Who'd Have Thought (back in 1984)?

[kato13]

I don't disagree with this point. My point is about perception and how an expansionist tyrant (Putin) would perceive NATO's failure to support Ukraine after a full-scale invasion. I firmly believe that Putin would see such failure as evidence of a lack of willpower on the part of NATO to go to war to defend a former SSR (applicable to the Baltic States). I'm basing this on Putin's psych profile and past behavior (the best indicator of future actions), as well as the historical parallels- namely the consequences of Great Britain and France failing to use military force in response to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. As a result of this failure of resolve, the German dictator concluded that England and France would not go to war on behalf of Poland despite their public declarations to the contrary. As the infamous "Sitzkrieg" (Phony War) that followed Poland's partition showed, he was essentially correct.
-

What ever we say about Hitler's delusional mindset, due to the 1930's Germans being the first masters of Combined arms maneuver warfare, their bite was at bad as their bark. Even if Putin is delusional, he knows his own forces are limited.

I feel Putin is first and foremost a survivor and I don't see him betting his life again on the capabilities of the Russian armed forces.

Thinking that Putin will feel emboldened to risk invoking Article 5 after:

• The absolutely pitiful attempt to defeat a force literally 10 times less capable than NATO would be
• Using his own force that is, at a minimum, 50% less capable than when the war started

is folly IMHO.

Even with a decade to recover Russia would not be able to defeat just Poland (with them getting the cream of the crop equipment from the US and ROK). The reason Putin is not backing down now, is to prevent his own downfall. Even if he "wins" his current conflict, his tempting fate by attacking a Polarbear (NATO) when he just barely eked out a bloody victory against a Coyote (Ukraine) means he is in jeopardy of losing everything again with even slimmer odds of survival (the most important factor to him).

I personally think if Putin ordered his generals to move into the Baltic states while NATO still exists, the command staff would realize if NATO came back with full force their remaining lifespan could be measured with an hourglass.

Prigozhin made it over 50% of the way to Moscow. There would not be much to stop these generals for making it there.

I want Russia defeated in Ukraine. I want all NATO members to take defense seriously and spend at least the 2% "required". I particularly want Germany who is limited in the number of armed forces it can deploy due to the reunification agreement, to make a super elite force befitting of their military history. But I don't like getting there via fear of something I don't feel is likely at all.

[Targan]

I'm very much enjoying reading everyone's analyses of the situation, and the cordial nature of the conversation. I agree with the views expressed that much of Putin's decision making at the moment is focused on his political and personal survival.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Australia's non-commercial, government funded media organisation) recently got a couple of journalists across the border from Ukraine and into Russia. The Ukrainian unit they were with told them they could talk to whoever they wanted and record whatever they wanted, as long as it didn't reveal Ukrainian positions. The Ukrainians also said they would not seek to censor any of the ABC's reporting. The ABC's interviews with the Russians they spoke to in the occupied zone were very interesting. Quite a few really, really didn't like Putin. And considering they were under armed occupation, they didn't seem as upset with the Ukrainians as you might expect.

Several mentioned that the Russian forces in the area made no effort to help them at all as they withdrew (apparently the Russian conscripts right at the border surrendered en masse as soon as the shooting started, and the rest left quickly), but the Ukrainians had been supplying the civilians left behind with food and medicine.

[Raellus]

I feel Putin is first and foremost a survivor and I don't see him betting his life again on the capabilities of the Russian armed forces.

Thinking that Putin will feel emboldened to risk invoking Article 5 after:

• The absolutely pitiful attempt to defeat a force literally 10 times less capable than NATO would be
• Using his own force that is, at a minimum, 50% less capable than when the war started

is folly IMHO.

I totally agree with this assessment. The point that I've been trying to make (not well, apparently), is that if the West had not supplied Ukraine with significant military aid in the first six months or so after the 2022 invasion, and Putin had been able to engineer the conquest of Ukraine in the next year or two, that Europe would be much less safe than it is now because Putin would have been emboldened by his success, and NATO would have painted itself as timid and weak. My second main argument is that providing Ukraine with the weapons it needs is the right call, as far as US foreign interests are concerned. From the recent uptick in European defense spending and the expansion of NATO to include two nations that had maintained non-aligned status throughout the entirety of the first Cold War, it would seem that said policy is widely seen in Europe as being in its constituents' best interests as well. To put it another way, I think failure/refusal to provide Ukraine with military aid would not have been in NATO's interests.

@Targan: That's interesting. It's really difficult, IMHO, to get an accurate sense of Russian public opinion re Putin and/or the war. In the early days of the conflict, the Western media were rather sanguine in their assessments of opposition to the regime and its military adventurism. In the last year or so, I've read a couple of credible news pieces* that suggest that public support for the war in Russia is much broader and stronger than we'd been led to believe.

*One in particular that I really wish I'd shared here at the time, and that I can't find now.

The war in Ukraine is pretty much the only ongoing news story that I follow closely any more (I find American politics to be too frustrating/depressing). Apart from my fascination with various historical military conflicts, I've never been so invested in a war [occurring during my lifetime] that doesn't directly involve US forces. Russia is clearly the bad guy here. I'm pulling for the white hats, and I think the US gov't should too (regardless of which party predominates at any given time).

Slava Ukraini!

-

[kato13]

I totally agree with this assessment. The point that I've been trying to make (not well, apparently), is that if the West had not supplied Ukraine with significant military aid in the first six months or so after the 2022 invasion, and Putin had been able to engineer the conquest of Ukraine in the next year or two, that Europe would be much less safe than it is now because Putin would have been emboldened by his success, and NATO would have painted itself as timid and weak. My second main argument is that providing Ukraine with the weapons it needs is the right call, as far as US foreign interests are concerned. From the recent uptick in European defense spending and the expansion of NATO to include two nations that had maintained non-aligned status throughout the entirety of the first Cold War, it would seem that said policy is widely seen in Europe as being in its constituents' best interests as well. To put it another way, I think failure/refusal to provide Ukraine with military aid would not have been in NATO's interests.
Slava Ukraini!

-

I think we are in total agreement then. The first 6 months was totally logical for the US particularly given how much of the ordinance was sitting on shelves waiting to be destroyed as it was nearing its "Best use by" date. Now that we have depleted our stocks, while it is still the right thing to do, the costs of new production make it a little less clear.

I want the US to support Ukraine, but I want Europe to do more as even if a non Russian Ukraine is in US interests, this should be more of their fight as the refugee issue you mentioned effects them more directly.

Germany is my biggest sticking point. After hostilities began they could have moved harder into using US and Qatari supplied LNG, instead of continuing, to this day, to directly fund the Russian war effort. If this is truly a European war of survival, Germany should be more willing to make more sacrifices. I know the gas from the US can be up to 10 times more expensive than the extremely cheap Russian gas but we could cut that cash flow entirely, thus saving more Ukrainian lives.

For all of this millennium Germany (the worlds 3rd largest economy) felt it could slash its military effectiveness by coasting under the US defense umbrella and made energy deals that truly emboldened Putin (including shutting down their nuclear plants at least partially due to cheap Russian gas). It annoys me. Not so much I want to abandon the good people of Ukraine, but opening our checkbook would be easier if I felt Germany was reaping more of what they had sown.


EDIT

Getting back on topic of this thread. Who in 1984 would have thought a reunited Germany would only have three divisions in 2022, none of which would be combat effective without a 3 month ramp up, and even that timeline is debatable.

[Nowhere Man 1966]

The "access anywhere in the world" is just describing a dial-up modem. Modems were pretty amazing despite their downsides. You could make a phone call, even with an acoustic coupler on a pay phone, and connect to other systems hooked to phone lines and communicate digitally.

The ~24 year projection in Dark Conspiracy was positing that phone connectivity and thus the reach of modems would increase, not envisioning dedicated IP data networks. DC was released even before consumer access to the Internet was even a thing.

Good points. I remember even in the 1970's and before, you could buy cups to put on the phone receiver and hook it to you modem's acoustic coupler. Dark Conspiracy it basically the tech level of 1990's taken to a higher limit.

[Nowhere Man 1966]

The problem is, Russia was/is a mafia state. The realistic post-USSR choices for Russia were either an extremely corrupt democracy or a return to autocracy of some form. From a Russian perspective, the US and the West used and abused Russia even when Russia acted in good faith (like after Sep 11). Then again, the US isn't forcing countries to join NATO. That kind of thing happens when you invade your neighbors and murder and rape their civilians.

The ironic thing is, the US and Russia share many of the same geopolitical threats (China, radical Islam), and Russia is under much more of a direct threat from both.

Point taken. Not sure how we can get them to the peace table, but I think really when we had Yeltsin in power, we did lose some opportunity to work with them somehow. Maybe if we did somehow we could have avoided Putin, I do not know. There are some differences between the West and Russia, but I think overall we share a lot of the same values and have similar enemies and potential enemies.

[Nowhere Man 1966]

I think we are in total agreement then. The first 6 months was totally logical for the US particularly given how much of the ordinance was sitting on shelves waiting to be destroyed as it was nearing its "Best use by" date. Now that we have depleted our stocks, while it is still the right thing to do, the costs of new production make it a little less clear.

I want the US to support Ukraine, but I want Europe to do more as even if a non Russian Ukraine is in US interests, this should be more of their fight as the refugee issue you mentioned effects them more directly.

Germany is my biggest sticking point. After hostilities began they could have moved harder into using US and Qatari supplied LNG, instead of continuing, to this day, to directly fund the Russian war effort. If this is truly a European war of survival, Germany should be more willing to make more sacrifices. I know the gas from the US can be up to 10 times more expensive than the extremely cheap Russian gas but we could cut that cash flow entirely, thus saving more Ukrainian lives.

For all of this millennium Germany (the worlds 3rd largest economy) felt it could slash its military effectiveness by coasting under the US defense umbrella and made energy deals that truly emboldened Putin (including shutting down their nuclear plants at least partially due to cheap Russian gas). It annoys me. Not so much I want to abandon the good people of Ukraine, but opening our checkbook would be easier if I felt Germany was reaping more of what they had sown.


EDIT

Getting back on topic of this thread. Who in 1984 would have thought a reunited Germany would only have three divisions in 2022, none of which would be combat effective without a 3 month ramp up, and even that timeline is debatable.

I do agree with you that Europe should support the effort more especially Germany. If Germany needs oil, maybe the Brits can offer them a deal as well for North Sea crude, I don't know, I'm not a petroleum engineer but just a thought. I'm still not quite on board with the US supporting almost everything in the Ukraine but if it has to be, we need to have the rest of NATO members pony up more. Still, a big concern is where if all members are willing and strong enough mentally as well as physically to do this. It's like the Vietnam War, the US and allies were strong enough physically but we were not as willing and without that will, gusto if I may, it does not matter how much or little stuff you have in your forces. That's why I'm am not too strong with support, I just think we have too many weaknesses right now from the leadership on down. I do believe we have enough hardware but without the "software," it would fail. You rightly pointed out that Germany is the worst, they bought into a mindset that cripples their thought processes and that really made them weak. I just don't want things to snowball out of control to the point where bad decisions end up taking us into Twilight: 2025.

[ToughOmbres]

Times have really changed. Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, it seemed like the only way that the Cold War would end was in nuclear Armageddon (worst case) or, in the best case, a Red Storm Rising type conventional war scenario that would see NATO triumphant. As it turned out, the end was a lot less spectacular (thank heaven). Subsequently, for a little over a decade, it seemed like the West no longer had anything to fear from Russia.

And now here were are, in the midst of a new, even more complicated Cold War. Several former SSRs are now NATO members. Several former SSRs, and former Warsaw Pact members, now belong to NATO. Poland, the original setting of T2k, is a full NATO member that has just concluded a deal to purchase one of the USA's most advanced conventional weapons systems, the F-35 (check out the cool promo pics in the linked article).

https://www.twz.com/air/polands-first-f-35a-hussar-stealth-fighter-rolled-out

Even perennially neutral Sweden is now a NATO member.

Today Russia, rather than the USSR, plays the role of NATO's major antagonist. Its government is yet again a one-party state led by an anti-democratic dictator. During the Cold War, a Soviet attack on Free Europe was a major fear, one that the USA's government and military-industrial complex were dedicated to preventing (or stopping, should deterrence fail). Two-and-a-half years ago, Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of its democratic neighbor, former SSR, Ukraine.

In the USA, the once markedly more hawkish-on-Russia political party is now more sympathetic to the oppressive, imperialistic Russian government than to its fellow democracies, so much so that many American office-holders (and candidates) wish to stop aiding Ukraine, thereby appeasing the Russian dictator. In 1984, this would have been unthinkable, except perhaps in a Superfriends episode featuring Bizzarro World. It's still hard to believe that this is the way things are now.

What else would the inhabitants of 1984 be shocked to learn about the present day

-

For those who followed defense policy in the US, that the U.S. Army is now only ten divisions effectively, down from 16 during the height of the Cold War.

That virtually all NATO members (not merely Germany and France) suspended or abolished conscription AND drastically slashed personnel-to the point where many can only field a brigade (if they're lucky) and have minimal supply/ordnance stockpiles.

Virtually all U.S. Army Reserve combat units are long gone.

The nearly 600 ship U.S. Navy is effectively halved.

The megaton range nuclear ordnance (on both sides) is gone or mothballed-replaced (mostly) by smaller weapons.

The miniaturization and (relatively) low cost of advanced electronics-computers, cellular phones, the IPod, and the like.

The U.S. Army 10th Mountain and 25th Light Infantry Divisions still exist while the 7th and 9th Light Motorized were killed and inactivated.

The round-out/round-up ARNG concept of pairing two active brigades and having a Naional Guard brigade to bring them up to strength is effectively gone.

There are doubtlessly many others that I have missed-those are just some highlights in my mind.

[LoneCollector1987]

After reading your comments regarding Germany - sorry, but I am laughing.

Long ago I wrote a satire exactly about that and as I dont know if this will derail this thread I will post the relevant part if you agree.

And to the war: (and yes, I am the pessimist)

In regard to war you need two things: manpower and willpower.
The West has neither.

(I apologize for the cold language)

Compare - for instance - 1800 to today.
Back then every country had a childfactor of 4 or more (4 children born per family. And you need 2,1 to keep the number of population)
And then the countries could go to war, lose a few tenthousand or more (Napoleon anybody with about 800.000 death in Russia alone on both sides combined) and still have a population growth.

Today any NATO country has a childfactor of 1,5 or worse. So, losing people is bad, because we have no replacement, no security margin. We are barebones.
Or does anybody think that - if we enter the war - we will have no casualties

Willpower:
We dont have it.
Remember Syria One red line after another. Not one politician willing to pull the trigger. Just imagine that after having crossed the line of using a chemical weapon Assad would have been given a wake up call by a nuclear weapon detonated close (BUT far enough away to cause NO damage!!) to the coast of Syria.

And look at the state our weaponsindustry is in. According to a news in todays msn (based upon a report in the NZZ) even if Germany would spend every year the required 2% it will take about 40-100 years to bring back the military power of 2000.
For tanks it will be till 2066 to reach the numbers we had in 2004

We made the mistake of destroying our equipment and downsizing our productioncapabilities. Russia did not.
We may say thanks to our politicians for that.

[kato13]

There is much wisdom in what you say.

One nit pick

Today any NATO country has a childfactor of 1,5 or worse.

Currently (2022) the the 4 most powerful forces in NATO are above 1.5
UK 1.6
France 1.7
US 1.7
Turkey 1.8

I believe the only others are Bulgaria 1.6 and Romania 1.8 but how much value would they provide.

Source https://data.worldbank.org/indicator...ame_desc=false

And look at the state our weaponsindustry is in. According to a news in todays msn (based upon a report in the NZZ) even if Germany would spend every year the required 2% it will take about 40-100 years to bring back the military power of 2000.
For tanks it will be till 2066 to reach the numbers we had in 2004

This is why I would like to see more. 2% is the minimum. If this is, as I have been told, really a clash of cultures which will effect the course of the continent, maybe up it to 3 or 4.

Personally I feel Russia's own demographics crash (1.4), while pulling (and the Ukrainians killing) so many soldiers from districts that generated above average population growth, makes this Russia's last hurrah (without self destructing). Even so if other NATO countries make conscious decisions not to do anything serious for their own defense, I can see more and more Americans not seeing the value in shouldering such a great percentage of costs of maintaining NATO's defensive strength.

[castlebravo92]

After reading your comments regarding Germany - sorry, but I am laughing.

Long ago I wrote a satire exactly about that and as I dont know if this will derail this thread I will post the relevant part if you agree.

And to the war: (and yes, I am the pessimist)

In regard to war you need two things: manpower and willpower.
The West has neither.

(I apologize for the cold language)

Compare - for instance - 1800 to today.
Back then every country had a childfactor of 4 or more (4 children born per family. And you need 2,1 to keep the number of population)
And then the countries could go to war, lose a few tenthousand or more (Napoleon anybody with about 800.000 death in Russia alone on both sides combined) and still have a population growth.

Today any NATO country has a childfactor of 1,5 or worse. So, losing people is bad, because we have no replacement, no security margin. We are barebones.
Or does anybody think that - if we enter the war - we will have no casualties

Willpower:
We dont have it.
Remember Syria One red line after another. Not one politician willing to pull the trigger. Just imagine that after having crossed the line of using a chemical weapon Assad would have been given a wake up call by a nuclear weapon detonated close (BUT far enough away to cause NO damage!!) to the coast of Syria.

And look at the state our weaponsindustry is in. According to a news in todays msn (based upon a report in the NZZ) even if Germany would spend every year the required 2% it will take about 40-100 years to bring back the military power of 2000.
For tanks it will be till 2066 to reach the numbers we had in 2004

We made the mistake of destroying our equipment and downsizing our productioncapabilities. Russia did not.
We may say thanks to our politicians for that.

Within the next 10 years, probably within the next 5, you will have autonomous drone swarms deployed by the US and China, at a minimum, that will simultaneously deploy thousands to tends of thousands of drones into a combat zone to search and destroy any militarily valuable asset in a wide footprint. Ballistic missiles will be used to deploy drone swarms thousands of miles away.

The value of everything that is not a drone is fading rapidly, including manpower.

[Adm.Lee]

Hopefully, this is a link https://www.celesticon.com/Podcasts/...%20Striker.mp3

Frank Chadwick was speaking at a convention in 2011, about Striker (sci-fi minis game linked to Traveller) and the technological changes he did or didn't see coming between 1981 and 2011. I think that can speak to some tech changes we and GDW didn't predict from 1984 to now, either.

For myself, aged 16 in 1984, I think I vaguely thought that the USSR might collapse, but with no thought as to timeline. I was reading Russian, Polish, and Soviet history as much as I could, as well as military history, and wargaming what I could find.

[LoneCollector1987]

Within the next 10 years, probably within the next 5, you will have autonomous drone swarms deployed by the US and China, at a minimum, that will simultaneously deploy thousands to tends of thousands of drones into a combat zone to search and destroy any militarily valuable asset in a wide footprint. Ballistic missiles will be used to deploy drone swarms thousands of miles away.

The value of everything that is not a drone is fading rapidly, including manpower.

You may be right, but if you look at the current technology:
Who has functioning Hypersonicmissiles and deploys them
Russia
If the media is to be believed (and yes, I am aware that the military doesnt tell us all) the USA is years if not decades behind Russia and China.

And to the drone swarms:
Do we even have the production capabilities to do so

I dont want to sound conspiracy theorists but every chip from China is a potentially hole to hack them. So, we would need an entire industrial setup here in the west. And it would be best if every country has a factory or two of its own.

And yes, we should standarsize them. Find a body where you can fit multiple types of engines, armor and weaponsload and then every country can build their own drones.

A german unit finds a french drone with a damaged engine: put a german engine in it and use it.

But the greatest threat I see is Electronic Warfare. How do we make sure that our drones are not hacked
According to WELT (german newspaper) Germany is under relentless assault (but below war threshold) by other states. And some attacks can be followed to Russia and China. But also other countries. And it is hinted that some of those other countries are NATO members, industrial espionage somebody

So, do we have the Cyberwarfare capabilities against hacking and why do we hurt each other

[castlebravo92]

You may be right, but if you look at the current technology:
Who has functioning Hypersonicmissiles and deploys them
Russia
If the media is to be believed (and yes, I am aware that the military doesnt tell us all) the USA is years if not decades behind Russia and China.

And to the drone swarms:
Do we even have the production capabilities to do so

I dont want to sound conspiracy theorists but every chip from China is a potentially hole to hack them. So, we would need an entire industrial setup here in the west. And it would be best if every country has a factory or two of its own.

And yes, we should standarsize them. Find a body where you can fit multiple types of engines, armor and weaponsload and then every country can build their own drones.

A german unit finds a french drone with a damaged engine: put a german engine in it and use it.

But the greatest threat I see is Electronic Warfare. How do we make sure that our drones are not hacked
According to WELT (german newspaper) Germany is under relentless assault (but below war threshold) by other states. And some attacks can be followed to Russia and China. But also other countries. And it is hinted that some of those other countries are NATO members, industrial espionage somebody

So, do we have the Cyberwarfare capabilities against hacking and why do we hurt each other

I don't think hypersonics do anything that other platforms don't already do..they might do it better/faster, but they certainly don't do it cheaper.

Drones / loitering munitions lowered the cost of "smart munitions" with a high PKILL from millions of dollars (Tomahawk ALCM) to tens of thousands of dollars (JDAM) to hundreds of dollars (for the really cheap ones) and have inverted the cost to countermeasure cost curve. For example, a hypersonic cruise missile probably isn't any cheaper than a PAC-2 Patriot. A current production run FIM-92 Stinger is a tad under $500,000 per missile/launcher unit. A Switchblade 300 (on the very high cost side of suicide drones) runs about $50,000 per unit. So, you are losing money shooting down a Switchblade 300 with a FIM-92, and you are losing a LOT of money shooting down a $500 DIY suicide drone that HAMAS or the Houthis are launching. The only real cost argument for shooting down $300 drones with $50,000 missiles is it's probably cheaper than losing whatever the drone is targeting.

US munitions production capacity has really taken a hit over the last 20 years though. It is a fair point on whether or not we have the relevant industrial capacity to sustain a high tempo war for very long.

[LoneCollector1987]

I don't think hypersonics do anything that other platforms don't already do..they might do it better/faster, but they certainly don't do it cheaper.

Drones / loitering munitions lowered the cost of "smart munitions" with a high PKILL from millions of dollars (Tomahawk ALCM) to tens of thousands of dollars (JDAM) to hundreds of dollars (for the really cheap ones) and have inverted the cost to countermeasure cost curve. For example, a hypersonic cruise missile probably isn't any cheaper than a PAC-2 Patriot. A current production run FIM-92 Stinger is a tad under $500,000 per missile/launcher unit. A Switchblade 300 (on the very high cost side of suicide drones) runs about $50,000 per unit. So, you are losing money shooting down a Switchblade 300 with a FIM-92, and you are losing a LOT of money shooting down a $500 DIY suicide drone that HAMAS or the Houthis are launching. The only real cost argument for shooting down $300 drones with $50,000 missiles is it's probably cheaper than losing whatever the drone is targeting.

US munitions production capacity has really taken a hit over the last 20 years though. It is a fair point on whether or not we have the relevant industrial capacity to sustain a high tempo war for very long.

I do agree with you. Thats why it should be imperative to re-build the capacity of ammunition production.

And to the costs of shooting done drones: What if we use drones to shoot done drones
If they attack with cheap drones: Two can play that game.
But using drones in this capacity would need a lot more computing power to control all of them.
I saw a trailer for a PC game: Ghost Recon Breakpoint

https://www.youtube.com/watchv=Lqj9aH3jLD0

Could we control such a drone swarm