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Armored ground vehicles in a frontline role are largely worthless against a modern military; it’s too easy to take them out with drone-fired missiles or kamikaz
by wayoutthere 5y ago
Armored ground vehicles in a frontline role are largely worthless against a modern military; it’s too easy to take them out with drone-fired missiles or kamikaze drones.
NATO doesn’t need to position planes in the Baltics when they’re within range of its air bases in Germany (airbases should be well behind the front lines anyway).
- varjag 5y agoPeople often have no appreciation of scale. Russia has more armor than NATO has Javelins and loitering munitions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wayoutthere 5y agoMost of which are pushing 50 years old. Russia has a lot of military assets, and has developed some advanced capabilities, but has not been able to field them in any meaningful quantity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The same story is true with their air superiority / denial capabilities. They have advanced weapons, but not enough of them to go toe-to-toe with NATO and the bulk of their military is obsolete Soviet-era hardware.
- varjag 5y agoMost of NATO equipment is not exactly sparkling new either, am not sure what that proves. Does it not count if the battletank that runs you over is from 1980s?
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, but they run just fine. Russia can field massive amounts of heavy materials, far more than any other Western European country, and they have plenty of mobile launchers and other annoying hardware that can throw a spanner in the works for a fairly large surface area, and the number of airplanes they can field is quite impressive. It may not be the latest and the greatest, but it's not as if F35s are thick on the ground (or in the skies) in Europe either (less than 100 in total, most for training purposes). I really would not see this put to the test, not only because of the potential outcome but because such an exchange has the potential to spiral out of control really fast.
- wayoutthere 5y agoTotally agree with the last part, and I think Russia is playing a dangerous game of chicken here that risks nuclear WW3 if it goes wrong.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoAnd yet Finns, spectacularily outnumbered, held off Russian invasion anyway with machine guns and German drugs.
- varjag 5y agoFSVO held off. All Finnish territory claimed by USSR at the beginning of the conflict was in the end annexed and remains so to this day.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoCertainly kept more than half the country. Here's hoping Ukraine prevails as well.
- varjag 5y agoAmen.