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Russia has pretty conclusively shown that they aren't even close to the same league as the US in terms of warfare. Like comparing an amateur pickup basketball

Russia has pretty conclusively shown that they aren't even close to the same league as the US in terms of warfare. Like comparing an amateur pickup basketball team to the Chicago Bulls.

maybelsyrup 4y ago
Uh what US warfare have you been watching? Your analogy only works if it’s the like the 2000-200 Bulls (15-67).
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Uh what US warfare have you been watching? Russia is struggling with Ukraine and the NATO weaponry they've been gifted. 100 mile supply lines proved too much, and they failed entirely to achieve air superiority. There's zero reason to think they'd do better against the US more directly.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    Let's take a step back and remember something: If Russia and the USA had a "war" it would consist of reducing each other to the Stone Age in a couple of hours, then struggling not to starve to death
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      The idea that any armed conflict between the two is guaranteed to escalate to nuclear weapons is widespread, but certainly not proven. A US invasion of Russia seems likely to result in nuclear war, but an engagement between conventional forces over a third-party nation like Ukraine seems quite unlikely to. Neither side is suicidal at the leadership level. US and Russian aviators directly engaged in Vietnam without nuclear holocaust.
      - davrosthedalek 4y ago
        I hope you are right, but I am not convinced in Putin's case.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        If Putin had a big red button that ran wirelessly and automatically, I'd be concerned. Human beings have to actually implement the order. I think a first-strike order on the US without a serious and immediate existential threat to the Russian state and people winds up with someone offing him with their sidearm. The Russians have plenty of precedent for this (both offing the leadership, and more generally "oops, he fell out of a window" as a solution), and we've a number of historical examples of lower-level folks going "I don't wanna" in false-alarm situations, like Stanislav Petrov.
        davrosthedalek 4y ago
        I agree, a first strike order is very unlikely. But what if he fires off a nuke over Ukraine? Maybe in a way that it's not 100% clear whether it's a Russian nuke, or a power plant blowing up, or somebody else? Or he orders to detonate a bomb over the open sea to demonstrate the capability? But certainly, if I would be Putin, I'd be nervous drinking tea, or walking close to a window. That doesn't make him more stable though.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        You can't make a nuke look like a power plant explosion; they're simply too different. No nuclear power station can explode in that fashion. A bomb over the ocean wouldn't demonstrate any new capacity, and would be seen as the bluff it would almost certainly be. A nuke on Ukranian soil would further open the floodgates of Western aid, expand sanctions, and push more nations firmly into the EU/NATO fold as Finland and Sweden already have been.
        AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    - eitland 4y ago
      Why do you think a country that isn't capable of properly maintaining tanks is capable of maintaining nukes? I mean, ICBMs are literally rocket science with nuclear physics on top of them. How can a country that cannot even prevent theft of electronics from their "doomsday plane" in front of the 9th of May parade keep a fleet of ICBMs operative? In a normal year Russia has a total military budget that is smaller than the part of the US military budged allocated to nuke maintenance. How do you think they keep their nukes ready? All this is before we start talking about corruption. There is a reason why some Russian military leaders have yachts and/or palaces and US military leaders doesn't have them. In all fairness, maybe most of the yachts are made of missing winter uniforms (I recently saw Russians wearing Tyvek suits as "winter uniforms"). But if they steal so openly from things that was supposed to be used - why wouldn't they steal even more from things that were never meant to be used? Before I round up, some hearsay: Some journalist that claimed he traveled throught the former Soviet Union shortly after the collapse (I have forgotten the name and I am in no position to verify it anyway) said that he saw missile silos full of rainwater. And when he asked people said it had already been like that for a few years before the collapse in 1991. Do I think we don't have to care? Absolutely not. They might very well have a few functional nukes, maintained by enthusiastic crews, sailing around on subs somewhere I don't know (I don't follow the space to closely). But I am not worried that they will send US back to the stone age at all.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        A nuclear arsenal where only 100 of the 6,000 warheads are actually maintained and functional is still a useful one, though. Less so if 100/6,000 tanks work.
      - Firmwarrior 4y ago
        Do you remember when there was a tiny blip in production for COVID, and suddenly the shelves were empty? What do you think is going to happen if 100 nukes go off and wipe out strategic chunks of the USA?
        tmccrary55 4y ago
        No, not really. In the Midwest, supply shortages of staples and most consumer goods were not so bad that the "shelves were empty." You might have had to buy a different brand of a given good. The only real annoying thing has been products that use semiconductors.
    - mustacheemperor 4y ago
      Let's check our assumptions. The bulletin of atomic scientists first published in 2017 [0] that they felt the modernized US nuclear arsenal is likely sufficient to execute a devastatingly successful first-strike against the Russian arsenal and nuclear command and control, because the new 'super-fuze' in the submarine arsenal significantly upgrades the hard-target kill capability of the warheads. The risk they communicate in this article is that Russia will misinterpret a false positive from their early warning system (which offers only half the warning time of the US') and launch a "retaliatory" strike against the US on a false alarm, because they do not expect to have that capability after a US strike. The modernization program has continued since 2017 and extended to the minuteman arsenal. [0] https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-compensating-super-fuze/ https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni... >the United States would be able to target huge portions of its nuclear force against non-hardened targets, the destruction of which would be crucial to a “successful” first strike...The garrisons and their support facilities would probably be destroyed quickly, and some of the dispersed road-mobile launchers would also be quickly destroyed as they were in the process of dispersing. To destroy or expose the remaining launchers...Just 125 US Minuteman III warheads could set fire to some 8,000 square miles of forest area where the road-mobile missiles are most likely to be deployed. This would be the equivalent of a circular area with a diameter of 100 miles. >Many of the nearly 300 remaining deployed W76 warheads could be used to attack all command posts associated with Russian ICBMs.
- adventured 4y ago
  > Uh what US warfare have you been watching? The one where the US tends to perform well against its adversaries. True in the Civil War. True in WW1. True in WW2. True in Korea. True in Vietnam. True in the Gulf War. True in Afghanistan. True in Iraq. And now just a smidgen of its old weapons are helping Ukraine humiliate Russia. The US was in Afghanistan for two decades with 1,932 soldiers killed by hostile action. Russia lost 15,000+ soldiers in Afghanistan in ten years (probably far higher given the information available and how we've seen Russia lie so dramatically about its losses in Ukraine). It's going to lose 100,000 soldiers in Ukraine in a little over a year. The US could have held Afghanistan perpetually with 15,000-20,000 soldiers on the ground. The Taliban is a joke of a fighting force, they never competed well with the US; but they have replacement numbers, and guerrilla wars are very time consuming to fight and require massive troop deployments to actually win (you have to suffocate every corner of the enemy presence, like battling an infestation). It wasn't worth it and voters decided that, it had begun to become an unpopular nation building exercise despite the very low losses for the US.
  - trhr 4y ago
    - smegger001 4y ago
      > True in the Civil War. >You think so? Ya'll lost 200,000 men to Southern fever, steel, and shot. Next time it'll be 20 million. Know your limits, yankee, and stay north of Dallas. The south started with a treasonous surprise attack and had most of the the infantry that wasn't stationed in isolated western frontier territory or along the us-canada border, the countries war college at westpoint and many of the countries highest generals, once the north got its act together it started to burn the south to the ground. There is a reason the south still dreads the name Sherman. You got set on fire once when you started the fight with sucker punch, and you want to try to pick fight again?
      - BuckRogers 4y ago
        Well put. For our international observers I would note that the War of Southern Aggression that began with the treasonous attack on Fort Sumter is nearly identical to the behavior we're seeing out of similar origins today. New US states were increasingly free rather than slave states, and thus when democracy wasn't going the way of those who wanted to maintain slavery, they attacked their own government. The terrorist attack on January 6th was the exact same root cause, democracy not going the way some want it. Leading them to embrace terrorism and violence. After the Civil War, the KKK was created, which continued the terrorism of our citizenry for decades. Yet in that case, the KKK came after the failed attempt at succession, today MAGA came before the attempt. I describe myself as a 'pre-MAGA Republican who supports labor unions', but there's a rotten seed in American discourse today that was always there and it's largely the same people then as now. The south would have no chance in Round 2. Most of their money and manpower actually comes from 'Yankees'. Which historically when someone is called that, it's the easy indicator to who is loyal and true to the United States, a real American patriot. Whether spoken spoken by a Brit or Johnny Reb, you definitely want to be called a Yankee as it's a badge of honor that you are loyal to your nation. Those that are moving south are whose ancestors' allegiance was to the United States of America in the Civil War, and they still maintain that allegiance to this day in those families. They are not loyal to the defunct Confederacy and would not die for their Lost Cause.
- baseballdork 4y ago
  Probably the warfare that involved invading and occupying 2 states thousands of miles away for 20 years with complete air dominance and suffering under 10,000 KIA. Russia has suffered 20,000 deaths in under a year on its boarder.

Russia has pretty conclusively shown that they aren't even close to the same league as the US in terms of warfare. Like comparing an amateur pickup basketball team to the Chicago Bulls.

maybelsyrup 4y ago

Uh what US warfare have you been watching? Your analogy only works if it’s the like the 2000-200 Bulls (15-67).

ceejayoz 4y ago
> Uh what US warfare have you been watching? Russia is struggling with Ukraine and the NATO weaponry they've been gifted. 100 mile supply lines proved too much, and they failed entirely to achieve air superiority. There's zero reason to think they'd do better against the US more directly.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Let's take a step back and remember something: If Russia and the USA had a "war" it would consist of reducing each other to the Stone Age in a couple of hours, then struggling not to starve to death
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The idea that any armed conflict between the two is guaranteed to escalate to nuclear weapons is widespread, but certainly not proven. A US invasion of Russia seems likely to result in nuclear war, but an engagement between conventional forces over a third-party nation like Ukraine seems quite unlikely to. Neither side is suicidal at the leadership level. US and Russian aviators directly engaged in Vietnam without nuclear holocaust.
    - davrosthedalek 4y ago
      I hope you are right, but I am not convinced in Putin's case.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        If Putin had a big red button that ran wirelessly and automatically, I'd be concerned. Human beings have to actually implement the order. I think a first-strike order on the US without a serious and immediate existential threat to the Russian state and people winds up with someone offing him with their sidearm. The Russians have plenty of precedent for this (both offing the leadership, and more generally "oops, he fell out of a window" as a solution), and we've a number of historical examples of lower-level folks going "I don't wanna" in false-alarm situations, like Stanislav Petrov.
        davrosthedalek 4y ago
        I agree, a first strike order is very unlikely. But what if he fires off a nuke over Ukraine? Maybe in a way that it's not 100% clear whether it's a Russian nuke, or a power plant blowing up, or somebody else? Or he orders to detonate a bomb over the open sea to demonstrate the capability? But certainly, if I would be Putin, I'd be nervous drinking tea, or walking close to a window. That doesn't make him more stable though.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        You can't make a nuke look like a power plant explosion; they're simply too different. No nuclear power station can explode in that fashion. A bomb over the ocean wouldn't demonstrate any new capacity, and would be seen as the bluff it would almost certainly be. A nuke on Ukranian soil would further open the floodgates of Western aid, expand sanctions, and push more nations firmly into the EU/NATO fold as Finland and Sweden already have been.
        AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  - eitland 4y ago
    Why do you think a country that isn't capable of properly maintaining tanks is capable of maintaining nukes? I mean, ICBMs are literally rocket science with nuclear physics on top of them. How can a country that cannot even prevent theft of electronics from their "doomsday plane" in front of the 9th of May parade keep a fleet of ICBMs operative? In a normal year Russia has a total military budget that is smaller than the part of the US military budged allocated to nuke maintenance. How do you think they keep their nukes ready? All this is before we start talking about corruption. There is a reason why some Russian military leaders have yachts and/or palaces and US military leaders doesn't have them. In all fairness, maybe most of the yachts are made of missing winter uniforms (I recently saw Russians wearing Tyvek suits as "winter uniforms"). But if they steal so openly from things that was supposed to be used - why wouldn't they steal even more from things that were never meant to be used? Before I round up, some hearsay: Some journalist that claimed he traveled throught the former Soviet Union shortly after the collapse (I have forgotten the name and I am in no position to verify it anyway) said that he saw missile silos full of rainwater. And when he asked people said it had already been like that for a few years before the collapse in 1991. Do I think we don't have to care? Absolutely not. They might very well have a few functional nukes, maintained by enthusiastic crews, sailing around on subs somewhere I don't know (I don't follow the space to closely). But I am not worried that they will send US back to the stone age at all.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      A nuclear arsenal where only 100 of the 6,000 warheads are actually maintained and functional is still a useful one, though. Less so if 100/6,000 tanks work.
    - Firmwarrior 4y ago
      Do you remember when there was a tiny blip in production for COVID, and suddenly the shelves were empty? What do you think is going to happen if 100 nukes go off and wipe out strategic chunks of the USA?
      - tmccrary55 4y ago
        No, not really. In the Midwest, supply shortages of staples and most consumer goods were not so bad that the "shelves were empty." You might have had to buy a different brand of a given good. The only real annoying thing has been products that use semiconductors.
  - mustacheemperor 4y ago
    Let's check our assumptions. The bulletin of atomic scientists first published in 2017 [0] that they felt the modernized US nuclear arsenal is likely sufficient to execute a devastatingly successful first-strike against the Russian arsenal and nuclear command and control, because the new 'super-fuze' in the submarine arsenal significantly upgrades the hard-target kill capability of the warheads. The risk they communicate in this article is that Russia will misinterpret a false positive from their early warning system (which offers only half the warning time of the US') and launch a "retaliatory" strike against the US on a false alarm, because they do not expect to have that capability after a US strike. The modernization program has continued since 2017 and extended to the minuteman arsenal. [0] https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-compensating-super-fuze/ https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni... >the United States would be able to target huge portions of its nuclear force against non-hardened targets, the destruction of which would be crucial to a “successful” first strike...The garrisons and their support facilities would probably be destroyed quickly, and some of the dispersed road-mobile launchers would also be quickly destroyed as they were in the process of dispersing. To destroy or expose the remaining launchers...Just 125 US Minuteman III warheads could set fire to some 8,000 square miles of forest area where the road-mobile missiles are most likely to be deployed. This would be the equivalent of a circular area with a diameter of 100 miles. >Many of the nearly 300 remaining deployed W76 warheads could be used to attack all command posts associated with Russian ICBMs.
adventured 4y ago
> Uh what US warfare have you been watching? The one where the US tends to perform well against its adversaries. True in the Civil War. True in WW1. True in WW2. True in Korea. True in Vietnam. True in the Gulf War. True in Afghanistan. True in Iraq. And now just a smidgen of its old weapons are helping Ukraine humiliate Russia. The US was in Afghanistan for two decades with 1,932 soldiers killed by hostile action. Russia lost 15,000+ soldiers in Afghanistan in ten years (probably far higher given the information available and how we've seen Russia lie so dramatically about its losses in Ukraine). It's going to lose 100,000 soldiers in Ukraine in a little over a year. The US could have held Afghanistan perpetually with 15,000-20,000 soldiers on the ground. The Taliban is a joke of a fighting force, they never competed well with the US; but they have replacement numbers, and guerrilla wars are very time consuming to fight and require massive troop deployments to actually win (you have to suffocate every corner of the enemy presence, like battling an infestation). It wasn't worth it and voters decided that, it had begun to become an unpopular nation building exercise despite the very low losses for the US.
- trhr 4y ago
  - smegger001 4y ago
    > True in the Civil War. >You think so? Ya'll lost 200,000 men to Southern fever, steel, and shot. Next time it'll be 20 million. Know your limits, yankee, and stay north of Dallas. The south started with a treasonous surprise attack and had most of the the infantry that wasn't stationed in isolated western frontier territory or along the us-canada border, the countries war college at westpoint and many of the countries highest generals, once the north got its act together it started to burn the south to the ground. There is a reason the south still dreads the name Sherman. You got set on fire once when you started the fight with sucker punch, and you want to try to pick fight again?
    - BuckRogers 4y ago
      Well put. For our international observers I would note that the War of Southern Aggression that began with the treasonous attack on Fort Sumter is nearly identical to the behavior we're seeing out of similar origins today. New US states were increasingly free rather than slave states, and thus when democracy wasn't going the way of those who wanted to maintain slavery, they attacked their own government. The terrorist attack on January 6th was the exact same root cause, democracy not going the way some want it. Leading them to embrace terrorism and violence. After the Civil War, the KKK was created, which continued the terrorism of our citizenry for decades. Yet in that case, the KKK came after the failed attempt at succession, today MAGA came before the attempt. I describe myself as a 'pre-MAGA Republican who supports labor unions', but there's a rotten seed in American discourse today that was always there and it's largely the same people then as now. The south would have no chance in Round 2. Most of their money and manpower actually comes from 'Yankees'. Which historically when someone is called that, it's the easy indicator to who is loyal and true to the United States, a real American patriot. Whether spoken spoken by a Brit or Johnny Reb, you definitely want to be called a Yankee as it's a badge of honor that you are loyal to your nation. Those that are moving south are whose ancestors' allegiance was to the United States of America in the Civil War, and they still maintain that allegiance to this day in those families. They are not loyal to the defunct Confederacy and would not die for their Lost Cause.
baseballdork 4y ago
Probably the warfare that involved invading and occupying 2 states thousands of miles away for 20 years with complete air dominance and suffering under 10,000 KIA. Russia has suffered 20,000 deaths in under a year on its boarder.