Military Father Surprises Family on the Field at Florida Gators Game

© AP
Russian tanks in drills at the Kadamovskiy firing range in the Rostov region in southern Russia
Jan. 12, 2022

In a recent press briefing held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke near continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to join the trans-Atlantic alliance. He said:

"Their [NATO'southward] principal task is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to attain this goal. They could describe united states into some kind of armed disharmonize and forcefulness their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked about in the Usa today. Or they could depict Ukraine into NATO, set up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the outcome of Donbass or Crimea past force, and still draw us into an armed conflict."

Putin connected:

"Permit us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is blimp with weapons and at that place are state-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who will terminate information technology from unleashing operations in Crimea, let lonely Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and ventures such a combat operation. Exercise we accept to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone idea anything about it? It seems not."

But these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fob "screaming from the top of the hen house that he'due south scared of the chickens," calculation that any Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should non be reported as a statement of fact."

Psaki'south comments, withal, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The principal goal of the authorities of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is what he terms the " de-occupation" of Crimea. While this goal has, in the by, been couched in terms of diplomacy - "[t]he synergy of our efforts must force Russian federation to negotiate the return of our peninsula," Zelensky told the Crimea Platform, a Ukrainian forum focused on regaining command over Crimea - the reality is his strategy for return is a purely military machine 1, in which Russian federation has been identified as a "armed services adversary", and the accomplishment of which can only be achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military ways has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would non initiate any offensive armed forces action to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russian federation. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine'due south membership, if granted, would need to include some linguistic communication regarding the limits of NATO's Article 5 - which relates to collective defense - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The about likely scenario would involve Ukraine being chop-chop brought under the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' like those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil every bit a 'trip-wire' force, and modern air defenses combined with forward-deployed NATO aircraft put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

In one case this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict confronting what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability it has acquired since 2015 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "impale Russians."

The thought that Russia would sit down idly by while a guerilla war in Crimea was existence implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia would more than likely use its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defence under Commodity 5. In short, NATO would exist at war with Russia.

This is non idle speculation. When explaining his recent decision to deploy some three,000 US troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, US President Joe Biden alleged:

"As long as he's [Putin] acting aggressively, we are going to make sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we're there and Article v is a sacred obligation."

Biden'due south comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last year. At that fourth dimension, Biden saturday down with NATO Secretarial assistant-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Commodity v of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Article 5 we take equally a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is in that location."

Biden's view of NATO and Ukraine is fatigued from his experience as vice president nether Barack Obama. In 2015, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Piece of work told reporters:

"Every bit President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to cull its own time to come. And we reject any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Republic of estonia this by September, the president made information technology clear that our commitment to our NATO allies in the confront of Russian assailment is unwavering. As he said it, in this alliance there are no old members and there are no new members. There are no inferior partners and in that location are no senior partners. At that place are merely allies, pure and simple. And nosotros volition defend the territorial integrity of every unmarried ally."

But what would this defence force entail? As someone who one time trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can attest that a war with Russian federation would be unlike annihilation the US military machine has experienced - always. The Us military is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does it possess doctrine capable of supporting large-scale combined arms conflict. If the Usa was to be drawn into a conventional ground state of war with Russia, it would discover itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In curt, it would be a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking about the results of a study - the Russia New Generation Warfare - he had initiated in 2015 to examine lessons learned from the fighting in eastern Ukraine, told an audition at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians have superior artillery firepower, better gainsay vehicles, and have learned sophisticated employ of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

"Should US forces detect themselves in a land war with Russia, they would be in for a rude, cold enkindling."

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America's twenty-year Middle Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria produced a war machine that was no longer capable of defeating a peer-level opponent on the battlefield. This reality was highlighted in a report conducted by the The states Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO'south Rapid Deployment Forcefulness, in 2017. The report constitute that Usa armed forces forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face armed forces assailment from Russian federation. The lack of viable air defense force and electronic warfare adequacy, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would result in the piecemeal destruction of the US Ground forces in rapid lodge should they face off against a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The issue isn't just qualitative, but as well quantitative - even if the U.s.a. military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it tin't), it simply lacks the size to survive in any sustained boxing or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the Us military waged in Republic of iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan has created an organizational ethos built around the thought that every American life is precious, and that all efforts will be made to evacuate the wounded and then that they can receive life-saving medical attention in as short a timeframe every bit possible. This concept may have been viable where the United states of america was in control of the environs in which fights were conducted. It is, even so, pure fiction in big-calibration combined artillery warfare. There won't be medical evacuation helicopters flight to the rescue - even if they launched, they would be shot downwardly. There won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in brusque guild. There won't be field hospitals - even if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What in that location will be is death and devastation, and lots of information technology. One of the events which triggered McMaster's report of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade by Russian arms in early on 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of any like Usa gainsay formation. The superiority Russia enjoys in arms fires is overwhelming, both in terms of the numbers of artillery systems fielded and the lethality of the munitions employed.

While the US Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, there will be cipher like the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American military in its operations in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will be contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian footing troops volition be operating under an air defence force umbrella the likes of which neither the Us nor NATO has ever faced. There will exist no close air back up cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground will be on their own.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, because of Russia'due south overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the United states forces on the ground will be deaf, dumb, and blind to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and even operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons cease to function.

Whatsoever war with Russia would observe American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to have losses of 30-twoscore percent and go along the fight, because that was the reality of modernistic combat against a Soviet threat. Back then, nosotros were able to finer match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and adequacy - in brusque, we could requite as good, or better, than nosotros got.

That wouldn't be the case in any European state of war against Russian federation. The United states of america will lose most of its forces before they are able to close with any Russian adversary, due to deep artillery fires. Even when they close with the enemy, the advantage the US enjoyed confronting Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a thing of the by. Our tactics are no longer upwardly to par - when there is close gainsay, it will exist extraordinarily violent, and the US will, more than times than not, come out on the losing side.

But fifty-fifty if the Usa manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, information technology simply has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russia volition bring to bear. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of U.s. ground troops were constructive against modern Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will simply be overwhelmed by the mass of combat strength the Russians volition confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style set on carried out by specially trained US Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a U.s. Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around 2 in the morning. By 5:30am it was over, with the US Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. In that location's something near 170 armored vehicles bearing down on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would look like. Information technology would not exist limited to Ukraine, but extend to battlefields in the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere. It would involve Russian strikes against NATO airfields, depots, and ports throughout the depth of Europe.

This is what volition happen if the U.s.a. and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Lease to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

Virtually the Author:
Scott Ritter is a former U.s.a. Marine Corps intelligence officer and writer of 'SCORPION KING: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf'south staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 equally a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

vivancodosever93.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.sott.net/article/464018-A-war-with-Russia-would-be-unlike-anything-the-US-and-NATO-have-ever-experienced