EPTSubmarines are a good counter for being the weaker navy. They undermine the "command of the sea" advantage of having free reign of the seas while landlocking your opponent. The Germans were really quite successful about putting that historic aspect of military doctrine to rest.
European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 578
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
Submarines are a good counter for being the weaker navy. They undermine the "command of the sea" advantage of having free reign of the seas while landlocking your opponent. The Germans were really quite successful about putting that historic aspect of military doctrine to rest. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On November 12 2016 04:56 Sent. wrote: I'm aware and see nothing wrong with it not mattering to you but it was still surprising to see that the third strongest NATO member has less tanks (altough much better in quality) than Poland. About Baltic States: I don't think anyone even considers defending them from day 1. It's more like "You can take Riga in 2 days but if you do that we'll take Moscow in one year". If I was in charge of some Baltic country I wouldn't even try to prepare defenses against Russian army. Some small force capable of dealing with "separatists" like those in Eastern Ukraine should be enough. I guess they could try to be like Finland and invest heavily into artillery and things like that but they'd still get destroyed in like 2 weeks at best while losing thousands of people in the process. Better just surrender and hope they aren't staying for too long. It would be less so "a year" and more so "prepare for WWIII." Nukes will fly if there is an existential threat to any nuclear power in the world. And in fact Russia built quite a lot of infrastructure for that (probably a fair bit of Soviet-era infrastructure for that in Poland as well). | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6326 Posts
On November 12 2016 01:44 LegalLord wrote: To give you a bit of perspective that is simplistic but still better than raw military spending, here is a military hardware comparison of Russia, the US (10x spending), and the UK (0.85x spending), from the Telegraph. + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3MHzjmP.png) While on the naval/air side the US has Russia outgunned, on the land-based side it's not quite so certain. This also understates some of Russia's other advantages (cyber warfare, intelligence apparatus, AA capability). Russia's naval capabilities are certainly quite behind the US (10x spending, it does that), and it will take Russia a fairly decent amount of time to catch up (new carriers are expected to be made around 2035-2040), but in a land-based war (like what you would have in a theoretical invasion of Europe) you would run into trouble. And we're talking about the US here, rather than France plus Germany like you suggested. And France has always been quite cautious about committing itself to an anti-Russian agenda (since 2009 less so, but I expect they will ultimately move back from an Atlanticist outlook in the future) so the unity involved there would be disputable. And as you can see, even a particularly naval-focused nation like the UK has trouble keeping up with Russia on their most favorable front, with an equal budget. Of course, a further story is technology. On that front, the advantages are mixed. A lot of both sides have weaponry upwards of 30 years old, but both sides also have a lot of pretty new stuff being deployed. US naval technology is mostly the best (Russia has some rather impressive feats in submarine tech, but the US mostly wins this one) but on land-based warfare this is less clear. The Russian land AA is probably the best, with tanks it's hard to tell, and on artillery there is stuff like this experimental MLRS. + Show Spoiler + In terms of land-sea conflicts, carriers would be much more vulnerable than they are against countries that have nothing to attack them with. Even in Iran, a substantial military power but one that can't hold a candle to one like Russia, the US expects to lose 1-2 carriers under realistic military scenarios. And that's without something like the S-300 (or S-400) which the US did a lot under Bush to convince Russia not to sell to Iran. So what's the point of all this? Just to say that, if it did come to a large-scale (conventional no-nukes) conflict between a European coalition that didn't include the US, and a coalition of Russia and its most willing allies, it would not look like a relatively simple European deflection of evil Russian aggression. It would look more like WWIII. West European leaders are rightly scared of being dragged into a war with Russia, and that's even before they really would sit down and consider to what extent they would even want to be dragged into a war like that. And when you do that, besides the UK the willingness of many nations to side against Russia in a conflict like that would be very questionable. Most would prefer to just sit that one out. Do you have any sources for what you're saying? I don't know a lot about the current military status of countries but I see a whole lot of words without a lot of backing. Not saying you're wrong but I'd like to read it myself. The only source I can see is globalfireranking.com which gives Russia as nr 2 but France and UK not far behind as nr 5 and 6. I agree with your general point that Europe won't just roll over Russia but you're overstating their strength while understating Europe's strength. The real difference between Europa and Russia is of course the industrial strength of the countries where Europe far surpasses Russia by whichever measure you take. In the end that's what decided the last big war. On November 12 2016 02:24 LegalLord wrote: No, because that hasn't happened in way too long. Almost all air conflicts are highly asymmetric, being something like Israel or the US fighting with the most modern airplanes and highly trained pilots against poorly trained MidEast pilots with 40-year-old "export grade" Soviet technology that they bought ages ago and didn't upgrade. The last real conventional war of any scale would be WWII, in which there are plenty of good examples. There were a fair few conflicts where German fighters (which were, by all means, among the most advanced) got owned by being severely outnumbered. For a more modern example, try pitting something like six MiG-29's (most upgraded version) against one F-22, or like 60 vs 10. In terms of program cost that would be a fair ratio (per-unit cost is lower than that for F-22 but they produced very few so the R&D-per-unit costs are substantial relative to the per-unit cost). The F-22 is more advanced but not as much as it would need to be to be favored in a situation that lopsided by numbers. And besides that, dogfighting doesn't really happen much anymore, and more aircraft lets you complete more missions. If there's one thing US technology isn't, it's cost-efficient. US aircraft are horrendously overpriced. In the biggest airbattle in ww2 between 2 almost equal airpowers, the Battle of Britain, it was neither quantity or quality of the planes which were the most important. It was trained pilots I don't think it'll be any different now in any prolonged war. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
Regardless of where you rank them (relative to China, Japan, Italy, and India, which are also "great power" militaries), France and the UK are well behind Russia in capabilities. Russia is #2 by a longshot, and China is #3 by a longshot after that. The rest are contentious. Here is another decent ranking to look at, but rankings obviously depend on the methodology. Though what doesn't change in pretty much all the rankings I've seen is US #1, Russia #2, China #3, because it's folly to argue those. My point is that, at present, the Russian military is strong enough that there is no likelihood that a conflict like that would end easily. It would be a brutal fight that would leave much of Europe quite in ruins. Furthermore, while it is true that this underestimates Europe's theoretical military capacity, here's a few other things to note: 1. Theoretical capacity isn't easily translated into actual capacity. It takes years of work. Large military hardware takes many years to build. 2. Russia has a lot of untapped industrial capacity as well - which is being developed at present. Which will also unlock a fair bit of economic capacity in the form of potential allies that will be more willing to fall into its sphere of influence. 3. You are overestimating the cohesion of Europe. Many countries are not politically aligned towards war with Russia. The UK is the only one that I can confidently say would push for involvement on the side opposing Russia. France, Germany, and Italy are among the more Russian-friendly European nations. Poland is pretty Russophobic right now but I don't think they want war with Russia either. On airplanes and quantity, this is a hard one because there is no "controlling for the variables in question" in any appreciable way, lol. Nor are dogfights a realistic scenario in modern war. But nevertheless, my point about overpriced hardware still stands. The biggest way in which F-22s and F-35s outdo the other, cheaper craft is that they are only partially vulnerable to the most advanced AA technology that the Russian government deploys (the S-300 and S-400 batteries) that would shred the older craft. Their price tag is insane though. | ||
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forsooth
United States3648 Posts
On November 12 2016 01:35 Dan HH wrote: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-africa-idUSKBN1361KN Countless billions in aid and relief sent to Africa over the decades have accomplished fuck all. Bribing the kleptocrats and hoping it leads to improvements for the people hardly seems an effective means of stemming the flow of migration. If they want to stop people dying in the Mediterranean, all they need do is deploy ships, intercept boats, and tow them to their ports of origin. The message will be made clear soon enough. | ||
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SK.Testie
Canada11084 Posts
On November 12 2016 14:57 forsooth wrote: Countless billions in aid and relief sent to Africa over the decades have accomplished fuck all. Bribing the kleptocrats and hoping it leads to improvements for the people hardly seems an effective means of stemming the flow of migration. If they want to stop people dying in the Mediterranean, all they need do is deploy ships, intercept boats, and tow them to their ports of origin. The message will be made clear soon enough. This is the only sensible solution. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
Anyhow, any smaller country will look worse military than the US and Russia. They are both larger and spender a greater proportion of their budget towards their military as well as benefiting from economies of scale. Germany, France and Italy have a rather similar military disposal. As for UK having a small land force, it had always had a smaller land force than continental powers, seeing as the home countries are on an island. Specifically speaking, UK has a preference for air and sea power for rather obvious reasons. And rather obviously, the nearer a country is to Russia, the more focused they are towards land power. I don't understand why Legalord is so adamant that individual European countries are politically aligned to declare with war Russia. They don't. Who would want nuclear war? But from Legalords patriotic chest beating it is clear he harbours fantasies towards invading individual European countries for yet unexplained reasons. In the end though, hopefully, only a madman would want to propose actions that would lead to nuclear war, so I am not entirely sure what these comparisons of military forces is supposed to accomplish. | ||
Nixer
2774 Posts
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On November 13 2016 00:49 Nixer wrote: Quoting globalfirepower.com as some kind of legitimate source is idiotic and further more mostly looking at raw numbers like those used is even more so. Hence, "simplistic yet better than looking at raw budget numbers." | ||
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Nixer
2774 Posts
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
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Sent.
Poland9336 Posts
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Nixer
2774 Posts
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
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Nixer
2774 Posts
Quoted MBT numbers of Russia, the example I gave, shown as 15,398(!) when the vast majority are old and un-modernized tanks that are very much deep in reserve and never intended for use ever again either because simply too old, deemed to be disastrous or just unnecessary. Pure numbers and amounts aren't applicable in reality, see how they show a T-62 equal to a M1A2 in their analysis? Furthermore application of said equipment isn't taken into account at all in any of these rankings. Like I said, using globalfirepower.com for analytical purposes is nonsensical. "Material presented throughout this website is for entertainment"... | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
You really aren't saying anything. You're looking at a graphic which was used to illustrate a simplistic version of the point, and focusing on saying "this graph isn't telling us anything!" Well of course it's pretty simplistic, that was literally the point. And yet it provides far more insight than just saying "look who spends more!" I'm tired of your vague and unsubstantiated assertions. Unless you have something to say that actually has substance, that actually makes an argument beyond "this simplified graphic is stupid!", I'm done with you. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
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Nixer
2774 Posts
Fuck off. That burden is on you. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On November 13 2016 02:54 Dangermousecatdog wrote: None of us are military analysts with "insider knowledge", so I don't really see the point of this conversation. Why exactly are you arguing that Russia will win an apocalyptical scenario? Did I say that? Perhaps you should read what I actually said. On November 12 2016 01:44 LegalLord wrote: So what's the point of all this? Just to say that, if it did come to a large-scale (conventional no-nukes) conflict between a European coalition that didn't include the US, and a coalition of Russia and its most willing allies, it would not look like a relatively simple European deflection of evil Russian aggression. It would look more like WWIII. West European leaders are rightly scared of being dragged into a war with Russia, and that's even before they really would sit down and consider to what extent they would even want to be dragged into a war like that. And when you do that, besides the UK the willingness of many nations to side against Russia in a conflict like that would be very questionable. Most would prefer to just sit that one out. No one would win. Who would "win" is actually irrelevant here, the only result would be that much of Europe will be completely destroyed in the process. And that's before nuclear weaponry comes into the picture. Also, your own ignorance about relative technological prowess is not necessarily shared by everybody. Speak for yourself. On November 13 2016 02:54 Nixer wrote: You have nothing to support your own claims, yet you accuse me of coming up with vague and unsubstantiated assertions? Fuck off. That burden is on you. Nothing? Ok, bye bye. Enjoy yourself. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On November 13 2016 02:57 LegalLord wrote: Did I say that? Perhaps you should read what I actually said. No one would win. Who would "win" is actually irrelevant here, the only result would be that much of Europe will be completely destroyed in the process. And that's before nuclear weaponry comes into the picture. Ok, Legalord, according to your own quote, you argue that 1) Evil Russian aggression will look like WWIII, rather than a simple deflection of a Russian invasion. (I'll conveniently ignore the part where you know what WWIII looks like.) 2) Western European leaders do not want to be at war with Russia. They should sit down instead. 3) UK might oppose a Russian invasion. Other countries would just let Russia invade Europe. On November 13 2016 02:57 LegalLord wrote:No one would win. Who would "win" is actually irrelevant here, the only result would be that much of Europe will be completely destroyed in the process. Yes...and that's an apocalyptic scenario, seeing as we all live in Europe. So...again. Why exactly are you arguing this? Am I missing something in your thought processes, because I don't see why you are arguing any of this. | ||
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