Vanir Ausf B

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.

This is true. However, they do mention plans for the propositioning in the footnotes: "The Army has announced plans to add two more battalion-sized activity sets in Europe, bringing the total amount of prepositioned armor to a brigade equivalent. While the details of and time line for these additional deployments are not yet known as of this writing, media reports suggest that they would be distributed widely across NATO’s eastern frontier, “in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and possibly Hungary” with only a battalion’s worth combined across the three Baltic republics (Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers, “U.S. Is Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in Eastern Europe,” New York Times, June 13, 2015). This scattershot laydown of company-sized equipment sets, while perhaps politically and symbolically significant, would likely do little to solve the military challenge described in this report." "The quickest-responding NATO heavy armor force would likely be a U.S. combined arms battalion, the personnel for which would fly in and mate up with the prepositioned equipment of the European Activity Set stored in Grafenwoehr, Germany. Getting this unit into the fight is a complicated process that will not be instantaneous. Breaking out the equipment—24 M-1 main battle tanks, 30 M-2 infantry fighting vehicles, assorted support vehicles—preparing it for movement, transporting it by rail across Poland, offloading it, and road-marching it forward into the battle area are unlikely to take less than a week to 10 days." They apparently did assume it showed up in at least one game, but it didn't make much difference. This brings up an interesting question: are there any units from any other nations tasked for that type of rapid deployment? I suspect this was intended to be a war game first and foremost so there is little mention of economics. They did however consider the idea of insurgency: A subcase of this option that is sometimes discussed would be for NATO to help people in the occupied Baltic states mount an insurgency against their occupiers. The prospects for success of such an undertaking are at best highly uncertain; the brutality of Russia’s war in Chechnya indicates that, under some circumstances at least, Moscow is willing to take a very “gloves off ” approach to dealing with such opposition. In any event, such a strategy certainly countenances a high probability of considerable loss of life and damage to the economies of these states. Even if an insurgency ultimately succeeded in convincing Moscow to withdraw, it would likely take many months to years, during which the people of the occupied territories would endure substantial suffering, while the loss of the Baltics would constitute a clear strategic setback for the United States and its allies. Finally, planning for this as NATO’s response to Russian coercion, intimidation, and aggression offers little assurance to our allies, who would certainly find little comfort in the notion of Washington and Brussels nominating partisan warfare as their primary line of defense.

It means everything if they achieve their objectives before NATO can establish air superiority.

Wow! Thanks! I didn't know they had that information up. I haven't read the entire document yet, but a few nuggets pop out. One is that Rand actually did include some soft-factor modeling, at least with regards to training levels. Several other assumptions we had about the games were also incorrect. 1) The scenario assumes a Russian invasion of Estonia and Latvia but not Lithuania. 2) NATO is assumed to have 1 week of warning to prepare. 3) The Russian invasion force is smaller than either Steve or myself had guessed. EDIT: No wonder I didn't know about this document. It was released to the public only two days ago.

CMAK sold less-well than CMBO and CMBB. What that says (if anything) about the commercial appeal of North Africa is debatable I'm sure.

Thank you for the information.

Trees in close proximity to vehicles do not block outbound munitions for sure, and I don't think they block LOS either. I'm not sure what the radius is, but I would guess 30 meters at least. I had assumed the same is true for all unit types but I am less sure.

Basically correct, but more specifically it's a race to see if NATO can move sufficient reinforcements directly onto the AoO before Russia slams the doors shut. Geography would give the Russians some advantages here. The Baltic states are collectively so small Russian anti-air can blanket them from within Russian territory. That makes direct reinforcement by air unlikely. Reinforcement by sea is always a crapshoot and would take more time (and this is also where Russian naval assets, probably submarines, would play a roll in interdiction). That leaves the land routes, and this is where the position of Belarus becomes critical. If Belarus sides with NATO then Russia is probably screwed. But if Belarus is neutral the only land corridor into the Baltics is the Lithuanian/Polish border, which is only about 30 miles (50km) wide.

That sounds a lot more reasonable if you only count personnel and don't count artillery, aircraft and armored vehicles EDIT: Ninja-ed

If the Baltic states' plan is to wage a guerrilla campaign that is a tacit admission they cannot hold territory, which has been my argument from the beginning. However, I doubt that is the plan since it doesn't jive with the prepositioning of US heavy equipment on their territory. To what extent their present force structure arose from political apathy or resource limitations or some combination could be an interesting conversation but within the context of this discussion it's the answer to a trivia question.

I'm so glad I don't have to wear that beret anymore.

Leaving the Baltics for a moment, it's worth noting that although Russia isn't the Soviet Union, NATO isn't the NATO of 1985 either. http://www.dw.com/en/ombudsman-german-army-is-short-of-almost-everything/a-19005841

Are we still debating this? If the "plan" is to have a military capable of standing up to an invading Russian army then the Baltic states appear to have fallen well short of that goal by any metric you want to use, which leads me to believe that at least up until the trouble in Ukraine they were not seriously preparing for such a conflict. I suppose we cannot rule out the possibility that they have found an amazingly cost effective means to that end. Ninjas wielding +5 vorpal nunchucks perhaps?

Soft factors are always relevant to a greater or lesser degree; I never said or meant to imply they were not. They can even be decisive, such as when Islamic State over ran northern Iraq. My contention is simply that they are hard to quantify in hypothetical situations and therefore should always be used with a degree of skepticism. It appears we are not in disagreement on that point... I wrote those numbers in response to the comment that the Baltic nations had spent 26 years preparing for a war with Russia. While %GDP is indeed not the best indicator of capability it is a fair indicator of national priorities, i.e. how serious they have been in their preparation. Good enough

CM is bug-free. Nothing can go wrong.

That changes everything.

The point I was making is that if you include soft factors the reliability of the result is dependent in part on the accuracy of those factors. If the assumptions behind those soft factors are incorrect you could have a less accurate result than with no soft factors. I have little faith in the ability of anyone to accurately gauge soft factors in hypothetical conflicts. That doesn't mean it's not fun to try What you are describing sounds like a guerrilla campaign. That could be effective over time but it's not going to hold territory. I am not buying into the idea that the Baltics will prevail by sheer force of will. That sounds like wishful thinking, and is an example if why trusting soft factors can lead you astray. How do you know how hard they will fight? I posit that you can't. Defense spending as %GDP: Latvia: 2000: 0.9%2001: 1.1%2002: 1.6%2003: 1.7%2004: 1.7%2005: 1.7%2006: 1.9%2007: 1.7%2008: 1.7%2009: 1.4%2010: 1.1%2011: 1.0%2012: 0.9%2013: 0.9%2014: 0.9%Estonia: 2000: 1.4%2001: 1.5%2002: 1.7%2003: 1.7%2004: 1.7%2005: 1.9%2006: 1.9%2007: 2.1%2008: 2.1%2009: 2.3%2010: 1.8%2011: 1.7%2012: 2.0%2013: 2.0%2014: 2.0%Lithuania: 2000: 1.2%2001: 1.4%2002: 1.3%2003: 1.1%2004: 1.2%2005: 1.2%2006: 1.2%2007: 1.1%2008: 1.1%2009: 1.1%2010: 0.9%2011: 0.8%2012: 0.8%2013: 0.8%2014: 0.8% They probably have less faith than you in armies that deploy in taxi cabs

The IISS numbers you used do not include those personnel. They are broken out into a separate "Command and Support" category (150-200,000 for all branches combined). Ukrainian moves into eastern Ukraine are a possibility although it's questionable how high a priority that is for the Kremlin in our alternate reality since Russia apparently doesn't actually want eastern Ukraine. Incursions into Russian territory, even disputed territory, would not happen and would ultimately fail if they did. The contention that I was speaking to was that the Baltic states could defeat Russia with no help from other NATO countries. In that scenario there would be no cavalry. This is probably true, but I question how much of a problem it is. Soft factors are more difficult to accurately quantify than hard factors. This is true even for conflicts that have already happened and have been extensively studied. If I were to go through and set the "typical" soft factors for the CM WW2 games they would be different than they are now across the board, and if you asked 5 other people to do the same you'd get 5 different variations. The problem compounds when modeling forces that have not seen combat. I appreciate that it is necessary to try in a tactical war game like CM and it can be fun and interesting to debate but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking these are anything more than highly subjective personal opinion. This is, I suspect, why professionals such as Rand don't even try. Having said all that and with the stipulation that I never played Shock Force, I suspect that if you set up a scenario in CM with accurate force ratios and TO&E, and gave the Russians realistic quantities of artillery and air support you could set the soft factors to anything you want and the Latvian player would rage quit Let's not fool ourselves here. The US DoD probably spends more money on MREs than Estonia's entire defense budget. These are not serious war fighting armies built for high intensity, highly kinetic conflicts. They are speed bumps. In the event of a Russian invasion their mission is to hold out for 72 hours. It's questionable if they could do that right now outside of a few enclaves.

Steve does like Russia. He just likes every other country even more