re: Russia Flew 2 Nuclear Bombers Over the English Channel

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But it would be over in two weeks so no sweat

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First let me make sure everyone understands that I'm not saying war is likely at this point with Russia, I'm not saying that. But it's possible that could change. AS things stand right now, I think we're entering into a new "cold war" with Russia but chances of a "hot war" are still low.


The only thing I am saying is that were it come to war between us and Russia that would mean Russia has attacked into Europe, somewhere like Poland for example. If that were to happen, the forces we currently have in Europe by themselves would not be enough to stem any major Russian offensive. We'd have to make a massive redeployment of conventional forces to Europe similar to what we exercised for back in my time in Germany in what was called REFORGER. This redeplyment of forces would take time and by the time we had enough forces in theater, more than likely the Russian will have already overrun Poland and a good chunk of Germany as well.

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The fact that they have a bunch of nukes alone means that they are a world power. Don't they also have a lot of tanks? Like up there as near the most in the world?

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The Rusisans do have a shite ton of tanks and most of them are the modern T-80 and T-90 main battle tanks. These are on a whole other level than the T-55's and T-72 I encountered back in 91.

T-80U


T-90SM

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Don't forget that quantity has a quality all of its own

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You're right

Now come get some comrades

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Do we even still keep a couple of divisions worth of equipment in storage there waiting to be paired with the troops kept in the US in the event of conflict?

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I don't know if we still have stockpiles in Western Europe like we did back in the 80's. I doubt we do but it's possible. I'm guessing a lot of that stuff went away when Clinton gutted the military back in the 90's with the so-called "peace dividend".

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You're right

Now come get some comrades

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Well, it's not that simple. A war against Russia would be a continental war. The carriers and their battle groups would be very useful in protecting convoys from Russian subs during the trans-Atlantic crossings. But as far as being a decisive factor in the overall ground war, there's the problem of them having to stay in range for their air power to be effective. This would mean bringing the carriers close to eastern and central Europe to places like the North Sea, Baltic Sea, and eastern Mediterranean Sea. This would in turn make the carrier groups vulnerable to Russian attacks from a variety of sources like missiles, bombers, and subs. The US would not risk their carrier groups by placing them close enough to support a central European "front" but rather would most likely use them to secure the Atlantic. More than likely the bulk of providing air power in such a war would fall to land based aircraft based in places like the UK, Germany, and Italy.

Nice find

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Russian Navy on verge of collapse

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You bring up a good point, Russia is for all intents and purposes a "continental" power. By this I mean they can project a good deal of power via their land and air forces around their borders i.e. Europe or Asia. But when it comes to projecting global power, other than their nuke subs(boomers) there's not a lot they can do. Course, this was the case even at the height of Soviet power.

This is why I said if war did come with Russia it would be fought in Europe as that's really as far as Russia could strike. The problem is that while Russia cannot project power outside of that area, Russia can project a lot of power into Europe. The good news here is that if they did try it, they could not do much to stop the US from deploying forces to Europe to try and stem the tide.