Vanir Ausf B

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.

RE: VJTF. Thanks, guys. That helps. I wonder how fast the heavy elements could deploy? That may be hard to determine if the unit is still in the formative stage. It's worth noting that in their comments on the reasons for the observed results there no mention of interdiction of ground forces by the Russian air force. That's not to suggest it never happened, only that it appears to not have been a major factor. The implied role of the Russian air force was to distract the NATO air forces from interdicting Russian ground units.

As far as I can tell there was no "primary test" per se. It's not clear exactly what other forces should have been included. I have not found a detailed description of the Very High Readiness brigade, only that it numbers about 5000. Given it's tasking I suspect it is a light brigade and that along with its size would have not affected the outcome to a significant degree. It has been understood from the beginning of this discussion that a Russian invasion of the Baltics is very unlikely for a multitude of reasons. From that perspective it is valid to question the necessity of their policy recommendations.

Three points. 1) Worst case isn't the same as unrealistic. 2) It really is not a worst case for Blue/best case for Red scenario. Worse case for Blue is Russian invasion with no warning. Russia was assumed to have kept the forces they have in and near Ukraine in place, and in fact the Russian invasion force was much smaller than your own maximum size estimation. 3) To some degree upper limits must be placed on how much time NATO has to prepare in order for the scenario to have any relevance, i.e. if NATO has months to prepare the most likely scenario is that there is no invasion.

They actually did, although I missed it in my first reading. As Krater noted in his post, they gamed NATO forces at varying levels of preparedness, and in at least one of these scenarios NATO had an entire ABCT, which would (I believe) represent all US prepositioned equipment in Europe. I don't see how this is true. Rand assumed 1 week warning. That could have represented when the Green Men are sent in. Aside form that we should remember just because Russia used Green Men in Crimea does not obligate them to do so anywhere else or withing any particular time frame. RE: Economics. I really don't care That was clearly outside the scope of the exercise and I have no problem with that.