US Would Fight Without Air Support for Weeks if War With Russia Began

a reply to: paraphi

Yeah that couple hundred challies... Maybe 120 leo 2a whatever's Germany has a whole herd of leclerc's and the odds and sods double handfuls you'd get from "everyone else"© Is totally gonna stop several thousand t-72b3's spearheaded by full up t90 cadre and filled out by another couple thousand t-62's just because they can...

Y'all don't have that many spike 2's and brimstones bro... Not to mention you DO NOT have sufficient coverage to take the blackjack raids designed to blow critical dams and infrastructure to channelize ypu into ground of their choosing!

Nice war face though i almost believed it.

Edit to add: especially now that b3 and some of tge 62's will be rocking full up modernized t90 grade ERA packages not kontakt 5 and firing svinets or even vakuum based rounds out of the newer much meaner guns they're installing super fast.

Not to mention b3's and t90's are likely to be sporting a light non full coverage APS later this year or next and they depot cycle tanks WAY FASTER THAN US!

they could bounce you and roll you anytime they felt like it up to now... In 6 years they'll just be able to flat demolish you while keeping the infrastructure fully intact!

a reply to: paraphi

The problem is, and always will be, infrastructure. There was a wargame a few years back, gaming what could happen if Russia was able to field the K-77M in large numbers. They were able to take air superiority in 72 hours. They didn't destroy NATO air forces, but were able to roll them back far enough to allow the bombers to slip through to their launch positions, and launch massive attacks on anything with a runway long enough to operate from.

One of the things that NATO trains for is using roads for airfields. The problem there is support. You can launch fighters all day from them, but how are you going up resupply? You can't operate tankers and C-17s from those same roads, so you lose inflight refueling and resupply of weapons and parts. Once that happens, it's all over but the screaming.

a reply to: roguetechie

Yeah that couple hundred challies... Maybe 120 leo 2a whatever's Germany has a whole herd of leclerc's and the odds and sods double handfuls you'd get from "everyone else"© Is totally gonna stop several thousand t-72b3's spearheaded by full up t90 cadre and filled out by another couple thousand t-62's just because they can...

Your analysis is fantastically lopsided and untrue. For a start, it's never going to be Germany versus Russia.

I'm stretched too thin at the moment so you guys cannot get a full response from me. That should say a lot about how concerned I am.

But, I looked through this entire thread and didn't find discussion or clarification about the actual context to the study that the title of this thread is based on. Instead, there's a whole lot of bluster about how stronk one of the most pathetic nations on the planet is. Anyway, I did not find the study in question on the RAND website, but I did find these:

RAND. Topic: NATO

The Russian Challenge

Hybrid Warfare in the Baltics

How NATO Could Accidentally Trigger a War with Russia

The general concern that RAND and others have is that Russia has local superiority in parts of NATO's eastern flanks such as the baltics. This region is far from most of the military might of NATO and is actually closer to Moscow than Brussels. Russia could therefore deploy A2AD assets such as the S-400 to for example, Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg and when combined with the RuAF they could deny the airspace over the baltics to NATO forces very quickly. Russian ground forces could drive into the baltics very quickly with moderate resistance but before NATO can fully respond. RAND and others therefore call for a NATO force in the baltics which can continue to fight without air superiority and from a position of inferiority, until the A2AD bubble can be burst and reinforcements arrive. Meanwhile, it is a balancing act, because some commentators think that Russia has little interest in the baltics and a larger NATO presence could threaten Russia and/or actually trigger conflict.

OP mentioned something about the Mig-35. I'm not saying it's a bad jet because it's not, but it's simply an upgraded Mig-29. How many have been built? Wikipedia shows 5. And, there already is a western equivalent to it, two actually, which are better and are actually successful. They're called the Gripen and F-16V Block 70. And if your goal is to burst or destroy an A2AD bubble, then the F-35 (currently ramping production to 168 per year) is your best bet.

Next I want to talk about air fields. They are incredibly large and incredibly spread out, the amount of munitions it takes to destroy an airfield is extremely large and even then they can be repaired. For example, when the US attacked Shayrat Airbase in 2017 with 59 Tomahawk missiles, the airfield was able to resume operations just hours later. Yes, some equipment was spared because they were warned. But, it is easier to fix a runway than it is to build a new missile.

Destroying the equipment such as aircraft at an airbase is possible, but this is reliant on actually knowing where the equipment is and being able to destroy it before it has moved. Hypersonics help here, but is still dependent on the entire kill-chain. Yes, a TEL is harder to find and destroy than equipment at an air base.

A tactical aircraft can reload and be flying its next mission considerably faster than reloading most kinds of cruise missiles. A tactical aircraft also carries a very large payload relative to a single cruise missile. A tactical aircraft can also do its targeting in real time.

Taking the Iskander as an example, about 150 are operational with two missiles each, each missile with 1000 lb to 1500 lb explosives. Even if you assume they all are in range of targets and all are operational at the same time, how many airbases do you think they could destroy? Using Shayrat Airbase as an example, I would estimate maybe 5, and the runways could be repaired.

I am most concerned about the ability of cruise missiles to target key C2 infrastructure. A lower concern is other infrastructure or aircraft when they're on the ground and disrupting flight operations for a short period if time.

So the point is, using multi-million dollar (conventional) cruise missiles to destroy pavement is extremely stupid, unless the purpose is to simply disrupt operations for a few hours. The notion that NATO will wake up one day with its runways destroyed and aircraft intact is fantasy.

NATO should build distributed infrastructure and a kill-web (if it isn't doing so already).

NATO should work on attacking or disrupting the kill-chain for cruise missile attacks (if it isn't doing so already).

NATO should ensure it can repair runways (should already be able to).

One of the largest problems NATO has is readiness not lack of fancy toys. NATO should strengthen their position in the Baltics so they are less dependent on kicking the Russians out after the fact and for deterrence.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Better said !