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Damn, I did not realise they were only now adding AESA radars on those things, I thought they were half decent! Were they cribbing notes from Indian military procurement? Or did the Indians learn how to design aircraft from Europe and apply those lessons on the Tejas? The Rafales at least have AESA.
Yes tactical nukes are one field where I think there's a real case for further development. Poland's conventional forces won't be much good if Russia starts vaporizing them and demanding unconditional surrender, trusting that France and Britain won't risk their own infrastructure.
But it seems unlikely that either party would take such risks. Does Russia really want to subjugate some extremely unruly and recently irradiated Poles? Why would they so greatly desire to conquer the tiny Baltic states? There are potential strategic gains but huge risks.
And Europe's population is so high that they can afford to buy time with hundreds of thousands, millions of lives in low tech, defensive trench warfare. They might have readiness problems, they might have shortages of this and that. But they're so big that they have the time and space to fix this stuff and fight a long war. Russia does not have the blitzkrieg capabilities to reach the European industrial core before they can militarize. Bombing Ukraine is one thing but Russian PGM production surely isn't sufficient to bomb out the combined military industry of Europe.
Well, they can carry the Meteor, which is something. There's a possibility radar will be if not obsolete then somewhat more limited in utility in World War III than it was in prior wars, so perhaps it won't be as much of a handicap as it seems.
But yes, the fact that they are apparently still running around with mechanically scanned arrays does not inspire me with confidence in Europe's military readiness.
Bingo.
Well it's interesting, I had the chance to speak to a former KGB officer about Russia's geopolitical situation once. (This would have been about a decade ago.) He told me that due to USSR central planning - which distributed various parts of Soviet industry to various SSRs, essentially specializing specific regions - Russia wanted to essentially reintegrate its old economy that was cleft from it by the fall of the USSR. Now, I don't think this necessarily needs to involve force - you'll notice that Russia did not start coercive measures against Ukraine [which is in any event more important in Russian consciousness than Latvia or Poland] until Ukraine started attempting to disentangle itself economically from Russia. Even after 2014, the Ukrainian arms industry continued to deliver arms to the Russian military as Soviet central planners had intended.
And of course there's always the intense Russian desire to put more space between Moscow and potential hostiles.
Now, I don't think Poland or Latvia are nearly as emotionally central or economically important to Russia as Ukraine is. It's also been a couple of decades and Russia has been able to develop their own internal industry. I tend to agree that going after Poland or even Latvia is unlikely while they have NATO protection. But on the other hand, I was a little surprised (although not shocked) when they went into Ukraine.
I think the concerns most people have are a bit more limited than "reaching the European industrial core," it's things like carving a land bridge to Kaliningrad and NATO being unwilling or unable to fix the problem after the blitzkrieg (which wouldn't need to drive more than 200 miles or so through the weakest NATO members).
On a quick Google, Russia launched more than 10,000 missiles between 2022 and 2024. Wikipedia says the
ShahedGeran-2 has a possible maximum 1,600 mile range which, if true, means Russia could hit targets in France even without staging from Belarus. A more conservative estimate of 600 miles merely threatens Poland. Russia looks to be able to make at least 6,000 a year, plus 10,000 decoy drones to screen them. And the Geran is bottom-shelf technology, cheap built stuff for mass attacks. For a more top-end option, consider the Kh-101 cruise missile (range of 2000 miles or so) and Russia is supposed to be able to make about 100 per month on wartime footing.So in other words, if you assume Russia gets two years of respite at current production levels they could probably have a theoretical opening day salvo of 12,000 Gerans, 20,000 decoy attack drones, and maybe 2,500 "conventional" cruise missile, of just those two types alone.
Obviously Russia may not continue wartime production after Ukraine winds down. However on the other hand their production might be so high during the war, should it continue, that even winding it down to nominal peacetime levels afterwards leaves them with stockpiles of thousands.
Anyway I do not believe that all of NATO could intercept nearly 35,000 targets even if they were fired piecemeal. On the other hand, 10,000 missiles isn't necessarily as devastating as it sounds when split across a large enough target set (as Ukraine shows - although I believe Ukraine has access to plenty of old Soviet hardened industrial sites and I am not sure if Germany is quite so hardened). I doubt even a 10,000 missile salvo can totally destroy all relevant European military industry, but I confess I don't have a good idea of how large a target set that would be. But definitely I can imagine a force like that being capable of a series of week-one salvos on the order of "kill thousands of sleeping troops in garrison" or "delete the Polish air force and navy in port" or "destroy dozens of major ammo depots and vehicle servicing facilities."
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I think that’s a scenario that Europe needs to think about hard given that a lot of old Soviet war plans (like Seven Days to the Rhine) explicitly call for massive nuclear strikes on peripheral NATO countries while avoiding nuclear strikes on Britain and France to give them an out. As for your irritated Polish clay point, there are pretty good strategic reasons to seize the Baltic States and Poland, that’s what gets them the Sulwaki Gap choke point, probably Russia’s most logical post-GDR defensive barrier against NATO.
Regarding your last point, most Western European countries might have serious internal stability problems calling up huge conscript armies, given the religious and ethnic demographic makeup of the military aged males they would be arming.
But where is the logic in launching such an ambitious invasion?
Why would you invade NATO so you can defend against NATO from mildly more advantageous geography?
Because they are in demographic decline and they’re thinking about how they are going to defend their border 40 years from now.
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Conscripting the fighting aged males from a poorly assimilated minority and throwing them into the meatgrinder is a solution to a problem, not a cause of social instability per se.
Until they decide they would rather not get frog-marched off to die in a trench in Ukraine and decide that Tiocfaidh ár lá might in fact refer to today.
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