NATO doesn't look so eternal any more.

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I'd like to direct your attention to a 2014 blog post due to recent events:

"How NATO changed the perception of what an alliance is and does" 

/2014/02/how-nato-changed-perception-of-what.html

 

Systems sometimes just seem stable until they collapse suddenly. Dicatorships with thier often sudden demise are a good example.

NATO seemed to be a truly exceptional alliance with no parallel in history, but now it seems as if this uniqueness - if not even NATO itself - may collapse. 

There's still an alliance organisaiton, but there's now much distrust. Hungarians, Slovakians, Czechs and Americans are no more trustworthy.

The perception of NATO as eternal is shattered. There's much public talk about setting up a European alternative (Art. 42 Lisbon Treaty already exists, but people keep ignoring it) without the 5th cohorts of Putin and in part to protect AGAINST the U.S..

 

Sadly, we've had dismal quality politicians at the helm in European countries for ~45 years, so there's little hope for a swift, decisive and sensible reorientation of defence policy in Europe. 

 

related: 

/2016/11/leaving-nato.html

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Free Europe's security challenge if America turns full fascist (Part II)

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The political consequences.

I wrote in 2016 that one shouldn't quit NATO ASAP when America turns fascist, despite the summer of 1914 experience with Austria-Hungary. 

We should quit eventually (there's a 12 month period between quitting and actually leaving the treaty, see article 13), though. The time should be used to build up deterrence & defence against the United States of America (that would be part III of the series).

 

The lessons learned about Putin's fifth columns in Hungary, Slovakia and kind of (more complicated) Poland point strongly at the EU not being fit for acting as a multinational defence organisation for Europe.

The European unification fanatics, EU politicians and EU bureaucrats would oppose it, but we would have to create a separate and functional European Defence initiative. It doesn't need to be a real alliance; the Lisbon Treaty can serve that purpose. We'd need a coordinating and meetings agency because we'd need to keep Americans, Canadians, Russia's 5th column, America's 5th column and unstable partners who might fall into such a category out of the core consultations and core preparations.

I mentioned the Lisbon Treaty. We really should raise awareness about it now that the "neutral" Swedes have shed their neutrality. Disregard Austrian sensitivities about them wanting to pretend to remain neutral! They signed the Lisbon Treaty as well. The public needs to understand that the Lisbon Treaty is at least as much an alliance as is the North Atlantic Treaty. Perception makes treaties powerful. Just look at Article I of the North Atlantic Treaty, which hardly anyone knows and thus almost nobody complaints about its violations. How many comments in newspapers or on television would point out our EU collective defence obligation if Vienna was hit by a Russian missile? They would probably manage to notice -with Wikipedia's help- that Austria is not NATO member, that's all.

We need to change that! A Turkish attack on a Greek island means the EU members go to war with Turkey. A Russian missile on Vienna means the EU members go to war with Russia. An American missile on Paris means the EU members go to war with America. This should be self-evident to the majority of adults in all middle-sized and large EU countries.

Finally, we need to stockpile strategic raw materials more and develop alternative routes of transportation with enough capacity for very high value but small volume and mass exports and imports. We could not make do with only services & air freight as objects of trade beyond Europe and its periphery. The stockpiling in particular would be difficult (and capital-intensive), but also useful in case of a Pacific War.

The problem with all this is that the current generation of politicians in the larger European countries is utterly worthless. They would rather misgovern so badly that their own country falls to extremists than to get their act together for European security in less than a generation.

Part III will be more about development, procurement and force design.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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About high-low army mixes for today's NATO

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Around 2011 I wrote multiple times about a scenario of a Russian surprise attack on NATO (at the only kind of attack that makes kinda sense, for it's the only scenario that gives the Russians a chance) and how this would lead to low force densities (very wide brigade sectors). This in turn would not allow to properly defend a frontline, and the benefits of a frontline (stability, safe resting area behind, counter-scouting) would disappear, the opportunities of a more fluid theatre situation would appear.

Consequently, I wrote many blog posts relevant to that scenario. Now Russia started the biggest post-WW2 war in Europe and the Ukrainians defend the full frontline. Neither Russians nor Ukrainians appear capable of breakthrough. I suppose that's a matter of competence, not of state of the technology or art of war. The Russians even botched the "strategic surprise" part and stumbled into Ukraine as they did into Chechnya in 1994.

My views seemed to be disproven (and I wrote about that a couple times).

Now I would like to claim that the war we're seeing is very similar in many aspects to both World Wars, the Spanish Civil War and the Iran-Iraq War. So there's little new. Even the drones merely repeat the accelerated advance of military aviation in WW1 and the accelerated advance of electronic warfare in WW2.

The concept of both sides appears to be to have a bulk of forces (80-90% ?) suitable for holding a frontline and a few formations set up for either breakthrough (Russian storm units) or main effort (Ukrainian mechanised brigades with Western gear).

Neither side has the competence to do a proper combined arms breakthrough, and the Ukrainian tank forces resemble rather the 'fire brigade' Panzerdivisionen of late 1944 than the 'Blitzkrieg' Panzerdivisionen of 1940-1942. The Russian mechanised forces resemble the French tank divisions of 1940.

It may not sound nice, but both sides suffer badly from insufficient reserves training prior to 2022 and are by now rather amateurish and incapable of combined arms warfare. Both sides are using armed forces that were ridden by corruption for three decades and are rooted in the at most modestly competent Russian army tradition. It's a common symptom that amateurish armies form when armies expand very quickly in wartime, with much of the pre-war experts killed in the opening stage. The American Civil War was such a amateur war. The British Expeditionary Forces were quite amateurish around 1916, too. Historians are usually too nice to point out that insufficiently-trained leaders and troops lead to amateurish, incompetent armies. They do usually research & write about their own country, after all.

The upside of all this is that the Russians gt a demonstration of the limit of their abilities. They do now understand they cannot defeat a 80/20 low-high mix force in the field. They understand that they suffer higher material and personnel losses than a moderately well-done 80/20 mix army, and without the Chinese helping them by the millions of troops the Russians would stand no chance against NATO even if NATO used 80/20 instead of trying to go for all high end forces (in the richer countries).

An all high end NATO might get swamped and overrun by a Sino-Russian force of three million troops in Europe, so maybe we need to counter mass with mass anyway, again leading to 80/20. The Chinese mobilisation potential is well in excess of 150 million men + millions of women for non-combat roles, so NATO might face a sustained incredible numerical inflow of PLA troops of low quality during a long war. We could defeat this only if we're prepared for it - this means at the very least have enough trained junior NCOs to do proper training for our own mobilised mass armies. The point of preparing for this scenario is to deter, avoid the scenario.

The Western way of war proved to be overwhelming to the Soviet arms-equipped 80/20 approach during 1991, but it did so at a time when the West enjoyed a near-monopoly on thermal vision in ground combat and it was in featureless terrain. High-quality munitions were expended at an unsustainable rate. Moreover, most of the ground combat was actually against Iraqi troops already withdrawing in disorder.

The fiscal argument is strongly in favour of 80/20. The 80% troops of the line would not need terribly much training and could be reserve troops. This would greatly save on the scarce personnel, as such reserve forces could have 1,000,000 troops mobilised strength with a peacetime active strength of less than 100,000. This reduces the high direct personnel expenses AND it frees up personnel for civilian, GDP-raising and taxes-paying jobs. A 100,000 € personnel costs soldier job has a true cost to the society of about 150,000...200,000 €. It's plain stupid to unnecessarily keep troops in active duty.

Moreover, those 80% troops of the line would be technologically and fiscally as well as doctrinally feasible for almost all NATO countries. The challenges of a high end tank brigade may not be met by any Western countries these days, and with better effort (focus on conventional warfare) maybe half a dozen NATO countries could master the tank brigade/exploitation brigade pattern well enough for consistent success with it.

So in my opinion 

• We should prepare NATO defence against Russian strategic surprise attack by 2028 or later
• This still means first weeks would have low force densities
• This still means it's important to get combat-ready forces to the front en masse within a few weeks
  
• We should prepare NATO defence against a 3 million men Sino-Russian land force 2026 or later
• This requires enough mass
• Facing demographic challenges and high costs of labour, we should make use of a hi/low mix with focus on mobilised strength after a few weeks. Peacetime military strength of most NATO members does not matter much for defence. To boost it is inefficient.
  
• We should consider helping the poorer NATO members with equipping & training proper brigades of the line
• We should consider helping the NATO frontier countries with equipping & training surprise-resistant 'first line of defence' forces that can delay incursions well.
• I keep insisting that forward-deploying brigades and setting up multinational (poor cohesion) brigades and creating small pools of increased (not total shit) readiness forces was and is all bollocks. ALL forces should be up to their tasks. Set up a multi-brigade air/land warfare training ground in Poland with always three or four (rotating) brigades present and maybe entire brigade sets of equipment prepositioned if we absolutely need such a forward presence.

Is there a place for my low force density ideas left? Well, yes, in the exploitation brigades. They do not need to be classic tank brigades or French-style 6x6 wheeled armoured car-based  formations.

I wrote about affordable brigades with reduced expectations (accepting some dependencies on higher level support) before. There's one draft (~80% done) for a text relevant to this.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: I should mention that the German, Japanese and Soviet forces of WW2 followed a similar pattern of bulk of forces being poor quality but 15...20% being either elite light infantry or fully motorized troops.  The only Italian troops of WW2 that were effective were concentrated in two divisions and the Bersaglieri battalions of the infantry divisions. Armies had no such high-low mix during the First World War (they thought they had it with the cavalry divisions being high end, but they proved to  rarely be of use). The German army started to be able to breakthrough the Entente in France once it created high end units (assault infantry with actual trench attack training and equipment) in combination with smarter artillery plans. Overall, a high/low mix proved to be the most cost-efficient approach through centuries in Europe. To go all high-end (as Americans with their fully motorised and tank-rich invasion force in 1944) is a luxury left to those with vastly superior industrial resources (or in peacetime: insane military spending).

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The Russian tactical nuclear threat card was spent

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I believe that the ability to end a RUS-NATO war with a RUS threat of using 'tactical' nukes against attempts of reconquest (and against airbases) is an essential requirement for Russia to dare attack any NATO member for real. They could not win in a conventional war.

 

Exactly this nuclear threat has been eroded by the inflationary bluffing with nukes since 2022.*

 

 

Thus IMO Russia wouldn't dare now to attack NATO anytime soon even if a fairy gave them back all troops and material they spent against Ukraine and all of Ukraine surrendered, handing over all its equipment.

 

related:

/2016/07/how-to-invade-baltic-countries-and-get.html

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: Reputation can be built up, but it can also be spent. Russia spent its 'nuclear threats credibility'. I understand that there are weak-minded pussies in positions of importance in the West as well and there's a bit of a 'Putin's 5th cohort' in power in Hungary and Slovakia, but an all-out stop of hostilities in a Russo-NATO or Russo-EU war just because Russia threatens with tactical nukes seems to be a ridiculous notion to me.

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Ukraine and NATO membership

I see three ways to look at the question whether Ukraine should be permitted to join the North Atlantic Treaty.

1. The egoistical view: What's in it for us?
2. The idealistic view: We should protect them!
3. The international order view: Wars of aggression should not happen!

The egoistical view makes some sense (disclaimer; I applied it in some early blogging). It was utterly standard before 1939. NATO truly changed the perception of alliances. Nowadays it feels a bit out of fashion, but an alliance was in the past either forced on a state or it was entered voluntarily out of self-interest. It may be argued that Ukraine joining NATO is in NATO members' self-interest, but the biggst advantage is unlikely to be had; to add Ukrainian military power allows the old members to spend less on their militaries for the same degree of security. Vested interests are hell-bent on spending ever more on the military-industrial complex. A variation of the egoistical view is Machiavellian power foreign policy gaming.

The idealistic view is enticing, especially if you don't have much emotional distance to the war and pay much attention to Russian atrocities. I'd like to point out that to help others without equivalent benefit to the own people is a violation of the German cabinet's oath of office, which requires to avoid harm to the German people. They violate this oath casually with all kinds of foreign policy, of course. The government of a state is in my opinion the people of that state doing those things together for their own good that cannot better be done alone or with other forms of association. A government is supposed to serve its nation, not to serve other nations.

The international order view is my current view. I think it's vastly superior and vastly better-suited to the topic. It has huge conclusions, though: Those who apply it must support Ukraine's intent to fight on till all of Ukraine is liberated, including Crimea. Wars of aggression shall not happen, thus it's necessary to make them 'unprofitable'. Personal risks to Putin himself are desirable in this framework. Other potential aggressors should fear for their personal well-being (power, riches and life) in case they dare to launch a war of aggression. Another huge conclusion is that the accusation of hypocrisy has to be solved by staying on the "international order view" at all times, inlcuding when the offender is a friendly or allied country. Almost all cruise missile attacks and bombings by the UK, U.S. and Poland post-1953 were illegal (even under U.S. law, which Americans prefer to ignore). The 1991 liberation of Kuwait and the 1982 Falklands War were notable exceptions.

The international order view is a bit weak regarding the risking of nuclear war. The Russian kleptocracy regime used the nuclear threat in a comical fashion and regularity, but the possibility of a violation of the nuclear taboo is real. So either we widen the international order view from "Wars of aggression should not happen!" to include "Nuclear strikes are taboo!" or we need to combine it with the egoistical view's disdain for a nuclear strike to get a properly encompassing view. And then things get really difficult to judge, with a huge grey zone of possibly correct conclusions.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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How to fix ... the Irish Land Forces (Army and Army Reserve)

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To join NATO appears to be in fashion, and there's occasionally talk about whether Ireland should join. I took this as a welcome thought experiment.

 

My conclusions are not terribly different from my other "How to fix..." blog posts, especially the Belgian one.

/2018/02/how-to-fix-belgian-armed-forces.html

 

Another relevant article is the one about a 'budget brigade' that aged fairly well:

/2015/11/a-budget-brigade-for-2020.html

 

Super-brief introductions on real existing Irish land forces are

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Army

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Defence_Forces 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Irish_Army

I cross-checked the equipment claims with my (dated) Jane's Infantry Weapons book and they check out (not identical info, but plausible that the few changes happened that way since the book was published).

 

 

So, first things first. Is the notorious "2% GDP military spending requirement" something to be applied to Ireland?

No, that's total bollocks on every angle. For starters, there's no such requirement to any NATO member. It's made-up nonsene, a scam.

The same reasoning applies as with Belgium:

My stance is that membership in a large alliance does NOT mean that you need to pay more to be a "good" ally and actually helper to some of the most aggressive alliance members. The purpose is to enable small powers to achieve deterrence and defence in the first place to maintain peace and sovereignty and secondarily it makes security and defence cheaper. 

A simple model shows this; two countries are border on each other and a third, larger and threatening country. Going alone they would need to maintain armed forces to deter an attack by the bigger neighbour on their own, and deter by being able to inflict punishing damage on both neighbours at once if they attack. An alliance between the two smaller countries enables them to not consider each other as a threat any more, and to spend roughly half as much as without the alliance, for they would stand together against aggression by their larger neighbour.

It's a simple, reasonable and rational principle - and utterly covered up by the nonsense that politicians spew about how smaller allies should spend much on their military [...] because they are in an alliance.

It makes no sense for Ireland to create a fast jet air force. It would be tiny and irrelevant. Air policing over Ireland is not an issue. Who's supposed to violate their airspace? Tu-95 flying a long distance just to annoy Ireland and NATO? And what would be the harm in that? Why would they overfly Ireland if no air policing is present, but not if it's present? It's not as if NATO fighters would actually shoot down a Russian military aircraft only because it violates sovereign air space of a NATO country. The fighters would accompany it, shoot some tracer rounds past the Tu-95 for warning and intimidation, document the transgression and then return.

It makes no sense to set up a real navy, either. Again, it would be tiny and irrelevant to collective defence.

This is why I pay attention to the land forces instead (also ignoring the helos, which have mostly domestic functions that could be done by civilian helos as well).

The simplistic equipment list of the Irish Army looks acceptable quality-wise, though some additions are advisable. I wouldn't have picked most of that gear on a clean slate force design, but there's no good reason to spend much on replacing the kit (unless it's -unknown to me- worn out already).

Keep in mind, I write this as a superficial case study to apply some of my rather general thoughts (opinions based on reasoning), not as a real recommendation by someone who knows what exactly is wrong with the Irish Army (and there's always something wrong in any army). 

 

The current army has a mostly domestic role, though it also features some equipment that does not quite fit to that (Javelin ATGMs, which were very new high-tech when they were introduced about two decades ago). I'll pretend that the domestic tasks (such as disaster aid) can still be met satisfactorily with the structure that I propose.

- - - - -

 

The multiple brigades make little sense in a context of about 7,000 army personnel. A highly agile small brigade type might be small enough that two brigades would make sense, but there's no reason why one should expect such a thing from Ireland.

Thus I say they should consolidate into one brigade with some reservist components, some capability additions to get ready for conventional warfare in Europe and with the logistics to support such a brigade on the continent. Additionally, the participation in non-combat blue helmet missions requires some more abilities.

For the continental warfare part; that's mostly what I wrote in the 'budget brigade' blog post, minus the tanks.

For blue helmet missions: I assume a deployment of a company or two of infantry with protected wheeled vehicles. They would benefit greatly by a tailored sustainment company, a detachment for military intelligence and passive EW and sensor drones, engineers with demining/EOD and construction equipment, a military police detachment with investigative capabilities, a Civ-Mil relations detachment, a small workshop, a medical detachment and attached snipers.

 

HQ Company (including signals detachment and MP plt)

2 Infantry Battalions (including the Piranha III vehicles, each one sniper plt)

1 Reserve Infantry Battalion (no AFVs, only light equipment in sealed storage - no cannibalisation)

1 Artillery Battalion (24 105 mm guns, 120 mm mortars, RBS-70)

1 Sensing Battalion (small; drones, passive EW, MI cell)

1 Logistics Battalion (incl. workshop, medical teams)

1 Engineer Company

1 CivMil team

So why no tanks this time? It would be a significant investment to add those (even assuming they're refurbished M1A2s and M88s), add huge operating expenses and are not absolutely necessary for defence of a frontline + attacks with (very) limited objectives. The current crop of Russian tanks can be defeated en masse without 105...125 mm tank guns.

 

I would add some M1043 (lightly armoured HMMWV) and M997 (HMMWV MedEvac vehicle). I'm normally no proponent of this vehicle class, but such vehicles are dirt cheap (especially refurbished ones) compared to new-built ones, and the newer designs followed a bad path with excessive emphasis on IED protection. IEDs and AT mines would not be relevant to the Irish Army's missions, not even be important in blue helmet missions. I'd hand over the aforementioned M1043s to the artillery (which has 24 105 mm guns, 120 mm mortars and forward observer teams). I'm not sure if a M1043 can properly tow a M118/M119, though (base HMMWV can do). These British light field howitzers are significantly heavier than the less durable French competitor, the LG1.

 

Logistics vehicles would need to be added, but this can be done with a low cost strategy. 

 

A lot of flying drones should be procured, primarily as standoff sensors with bird's view advantage. An overflight of hostile forces or their terrain would be more ambitious and thus either more expensive or a less trustworthy capability. I'm inclined towards a mix of tethered multicopters (should be fine for up to 30 kph base vehicle speed) and VTOL fixed wing drones (easy and safe operation combined with good endurance and not giving away the base vehicle's location so easily). The sensors should be zoomable E/O, zoomable IIR and (in a tethered type only) also passive 30...88 MHz listening and direction finding to map emitting tactical radios.

Forward observer teams and infantry platoons would have their own quadcopters with zoomable E/O camera (sensitive enough to sense near infrared illuminators at 500 m distance at night) and a thermal camera. DJI Mavic 3 quality with encrypted datalink and trustworthy control software (including returning based on INS if contact is lost) would make sense.

Some kind of effective yet affordable counter to small flying drones needs to be found and introduced, but this should be a MOTS (military off the shelf) purchase with zero R&D expenses for Ireland. It's fairly obvious that there should be some battlefield radars, which should also detect and track drones. I do generally prefer a mast-mounted solution for this, though a portable one could be mounted on roofs of buildings - ideally both would be of one type. Giraffe 1X is a candidate, but there are more candidates.

 

Spares and munitions (save for Javelin) should suffice for at least two years of peacetime operation + 30 days of combat. Munition storage sites do not need hardening, just sabotage & theft protection. The Javelins, the Javelin 1st generation command launch units and the RBS-70 missiles may be in need of refurbishment.

 

Expenses for "interoperability" should be limited to getting compatible signals equipment at brigade level. All other communications compatibility needs can be handled by neighbouring allied forces detaching a liaison team to Irish battalion command teams or by detaching a forward observer team (JFST).

 

The detachment of officers to NATO institutions should be minimised. There's nothing to be gained from participating in those anyway. Playing with big boys is no value in itself for the nation, and officers who want to do it for their own fun may do it while on unpaid leave if they insist.

 

The readiness should suffice to get the brigade without the blue helmet-deployed elements to Suwalki/Poland within 20 days, at 90% (fully trained) personnel, material and supplies (for 3 combat days) strength excluding the reserve infantry battalion. This includes a couple days for calling up reservists and giving them a refresher training of several days. The assumption is that the armoured vehicles would be shipped to Hamburg for further self-deployment (1000 km or 18 hrs driving time under peacetime conditions to Suwalki/Poland).

The further munitions should be stored on pallets that can easily be loaded into, stacked in and transported by commercial semi-trailer vehicles. These would need to be commandeered and driven by reservists in case of an emergency.

 

The Irish should not spend more for the military after joining NATO, as this would be senseless. They would not really gain security by joining, so why spending more? To join NATO would be mostly a symbolic affair, as "NATO" is increasingly synonymous with the Western society system and civilisation in Europe.

Thus ways to cut expenses should be sought and found, and so far I only wrote about things that sound like adding expenses. A reduction of personnel strength and some reductions during the restructuring process would have to offer savings and I have a hunch that all army ranks above Colonel are bollocks for them. Eight ranks (recruit to Colonel) should suffice in this case.

 

There's a minimum threshold in my opinion; it's about motivation of the troops and national self-respect. One decent brigade is IMO the minimum for a nation of Ireland's size in NATO. Anything below that would make sense as an army. To go any cheaper than one decent brigade would only make sense if it's about forming an anti-occupation and disaster aid militia incapable of conventional warfare. That would rather suit a neutral Ireland than a NATO member Ireland, though.

I hardly mentioned the reserves. It makes little sense to have a smaller formation than a brigade as the army's active component, and if a proper light brigade already risks asking for a budget increase, then the budget does not offer room for large reserves, regardless of their cost efficiency. I do thus conclude that the best choice for the army reserve would be a decently-administrated individual reserve in order to have all the logistics vehicles drivers, demolition experts, EOD experts, emergency room doctors (including for eye and burn injuries), emergency room nurses, motor vehicle mechanics, reserve infantry battalion perosnnel and generally individual replacements that they need in an alliance emergency. Personnel that left service after serving in the infantry battalions (or the rangers, which I consider pointless and its civilian tasks could and should be met by a police unit) would be available to fill out the reserve infantry battalion.

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Finland joins NATO

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Finland joins NATO. It's unfashionable to think so, but alliances used to be a concept in foreign policy to further the own nation's best interests. The notion that a country somehow has to serve an alliance rather than the other way around is a perverse distortion.

What's in it for Germany? Well, the accession of Finland adds almost no additional risk of a hot war (considering its longtime neutral and moderate foreign policy) and Finland adds a lot of land power (especially hundred of thousands of reservists in an army that always took actual defence seriously) to the alliance.

This added military power doesn't improve the odds that Russia would lose a war with NATO and given the demonstration of Russian military shortcomings in Ukraine*, it is beyond reasonable doubt that Finland does not improve the (already 100%) deterrence of Russian aggressions against NATO itself.

The logical conclusion is thus that Finland's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty adds military power on top of already sufficient (for deterence & defence) military power within NATO. 

This means that a continuation of the current military spending levels is necessarily and beyond reasonable doubt wasteful (even assuming there was no inefficiency in it at all). 

The accession of Finland thus means that we (the old NATO members) should revise military spending planning DOWN from the planned levels (at least down from the levels planned before Finland joining might possibly have been 'priced in').

The real benefit to Germany (and most other old NATO members) is thus that we can save military spending, as the alliance has gained military power by adding Finland rather than by adding military spending.

Military spending is not virtuous, it's not productive, it's not an efficient way of promoting science or technology. Military spending is government consumption like spending on armoured sedans for ministers. Its justification is not emotions, it's the achievement of a sufficient deterence (and as backup defence) to protect our freedom, prosperity and lives. It's comparable to buying a good lock for the door of a family home; there's no point in spending ever more money on it if it already does its job well. Likewise, you cannot further the prosperity of the family by spending more on the door lock; it's an entirely unsuitable tool for that purpose.

The insight that the accession of Finland should trigger military spending reductions is as alien to the general debate on military spending as is the insight that Russia proving to be a conventional military Potemkin' village  an empire without clothes, means that we need to spend less on detering it or defending against it than was previously reasonable to believe.

The dominant notion is that somehow we need to spend more on armed forces, and hardly anyone asks about what kind of reasoning supposedly supports that notion. The vested special interests of career officers, arms industry and legislators from arms industry-rich districts combine to support the illogical notion that causes more economic harm to a country than the vast majority of criminals combined.

The most disappointing part is not that we cannot defeat these special interest groups in pursuit of the nation's general interests. The truly disappointing part is that there's hardly anyone even only challenging to that fight.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Russia revealed that its armed forces combine all weaknesses and faults ever known from Russian armed forces of the post-Suvorov era at this time (other than the mutiny & revolution of 1917).

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Horseshite

 

"Dunning-Kruger effect" is the term for people basically being too stupid and incompetent to understand that they are too stupid and incompetent for an issue.

'He's a stupid man's idea of a smart man.' was said about a certain politician.

Combine these two things and you get the modern-day pundits (and more general: "comment-givers") who now diagnose the need for more military spending. They do so with an aura that spans a spectrum from "honest truth-teller" to "elder statesman".

They're idiots. That's the nice way to put it.

 And the media people who amplify such messages are too stupid to smell the horseshite.

The Russian Armed Forces are failing to subdue a country that hadn't even come close to spending at least 10 billion $ in a year from independence three decades ago till the all-out invasion of 2022.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/UKR/ukraine/military-spending-defense-budget

NATO members had 1,096.6 billion $ military spending in 2020, 325.9 billion $ without the U.S. (which went insane long ago).

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_197050.htm

Russia's military spending never exceeded 88.4 billion $ in any year.

https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/military-expenditure

And the horseshite producers conclude that, obviously, we don't spend enough. European NATO outnumbers Russian military personnel about 2:1 without counting the U.S., and outspends it by about 4:1 (not quite as dramatic when correcting by purchasing power parity, but still outspending).

We do spend too much - not too little - on the military.

There's practically no other direct threat to NATO than Russia, and it proved to be a sick man of Europe, utterly rotten and incapable. Their air force is ineffective, their army is shite, Russia of today combines all flaws known from past 200 years of Russian history while the only strength is the size of their dumb munition stocks and factories.

The realisation that the only threat is impotent leads to the logical conclusion that previous threat estimates - and thus required military power assessments - need to be revised DOWN.

Some people may be concerned about the PRC, but that's no direct threat to any NATO territory*, and nobody seems to argue to pump arms, spares & munitions into Taiwan for real NOW. No, these horseshite spewers want more military in Europe, where it matters jack shit for Taiwan.

This is not fantasy football. It's about real public funds. Billions and billions of Euros that would be allocated to military power if the horseshite becomes mainstream. One billion Euros is equivalent to about 100 citizen lives not saved by preventative measures that cost. One billion Euros is equivalent to 100 human sacrifices on the altar of wankers feeling good about military power.

Horseshite is not "honest truth-telling" or "elder statesman wisdom". It's homicidal horseshite, it's quasi-genocidal.

Misallocating so much money has real-world opportunity costs. It's not fantasy money in a fantasy game.

The horseshite-spewers are ethically to be ranked well below bank robbers and rapists. Not only is horseshite more dangerous to the society; at least some bank robbers and rapists are aware of themselves being terrible, antisocial persons.

The European armed forces as a whole (and big ones such as the British or German ones) don't have an underfunding problem. They have an inefficiency problem. Billions and billions of Euros are being allocated to worthless crap that matters jack shit for deterrence and defence. Meanwhile, essentials such as large and properly cared-for munition and spare parts stocks are getting neglected.

It's the "hollow force" syndrome. The "hollow force" syndrome is not being caused by underfunding. It's caused by stubborn resistance to cutting fat and stubborn resistance to resizing according to budget. The generals and admirals prefer to keep units and platforms in service in hope of getting bigger budgets later again rather than to resize. It's a shared responsibility of minister of defence and generals/admirals.

They (MoD, admirals, generals) fail their nation by hollowing out the armed forces, NOT the legislators who appropriate budgets that don't fit to the legacy military size. The executive branch is supposed to follow the legislative branch on this, not the other way around. Your waiter does not get to dictate how much you have to spend on dining.

We have huge fiscal challenges to cope with. The demographic changes in much of Europe (fertility well below 2.0) make long-term investments in infrastructure and real estate (rather than building cheaper, less durable stuff) advisable. Decarbonisation costs much. Chronic large budget deficits are unsustainable, as the rate of technological progress (and thus GDP growth) keeps slowing down. Generational budget distribution fights are brewing under the radar.

There's never a good time to waste resources, and that's very evident today.

We need to improve the resources allocation in the armed forces (more spare parts, more munitions, more budget for exercises, less units that are irrelevant for deterrence and defence).

We do NOT need to spend vastly more on the military. In fact, we could cut our military spending by half without any loss of security or stability.

related:

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/search?q=military+spending

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Guam and Hawaii are NOT covered by the North Atlantic treaty.

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It's the four big levers and the basics, stupid!

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The recent wars (Azerbaijan-Armenian and Russo-Ukrainian) confirm and -to those who pay attention- remind us of what really matters in defence, and it's not what you normally read about.

Only a few key levers absolutely need to be covered with good-enough hardware, even against a 1st rate opposition:

1. You need to be able to destroy many main battle tanks.
   
2. You need to be able to very largely mitigate the effects of hostile air power.*
3. You need to have effective support fires.**
4. You need to be able to usually maintain quick (message) communications***
   

Then everything else is about will (morale), good-enough doctrine (what is being taught & trained), good-enough training (quantitatively & qualitatively)**** and getting basics right.

The latter includes avoiding building a hollow force.*****

Your doctrine doesn't need major updates over what was state of the art (of war) up to the 1960's. Most things haven't changed much anyway, and (almost?) all armies are incapable of matching that level or tactical, operational and strategic proficiency anyway.

To get the basics right is laborious, inglorious, largely the job of non-commissioned officers and it's hardly profitable for the arms industry. Politicians know much about allocating more funds to the military, and next to nothing about what basics their army and air force don't get right, and how to fix that.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: "very largely" ~ 80+% / This does not require big, expensive hardware. All that it takes could be distributed on civilian pickup SUVs.

**: Artillery shooting 105 mm HE shells of WW2-ish quality and range would suffice, as long as the gun and its crew are survivable enough to pull it off.

***: "usually" ~ 80% connectivity even in face of a main effort attack / "quick" = quicker than motorcycle couriers, so by cable or by light or by radio frequency comms. Such quickness is important to achieve responsive (and thus effective) support fires. High bandwidth is no requirement. One 100 bytes message per minute is plenty bandwidth on a company leader to battalion HQ line.

****: Well-trained troops have better morale and are incredibly more effective. A well-trained reservists crew could be reassembled after two years of civilian life and be 10x as useful with a Soviet-era (1983) Buk M1 air defence system than the average Russian crew could be with the newest (2006) Buk M3 air defence system, for example.

*****: If you raise an army of a thousand howitzers, you better also buy millions of shells, fuzes and proportional quantities of propellant charges for it and store those properly. So for a thousand howitzers better have at least two million shells, and if that's too much in your opinion then a thousand howitzers are too many. If you think you can make do with 200,000 shells, then don't buy and train for more than a hundred howitzers. One might disagree on how many shells per gun exactly are appropriate and the correct figure may be different for Singapore than for Vietnam, for example. Yet the figure surely is between 1,000 shots and about 10,000 shots. At certain high round per gun counts you'd additionally need to be have certain spare parts and the corresponding maintenance & repair capacity, for that will be needed long before 10,000 rounds can be spent. .

Adapting to a paper tiger threat

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I find it remarkable that Russia failed so badly at mobile warfare.

The initial invasion was more akin to the Czechoslovakia occupations than to mobile warfare. This failed in the North due to stern opposition and enhanced rasputitsa (mud season reinforced by intentional flooding of some areas).

There were some -successively less ambitious- two-pronged encirclement attempts in the East. All of them failed to even only breakthrough on both sides.

Ever since that, Russia has gained very little terrain, and only so with massive use of artillery and very slow advances to limited objectives.

There's practically no hints of the mobile warfare competence of the Warsaw Pact armies left that was feared by NATO throughout the Cold War and rested on what the Soviet Union had shown to be capable from late 1942 to autumn 1945, especially Operation Bagration and the Manchurian Operation.

It's going to be most important to understand the reasons for this displayed low capability. To understand the reasons may help us understand how long this ineptitude will last (Can it be reformed away in a few years?) and inform us about indicators that tell us when it gets or got resolved.

My suspicion is that they are too stretched thin to be able to form operational reserves, as even mechanised formations need to hold the front-line. They may also have hoped to break Ukrainian morale through artillery bombardment during the summer.

- - - - -

Russia is still the main land threat to Europe, as China is far far away. EU and European NATO land warfare capabilities should be very largely oriented against Russian aggression against NATO/U. We can safely cut military expenses to a lower level if we properly understand how weak Russia is and why it is so weak. It makes absolutely no sense for our societies as a whole to go into a military spending frenzy now. Military spending is government consumption. All unnecessary (excessive) government consumption is a bloodletting against our own prosperity.

We can radically change into WHAT land power capabilities we spend our military budgets in order to achieve maximum efficiency when and if we understand the Russian land warfare capabilities. Right now it appears that a few key weapon systems suffice to counter Russian armoured vehicles and to largely degrade the effect of Russian air power over the battlefield.

Infantry is not really an arm of decision; it sweeps, observes and holds, and that's it. Massed infantry attacks seem not only inappropriate, but also plainly inefficient.

This leaves artillery. Russian artillery excels with quantity while being largely devoid of quality. We need to counter this quantity, and better than by just blowing up some munitions depots with GUMLRS missiles as the Ukrainians do. Russia can cope with this by dispersing its munition dumps and improved counterespionage may enable proper hiding of the same.

We know the tools of the trade that counter artillery. Artillery radars, sound ranging and flash spotting (the latter especially by aerial platforms) can be used to detect firing artillery and mortars. Other sensors (mostly airborne ones) can be used to track the artillery or mortar system as it changes position after firing. Precision-guided munitions and up to a certain range also dumb or merely trajectory-corrected artillery fires can engage the tracked artillery or mortar system when it's not on the move any more.

We could also jut detect the position and then immediately send fibre-optic guided missiles out that could engage the firer system even on the move. Nothing came of German and American efforts to make such a missile system ready, but the Serbians have one and the Japanese could offer us theirs for license manufacturing. The Israeli systems of this kind are at most suitable for counter-mortar fires due to short range.

So we could fix some of your shortcomings (spare parts stocks, deficient battlefield air defences, munition stocks), put some emphasis on defeating a quantity-rich Russian artillery and focus on getting the force design most efficient based on what we know. Nothing of this requires a sustained increase on military spending in free Europe.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Russia overran Georgia in 2008, so apparently the Georgians had a spectacularly bad army, below even Arab standards. Well, they were trained by the U.S. armed forces, which was historically a near-100% guarantee to lose the next (and often also the ongoing) war. All Western army training missions were disasters or are disasters-in-waiting. They seem more serve to corrupt the indigenous army with preparations for a Western-controlled coup d'état than to be a real military training mission.

Actual artillery battle

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There is often a huge difference between peacetime theory (+ practicing) and wartime reality. 

Armies are known to diverge from staying true to how war really is within three years after a war (= a not very widely used rule of thumb), and the gap between theory and reality is the greatest when much time has passed since theory was tested in battle, and new features were introduced.

Artillery as we knew it from the past about 30 years in the West appears to only remotely resemble what's going on in Ukraine. Our Western model of artillery in action was presumably proved to some degree during beating up Iraqi forces, but Eastern Europe doesn't appear to be bound by this evidence.

 

So what do I consider the Western model of artillery employment of the past 30 years? And what appears to go on in Ukraine (in red cursive)?

multiple rounds simultaneous impact for surprise effect lethality 

What is MRSI?

much use of DPICM (until the cluster munitions ban)

RU and UKR didn't ratify the ban, but DPICM employment is almost never seen on footage

DPICM is the primary anti-tank artillery munition

HE shells mess up AFVs by the hundreds, no footage of DPICM killing an AFV.

shoot & scoot to survive counterfires

even towed artillery pieces are in use at the front for months, no footage of shoot & scoot by SPGs

artillery shell purchases in the ten thousands

RU expends about 20,000 shells (and rockets) per day, supposedly has millions in storage

quality multifunctional fuses including RF proximity fusing for above-ground fusing for maximum lethality

RF PROX fusing never seen on footage, lots of craters from point-detonating shells, UKR troops largely survive in trenches without overhead cover

GPS and other navigation aids permit dispersed battery operations, guns can be alone in firing position

footage shows towed howitzers and non-improvised multiple rocket launchers always in battery formation

suppressive fires with HE shells support infantry and armour attacks

UKR: We have no munitions to spare for that.

Range is super important, let's enlarge the chamber volume and lengthen the barrel!

122 mm and 152 mm SPGs get busted alike, towed 152 / 155 mm guns survive for months, UKR uses unguided artillery with such precision that either the footage has an extreme selection bias or the fires weren't from far away. Only guided munitions appear to make good use of extreme range (Tochka-U, GUMLRS, possibly Excalibur)

smoke munitions provide concealment for troops movements on the battlefield

footage: Smoke? You mean burning wheat fields and grass?

mil spec hardware (including battlefield radios) and software older than some of its users used for fire support command control communications networks to digitally relay requests for fire to firing units

UKR: We got some apps running on civilian portable electronics and some American billionnaire gave us some cool satellite communications equipment that was meant for yachts and off-grid homes

RU: What are fire support command control communications networks? 

Russia considers artillery to be the king of the battlefield

RU: Look, we're almost as good at using artillery as in 1944! Pre-planned area fires and almost no responsiveness to infantry's calls for help.

Troops need to be trained for long and kept in active service for years to be effective.

UKR: We just mobilised a couple hundred thousand men and sent them to the front. That guy who  we sent to receive training on PzH 2000 in Germany is now hitting targets with it while sitting in it with beach sandals on his feet.

Artillery fights for supremacy by duelling artillery with radar-supported counterfires

Yeah, Russia loses about two arty pieces per day, but that's among many hundreds total and some kills were by air attack.

munitions are palletised and handled much with machinery (cranes and other load handling equipment mounted on logistic vehicles)

RU: Crane, yes, I recognise that reference. How does it relate to artillery? And what is load handling equipment?

In other words; save for HIMARS/GUMLRS we in European NATO could have our 1970's artillery arsenal in service and combine it with an app and consumer electronics and would be better-off than we're now. We kinda got the use of drones as flying artillery observation aircraft in WWI/WWII style right, but were not decisive enough to buy enough drones.

Most Western efforts on artillery of the last 30 to 40 years look like nonsensical circle jerking in retrospect. We neglected what's important (munitions quantity), overestimated the threat's quality and didn't go all in on what we actually got right.

You will not read that in publications of armed services in NATO, veterans' or reservists' associations, industry journals or the various milporn journals.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: Maybe someone knows footage that does not adhere to what I wrote here. I can only write on basis of what I've seen as I'm a one man show.

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DIANA

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NATO wants to add a DARPA-like program to spend money on military technological R&D.

This makes total sense for NATO bureaucrats, who of course like to see an expansion of their bureaucracy (allocating and overseeing resources - they do not do R&D themselves), especially with something interesting as a topic such as technological gadgetry.

It's also a total and complete confession by NATO that it's not a smart organisation or alliance and incapable of reacting to events in a timely fashion.

Ukraine is defending itself with mostly 1970's and 1980's equipment against an aggression with mostly 1970's and 1980's equipment. Very little of the relevant equipment there is considerably newer, and almost all of it was conceptually already known during the 1980's. Some of the newer relevant items are

• NLAW (introduced 2000's), conceptually going back to early 90's overflight attack ATGMs
• Javelin (introduced 1990's), developed since early 80's
• small recce drones (conceptually 1980's, see KZO Brevel)
• Bayraktar TB2 (introduced 2010's, conceptually 1970's)
• StarLink (introduced recently, conceptually 2000's, civilian product)
• some thermal night vision devices (tech introduced in 1980's, improved in resolution)
  

Ukraine could clearly defend itself with purely 1980's equipment (even purely Soviet equipment) if it had it in the right quantities.

 

Defence can nowadays be just fine if you master the art of introducing 20 years-old equipment in suitable quantities. The potential aggressors are using almost exclusively equipment older than 20 years and conceptually older than 30 years. A robust defence implies a robust deterrence.

We're seeing a large-scale live demonstration of how unnecessary "leap ahead" / "revolutionary" technology advances are for defence. It's visible to anyone paying attention and thinking for himself/herself that NATO has paid too much attention to fancy new tech and not enough attention to quantity of infantry and indirect fires munitions. 

So obviously, this is just the right moment for NATO to set up a bureaucratic program to promote military technology advances.

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Russian military incompetence

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The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine revealed some issues that confirm Russia as the successor of the Soviet Union's Red Army and the Tzarist army. These are long-lasting issues that will most likely persist and not be removed or reduced by much during a couple years of military reform. They are lasting features of the Russian way of war. Some examples:

 

(1) Some Russian soldiers were completely unaware of where they were and why they were supposed to fight. They believed they were going to participate in exercises. Some soldiers who had fought at a small town were unaware of whether Kyiv had fallen already or not, for they had received no news for weeks. This reminds me of stories about how the Soviet Red Army conscripts sent to Afghanistan often only found out inside Afghanistan where they were, what this war was about and so on.

(2) Many troops particularly of the ill-fated push through the Pripyet marshes NW of Kyiv had lived in horrible conditions in Belarus for weeks (during wintertime!) and were thoroughly demoralised by the time they were sent into Ukraine. Their primary thoughts were about a soft bed in a heated room and some decent hot food, not about military action.

(3) The traffic jam NW of Kyiv and actions elsewhere were reminiscent of a stupid form of 'command push'. It was common during WW2 for Red Army attacks to fail even with surprise, and then the commanders would receive orders to keep press forward. The would order attack wave after attack wave to the same place, from the same direction, without surprise. This was particularly prevalent in 1941/1942. This kind of stubborn top-down commanding was apparently also seen at the cities in the North and around Mykolaiv (though we'll likely have to wait years for confirmation by detailed reports).

(4) Agile and responsive artillery fires aren't a Russian thing. Fire plans developed over days against known positions were the maximum of Red Army artillery competence in 1943-1945, and even the Russian army of today doesn't seem to be capable of much more. They lacked the element of surprise when they started this war and apparently most of their pre-planned fires in the East did hit empty positions. This is the only plausible explanation for their inability to advance significantly in that region afterwards.

By comparison, Ukrainian artillery fires appear to be extremely munitions-austere (likely out of necessity) and thus well-aimed. The biggest I saw on video included about 20 shells.

The Russian military leans heavily on indirect fires. It's a mystery why they wouldn't get more proficient in indirect fires if they're so important to them.

(5) Total disregard for the lives of civilians, including shooting at hospitals (as in Syria already). (I won't pretend that the raping and prisoner abuse/executions are specifically Russian - they're specifically warfare.) 

(6) A mix of ancient (1960's technology) equipment with 1990's equipment (and really hardly anything more modern than that!). You can find much 1970's technology in the German army as well (especially armoured vehicles), but the share of ancient equipment in the Russian army appears to be higher, even among these active forces. This is a bit of a mystery, for the production figures of much newer equipment minus their exports and losses at the breakup of the Soviet Union still yields more than enough newer equipment. We saw T-62s in action in 2008 Georgia, and now very early T-72 models that equally belong into museums. This makes simply no sense, even if these were training tanks pressed into combat service as short-term replacement for losses. 

(7) Very poorly maintained, outright rusty equipment - even high value equipment such as air defence systems. This is reminiscent of the huge fleet of T-26 and BT-7 tanks in 1941 that was lost with little to show for. Great many T-26 and BT-7 broke down and were easily dismissed instead of offering a good fight.

 

(8) A tactical air force that is astonishingly ineffective. This is reminiscent of the almost unbelievably marginal impact of the Soviet air power in 1941-1942. Even in 1943 Soviet air power was much claims, little effect. It inflicted serious losses only when the Germans had failed to synchronise anti-air artillery cover with road marches. Then and now the culprit is fairly obvious; too few flying hours for training of the air crews.

 

(9) They're plain stupid and uneducated. I understand this sounds inappropriate to say, and there are no doubt some smart men in the Russian Army, but they are capable of displays of stupidity and lack of education otherwise not known in Europe. Who else would manage to get radiation sickness at Chernobyl weeks into a war in the area? Stupidity and lack of education are recurring themes in descriptions of the Russian army up to Colonel rank, and they sure provided much evidence to support such claims.

 

- - - - -

Several of these points can be traced to a lasting bug in the Russian army and its predecessors: It's lacking good non-commissioned officers. Their NCOs are rather enlisted personnel with some technical expertise. Many task of Western NCOs are left to junior officers in the Russian army. This is a problem because officers are not supposed to live with and close to the enlisted personnel. Officers are a bit detached from the grunts, which helps them make decisions that endanger their lives. Now if you have no NCO class of troops that takes proper care of the enlisted personnel, then you end up with ignorant, demoralised, undisciplined, malnourished, frostbitten enlisted troops. You also end up with the typical Russian and Red Army problem of bullying against new arrival enlisted personnel.

To sum it up; much went wrong at the individual to small unit level in the Russian army and its predecessors for well over a hundred years already.

 

Another issue are reckless orders given by senior officers, especially regarding sustainment and offensive action. There's much pretence of theoretical competence and scientific treatment of military theory, but the practical application ends up being brutish war after war.

The third big theme is corruption, but this cannot really be blamed for this debacle considering how corrupt Ukraine itself is (which likely contributed to the almost no-show of Ukrainian land power in 2014). The logistical problems of the first days were likely magnified by corruption in procurement (including ordinary things like buying poor quality tyres), but also by troops selling off diesel fuel to civilians in anticipation of doing exercises after which the sold fuel would not be missed. To launch an invasion with only partially filled fuel tanks would mess up any logistics plan.

The fourth big theme is the utter failure of the Russian arms industry to provide quality equipment. There has apparently been no progress in tank protection since 1987 despite the rise of diving and overflight top-attack munitions with shaped charges. Air power and air defences are failing against drones that a fighter from 1943 could intercept. The sensors used are quite crappy, too little night vision equipment is in use, the new tactical radio family is either failing technically or not available in sufficient quantity. Artillery fire control tech appears to be largely stuck in the 1980's. China won't be able to solve these issues for Russia, and these issues are very likely a consequence not only of corruption and 1990's brain drain, but also of an economic policy that doubled down on natural resources exploitation by oligarch-controlled megacorporations and provided horrible conditions for high tech or innovative businesses. Russia is largely limited to exports of raw materials and petrochemical products for good reasons.

The Russian army is crap, and it's not even large in comparison to NATO.  It's suffering from problems that cannot be solved by a couple years of intense efforts after an embarrassing war. Their economic and fiscal base is collapsing, and they already failed to make significant progress with big budgets in the past decade.

The predecessors of the Russian Army had a long history of poor military performance after the one-off talent of Suvorov, including underperforming even against backward Turks and catastrophically failing in the First World War after starting it with an incredible numerical superiority. The Red Army of 1942-1945 had some of its material quality and quantity issues solved by free imports (Lend-Lease), which enabled it to defeat German forces and their weak allies. The Germans had only about about 60% of German land power and most of the time a minority of German air power on the Eastern Front. Today's PR China could hardly provide assistance equivalent to American Lend-Lease. One reason is that it's not exactly a pool of highest military quality itself and another is the logistical situation; the Trans-Siberian Railway's capacity is still a narrow bottleneck in wartime.

That being said, I should mention that most armies in NATO are outright crap as well.* Some NATO members clearly lack the economic base to do much about that, while some large and wealthy ones mostly have a political and senior officer corps leadership problem. They've wasted too much attention on pointless small wars and other distant missions rather than on the noble task of deterrence & defence. This neglect of conventional warfare capability turned even the rather reputable Western armies into Potemkin' villages with too little technical readiness, too few (artillery) munitions in stock, incomplete equipment with night vision and force structures that make combined arms tactics impossible (such as some brigades without indirect fires capability and without significant battlefield air defence capability).

The difference is that our deficiencies might now be addressed (in a spectacularly inefficient, wasteful way), while there's little reason to believe that the Russians could address their issues effectively. They would need to stop being so Russian to do so.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: Have a look at the Bulgarian land forces' equipment if you want to see a museum force.

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