimea’s logistics and making the entire point of the war that siege.
Tokmak will not end the war, but it is THE rail line supplying the west.
I don't see you proposing an alternative to what the Ukrainians have chosen to do that doesn't leave them with a lot more territory to retake, or ceding a bunch of territory to Russia on a basically permanent basis.
And let's not forget that they're doing their damnedest to attrit Russian materiel all the while they've been fighting to hold or retake territory. Every weapon system they've been given to strike behind Russian lines and destroy materiel, they've used for that purpose. That both reduces Russia's availability materiel, and screws with their logistics by pushing back their various assets and supply depots.
Even after that though, I think they should have prioritized lives over territory. Luring Russia deeper into their territory so that their supply lines could be cut and trying to fight maneuver warfare would have worked better than trying to win a WW1 style war of attrition against an enemy 5x the power and equivalent sophistication that is fighting a war of attrition against you.
Russian logistics were only really seriously threatened by HIMARS and only then for a short period (theyve since deployed counter measures). Ukraine only really has the resources to hit propaganda targets behind enemy lines now - Russian logistics are not being threatened in any meaningful way any more.
I would calibrate the predictions you see from your sources with the predictions that they made 12 months ago. The results may surprise.
There are several technological areas where Russia is obviously ahead of the west - the two most notable being anti aircraft defences (S-400) and hypersonic missiles.
The Russian economy is struggling but not collapsing yet.
The hypersonic missiles have generally failed to beat western air defenses. The S 400s have been getting blown up with visual confirmation.
I’m curious about how this new deal would have actually stopped Russia from just invading again in the future to take more land.
Ukraine already had prior to 2014 multiple international agreements with Russia where they promised to respect Ukraines borders and sovereignty and that didn’t stop Russia violating them.
In fact this deal seems to be explicitly about allowing Russia to invade again by pledging them to stay out of defensive alliances that would finally stop and prevent Russian aggression.
> Ukraine only really has the resources to hit propaganda targets behind enemy lines now
Ukraine has destroyed one of the submarines that Russia was using to launch cruise missiles at them and has leveled the Black Sea headquarters effectively.
They are doing what Russia keeps claiming and failing to do (hitting decision making centres).
Russia can't even beat its next door neighbor who is supplied with the US's castoff tech
The US would destroy the Russian forces from a distance, even in non-nuclear combat, it wouldn't even be close.
Ukraine is suffering attrition at a rate of 1:2-5 in most areas based on stats I have seen (and I feel like trending 5+ lately fwiw). The US would certainly find that to be outrageous if it were US troops dying at that rate for something like the war in Ukraine.
I do think the US could perform with much better stats. But how much better do they need to be? I think not clear.
Russia’s proven to be a lot weaker mind you so they’re not the best example to have indexed on. Much of their capabilities could be annihilated if we just got the fuck on with ATACM and the cluster variety.
You can relatively easily conceive of scenarios where the US either needs to directly confront China, or lose its geo-strategic preeminence, but it much much harder to conceive of scenarios over the next 50 years in which direct confrontation with China is 'actually existential' (in the sense that if the US loss or did not partake in the confrontation, that the US would domestically cease to exist in a recognizable form).
Effectively, the US' challenge for recruitment (and honestly a lot of things) is to convince enough of its population that US hegemony/preeminence is "a good thing" and worth fighting and dying for.
Too bad the US pissed away a good chunk of that capital with GWOT.
My guess would be that if something like 9/11 happened again today, you'd see [tribe controlling the White House] try to use it as a unifying event, and this would immediately catalyze a furious reaction and counter-narrative from [tribe not controlling the White House] denouncing it as cynical grift, especially if it was used to try and justify a draft.
The topic goes quite deep. I'm sure better minds have written books arguing the specifics.
If the Japanese had not attacked, the United States certainly would've entered the war later, but I don't think you could ever refer to it as a "power play".
Ascribing intent is tricky here. Personifying the modern state is another iffy area. "Directed history" is another can of worms.
Inevitability isn't the question. Rather, "power play" in terms of post-hoc analysis is the only question we can probe. Suggesting otherwise is a leap beyond conjecture.
Without implying that this was the analysis at the time, we can safely say that the US was positioned to be the sole remaining industrial superpower post war, if the US entered the war at the time which it did. If it had entered earlier or not at all, this may not have been the case.
The original comment was concise. Perhaps it was appropriate for a simple assertion, but it did leave room for ambiguity.
My reply was directed towards the idea that the US entered WW2 as a "power play", not that the outcome of the war resulted in more power for the US.
The primary reason the US entered WW2 was because of Pearl Harbor.
Entering WW2 is the most righteous thing the US has ever done. I know that the US has done a lot of wrong, but I cannot imagine how much more suffering there would've been if the Axis had won.
If WW2 wasn't existential I don't know where the bar is.
Also there was a Japanese plan to unlease the plague on San Diego - it was ended by WW2.
Not...quite sure how much of a threat "attacked Hawaii, allies under attack, plans to send plague to San Diego" all groups up to be, but yeah it was existential.
Slowly boil the frog by removing internet freedom for 50 years, and close down independent media outlets, prevent growth of organic networks? Sure.
There's no guarantee that our freedoms continue unabated. Look at Jan 6th and how dangerously close we came to authoritarians seizing power. There was a false elector scheme!
Or a "backdoor" where as soon as the authoritarians grab power, they flip a switch and the only networks you have are ham radio enthusiasts. Not good.
Now imagine a world where Russia didn’t have nukes, that we successfully got rid of those horrible weapons in the 1980s to 1990s (which was very possible if the American government would have been willing), how far do you think Russia would go then without being shielded by this threat? At the very least western nations wouldn’t have their favorite excuse for why they don’t send their so many weapons and so many armies to actually defend a nation under an invasion.
This is just wishful thinking. All countries agreeing to give up their nukes is about as likely as all countries agreeing never to go to war again because it's a net negative; not going to happen.
Not only do they have the power to destroy the world many times over, but they also have a deterrence power which empowers nuclear powers to engage in wars of aggression without fearing the consequences.
In other words, there are two lessons here. The one you took from this, is that nations can use nukes to deter invasion, and that denuclearizing puts them at greater risks of being invaded. You denuclearizing as a mistake. My lesson is that the real mistake was to allow Russia to keep their nukes, and to keep nuclear armed nations. South Africa denuclearized just fine and hasn’t been invaded. If the world had denuclearized at the same time, Ukraine’s denuclearization would have yielded the same success.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
If this was a bet, I wager the proliferation of democracies and decolonization is a much better explanation for why there are fewer wars, than the binary of whether nuclear weapons exist or not.
Remove the "Nukes" parameter, and all the other parameters get nullified, or could not even get realization the way it is happening in our nuke-ified world. We are talking a massive butterfly/domino effect.
WWIII would have happen without nukes, or we better start to believe the earth is flat.
Given the destructive nature of nukes, and the mathematical fact that unhindered proliferation will always lead to nuclear warfare, I think a safer world where we thank the things which has provably made our lives better in addition to preventing wars.
Aside from that, I’m curious. I understand that it can be hard for you to accept my theory that human rights and democracy have prevented wars (or rather you may believe that nukes brought us both), but how do you suppose decolonization is not a significant factor. Like in the decades after WW-2 when the world had nukes (including a couple of colonial powers), Europe saw some horrific wars in its colonies. Angola, Algeria, Vietnam, those were all colonial wars with so many unnecessary deaths and destruction. More often than not (mostly because of France) those involved a nuclear state as the aggressor. How does this actual history fit into your narrative?
What makes you so certain that full scale warfare is so unavoidable if not for nukes?
Secondly, the cold war is over. What I alluded to was that the world would get rid of nukes in the period after the election of Gorbachev, but before the election of Bush. At this point the cold war is pretty much over (if not completely over; and it is certainly over now). And in this post-cold war era, Russia—a nuclear power—invades Ukraine. Why not get rid of nukes now?
And finally, I believe the Earth can be whichever shape an author wants it to be in fiction. Alternative history is fiction, so in your alternative timeline of no nukes causing WW3, the earth may as well be a donut.
And we are witnessing probably the end of the internet public message board due to chatgpt AIs.
The matter of Soviet nukes being stationed in Ukraine was so existential for Russia that a refusal to give up the nukes eventually would have led to a full-on invasion by Russia.
Ukraine had only been independent for a couple of years at that point, so they did not have the necessary military structures to defend themselves like they are doing this time around. The US would not have engaged in full-on war with Russia just to let Ukraine keep the nukes – at the time, nobody knew how Ukraine was going to develop, so the West preferred Ukraine giving up their nukes to avoid the scenario of a rogue post-Soviet country with nuclear weapons.
You have to remember, at the time, Ukraine was not yet seen in the West as this brave independent anti-Russia that it is perceived as today.
Finally, the Ukrainians could not have used those nuclear weapons in the hypothetical invasion. The nuclear command & control was headquartered in Russia, so the Ukrainians didn't have access to the launch codes. Even if they had somehow managed to circumvent that and actually used the nuclear weapons, that definitely would have united Russia and the West against Ukraine.