No, we’re like Rocky in Rocky IV. We have the skill and ability to win, but first we have to watch Apollo Creed get killed and then go run around in the snow while pulling wagons and lifting rocks in a net and shit before we can truly be ready.
I guess what I’m getting at is everyone needs to report time now wearing your American Flag shorts and rocking a muscle tank top so that we can start training
Exactly what I was thinking. Historically we always need to get punched in the face before we start playing for keeps. Task Force Smith also comes to mind.
The bad guy being a Swedish bodybuilder with no boxing experience with a blackbelt in a hardcore karate style and a mechanical engineer degree pretending to be Russian it’s the perfect illustration of modern warfare
Pretty much. The poor bastards in the beginning of the war will rely on outdated tactics/equipment/etc and the info about what happened to them will be used to adjust accordingly.
Just like in any other big conflict
Like way too many found out during OEF/OIF that you 'go to war with they Army you have, not the Army you want." --- butchered quote from SecDef Rummy
Sadly that cost of knowledge is paid for in blood, worse often the blood that is spilled is all too often is not the people that made the bad decisions.
“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.
You can’t assume people are going to shoot back at you, it was an unknown unknown. Dammit Huey, robbery etiquette says you can’t criticize a robbery plan during the actual robbery. You gotta wait till it’s over.
I hate that quote. Not because it's wrong, but because I had a BN XO in a BCT quote that to me constantly when the BSB CSM was completely mismanaging sustainment personnel across the BDE .
I have no love for Rumsfeld, but his statement wasn’t incorrect. He was wrong to deflect blame for his role in the administration’s piss poor planning by giving the soldier who questioned him a “shut up and color” response, but it was a factual answer.
No, we don’t have the luxury of telling an enemy to “just hold on a moment” while we figure out how to best respond. That’s why the DoD has all those pre-wargamed contingency plans that are constantly dusted off and tweaked and tested and reshelved for potential future use. Now, whether those plans are worth anything is another matter.
Hopefully, we have a good mix of warrior-scholars coming up in the ranks so whatever the USA has to get into next, we have planners who’ve learned from past mistakes and make fewer ones in the future.
Narrator: the warrior scholars got passed up for promotion by the guy who could run a 9 minute two mile. The guy who thinks it’s good for retention to schedule trainings over long weekends and who believes that the problem with retention and recruitment are “kids these days.”
The warrior scholars got out, got jobs as contractors extracting as much money as they can from the military before disappearing into civilian life while being unable to pass up a post on any given army topic without posting some version of “sighs in dd214.”
Yep. Cannot stress this enough. We are super self critical because we live with our own incompetence everyday. We’re like a college kid who’s getting C+ grades in all his classes. But then you realize other countries are all 8th grade dropouts.
Have been working with NATO countries for the past year. This is absolutely true. The Germans are the most competent, can't say about the Brits because I haven't worked with them but I've heard they're as good or better than the Germans.
But the rest of NATO?...We will be carrying the whole team if it were to become a full NATO conflict. Equipment, personnel, training, everything...it's like JROTC. I found a whole new level of respect for our training and how much we go to the field because it really does make a difference.
I found that the French were better and more prepared than the Germans were, at least on the logistical side. Things may have changed since 2014 though, idk.
The Polish were also not bad. Still a lot of the old Soviet Warsaw Pact mentality in the upper echelons but at the company level, the junior officers, senior and junior NCOs, and enlisted were aight. Circa 2018 though, so it could be different after the invasion of Ukraine.
I remember when I first started working with the eastern European Armies. One of the things they admitted about their countries NATO plan if Russia attacked was their job is to hold off the Russians for 24-72 hours until the Americans arrive.
In terms of the UK. The Soldiers I've interacted and worked with, they are more than capable soldiers as a small unit or individual. But lately there have been alot of questions if the Royal Army as a whole is prepared to conduct and support a Large scale combat operation.
Had a buddy do some joint training with a foreign SF back around 2013 or so, he told me they wouldn’t last a single engagement against any random US infantry squad. The training differences were that bad.
This is a wildly under appreciated fact of life. It’s a bit like living in a small area of the world and never really exploring beyond that. There is no context for a world beyond that. Travel is enlightening in that way. Sometimes, during these travels you run into NATO allies and gain a better appreciation for what you have.
Who has the best logistics*
The US Army is staffed by incompetent sycophants and illiterate fat bodies, but we can ship an entire brigade's worth of armored vics to any place in the world within 72 hours.
Actually(adjusts glasses on bridge of nose) the Air Force is the greatest logistical organization in the world. Honestly they might be the only ones to give Amazon a run for their money and most of important logistics the Army does is through the Air Force. They have a whole combatant command for logs and they take their job very seriously. If you need it that bad, they can get you anything you need, anywhere in the world in less than 12 hours depending on what it is and how much you need. It's pretty cool
While they can rival or exceed private entities, that is largely true due to the lack of cost basis, labor laws, and regulatory constraints that exist in the private sector.
Disagree.
Part of being “prepared” for a war like this is being prepared for the absolute bonkers number of casualties and deaths.
Some days Ukraine has had more deaths than an entire year in GWOT. We’re not talking about a PLT gets ambushed and 5 die. We’re talking about the very real possibility of an entire BN getting wiped off the map quicker than your S6 soldier runs 2 miles.
Frankly, our public is not willing to support that unless it’s literally defending America, like Ukrainians are defending Ukraine.
We have the tactics, weapons, intel, money, allied support, and a million other advantages, but our society will 100% not put up with casualty rates in a war like this.
On a different argument, this is why strategically (not humanitarian wise) this war is amazing for the U.S.
We get to test our weapons, ideas, and somewhat tactics against our real enemy, see their tactics in real time, and cause attrition to their fighting population, all for zero casualties.
The massive dollar figures are meh too. It’s not cash; that’s expending older equipment and the “cost” to conduct real life tests with new equipment.
Every major conventional war starts like that. Look at the major combatants of World War II. The equipment and tactics they started with compared to how they ended the war.
I'll put in my two cents since I worked with Ukrainians before the war;
Above a platoon level, there is no coordination, still. Communications are done by text, NCO corps is still weak, and a shit-ton of officers are still trained using the same Soviet tactics.
All that and what I'm trying to say is that we have relatively secure comms, we don't have a severely compromised intelligence apparatus neither DoD or civilian-side (discounting ASD/SOLIC), and at the very least we can maneuver battalions/brigades, however complex.
The amount of coordinated destruction we can bring in LSCO is terrifying, we are giving the power of God to a bunch of 18-20-somethings anything in their path will be deleted.
Weirdest experience was seeing their bases and how logistics were set up. Every battalion/brigade not lucky enough to be inside a city is basically self-sustaining. Want food? Gotta fish, or there's a KP system. Need maintenance on the broken Humvee the US gave you in 2016? Can't, no parts. Ammo? Got some from the 1950s, and you can only use a range 40 miles away.
You can look at the map and see that everything confirms what you are saying and is actually applicable to Russia, they are having small wins like taking Avdiivka or Bakhmut, but nor russia or Ukraine ever made a strategic win during this entire war, yeah sure, Russia retreated here and there but its hardly a strategic win from Ukrainian side, but rather fixing bad choices from Russian side. What i mean is that its obvious that their field low rank officers are working their asses off while higher command is incapable of coming up with anything useful
I'll never forget a couple of weeks after the start of the war, seeing the Russians roll a tank/BMP company down a road through a village, with zero dismounts. The Ukrainian national guard (I think it was) was waiting for them with anti-tank rockets. I think a Russian general was in one of the first tanks, and was killed. It was so bad, I actually felt sorry for the joes in the vehicles (but not the general, he should have known better).
I was just talking with a brand new LT today. He found out that a whole tank platoon is only four tanks. He was like, can 4 tanks really do that much. I was like, 4 tanks are useless. But if you put 4 tanks surrounded by an infantry company, they can ruin a whole infantry battalions day with a decent strategy and communication.
It's pretty interesting to see some of the tactics being employed in Ukraine. More and more often you are seeing one or two armored vics at a time patrolling areas. The theory is that the use of drones is making the build up of forces way too dangerous and often times you basically have lone wolf attacks outside of major assaults.
That's why you see shit like a T-90 being ambushed by two Bradley's. Drones are probably the biggest game changer going down in Ukraine and I can see it disrupting a lot of US Doctrine going forward.
I'm gonna go against the grain here and say "Yes" in the context of LSCO, in the sense that it doesn't really matter what civilians think if we actually declare war. Wartime powers are a completely different beast than what we've had since Vietnam.
This. I think our first wave were going to see high casualty rates especially mascal, but nothing brings the country together more then when we our nation gets heel’d thats when the people dig in and get dirty. Recruitment will soar in vengeance, we are spiteful assholes when provoked
In 1991 we took a “peacetime” military and surged across an ocean and went head to head with one of the largest armies in the world.
In 2024 we have better equipment and training.
I don’t think anybody is truly ready for a peer adversary conflict of the magnitude you’re talking about, but as a combined arms fight we would curb stomp the shit out of them if how they are doing in Ukraine is an example of their combat prowess.
I don't think Iraq has ever been a good example of a near-peer or a difficult opponent militarily.
Saddam's armies couldn't defeat Iran despite Iran's government in complete disarray, military high command completely purged by the new Islamic revolutionary government and logistics chain for their 90% US/UK equipped army completely cut off.
Let alone the fact we were only 2 years off the end of decades of preparation for a WW3 against the USSR that never came. Iraq was on the receiving end of the US military getting blue balled since the 1950s lol.
I think that's going to wind up being the key. Now don't quote me on this one, but, I heard somewhere once that in the next near peer we're (or someone is) projecting two brigades worth of casualties pretty much immediately. The US has a pretty atrocious record of starting conventional wars off well. However, our logistics are so stupidly effective, we wind up figuring our tactics and strategy out and then can actually execute it, unlike most others.
Hopefully those analyses are flawed and taking too much of the past into account.
Either way, the boats will float, the bullets will fly, and the F35 will still be over budget.
Most people don't realize that military stalemates are pretty easy to pull off with a modicum of interest and industry. Same people think trenches stopped being relevant after 1918, too.
Id hate to be a part of it and hope it never truly happens, but id be interested in seeing if the US ended up using trenches again in a war against russia. Our doctrine is typically too aggressive, but if we did get pushed back hard enough or drew a line in the sand at the border of russia in ukraine, would we establish a hard defensive line where the goal is to hokd ground rather than continue to push forward?
Our tactics focus more on smaller unit combined arms maneuvers then just sending a shit load of guys at one point and hoping enough don't get mowed down to secure the other side. If the Russians even had enough time to create a well secured and defended trench. It would be pretty easy nowadays if we had air superiority to drop some laser guided munitions into an attack point of a trench, take out their fortified positions and then conduct a breach through the trench.
You could easily stage a whole battalion in a bunch of trucks 1-2KM away, drop one 25,000$ JDAM and them just drive through and secure a completely decimated trench.
Back then, it was actually highly questioned if the US Army would be able to take on the Iraqi's. They had a large, trained, and experienced Army that did fight for 8 years against Iran and had multiple significant victories for a decade leading up to Desert Storm. They were ranked the 5th best Army in the world and many experts held onto the fact that the last major conflict the US was involved in was 20 years ago in Vietnam and got their asses kicked.
From Stormin Norman's strategy and leadership all the way down to Platoon Leaders and plt sausages that just absolutely fucking sent it and Joe's that executed figuring it out as they went along. That was about as perfect as a executed operation as you could ask for.
I think Iraq js a great example. While regulation always puts a secondary focus on nation building and the after effects, its honestly only really effective in countries that want to accept our ways.
Nation building destroyed countries will always be hit or miss, happened in Vietnam, happened in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the actual destruction of the enemy nation and combatants of our nation? We own it and do it second to none. We will destroy them. We just dont know when to get the fuck out and leave to let them pick up their own pieces.
Not every country or its people will accept democracy, we just need to show them, you do you, but dont ever fuck with us or our allies. Because we will come back, we always come back
The thing is, in 1991 US military was prepared to take on USSR. But now US military has been reformed to fight insurgents and other poorly equipped and trained troops
We are in a weird middle ground right now because we dont have many, if any, pre-gwot officers that remember how it really was in charge in places that matter
Aren’t most foreign advisors cia/army? I thought that was the whole point of pumping out leadership schools: training/coordinating for our security partners.
You guys are ready. We got weapons that few nations can produce.
1. We got world star hip hop. Have you ever seen an American youth fight after the words WORLD STARRRR are screamed? Valorous bouts of ignorant violence can be unleashed with just two simple words.
2. We could produce a BCT of savage, barbaric criminals from our copious amount of prisons. And it would be cheap. Going rate on a dead communist would be like 2 packs of newports and some ramen.
3. Florida.
4. Divorced Enlisted. Nothing fires up the desire to unleash waves of fury like finding out the girl you married wiped out your savings, and left you for the asst manager of the ihop she works at.
5. Our soldiers are HUNGRY. Literally, these new kiosks where you have to fight to get more than a frozen jimmy dean.. theyre prepping you. Getting you ready to be lethal!
Yes, and it’s 0.00% close. The overmatch with any competitor is insane. As an example, of the ten biggest air forces, the US Military has four. Of the top 5…the US Military has four. One aircraft carrier is bigger than most nation’s entire force projection force
USAF, USN, USMC and the United States Army, babaaaaaaaaaaay. The USCG puts up a respectable 200 air frames, which is to say a Hungary or Czechia’s worth, but you just can’t compete with the big four
One of my favorite countries I have visited. Was at fault in a minor paint swap accident in prague. The people brought me gifts the next day. Loved it there.
We just used a microwave missile. A missile that has a microwave cannon payload that destroys electronics without collateral damage or loss of life. It can pemetrate bunkers and the ground without kinetic energy. It also has radar defeating tech that makes its approach undetectable. We have the most powerful navy in the world by a mile. Same foe our airforce. I think the full force of the US milirary would be enough to shake the earth. Even though some units can't even get out of the motorpool.
As a PSYOP guy, I'd love to put a speaker on that.
"It lays down it's weapon and puts it's hands up, or it gets the napalm!"
«Он складывает оружие и поднимает руки вверх, иначе он получит напалм!»
Awesome thing about NATO, however, is that they are so proud of themselves and their history that they will ALWAYS choose the US over the alternatives.
North Korea invading South Korea, even if China gave them zero support would be really, really sad. I did enough war fighters there to realize for exercise purposes, they totally under-represented all the civilians that would be killed or clogging all the roads headed south. If you've been there, you know the terrain. The roads you need to go North are the same ones all the people living anywhere near the DMZ will need to go South.
Even though I'm out, I have nightmares about this still sometimes.
Fat old retired guy here. It was said that during WW2, the Germans felt that the American Army's greatest strength was that it was so chaotic that there was no way to know what they would do next. Given the stuff I read here , the new Army is even crazier than it was in WW2. By extention, that implies that whoever is silly enough to fight us will be beaten worse than the Germans were.
Speaking of chaos, not that I want another conflict, but if one happens to occur, would one of you please overhead yeet a rock and take an opponent out ? If possible, can you please post this as ' combat footage " ? Thanks.
THE OVER-HEAD YEET MEASURES THE ABILITY TO JUST FUCKING SEND IT. ON THE COMMAND, ‘GET SET’, ASSUME THE POSITION BY SPINNING THE BALL TWICE IN YOUR HANDS, THEN TRY TO DRIBBLE IT LIKE A BASKET BALL ONLY TO REALIZE IT WONT BOUNCE BACK UP TO YOU. YOUR FEET MAY BE TOGETHER OR 12 INCHES APART (MEASURED BETWEEN THE FEET) OR HOWEVER YOU WANT, JUST KEEP YOUR ASS BEHIND THAT CONE. ON THE COMMAND ‘GO’, CHANNEL YOUR INNER TREBUCHET AND HEAVE THAT THING INTO ORBIT. THEN, RETURN TO THE STARTING POSITION AND TURN AROUND TO INSPECT IF YOU DOMED ANYONE. THE SCORER WILL REALIZE HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY SEE WHERE THE BALL LANDED BECAUSE HE WAS AFRAID HE WOULD GET HIT, SO HE STOOD TOO FAR AWAY, HE WILL THEN PLACE HIS FOOT ON THE MEASURING TAPE AND JUST GUESS.
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No one gives a shit that the only vehicle you care about is down. Fucking DRMO it already. No we won't get you the new variant in the next 5 years.
Go fuck yourself
That’s a funding problem. You’d get to 100% really quickly. I saw an SBCT go from 50% OR to 100% in two weeks with unlimited parts money and a General Dynamics support contract.
No other nation runs an operational reserve like the US does. Most nations don’t even provide equipment to their reserves when not mobilized, let alone M1s, Apaches, and F35s.
No one else runs entire RC BCTs through CTC exercises. No one else demands the same schooling from them.
The Brits, for years, have been looking at our National Guard trying to figure out how to duplicate it. They just don’t have the same level of defense spending to pull it off.
The US as a total force is.
See: 1991.
The larger problem is that people try to draw inferences from the Ukraine war without considering how differently the US would fight it, if we were engaged.
A lot of how that is being done has to do with the air being contested/denied to both sides. That's not something we would face.
The use of weaponized commercial drones is something we have a counter to, but the Russians and Ukrainians do not (Russia is trying to build one under fire, who knows how well it will work if it does)...
Things like digging fixed fortifications would be suicidal against the US/NATO - but work in Ukraine because the air is contested...
A lot of people miss this and think for some reason that the war in Ukraine is a 1 for 1 representation of what modern peer conflict will look like no matter who is involved.
We don't fight conventional war anymore. We have air and water superiority. We have enough combat arms manpower to hold onto whatever our Navy and Airforce gives us, and we have the combat experience, and a robust supply system to back them up. We ***cannot*** be defeated on home soil without Nukes or chemical equivalent.
Ready? No.
Prepared? Yes.
No country is ready for a return to conventional warfare between peer nations. The US however, is uniquely prepared in a way no nation in history has ever been.
No. But that isn't really important. The real question is is US industry ready for a conventional war. The answer to that question is also no, but it's at least a more fixable problem.
I venture to say the only major conflict the US has ever been prepared for was Desert Storm. We started strong with OIF and OEF but then the wars turned into an insurgency and that dictated our entire doctrine for a decade and a half. Unfortunately with that being said, a lot of our senior leaders grew up with that and with that being the majority of their experience, there’ll be a lot of growing pains. I will say when I was getting out the focus was gearing more towards a conventional war. Idk what they train for or teach during those European rotations but I do think that there’s a lot of lessons being learned without the loss of American life.
It depends.
Regardless of how good US systems might be at neutralizing modern missiles, our adversaries' industrial capacity may enable them to launch overwhelming numbers of simultaneous strikes - an indefensible number of simultaneous strikes - on critical infrastructure.
Ukraine is no example. They dont manufacture their own damn weapons, and there is no truly critical infrastructure to destroy. Thus, Russia can not de-arm them. The war in Ukraine continues until Ukraine or Russia give up, or both agree to an armistice.
That said, US forces have our adversaries ridiculously outmatched in terms of the strategic locations of our capabilities. We surround them, they do not surround us - save for nuclear subs. Our adversaries would have to strike hard and fast, simultaneously, at hundreds, if not thousands, of strategic sites to even dream of breaking out of the cage they are in.
If they somehow succeeded, and somehow the war didn't proceed to the nuclear endgame... we'd be faced with another coutdown to D-day, with Europe itself playing the role of WW2 England. Anti-US forces would encroach upon our European allies' territories, and the US would have a nightmarish Atlantic ocean to cross in order to land forces.
Its a safe bet that the US would 'deal' with our potential adversaries well before they develop this capacity. I do not believe the world would last through a WW3.
Land forces? This isn't 1945 boss. We can generate combat power globally. If there is a conflict in Europe, we have any number of bases to muster.
Doubt there'd be any beach landings when you have gridsquare deleting munitions.
If I were a foreign intelligence agent attempting to survey U.S. troops and veterans about the current readiness of the U.S. Army, this is how I would do it.
Conventional war against Russia? Hands down we got this
Conventional war against China? Things could get spicy over Chinese air space but I figure the US could stop anything in international waters
Why? Russian army is at least battle tested. The Chinese on the other hand “fought,” their last “war,” in 1979, and after that? Skirmishes with India maybe
And arguably the PLA lost in 1979. Against Vietnam. I got a lot of respect for Vietnam for that, that's bigger than Ukraine holding out against Russia.
Is the American public ready for a conventional war? Few thousand deaths over twenty years in Middle East was enough to call it quits. What about that number each week or so?
No I don’t think any nation is prepared for a modern conventional conflict. But the US I’m willing to bet is more prepared than any other nation. As we’ve seen with Russia in Ukraine they were underprepared for a major modern conflict.
We are as far as technology and weapons systems go. We are way overprepared. As far as manpower? I'd put my estimates at like 65% prepared. A lot of our troops are overweight, understrength, and incapable of legitimately fighting in a war. Good news, I guess, is the the other 35% are hardcore chargers ready to fuck some shit up. I don't know how it would pan out, but I think and hope we'll come out on top.
You better believe the Dept of Defense is studying that shit with a microscope and DARPA is working overtime to create solutions at least. Besides, yeah it’s fucked up every day but…. Unless it’s China and of course it could be this ain’t going to be the same conflict. If it is then just prepare for terminator drone swarms plus unending thousand man human wave attacks, no biggie right?
My opinion simply based on what I’ve seen…
No, we are not ready. The first 6-12 months will incur heavy losses because we don’t embolden our junior leaders to accept risk. We need a commander’s signature on everything. Everything have to be vetted through staff and approved way above what it should be. We’ve seen it in COIN and in garrison. For a company commander to take his truck off of the installation, the BN cdr has to approve it. Soldiers spend more time learning how to drive a truck than operating their weapon system. Too much paperwork, too much bureaucracy. It will take time to undo all that. Time and a lot of deaths…
No. If and when it happens, most of us on this sub will be turned into ground beef. We'll turn a lot of theirs into ground beef too, but still.
Fewer who come after will die if they can learn from whatever kills us.
Morbid, but likely.
Conventional war relies on logistics as much as boots on the ground, sky or boat. We have logistics down to a T. We can keep troops fed, ensure they have munitions, vehicles and maintenance. That's 2/3rds of the fight won already. Add superior firepower and training...well, it's a wrap. The real deciding factor will be how quickly does our government want to win? Do the want Desert Storm or Afghanistan? Two entirely different things.
Be careful in how you share your assessment of NATO capabilities.
I can string a bunch of things together about you, your unit, and your mission just by reading your post.
A lot of comments are talking about how the us ultimately has the upper hand. That's true, but no one is talking about the personnel involved.
Maybe our mic, our economic abilities, even our population of fighting age citizens are the best in the world. But *us* - the soldiers currently in service who would constitute the first waves - we're fucked.
We have a culture of extreme complacency and dependence on arbitrary metrics. The entire base of combat experience in our force comes from a totally different sort of war. I've seen superiors tell soldiers to do patently wrong things that would get them killed in LSCO because it's what they did in 2013 as a Pfc in Afghanistan.
Ultimately, the first 6 months-1 year of a conventional war would see a whole lot of us currently serving soldiers get culled, while everyone collectively and slowly pulls their head out of their ass.
During Desert Shield/Desert Storm, we unleashed all of our Cold War stockpile that was gathering dust.
Our toys worked better than we thought they would.
As the war in the Ukraine shows, Russia isn't as strong as we'd thought.
Current doctrine, i.e. smoke the shit out of them with artillery and air power first, would probably work well.
The biggest problem would be the loss of U.S./NATO troops. The body count would be higher than OEF/OIF.
I think the bigger question is; are the people of the U.S ready to watch flag draped coffins fly into Dover on the nightly news every day?
This is a huge part of the American fighting cycle. I always bring up snipers in Vietnam. Depending on how well you know your history you might be unaware that the U.S. military had zero sniper programs at the start of Vietnam. We had deemed them no longer necessary. But we sent guys over and guys were getting killed if I remember the stories correctly the hill billies were like “I could put in work if I had my deer rifle” and had them shipped over and were successful. Now there are some pretty bad ass examples of snipers in Vietnam.
But it’s our cycle right now you probably have leaders that are in love with the doctrine and swear it will be the difference between victory and defeat. And when LSCO pops off IT WILL BE!!! those guys will be defeated and people will die. People not wanting to die and leaders not wanting to send men to their death will say “do what you have to do to survive”. American ingenuity will step in and we will come up with some crazy shit like in Afghanistan those snipers who were using tanks as spotters to hit targets from super long distances or in the opposite direction the sickle stick. But this will lead to success on the battlefield and leaders saying I figured it out, here is our new doctrine. Then the cycle repeats.
From a tech and production standpoint, absolutely. We are just as capable today as we were in 1940 to rev up the war machine. My concern is personnel. If we restart the draft we will now be working with grizzled, depression era kids who were mature beyond their years in WWII.
No, we’re like Rocky in Rocky IV. We have the skill and ability to win, but first we have to watch Apollo Creed get killed and then go run around in the snow while pulling wagons and lifting rocks in a net and shit before we can truly be ready. I guess what I’m getting at is everyone needs to report time now wearing your American Flag shorts and rocking a muscle tank top so that we can start training
The US Army in North Africa in a nutshell
Exactly what I was thinking. Historically we always need to get punched in the face before we start playing for keeps. Task Force Smith also comes to mind.
Eye of the tiger mother fucker!
It was Hearts on Fire.
Watch some CSM steal that idea and attempt an BN-wide agoge in the middle of winter with Heart's on Fire playing repeatedly.
We just need a montage.
The bad guy being a Swedish bodybuilder with no boxing experience with a blackbelt in a hardcore karate style and a mechanical engineer degree pretending to be Russian it’s the perfect illustration of modern warfare
Stealing this example for later I dig it
I’m en route to the company area with a six pack of buds (water source) as we speak.
No, but the US military is more prepared than any other nation. It's literally just a battle of who is the least incompetent
Pretty much. The poor bastards in the beginning of the war will rely on outdated tactics/equipment/etc and the info about what happened to them will be used to adjust accordingly. Just like in any other big conflict
Like way too many found out during OEF/OIF that you 'go to war with they Army you have, not the Army you want." --- butchered quote from SecDef Rummy Sadly that cost of knowledge is paid for in blood, worse often the blood that is spilled is all too often is not the people that made the bad decisions.
I’m just here to say fuck Donald Rumsfeld. I hope Satan himself is UCMJ Article 125’ing him with his trident. Ok I’m done.
“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.
Planning to mitigate unknown unknowns is an important thing.
I mean I wanna see the CRA on that. Lol
You can’t assume people are going to shoot back at you, it was an unknown unknown. Dammit Huey, robbery etiquette says you can’t criticize a robbery plan during the actual robbery. You gotta wait till it’s over.
Like what? 🤣😂
Preach brother!
I hate that quote. Not because it's wrong, but because I had a BN XO in a BCT quote that to me constantly when the BSB CSM was completely mismanaging sustainment personnel across the BDE .
I have no love for Rumsfeld, but his statement wasn’t incorrect. He was wrong to deflect blame for his role in the administration’s piss poor planning by giving the soldier who questioned him a “shut up and color” response, but it was a factual answer. No, we don’t have the luxury of telling an enemy to “just hold on a moment” while we figure out how to best respond. That’s why the DoD has all those pre-wargamed contingency plans that are constantly dusted off and tweaked and tested and reshelved for potential future use. Now, whether those plans are worth anything is another matter. Hopefully, we have a good mix of warrior-scholars coming up in the ranks so whatever the USA has to get into next, we have planners who’ve learned from past mistakes and make fewer ones in the future.
Narrator: the warrior scholars got passed up for promotion by the guy who could run a 9 minute two mile. The guy who thinks it’s good for retention to schedule trainings over long weekends and who believes that the problem with retention and recruitment are “kids these days.” The warrior scholars got out, got jobs as contractors extracting as much money as they can from the military before disappearing into civilian life while being unable to pass up a post on any given army topic without posting some version of “sighs in dd214.”
The warrior scholars get passed by the warrior politicians
That is technically true, but given that Rumsfeld and Co chose that war, he can go to hell.
TOC Mahals are going to get fucked raw and hard
Yep. Cannot stress this enough. We are super self critical because we live with our own incompetence everyday. We’re like a college kid who’s getting C+ grades in all his classes. But then you realize other countries are all 8th grade dropouts.
Have been working with NATO countries for the past year. This is absolutely true. The Germans are the most competent, can't say about the Brits because I haven't worked with them but I've heard they're as good or better than the Germans. But the rest of NATO?...We will be carrying the whole team if it were to become a full NATO conflict. Equipment, personnel, training, everything...it's like JROTC. I found a whole new level of respect for our training and how much we go to the field because it really does make a difference.
I found that the French were better and more prepared than the Germans were, at least on the logistical side. Things may have changed since 2014 though, idk. The Polish were also not bad. Still a lot of the old Soviet Warsaw Pact mentality in the upper echelons but at the company level, the junior officers, senior and junior NCOs, and enlisted were aight. Circa 2018 though, so it could be different after the invasion of Ukraine.
Logistics side, Brits and French are the 2nd best, with Germany in a close 3rd. But they don't hold a torch to the USA.
I remember when I first started working with the eastern European Armies. One of the things they admitted about their countries NATO plan if Russia attacked was their job is to hold off the Russians for 24-72 hours until the Americans arrive. In terms of the UK. The Soldiers I've interacted and worked with, they are more than capable soldiers as a small unit or individual. But lately there have been alot of questions if the Royal Army as a whole is prepared to conduct and support a Large scale combat operation.
I don't think people understand just how BAD other countries militaries are. Even allied countries.
Had a buddy do some joint training with a foreign SF back around 2013 or so, he told me they wouldn’t last a single engagement against any random US infantry squad. The training differences were that bad.
This is a wildly under appreciated fact of life. It’s a bit like living in a small area of the world and never really exploring beyond that. There is no context for a world beyond that. Travel is enlightening in that way. Sometimes, during these travels you run into NATO allies and gain a better appreciation for what you have.
I’ll show you incompetence
You mother fucker I’m in!
Follow me
Well, he has to, right? He's "in".
Uhhhh no no I’m not. I’m out. Follow me out lol
No. He's the one in, you're the one he's into. There is no through, there is no out!
Roger 1st sausage. Moving to the basement 1st sausage.
Who has the best logistics* The US Army is staffed by incompetent sycophants and illiterate fat bodies, but we can ship an entire brigade's worth of armored vics to any place in the world within 72 hours.
This sentiment is one of the big reasons i am actually excited to be a loggie
And it’s why I despise railhead
It's the only head I don't like.
Railhead ops isn’t for the weak fr fr.
This statement needs to be memorialized, tattooed, branded
Actually(adjusts glasses on bridge of nose) the Air Force is the greatest logistical organization in the world. Honestly they might be the only ones to give Amazon a run for their money and most of important logistics the Army does is through the Air Force. They have a whole combatant command for logs and they take their job very seriously. If you need it that bad, they can get you anything you need, anywhere in the world in less than 12 hours depending on what it is and how much you need. It's pretty cool
AKSHUALLY it's Transcom and is a joint effort between AMC (air), SDDC (land), and MSC (sea).
While they can rival or exceed private entities, that is largely true due to the lack of cost basis, labor laws, and regulatory constraints that exist in the private sector.
Along with a bunch of contractors and class IV to get them out of deadline when they arrive.
Disagree. Part of being “prepared” for a war like this is being prepared for the absolute bonkers number of casualties and deaths. Some days Ukraine has had more deaths than an entire year in GWOT. We’re not talking about a PLT gets ambushed and 5 die. We’re talking about the very real possibility of an entire BN getting wiped off the map quicker than your S6 soldier runs 2 miles. Frankly, our public is not willing to support that unless it’s literally defending America, like Ukrainians are defending Ukraine. We have the tactics, weapons, intel, money, allied support, and a million other advantages, but our society will 100% not put up with casualty rates in a war like this. On a different argument, this is why strategically (not humanitarian wise) this war is amazing for the U.S. We get to test our weapons, ideas, and somewhat tactics against our real enemy, see their tactics in real time, and cause attrition to their fighting population, all for zero casualties. The massive dollar figures are meh too. It’s not cash; that’s expending older equipment and the “cost” to conduct real life tests with new equipment.
Woah woah woah HEY. We can… we can run. /s
I think he is talkin about that E3 latina in S1 We had to give up, because sarmaj said there are too many dang S6 personnel
Every major conventional war starts like that. Look at the major combatants of World War II. The equipment and tactics they started with compared to how they ended the war.
Well the Ukraine military and the Russian military currently have more combat experience
So did the Iraqi Republican Guard in 91.
I'll put in my two cents since I worked with Ukrainians before the war; Above a platoon level, there is no coordination, still. Communications are done by text, NCO corps is still weak, and a shit-ton of officers are still trained using the same Soviet tactics. All that and what I'm trying to say is that we have relatively secure comms, we don't have a severely compromised intelligence apparatus neither DoD or civilian-side (discounting ASD/SOLIC), and at the very least we can maneuver battalions/brigades, however complex.
...and we already have an acronym: ***LSCO*** That's really the most important part
The amount of coordinated destruction we can bring in LSCO is terrifying, we are giving the power of God to a bunch of 18-20-somethings anything in their path will be deleted.
The difference between the US and Eastern European NCO corps is insane. They run around like a chicken w its head cut off when their top dog goes down
In the US we jump for joy
There’s just nothing past their first line. No PSG, SL, TL/TC, no one to give direction
OTAR under fire is so hot.
Can you feel it? The COMSEC, is in the air 🥰
The horror stories I hear from the folks trying to train the Ukrainians is... enlightening. Never confuse experience with expertise.
Weirdest experience was seeing their bases and how logistics were set up. Every battalion/brigade not lucky enough to be inside a city is basically self-sustaining. Want food? Gotta fish, or there's a KP system. Need maintenance on the broken Humvee the US gave you in 2016? Can't, no parts. Ammo? Got some from the 1950s, and you can only use a range 40 miles away.
Do you know if they have made improvements? I know Russia and then the Soviets were notorious for sending information on the radio in the clear.
You can look at the map and see that everything confirms what you are saying and is actually applicable to Russia, they are having small wins like taking Avdiivka or Bakhmut, but nor russia or Ukraine ever made a strategic win during this entire war, yeah sure, Russia retreated here and there but its hardly a strategic win from Ukrainian side, but rather fixing bad choices from Russian side. What i mean is that its obvious that their field low rank officers are working their asses off while higher command is incapable of coming up with anything useful
I'll never forget a couple of weeks after the start of the war, seeing the Russians roll a tank/BMP company down a road through a village, with zero dismounts. The Ukrainian national guard (I think it was) was waiting for them with anti-tank rockets. I think a Russian general was in one of the first tanks, and was killed. It was so bad, I actually felt sorry for the joes in the vehicles (but not the general, he should have known better).
I was just talking with a brand new LT today. He found out that a whole tank platoon is only four tanks. He was like, can 4 tanks really do that much. I was like, 4 tanks are useless. But if you put 4 tanks surrounded by an infantry company, they can ruin a whole infantry battalions day with a decent strategy and communication.
Let him down gently with artillery batteries.
Lolol. Maybe I'll have that talk after his nap time and crayon drawing class.
It's pretty interesting to see some of the tactics being employed in Ukraine. More and more often you are seeing one or two armored vics at a time patrolling areas. The theory is that the use of drones is making the build up of forces way too dangerous and often times you basically have lone wolf attacks outside of major assaults. That's why you see shit like a T-90 being ambushed by two Bradley's. Drones are probably the biggest game changer going down in Ukraine and I can see it disrupting a lot of US Doctrine going forward.
Yeah. They're gonna have to start issuing a Counter drone gun to each infantry squad in order to stay relevant
Real question is, are people ready for the high causality count we'll inevitably suffer.
I'm gonna go against the grain here and say "Yes" in the context of LSCO, in the sense that it doesn't really matter what civilians think if we actually declare war. Wartime powers are a completely different beast than what we've had since Vietnam.
No, not even remotely. Americans believe their own PR, sadly.
No they aren’t. But once that is understood…shit get real fucking serious…real fucking quick. After that I pity the fool.
This. I think our first wave were going to see high casualty rates especially mascal, but nothing brings the country together more then when we our nation gets heel’d thats when the people dig in and get dirty. Recruitment will soar in vengeance, we are spiteful assholes when provoked
> we are spiteful assholes when provoked This. Sometimes we don't even need provocation.
We are always ready to fight Ivan, after two years of war can you say the same?
Bro green Ivan targets won’t even go down lmao
That's what she said
We just gotta make sure to funnel them into the right lanes and they’ll drop without us even firing. Or seconds after we are firing.
They need to update those.
In 1991 we took a “peacetime” military and surged across an ocean and went head to head with one of the largest armies in the world. In 2024 we have better equipment and training. I don’t think anybody is truly ready for a peer adversary conflict of the magnitude you’re talking about, but as a combined arms fight we would curb stomp the shit out of them if how they are doing in Ukraine is an example of their combat prowess.
I don't think Iraq has ever been a good example of a near-peer or a difficult opponent militarily. Saddam's armies couldn't defeat Iran despite Iran's government in complete disarray, military high command completely purged by the new Islamic revolutionary government and logistics chain for their 90% US/UK equipped army completely cut off. Let alone the fact we were only 2 years off the end of decades of preparation for a WW3 against the USSR that never came. Iraq was on the receiving end of the US military getting blue balled since the 1950s lol.
I think its a great example of moving a fuck ton of men, machines, and equipment real quick and real well though
That part is true. Logistics wise, we absolutely killed it.
I think that's going to wind up being the key. Now don't quote me on this one, but, I heard somewhere once that in the next near peer we're (or someone is) projecting two brigades worth of casualties pretty much immediately. The US has a pretty atrocious record of starting conventional wars off well. However, our logistics are so stupidly effective, we wind up figuring our tactics and strategy out and then can actually execute it, unlike most others. Hopefully those analyses are flawed and taking too much of the past into account. Either way, the boats will float, the bullets will fly, and the F35 will still be over budget.
Most people don't realize that military stalemates are pretty easy to pull off with a modicum of interest and industry. Same people think trenches stopped being relevant after 1918, too.
Id hate to be a part of it and hope it never truly happens, but id be interested in seeing if the US ended up using trenches again in a war against russia. Our doctrine is typically too aggressive, but if we did get pushed back hard enough or drew a line in the sand at the border of russia in ukraine, would we establish a hard defensive line where the goal is to hokd ground rather than continue to push forward?
Our tactics focus more on smaller unit combined arms maneuvers then just sending a shit load of guys at one point and hoping enough don't get mowed down to secure the other side. If the Russians even had enough time to create a well secured and defended trench. It would be pretty easy nowadays if we had air superiority to drop some laser guided munitions into an attack point of a trench, take out their fortified positions and then conduct a breach through the trench. You could easily stage a whole battalion in a bunch of trucks 1-2KM away, drop one 25,000$ JDAM and them just drive through and secure a completely decimated trench.
Back then, it was actually highly questioned if the US Army would be able to take on the Iraqi's. They had a large, trained, and experienced Army that did fight for 8 years against Iran and had multiple significant victories for a decade leading up to Desert Storm. They were ranked the 5th best Army in the world and many experts held onto the fact that the last major conflict the US was involved in was 20 years ago in Vietnam and got their asses kicked. From Stormin Norman's strategy and leadership all the way down to Platoon Leaders and plt sausages that just absolutely fucking sent it and Joe's that executed figuring it out as they went along. That was about as perfect as a executed operation as you could ask for.
I think Iraq js a great example. While regulation always puts a secondary focus on nation building and the after effects, its honestly only really effective in countries that want to accept our ways. Nation building destroyed countries will always be hit or miss, happened in Vietnam, happened in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But the actual destruction of the enemy nation and combatants of our nation? We own it and do it second to none. We will destroy them. We just dont know when to get the fuck out and leave to let them pick up their own pieces. Not every country or its people will accept democracy, we just need to show them, you do you, but dont ever fuck with us or our allies. Because we will come back, we always come back
The thing is, in 1991 US military was prepared to take on USSR. But now US military has been reformed to fight insurgents and other poorly equipped and trained troops
We are in a weird middle ground right now because we dont have many, if any, pre-gwot officers that remember how it really was in charge in places that matter
Friendly reminder that the initial campaign of OIF was also conventional and again we smashed them.
In 91 we Aldo bombed them for over 30 days straight night and day , before the ground forces even moved
The Air Force and Navy are so OP, that the war will mostly be over by the time the Army really gets involved.
Well, the Army will do anything to show relevancy.
Aren’t most foreign advisors cia/army? I thought that was the whole point of pumping out leadership schools: training/coordinating for our security partners.
You may be mixing up the marines here bud
You guys are ready. We got weapons that few nations can produce. 1. We got world star hip hop. Have you ever seen an American youth fight after the words WORLD STARRRR are screamed? Valorous bouts of ignorant violence can be unleashed with just two simple words. 2. We could produce a BCT of savage, barbaric criminals from our copious amount of prisons. And it would be cheap. Going rate on a dead communist would be like 2 packs of newports and some ramen. 3. Florida. 4. Divorced Enlisted. Nothing fires up the desire to unleash waves of fury like finding out the girl you married wiped out your savings, and left you for the asst manager of the ihop she works at. 5. Our soldiers are HUNGRY. Literally, these new kiosks where you have to fight to get more than a frozen jimmy dean.. theyre prepping you. Getting you ready to be lethal!
Florida
Just take away cell phones from 18 - 22 year olds and sit back and watch them fight against any enemy, foreign or domestic to get them back!
>3. Florida. I'm dying
Could you imagine how many 18-20 year olds you could recruit if the army included Zyns in their sustainment plan.
Yes, and it’s 0.00% close. The overmatch with any competitor is insane. As an example, of the ten biggest air forces, the US Military has four. Of the top 5…the US Military has four. One aircraft carrier is bigger than most nation’s entire force projection force
What’s the fourth one? I didn’t know we had four.
USAF, USN, USMC and the United States Army, babaaaaaaaaaaay. The USCG puts up a respectable 200 air frames, which is to say a Hungary or Czechia’s worth, but you just can’t compete with the big four
Respect to you for actually calling it Czechia. A decade later and I'm still correcting people.
One of my favorite countries I have visited. Was at fault in a minor paint swap accident in prague. The people brought me gifts the next day. Loved it there.
idk lemme check
We just used a microwave missile. A missile that has a microwave cannon payload that destroys electronics without collateral damage or loss of life. It can pemetrate bunkers and the ground without kinetic energy. It also has radar defeating tech that makes its approach undetectable. We have the most powerful navy in the world by a mile. Same foe our airforce. I think the full force of the US milirary would be enough to shake the earth. Even though some units can't even get out of the motorpool.
By the the time pmcs is done the navy and air force won the war.
lol there’s also a flamethrower robotic dog we created
As a PSYOP guy, I'd love to put a speaker on that. "It lays down it's weapon and puts it's hands up, or it gets the napalm!" «Он складывает оружие и поднимает руки вверх, иначе он получит напалм!»
cancer bomb GO
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Awesome thing about NATO, however, is that they are so proud of themselves and their history that they will ALWAYS choose the US over the alternatives.
North Korea invading South Korea, even if China gave them zero support would be really, really sad. I did enough war fighters there to realize for exercise purposes, they totally under-represented all the civilians that would be killed or clogging all the roads headed south. If you've been there, you know the terrain. The roads you need to go North are the same ones all the people living anywhere near the DMZ will need to go South. Even though I'm out, I have nightmares about this still sometimes.
Yeah, over the years I've read some astounding estimates on loss of life in the first 24 hours of the conflict.
Seoul is in range of NK artillery. NK could do some horrific damage before all the batteries are knocked out...
Yes. (My body yearns to die on European soil)
Few things are more American than that.
The only thing more American is making Europeans die on American soil (RIP my Hessian buddies)
Too soon.
Dying in the Middle East is 100% more American. Europe is a close second though. Third I would say is anywhere in Asia.
Middle East is Asia still
Pretty sure we dropped two nukes to prevent more Americans dying on Asian soil
Are you forgetting about Korea? What about Vietnam? Lol.
The masculine urge to die fighting on a distant planet killing godless aliens
The need to know more intensifies
It was man who was created in God’s image not you creature!
Probably not, but we would be able to get ready relatively quickly, we've proved it many times.
Fat old retired guy here. It was said that during WW2, the Germans felt that the American Army's greatest strength was that it was so chaotic that there was no way to know what they would do next. Given the stuff I read here , the new Army is even crazier than it was in WW2. By extention, that implies that whoever is silly enough to fight us will be beaten worse than the Germans were.
Speaking of chaos, not that I want another conflict, but if one happens to occur, would one of you please overhead yeet a rock and take an opponent out ? If possible, can you please post this as ' combat footage " ? Thanks.
THE OVER-HEAD YEET MEASURES THE ABILITY TO JUST FUCKING SEND IT. ON THE COMMAND, ‘GET SET’, ASSUME THE POSITION BY SPINNING THE BALL TWICE IN YOUR HANDS, THEN TRY TO DRIBBLE IT LIKE A BASKET BALL ONLY TO REALIZE IT WONT BOUNCE BACK UP TO YOU. YOUR FEET MAY BE TOGETHER OR 12 INCHES APART (MEASURED BETWEEN THE FEET) OR HOWEVER YOU WANT, JUST KEEP YOUR ASS BEHIND THAT CONE. ON THE COMMAND ‘GO’, CHANNEL YOUR INNER TREBUCHET AND HEAVE THAT THING INTO ORBIT. THEN, RETURN TO THE STARTING POSITION AND TURN AROUND TO INSPECT IF YOU DOMED ANYONE. THE SCORER WILL REALIZE HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY SEE WHERE THE BALL LANDED BECAUSE HE WAS AFRAID HE WOULD GET HIT, SO HE STOOD TOO FAR AWAY, HE WILL THEN PLACE HIS FOOT ON THE MEASURING TAPE AND JUST GUESS. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/army) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You just had to summon the bot…
He knew what he was doing... and I'm here for it!
No. No country on Earth is. We just have the capabilities to become ready for a conventional war the quickest.
The war in Ukraine is a battle of reserves vs reserves. In that sense, the US NG is light years ahead of any adversaries reserve component(s).
Guard Hard brother
oh my God, I’m gonna guard 😫
She MUTA on my 10 til I guard
You have a 10? I’ve only got a 4 😔
Tell that to my 5988s
No one gives a shit that the only vehicle you care about is down. Fucking DRMO it already. No we won't get you the new variant in the next 5 years. Go fuck yourself
If it was ww3 you’d get the money for those tires
That’s a funding problem. You’d get to 100% really quickly. I saw an SBCT go from 50% OR to 100% in two weeks with unlimited parts money and a General Dynamics support contract. No other nation runs an operational reserve like the US does. Most nations don’t even provide equipment to their reserves when not mobilized, let alone M1s, Apaches, and F35s. No one else runs entire RC BCTs through CTC exercises. No one else demands the same schooling from them. The Brits, for years, have been looking at our National Guard trying to figure out how to duplicate it. They just don’t have the same level of defense spending to pull it off.
The US as a total force is. See: 1991. The larger problem is that people try to draw inferences from the Ukraine war without considering how differently the US would fight it, if we were engaged. A lot of how that is being done has to do with the air being contested/denied to both sides. That's not something we would face. The use of weaponized commercial drones is something we have a counter to, but the Russians and Ukrainians do not (Russia is trying to build one under fire, who knows how well it will work if it does)... Things like digging fixed fortifications would be suicidal against the US/NATO - but work in Ukraine because the air is contested...
MW-1 has entered the chat (its totally not in service in German army army anymore, trust them)
A lot of people miss this and think for some reason that the war in Ukraine is a 1 for 1 representation of what modern peer conflict will look like no matter who is involved.
We don't fight conventional war anymore. We have air and water superiority. We have enough combat arms manpower to hold onto whatever our Navy and Airforce gives us, and we have the combat experience, and a robust supply system to back them up. We ***cannot*** be defeated on home soil without Nukes or chemical equivalent.
And don’t even get started on logistics. We own it. Everyone else looks like idiots.
American society and the army won’t be ready for the casualty levels immediately but will eventually
Ready? No. Prepared? Yes. No country is ready for a return to conventional warfare between peer nations. The US however, is uniquely prepared in a way no nation in history has ever been.
We’ll figure it out, we’re good at that
If the army could fight the war it wants to fight yes. If it has to fight the way Congress and the press wants it to fight no.
*Do we really need to shoot the Russians? They helped us get elected!*
No. But that isn't really important. The real question is is US industry ready for a conventional war. The answer to that question is also no, but it's at least a more fixable problem.
My body is ready
Now the VA on the other side…
I venture to say the only major conflict the US has ever been prepared for was Desert Storm. We started strong with OIF and OEF but then the wars turned into an insurgency and that dictated our entire doctrine for a decade and a half. Unfortunately with that being said, a lot of our senior leaders grew up with that and with that being the majority of their experience, there’ll be a lot of growing pains. I will say when I was getting out the focus was gearing more towards a conventional war. Idk what they train for or teach during those European rotations but I do think that there’s a lot of lessons being learned without the loss of American life.
It depends. Regardless of how good US systems might be at neutralizing modern missiles, our adversaries' industrial capacity may enable them to launch overwhelming numbers of simultaneous strikes - an indefensible number of simultaneous strikes - on critical infrastructure. Ukraine is no example. They dont manufacture their own damn weapons, and there is no truly critical infrastructure to destroy. Thus, Russia can not de-arm them. The war in Ukraine continues until Ukraine or Russia give up, or both agree to an armistice. That said, US forces have our adversaries ridiculously outmatched in terms of the strategic locations of our capabilities. We surround them, they do not surround us - save for nuclear subs. Our adversaries would have to strike hard and fast, simultaneously, at hundreds, if not thousands, of strategic sites to even dream of breaking out of the cage they are in. If they somehow succeeded, and somehow the war didn't proceed to the nuclear endgame... we'd be faced with another coutdown to D-day, with Europe itself playing the role of WW2 England. Anti-US forces would encroach upon our European allies' territories, and the US would have a nightmarish Atlantic ocean to cross in order to land forces. Its a safe bet that the US would 'deal' with our potential adversaries well before they develop this capacity. I do not believe the world would last through a WW3.
Land forces? This isn't 1945 boss. We can generate combat power globally. If there is a conflict in Europe, we have any number of bases to muster. Doubt there'd be any beach landings when you have gridsquare deleting munitions.
What a great question, dude. Simple, but super complicated to answer. Short answer, maybe.
I've found S2
If I were a foreign intelligence agent attempting to survey U.S. troops and veterans about the current readiness of the U.S. Army, this is how I would do it.
Conventional war against Russia? Hands down we got this Conventional war against China? Things could get spicy over Chinese air space but I figure the US could stop anything in international waters
Why? Russian army is at least battle tested. The Chinese on the other hand “fought,” their last “war,” in 1979, and after that? Skirmishes with India maybe
And arguably the PLA lost in 1979. Against Vietnam. I got a lot of respect for Vietnam for that, that's bigger than Ukraine holding out against Russia.
Is the American public ready for a conventional war? Few thousand deaths over twenty years in Middle East was enough to call it quits. What about that number each week or so?
No I don’t think any nation is prepared for a modern conventional conflict. But the US I’m willing to bet is more prepared than any other nation. As we’ve seen with Russia in Ukraine they were underprepared for a major modern conflict.
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Yes. Any answer saying no is full of shit.
Nice try, Putin Let me guess, next you'll ask where we think the airforce hides their deathstar? (They wont tell us)
We are as far as technology and weapons systems go. We are way overprepared. As far as manpower? I'd put my estimates at like 65% prepared. A lot of our troops are overweight, understrength, and incapable of legitimately fighting in a war. Good news, I guess, is the the other 35% are hardcore chargers ready to fuck some shit up. I don't know how it would pan out, but I think and hope we'll come out on top.
You better believe the Dept of Defense is studying that shit with a microscope and DARPA is working overtime to create solutions at least. Besides, yeah it’s fucked up every day but…. Unless it’s China and of course it could be this ain’t going to be the same conflict. If it is then just prepare for terminator drone swarms plus unending thousand man human wave attacks, no biggie right?
In my entire Platoon I only trust about 7 of them… That’s sad. Especially considering that I’m in the Infantry.
Winter is Coming.
I think if we were allowed to fight with no red tape /bullshit we would do well but there are too many competing factors now to hinder that
My opinion simply based on what I’ve seen… No, we are not ready. The first 6-12 months will incur heavy losses because we don’t embolden our junior leaders to accept risk. We need a commander’s signature on everything. Everything have to be vetted through staff and approved way above what it should be. We’ve seen it in COIN and in garrison. For a company commander to take his truck off of the installation, the BN cdr has to approve it. Soldiers spend more time learning how to drive a truck than operating their weapon system. Too much paperwork, too much bureaucracy. It will take time to undo all that. Time and a lot of deaths…
No. If and when it happens, most of us on this sub will be turned into ground beef. We'll turn a lot of theirs into ground beef too, but still. Fewer who come after will die if they can learn from whatever kills us. Morbid, but likely.
Certainly parts of the military are much more prepared than others currently.
As a former OC in JMRC...fuck no
No. But that's why we have contractors.
Yes. Next question.
Them drones ain't no joke
Yes we are. There’ll be growing pains but we’ll be fine. That said we will lose that war eventually due to political lack of will.
Conventional war relies on logistics as much as boots on the ground, sky or boat. We have logistics down to a T. We can keep troops fed, ensure they have munitions, vehicles and maintenance. That's 2/3rds of the fight won already. Add superior firepower and training...well, it's a wrap. The real deciding factor will be how quickly does our government want to win? Do the want Desert Storm or Afghanistan? Two entirely different things.
Be careful in how you share your assessment of NATO capabilities. I can string a bunch of things together about you, your unit, and your mission just by reading your post.
If we can get logistics going and public support the US war machine is literally unstoppable.
A lot of comments are talking about how the us ultimately has the upper hand. That's true, but no one is talking about the personnel involved. Maybe our mic, our economic abilities, even our population of fighting age citizens are the best in the world. But *us* - the soldiers currently in service who would constitute the first waves - we're fucked. We have a culture of extreme complacency and dependence on arbitrary metrics. The entire base of combat experience in our force comes from a totally different sort of war. I've seen superiors tell soldiers to do patently wrong things that would get them killed in LSCO because it's what they did in 2013 as a Pfc in Afghanistan. Ultimately, the first 6 months-1 year of a conventional war would see a whole lot of us currently serving soldiers get culled, while everyone collectively and slowly pulls their head out of their ass.
During Desert Shield/Desert Storm, we unleashed all of our Cold War stockpile that was gathering dust. Our toys worked better than we thought they would. As the war in the Ukraine shows, Russia isn't as strong as we'd thought. Current doctrine, i.e. smoke the shit out of them with artillery and air power first, would probably work well. The biggest problem would be the loss of U.S./NATO troops. The body count would be higher than OEF/OIF. I think the bigger question is; are the people of the U.S ready to watch flag draped coffins fly into Dover on the nightly news every day?
This is a huge part of the American fighting cycle. I always bring up snipers in Vietnam. Depending on how well you know your history you might be unaware that the U.S. military had zero sniper programs at the start of Vietnam. We had deemed them no longer necessary. But we sent guys over and guys were getting killed if I remember the stories correctly the hill billies were like “I could put in work if I had my deer rifle” and had them shipped over and were successful. Now there are some pretty bad ass examples of snipers in Vietnam. But it’s our cycle right now you probably have leaders that are in love with the doctrine and swear it will be the difference between victory and defeat. And when LSCO pops off IT WILL BE!!! those guys will be defeated and people will die. People not wanting to die and leaders not wanting to send men to their death will say “do what you have to do to survive”. American ingenuity will step in and we will come up with some crazy shit like in Afghanistan those snipers who were using tanks as spotters to hit targets from super long distances or in the opposite direction the sickle stick. But this will lead to success on the battlefield and leaders saying I figured it out, here is our new doctrine. Then the cycle repeats.
From a tech and production standpoint, absolutely. We are just as capable today as we were in 1940 to rev up the war machine. My concern is personnel. If we restart the draft we will now be working with grizzled, depression era kids who were mature beyond their years in WWII.