Vanir Ausf B

The thesis statement with your suggested corrections (that I agree with, which isn't all of them): In a series of wargames conducted between summer 2014 and spring 2015, the RAND Corporation examined the shape and probable outcome of a near-term Russian invasion of the Baltic states to determine if NATO is capable of defending the territory from occupation. As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members. Across multiple games using a wide range of expert participants in and out of uniform playing both sides, the longest it has taken Russian forces to reach the outskirts of the Estonian and/or Latvian capitals of Tallinn and Riga, respectively, is 60 hours. Such a rapid defeat would leave NATO with a limited number of options, all worse than defeating the invasion in it's infancy: a bloody counteroffensive, fraught with escalatory risk, to liberate the Baltics; to escalate itself, as it threatened to do to avert defeat during the Cold War; or to concede at least temporary defeat, with uncertain but predictably disastrous consequences for the Alliance and, not incidentally, the people of the Baltics. This is a more precise statement in a couple of places, but to analogize the original to something scribbled in crayon "using the vocabulary of a 10 year old who speaks English as a second language" can most politely be described as massively hyperbolic. How about 3. Writing thesis statements is a different skill set than running wargames. 4. Imprecise syntax is not evidence of deception. 5. Nothing is perfect. If perfection is the standard everything fails. What you are doing is akin to using inaccuracies in the Combat Mission manuals to indict Combat Mission and it's creators. I have very good reason to suspect flaws in Combat Mission's modeling. That doesn't make it a poor simulation. The report is a data point intended to help inform the discussion, which was in some respects unhinged from reality prior to the report's introduction. While you have questioned the unambiguous certainly of their conclusion there appears to be universal agreement that their conclusion is the most probable one. Mission accomplished, as far as I am concerned. Agreed that this discussion appears to be a tempest in a teapot. It does make one consider what is unique about this teapot... What you said was: "Because it presumes a massive and unprecedented military buildup right on Russia's border is the only way to ensure it won't invade the Baltics." This is incorrect because the report explicitly states it is not possible to ensure Russia never invades. Ah, more kvetching about syntax. What else? The report actually says "relatively cheap" but I grant you they don't define what it is relative to. Nevertheless, that does not negate the preceding sentence, which is more unambiguous: "It is unclear whether denial of the prospect for a rapid victory would suffice to deter Russia from gambling on an attack on the “Baltic three,” were it inclined to contemplate one." Which they admit. The phrasing is odd but they definitely have not concluded that threat of war with NATO is not itself a deterrent. They almost explicitly state otherwise: "Even in the absence of strong conventional resistance, attacking NATO nonetheless would represent a very risky course for Russia. Deterrence is a complex phenomenon that does not rest on any single element." Apparently they have. I doubt you stepped back from your initial position on a whim. If not because of the report it must have been my persuasive arguments

Debating proper thesis writing. You might as well criticize their choice of font while you're at it. I should just concede the point because I find it too trivial to waste time on. Emphasis added. I don't recall any non-military recommendations. Regardless of that, I have already said about 5 times that I am not in favor of the brigades, so this is not a point of contention and never has been. What odds would you place on the report released to the public being identical to the report given to the Pentagon? Oh? Pg 9 : "It is unclear whether denial of the prospect for a rapid victory would suffice to deter Russia from gambling on an attack on the “Baltic three,” were it inclined to contemplate one. What seems certain is that NATO’s current posture, which appears to offer Moscow the opportunity for a quick and relatively cheap win, does not." Pg 16: "Even in the absence of strong conventional resistance, attacking NATO nonetheless would represent a very risky course for Russia. Deterrence is a complex phenomenon that does not rest on any single element. Nevertheless, the lack of a credible conventional defense cannot strengthen it." As demonstrated above, you are misrepresenting what the report says. Actually, they did game out a second ABCT scenario, alongside 2-3 battalions of the 82nd Airborne (who probably DO have Javalins, BTW ), a battalion from the UK's 16 Air Assault Brigade (who probably also have Javelins), and others. They also allowed NATO fighter squadrons to base in Sweden, a non-NATO country, which helped them avoid the air defense network in Kaliningrad. I rather suspect it was "released" to the DoD long before the official announcement last week, the irony being that the report's increasing obsolescence over time is probably due in no small part to the report itself.

Try this one. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-PXQYVjbp6MC&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq=casualty+rates+of+german+tank+commanders&source=bl&ots=qpRV1qfLvc&sig=lOvh64jyE3RR40dnM5A1Vt3k91Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQ4dyHs-PKAhWFkA8KHcdTBfQQ6AEIVTAJ#v=snippet&q=casualty rate german tank commanders&f=false

Briefly, RE: Northern Fleet. I would expect Russian SSNs to be primarily tasked with boomer protection. Assuming 50% deployable gives 6 or 7 SSNs plus 1 or 2 Oscar SSGNs. It's hard to see how they find the numbers to do anything significant in the Atlantic. RE: Black Sea Fleet. The primary impediment to US naval control of the Black Sea would be Russian land-based assets. I question if sea-borne access to Ukraine is critical enough to make that fight worthwhile to the USN. Russian interdiction efforts would be primarily via the various types of Iskander and Kalibr missiles. If Article 5 has not been invoked targets will be limited to inside Ukraine. In my opinion

Unless the tank has an APS

I should say, a more serious response to your question can be found on the report's final page:

Only because you are jaded

This is RAND we're talking about. Go to Dominos for dinner and what do you expect? If you don't want pizza why are you there?

Oh, you edited before I found time to respond The juicy target I was planing my attack upon is gone! The Lanchester Exchange Rates would have been in my favor, I tell you. Interesting that you use the world "flawed" in the same way you use "worst": not literally Your views on this report can be broadly grouped into two categories: 1) attacks on data within the report and 2) attacks on data not in the report. The former do not amount to much. There is remarkably little in the report that can be definitively pointed to as wrong. Nearly all of the challenges of this variety that have resisted knocking down are subjective, e.g. how incompetent are Russian pilots at striking ground targets. The attacks on data missing from the report are almost wholly speculative and therefore not provable or disprovable. What they did was posit that outcomes following occupation of the Baltics were all less joyful on the joy scale than ensuring the occupation could not happen in the first place. Overreach? Perhaps. But their reasoning, while debatable, is sound. A minor point here. Up until this week's announcement of a second ABCT in Europe, RAND's Blue force was pretty darn close to reality in terms of type and quantity of capabilities and combat power.

Out of curiosity, which conclusions? All of them?

Assuming for a moment all that is true, this is a massive scandal, reaching into the highest levels of government. Someone in this thread is going to be famous if he contacts the right people.

+1

Character assassination via inuendo. That is what this thread has degenerationed to.

The conspiracy is vast.

Hours. Not days. Yes I chose a single flawed report to make a point, in response to which you made a multitude of flawed counter-arguments If perfection is where the bar is set we all fail. I will try to explain this a clearly as I can. NATO is a military alliance, so any recommendation to NATO on how to solve a problem or perceived problem is inevitability going to focus on military solutions because that's what NATO does. The report basically has two components: a premise and a recommendation based on that premise The premise is that given a 1 week of "THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING" notice and the assets available at the time, NATO could not prevent a Russian invasion from occupying the Baltic states. Note there was no attempt to ascertain the likelihood of an invasion, only to measure the military balance of power. Based on that premise the recommendation was made to place 6 or 7 brigades in the Baltic states to ensure a Russian invasion would fail to occupy the Baltics. A military solution to a military problem. You can question the proposed solution all you want. I have questioned the need for it myself and am not wedded to it in any way. The same is not true for the premise. I think the results of RAND's wargames accurately reflect the reality of NATO's ability to prevent an initial Russian military takeover of the Baltics in the event of war. You seem to have moved away from questioning that in your last few posts to focus on attacking aspects of the report that do not represent my position. I consider the initial Baltics takeover question settled and therefore feel my interest waning

There are a few issues related to how armored warfare is presented in CMBS that are holding me back, but once those are sorted out (I am cautiously optimistic they will be) it will be terrific. I love how different it feels to play the various nationalities, to a larger degree than the West Front WW2 games and maybe even Red Thunder. Infantry feels empowered.

I have already stated my wishes with regards to details. As a wargamer of course I want to see AARs with stats and maps. Clearly the report was written for policy makers, not wargamers. I have also questioned whether their ultimate recommendations are really necessary given the low likelihood of a Russian invasion, and I doubt they will be implemented to nearly the degree they want. The other issues you have raised are trivial, at least to me. I presented the report as a counter-point to the narrative seen early in this thread that a NATO-Russian war would be a cakewalk on par with the Gulf Wars. It has served it's purpose to that end and I have no desire to turn the thread into a discussion on proper report writing

I read something today that reminded me of this post. It's from the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, General Petr Pavel. ___ Czech General Petr Pavel, who is scheduled to become chairman in June, warned on May 27th that Moscow would be able to conquer the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania within two days despite the former Soviet republics' NATO membership, according to the Czech news site CTK. This is largely due to the complexity of the NATO decision-making process, along with the small geographic area of the Baltics. Russia could take advantage of NATO's relatively slow-moving command structure to blitz across the three countries in a matter of hours. "On the one hand, one of [NATO's] disadvantages is its complex process of decision making. It is because NATO has 28 members who have to reach consensus on all conclusions," Pavel told CTK. "From the technical point of view, if I consider how many forces Russia is able to deploy in the Baltics, the size of the Baltic countries, and the density of forces on their territories, the Baltics could really be occupied in a couple of days." According to Pavel, the key military and political processes of NATO are not synchronized to allow for a split-second response. Whereas NATO's rapid-reaction force could be mobilized and deployed within two days, the political consensus needed to make that decision could take substantially longer to reach. And until there is a consensus that the Russian advance has triggered the NATO alliance's mutual defense obligations, NATO military forces would have to remain on the sidelines. http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-can-occupy-baltics-in-2-days-2015-5

Hey Steve, what do you really think of the report? I am not going to debate the wording of sentences or whatnot. The report has been picked-over and turned inside out enough that everyone has made of it what they will by now. I know I have.

These things are mostly implied rather than stated in explicit detail (unfortunately), but there is no question that the exercise was mainly intended to answer a single question: could NATO prevent an initial take-over of the Baltics in the face of a Russian invasion given the present force structure and deployments. The "win" condition for Russia was effective control of at least most of the Baltic states territory and control of their borders, to the extent that NATO forces could no longer reinforce directly to the Baltics and would instead have to mount a counter-offensive from outside the Baltics. They appear to have said "good game" when that outcome was no longer in doubt. They did. They don't assume that NATO/The West has a win button they can press to destroy the Russian state at any time they feel the need, nor do they assume there would be sufficient political will to pursue a costly counter-offensive to retake the Baltic states, although they do allow that NATO has the physical resources to do that. A couple of problems here. One is that Russian forces could overrun an entire Baltic state in one day, and that is precisely the situation NATO is trying to prevent. Also, you are assuming NATO suddenly gains air superiority the next day, but it is not apparent that would happen. RAND says Russia was able to prevent NATO air superiority for "a few days" but what is not stated is if that means NATO gained superiority after a few days or if the scenario ended after a few days. I'm guessing it was the latter and that we don't know how long it would take to gain air superiority. Given the time needed to deploy additional aircraft and support assets from around the globe it could take weeks. How much time does it take to line up your artillery on a city and open fire? In any event, RAND points out that even a successful insurgency would damage NATO's credibility. But it would be cheaper than an counter-offensive.

Steve, it appears you have conflated hours with days in your memory. There is no mention of any scenario being played out to 60 days. I even did a word search on the document and the only reference to the number 60 was: It is not specifically stated at what point d-day+hours the strike on the Blue heavy brigades happened, but given the above statement it most likely happened within the first 60 hours, which would place it within the "multiple days" time period in which NATO does not have air superiority. Given that, there is no apparent reason why the result should be impossible. Unless you are feeling that RAND's assumption of "moderate" competency for the Russian air force is too optimistic and that the Russian pilots are actually incompetent. Not that you would ever believe such a thing

It is a bit confusing as to where everything is and in what quantity, but from what I can gather the entire European Activity Set essentially amounts to 1 ABCT with 1 battalion in the Baltics. The EAS originally consisted of a single combat arms battalion set that provided equipment, but has since expanded to a full Armored Brigade Combat Team, or ABCT, primarily employed to conduct Operation Atlantic Resolve activities. EAS consists of 12,000 total pieces of equipment, of which approximately 250 are tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and self-propelled howitzers. Approximately 1,750 other pieces are support vehicles. EAS sites currently are located in Germany, Romania, Bulgaria and Lithuania. http://www.army.mil/article/159894/European_Activity_Set_turn_in_officially_underway_in_Lithuania/ So you have .33 ABCT in Baltics at the start with other elements arriving at intervals. RAND says 7-10 days from Grafenwoehr; transit time from Romania and Bulgaria are unknown. I do not think this is a game-changer What "analysis of Russian air to ground capabilities" are you referring to? RE: Readiness rates. It's not just something Russians deal with. Where do you get that 2 month time frame? I don't remember seeing that and my impression is that it's much shorter. RAND lists the number of available in-theater air wings on d-day at 18.5 for NATO, 27 for Russian. If these numbers are incorrect please post the corrected numbers. Even though, as I have pointed out, the Russian invasion force RAND used is much smaller that your own estimate. Everyone love a winner

This is (bizarrely) turning into a referendum on RAND Corp's professional integrity, which I have little interest in debating so this may be my last post on that subject. Of course neither heavy brigade was intended to represent the NJTF. My point was that there was another NATO brigade in play that would have had roughly equivalent combat power to the NJTF. Whether it was in place before d-day or arrived shortly after is a minor detail. There is no question the US prepositioned equipment was in play. The report explicitly states the presence of an ABCT and that is the only ABCT in Europe. Interesting that you think the neutering was a decision deliberately made rather than a combat result arising organically from the game rules. More on that below... According to the report this was a series of actual war games, with two competing teams and combat results adjudicated by the game rules. There was no Rand guy arbitrarily deciding combat results, therefore no "presumption" of the heavy bridges fate. The report states that "Airpower is rate limited, and against a moderately competent adversary—which is how we portrayed the Russian Air Force", (pg 6) and that the Russian air force was only able to achieve what it did through "sheer numbers" (pg 9). So no, I do not see "the pattern" because while I share your desire for more detail and more information I am not systemically filling in the unknowns with assumptions of game-rigging and ulterior motives. Let's not pull punches here; you are more-or-less accusing RAND of perpetrating a fraud. I see no evidence of that and I flatly reject it, even if I cannot objectively disprove it, any more so than I can disprove that John Kettler is a space alien. I volunteer to be the Red commander

That isn't obvious at all. "Russian forces eliminated or bypassed all resistance and were at the gates of or actually entering Riga, Tallinn, or both, between 36 and 60 hours after the start of hostilities." "Across multiple games using a wide range of expert participants playing both sides, the longest it has taken Russian forces to reach the outskirts of Tallinn and Rigais is 60 hours." "The games’ findings are unambiguous: As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members." The results do not appear to reference any particular scenario and there is no implication that any scenario produced a result that was strategically much different than the rest. I would love to have a detailed breakdown of results by scenario but this is all we have to go on. I give them a pass on the NJTF since the unit did not exist at the time. In addition, the exact composition and locations of this force are apparently classified which would be problematic. They did not omit the prepositioned forces, and in fact in at least one scenario NATO was given two "heavy brigades", one of which could have served as a stand-in for the NJTF were it a heavy brigade. A fair point, but this discussion has centered around the military aspects of a hypothetical war. Yes, and I admit I had forgotten about the bubbles However, my point stands that Russian air-to-ground was not listed as one of the four factors that "contribute most substantially" to RAND's results. Keep in mind this was in reference to a specific event in one scenario. I think you may be in danger of overstating it's significance. What the report actually says: "The result was heavy losses to several Blue battalions and the disruption of the counterattack." There is no mention of combat ineffectiveness nor of their fate afterwards. Aside from that I would like to know why you think this particular result is "fantasy". It looks reasonable to me, or at least not impossible. But I do agree (once again) that it would be nice to have more details.