re: Russia Unveils New Main Battle Tank, Among Other Things

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I think you are high underestimating the Polish hate for the Russians.

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I'm sure they can find the Vlad Putin of Poland looking to restore the Eastern Bloc glory days to get things under control.

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I think you are high underestimating the Polish hate for the Russians.

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. . . and the hate will be even more intense once they are forced to choose between waging ineffective civilian guerrilla war OR witness the destruction of their own cities and towns, razing them to the ground and the mass extermination of their women and children.

You underestimate your fellow man's/fellow woman's capacity for medieval brutality, especially when that fellow man or woman is a Russian.

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Conscripts my man

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I don't think you need precise military maneuvers to destroy a town. Conscripts would be the perfect rapers and pillagers for the task.

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Conscripts my man, many not from western russia who do not identify culturally or ethnically with Moscow.

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What are you talking about?? If these Russian security forces are indeed "conscripts" they would be fighting against and killing unarmed Polish women and children!

I can see that you are the type of person who makes up his mind and never changes it, regardless of any new developments or considerations.

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Yet their military is not as massive as it used to be and is made up of a frick ton of conscripts. They would probably need almost every well bodied man on the front fighting NATO.

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Today yes, But remember the whole point of this thread is that the Russians are rapidly rebuilding and rearming to the point they could be as massive as they were back in the Soviet heyday within about 10 years. Russia is growing threat, maybe not as big of a threat as they were back in my day of the 80's. But they're moving in that direction. And we'd be wise to take that threat seriously.

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A bunch of conscripts vs people fighting for their home.

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The Soviets used a bunch of barely trained conscripts and crushed Germany and overran half of Europe in the process.

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If war were to break out today, probably. But it would not be as much of a cakewalk as you imagine. Like I've said before, the NATO of 2015 is a far cry from the NATO of 1988-89. The main contributors of forces to NATO has always been the US, GB, and Germany. And all three of those heavily slashed their militaries in the 90's (remember the "Peace Dividend"?). Yes, they're all still well equipped and well armed, but they're not near as big as they use to be. Furthermore, at the rate the Russians are rearming and rebuilding their military, the advantage that NATO now holds can be gone within a decade.

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The USA alone spends over 5x times what Russia does on defense spending. Do you honestly think we don't have answers for these new Russian equipment? The difference is the US does not put on parades to show our tech.

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Don't sell the Russians short. Yes it looks like their military hardware is garbage based on how it's performed when crewed by Arab troops. But that's more to do with the poor quality of the Arab troops than the poorly maintained equipment they use.

For example, in the First Gulf War, the best tanks the Iraqi forces threw against us were all using out of date T-72 and the rounds they were using were outdated and nothing like the modern tank ammo the Russians have.

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I am not selling them short. They are closing the tech gap, but unless oil goes back to >$100/barrell and the sanctions are lifted they will not be able to afford the new enough of the new tech to take on NATO.

You are also ignoring the fact that wars are not fought like they were when you were there. NATO could use predators, A10s or F-35s, Apaches, etc to destroy those tanks before they got close to overrunning any NATO country. Russia is building a new stealth fighter, but the first one isn't scheduled to be develivered until this year or next. The US has had F-22s for over a decade and have been training with them and developing tactics for 5th generation fighter fights for a decade. Russia does not and will not have the #s or the tactics to go toe to toe with NATO for a sustained period of time.

Not that would matter because any war between Russia and NATO would quickly turn into a nuke show and we all lose in that scenario.

The best way to defeat the Russians would be to line up cases full of vodka and they would stop.

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having enough troops

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The Russian military throughout military history has had many problems and weaknesses.

One weakness that it has NEVER had was the problem of not having "enough troops."

Has the Russian/Soviet military ever run out of troops to the best of your knowledge?

A Russian invasion of Europe might indeed fail, but, I firmly believe that an ad hoc civilian guerilla movement would not be a huge factor in the defeat of the Russians.

For pete's sake, how many Poles know anything about waging a guerrilla war? Unconventional war is the most physically challenging type of war, and that's why most guerrilla movements are crushed.

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The US electorate is sick of war and will have no more of it, no matter who Russia invades and overruns in Europe, which is a place that a large portion of the US electorate could not find on a map, nor would they care to do so, unless they were a rich white man planning a vacation.

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Same thing with Vietnam and <20 years later we were kicking Saddam's arse in Kuwait and going on policing missions throughout the 90s and waging war in 2 countries. The current state of apathy will end and if we keep producing films like American Sniper the mojo will be back. It is much easier to reverse the attitudes of a country than to reverse population trends.

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The Russian military throughout military history has had many problems and weaknesses.

One weakness that it has NEVER had was the problem of not having "enough troops."

Has the Russian/Soviet military ever run out of troops to the best of your knowledge?

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When defending their homeland they always had plenty. But this isn't defending their homeland now is it? or WWII

That and their population is shrinking