Is the US Military capable of facing Russia in the Baltics?

2016-04-11T09:29:54-04:00

If you're not familiar with the scenario, read the following...https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-army-may-not-be-able-to-hold-off-russian-attack-europe
One of the scenarios that the Pentagon plans against is outlined in this piece. It shows a significant problem. While this author doesn't go into it, one of the problems is stationing. We have the forces, but none in Europe. Thoughts?

The US Army Doesn't Seem Real Sure It Could Stop a Russian Invasion of Europe | VICE News

The US has been neglecting its traditional warfare capability for decades. Now, with Russia seemingly emboldened and slightly loopy, that neglect has the potential to bite America in the ass.

Response by 1stSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Apr 11 at 2016 9:36 AM

2016-04-11T09:36:06-04:00

While we have moved away from the large land army, I still we would hold our own as a force. I would question Americas resolve to finish the conflict.

One thing I found interesting is "By the time the 1980s rolled around, the US was trying to see if it could actually hold the line against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe without nuking the other guys and triggering a full-scale, civilization-ending nuclear war." While we would undoubtedly not use tactical nuclear weapons, we would need to bring the entire national inventory to win the fight.

Response by SSG Ed Mikus made Apr 11 at 2016 9:39 AM

2016-04-11T09:39:11-04:00

We should not be the backbone used to hold off such an invasion, we should be the backup force and as such, i believe we are well suited.

Response by SGT Patrick Reno made Apr 11 at 2016 9:53 AM

2016-04-11T09:53:50-04:00

Ever since the end of WW2 We have been fighting proxy wars with Russia. We have not come out on top each time. But a full scale war with Russia in the Baltics would be a disaster. Just the thought of moving that many troops and equipment is staggering. We are not talking about trying to overwhelm a much smaller force like we did in the Middle East. We are talking about a huge army with a lot shorter distance to move troops and supplies. Also what allies can we count on for help? The outcome of such a war would be staggering for Europe. Also n this day and age there is no way the United States will be able to stay isolated. Russia would bring this type of war home to the American people, and they just would not be able to take it.

Response by Col Joseph Lenertz made Apr 11 at 2016 10:01 AM

2016-04-11T10:01:41-04:00

The article uses "army" as a replacement for "military" when that is not how we fight. It's not 1980 anymore, and no service fights a war by itself. The article makes some valid points though, and I agree there is a disconnect between the NSS's "Two MRCs At Once" strategy and the actual manpower and funding which reflects one MRC plus a smaller low-intensity regional conflict.

Response by SGT William Howell made Apr 11 at 2016 11:25 AM

2016-04-11T11:25:48-04:00

While in Iraq I had to work with the Ukrainians. My beliefs are based off that interaction. We would whip the snot out of them. They have no ability to make any decisions without senior level input. I mean down to small details have to be cleared by an officer.

Their equipment is dated and ineffective. Sure they have new jets and tanks, 4 of them. They are for show not for battle. All dogs and ponies.

They don't have well trained troops and they don't have 13 million of untrained troops anymore.

They are still capable of nuking something and because of the reasons above there is much more of a chance that they will use them.

Response by MCPO Roger Collins made Apr 11 at 2016 3:29 PM

2016-04-11T15:29:36-04:00

Capable, yes. Likely to, no.

Response by CPT Joseph K Murdock made Apr 11 at 2016 3:49 PM

2016-04-11T15:49:33-04:00

If we are not war planning for China I am a monkey's uncle. The key to these wars is air superiority.

Response by COL Private RallyPoint Member made Apr 21 at 2016 9:21 AM

2016-04-21T09:21:07-04:00

A newer piece highlighting the problem highlighted by LTG McMaster and GEN Milley in congressional testimony:
OUTNUMBERED, OUTRANGED, AND OUTGUNNED: HOW RUSSIA DEFEATS NATO

DAVID A. SHLAPAK AND MICHAEL W. JOHNSONAPRIL 21, 2016

When asked two weeks ago in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee whether the Army was “outranged” by any adversary, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley said: “Yes … the ones in Europe, really Russia. We don’t like it, we don’t want it, but yes, technically [we are] outranged, outgunned on the ground.”

Given Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine, this is sobering testimony. But is it accurate? Unfortunately, yes: Nearly two years of extensive wargaming and analysis shows that if Russia were to conduct a short-warning attack against the Baltic States, Moscow’s forces could roll to the outskirts of the Estonian capital of Tallinn and the Latvian capital of Riga in 36 to 60 hours. In such a scenario, the United States and its allies would not only be outranged and outgunned, but also outnumbered.

Outnumbered? While the Russian army is a fraction of the size of its Soviet predecessor and is maintained at a level of imperfect readiness, we found that it could — in 10 days or so — generate a force of as many as 27 fully ready battalions (30–50,000 soliders in their maneuver formations, depending on precisely how they were organized) for an attack on the Baltics while maintaining its ongoing coercive campaign against Ukraine.

All these Russian units would be equipped with armored vehicles — tanks, infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), and so forth. NATO, meanwhile, would be able to respond largely with only light, unarmored, or lightly armored forces. These would consist of the forces of the Baltic republics themselves and those that the United States and its partners could rush to the scene in the few days of warning that would likely be available.

Counting the “Very High Readiness Joint Task Force” (VJTF), NATO could optimistically deploy elements from three airborne infantry brigades, one Stryker brigade, and one U.S. armor brigade. Russia would achieve initial advantages in tanks (7:1), infantry fighting vehicles (5:1), attack helicopters (5:1), cannon artillery (4:1), long-range rocket artillery (16:1), short-range air defense (24:1), and long-range air defense (17:1).

Outranged? But the problem is not just numbers. The Russians field cannon and rocket artillery with significantly longer ranges than their U.S. counterparts. Existing Army tube artillery can generally fire at targets 14 to 24 kilometers (9 to 15 miles) away. Unfortunately, the most common Russian self-propelled howitzer NATO forces would encounter in the Baltics has a range of 29 kilometers (or 19 miles). On the battlefield, these differences matter.

Moreover, at the moment, the United States has no Multiple-Launch Rocket System units deployed in Europe, but even if it were, and the range of its primary rocket is only 40–70 kilometers (25–44 miles) depending on payload. Meanwhile, Russian forces are richly equipped with two rocket artillery systems with ranges up to 90 kilometers (56 miles).

Outgunned? Here the evidence is somewhat less clear, but the situation is certainly far less favorable to the United States than it is accustomed to. While Russia’s tanks and IFVs in some cases share the same designations as those that U.S. forces encountered in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, those weapons have little in common besides the name. They have much more advanced armor, weapons, and sensors, and in some areas — such as active protection systems to defend against anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) — are superior to their Western counterparts.

If a fight broke out today in the Baltics, Russian attack helicopters, IFVs, and even some tanks could employ ATGMs with an effective range that could penetrate the armor of most if not all NATO combat vehicles, including the U.S. M1 tank. The M1s might maintain a slight advantage in the close-in fight, if they survived to get there. But given the current U.S. posture, there would at best be only a few dozen on the field, compared to about 450 Russian. The Baltic states themselves have no heavy armor, and our analysis indicates that no other European heavy forces could make it to the frontlines in time to influence the outcome of a short-warning Russian assault.

Beyond the disadvantages of being outnumbered, outranged, and outgunned, a slew of other issues compounds the problem. First, NATO allies and the U.S. military would be of limited immediate help offsetting these disadvantages. European allies followed the American lead by cutting armor and optimizing their remaining forces for “out-of-area” missions like Afghanistan. Thus, Great Britain is continuing with plans to withdraw its last troops from Germany, while Germany has reduced its army from a Cold War level of 10 heavy divisions to the equivalent of two.

But it’s not just the numbers here that matter. The United States and its partners have also steadily reduced the infrastructure necessary to support any kind of substantial deterrent or defensive effort in Europe. Today, there are no U.S. division or corps headquarters forward-based on the continent, nor any Army aviation, engineer, and associated logistics brigades. Our analysis — which assumed brigades could be received, moved to the front, and then commanded, controlled, and supported once there — may have ignored significant shortfalls in all these dimensions. Deploying brigades is not enough. Without a plan, without adequate logistics, without robust command and control, a better-prepared adversary would still overwhelm NATO.

Second, airpower has long been the U.S. trump card, and the Army relies on it to deliver fire support and protect its units from enemy air attack. This reliance has reduced the amount of artillery it deploys with its maneuver forces and, for all intents and purposes, has stripped them of organic air defenses.

While these choices were entirely sound in facing the Taliban and Iraq’s air force and integrated air defenses, Russia is an entirely different story. Russia fields perhaps the most formidable array of surface-to-air missile (SAM) defenses in the world. Operating from locations within Russian territory, these SAMs far outrange existing defense-suppression weapons and present a credible threat to U.S. and allied airpower that would be costly and time-consuming to counter. Unlike recent American wars, getting air support will not be as easy as making a call and waiting. Especially in the crucial early days of any conflict, allied ground forces may find air support available only in narrow windows of time and space.

And third, the Russians possess a credible air force of their own. Our analysis shows that Moscow could commit hundreds of fighter, attack, and bomber aircraft to an assault on the Baltic states. While such forces are ultimately qualitatively and quantitatively inferior to the alliance’s airpower, when teamed with Russia’s surface-to-air defenses, such forces could present a threat to U.S. and allied ground forces moving to reinforce or counterattack. Without ground-based air defenses of their own, and with limited overhead cover from NATO air forces, U.S. Army formations could suffer serious attrition from enemy air attack for the first time since World War II.

On top of all these issues, geography is a harsh mistress in this scenario. It’s about 130 miles from the Russian border to Riga, a distance that modern armored forces can traverse in a matter of hours. Even against fierce opposition from airpower, our analysis shows that there is simply not enough time to inflict sufficient damage to halt a Russian attack, absent sufficient NATO ground forces to slow their movement and force invaders to operate in ways that make them more vulnerable to air attack. This is intrinsically a joint fight, not one that can be won on the ground or from the skies alone.

Add in the fact that the Bush administration decided — and the Obama administration affirmed — that, beginning in 2019, U.S. forces will no longer use cluster weapons that leave more than one percent of their ordnance unexploded on the ground. While admirable on humanitarian grounds, this decision — for which there is no parallel on the Russian side — will significantly reduce the effectiveness of U.S. artillery and air fire against Russian artillery, air defense, and mechanized targets. Given the weakness of NATO’s overall posture, this is no trivial concession.

Today NATO is indeed outnumbered, outranged, and outgunned by Russia in Europe and beset by a number of compounding factors that make the situation worse. Having said that, it is possible to begin restoring a more robust deterrent posture and to do so at a price tag that appears affordable in the context of an alliance with an aggregate GDP of $35 trillion. The enlarged European Reassurance Initiative announced by the administration is a step in the right direction, though not a complete solution. Also, NATO’s European members must begin making the necessary investments to fulfill their commitments to the alliance’s collective defense; this is not just America’s problem.

It seems unlikely that Vladimir Putin intends to turn his guns on NATO any time soon. However, the consequences should he decide to do so are severe. Probably the best outcome — if the phrase has any meaning in this context — would be something like a new Cold War, with all the implications that bears. A war with Russia would be fraught with escalatory potential from the moment the first shot was fired; and generations born outside the shadow of nuclear Armageddon would suddenly be reintroduced to fears thought long dead and buried.

A situation 20 years in the making will not be solved overnight, nor will solving it be politically simple or non-controversial for an alliance consisting of 29 members with different priorities and perceptions. Nonetheless, the potential consequences of failing to do so are so dire that prudent investments — in improved posture and thoughtful, targeted modernization of the joint force — to stave them off are warranted to assure allies living next to a belligerent Russia and to provide an insurance policy against the risks of a potential catastrophe.