Livdoc44

One more loss in our Air Forces.
23 y.o. "Blue Helmet" MiG-29 pilot has died during the mission. Those, who know what happened, hint this was accident, not a combat loss. But currently it's not allowed to say about reasons of his death and to make public his name. His family, according to the law can't receive 15 millions UAH of compensation (because non-combat death), so volunteers opened fundrising to support the family, until they will solve numerous bureaucracy barriers to get much smaller compensation
    
 

CMFB Downfall module is an instant buy.
CMBN Utah Beach BP is an instant buy.
CMFI BP1 is an instant buy.
CMCW BAOR module is an instant buy.
Already registered for @Mr.X's CMRT BP.
And almost forgot, @Paper Tiger CMSF2 Gung Ho! Campaign and his updated Road To Montebourg Campaign.
Looks like I'm going to have to clear my busy social calendar for the rest of the year! 🤣

Just uploaded new version (v.5) with couple of minor tweaks.

Ok so let's end all this horsesh#t.  The great thing about the US is that they put everything out to the public.  No other nation on earth is as transparent.  So here is what Miller actually said:
https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-january-4-2024/
First as to "no more money"
"QUESTION: Thank you. Let’s discuss Ukraine a little bit. How long will the latest package that you guys have sent already in December will give operations until they run out of funding again?
MR MILLER: I will let Ukraine speak to that because that pertains to – and my colleagues at the Pentagon may have some additional insight to offer on this. But ultimately, that’s a question to Ukraine to speak to because it goes to their rate of expenditure and other really military questions.
But I will say that we do need Congress to act. We are out of funding here. We know that we need to continue to support Ukraine. They need – they rely on this assistance. They rely on it to continue to fight what is a brutal Russian assault that continues, even over the – that continues every day. And so it’s important for Congress to act to continue to fund this democracy that is continuing to defend itself."
That is all about pushing Congress to act.  Inside DC baseball, not a US intent to cut off all funding.
As to current state of the war:
"QUESTION: And would you say that, given the latest developments, that the war is turning in Russia’s favor?
MR MILLER: No, I wouldn’t say that at all. I think people forget oftentimes the actual stakes of this war and what Vladimir Putin’s actual goal was, and what Ukraine has actually achieved and what it continues to achieve. Remember that Putin launched this as a war of total conquest where he wanted to take over Ukraine. He wanted to throw the government out of power. He wanted to subsume Ukraine inside Russia. Not only was Ukraine able to prevent that from happening, which everyone sort of takes for granted now but it was very not – it was very much not a settled question at the start of this war – they have managed to retake around half of the territory that Russia seized in the opening weeks of the war.
And even in the past few weeks, they continue to make battlefield gains. Remember the – over the last summer we were talking about the difficulty when Russia pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, and it looked like Ukraine wasn’t going to be able to continue to export grain. Well, because of advances that Ukraine made to open a Black Sea lane and expel the Russian fleet from certain parts of the Black Sea, they are now able to continue to export grain, which is critical to their economy.
So there are going to be battlefield developments back and forth, where you see each side gaining or losing territory. But when you look at the ultimate stakes of this war, it’s quite clear that Ukraine is going to exit this war independent, strong, with an improved economy, and looking west when what Russia wanted at the outset was not just a Ukraine that was looking east but Ukraine that was actually part of Russia."
Boy this sounds familiar...because some on this thread have been saying it all along.
And as to the statement that has some people running around like the panicky idiot in a bad plane crash movie:
"QUESTION: As long as it takes?
MR MILLER: As long as it takes. That does not mean that we are going to continue to support them at the same level of military funding that we did in 2022 and 2023. We don’t think that should be necessary because the goal is to ultimately transition Ukraine – to use the language that you repeated back – to stand on its own feet and to help Ukraine build its own industrial base and its own military industrial base so it can both finance and build and acquire munitions on its own. But we are not there yet, and that is why it is so critical that Congress pass the supplemental funding bill, because we are not yet at the point where Ukraine can defend itself just based on its own. And it’s why that it continues to be important for Congress to support Ukraine and continues to be important for our European allies and others throughout the world to support Ukraine."
From a State Dept talking head no less.
Oh, ya that totally says that "Ukraine is totally cut off and will have to build its own tanks from here on out."  You know we should totally freak out now and point to every Russian leg twitch as a major victory, while screaming "Ukraine is doomed!!" From the heights of the thread.
So "yes" I am saying the US will backstop a Ukrainian MIC as it plans for a transition away from tactical handouts to long term strategic sustainment...just like they did in South Korea.  But hey you wanna be "soundbite panic guy" on the thread, go right ahead.  
 

Now that we have so much late WW2 equipment, It doesn't seem so impossible that a CM Korean war title could be announced. Definitely has not been beaten to death and with the amount of nations that participated it could have quite the variety!

Pershings!!!
Edit: I'm excited about everything else as well. I'm really looking forward to the BAOR module, and to fighting through Utah beach and Carentan. But we were just talking in the 2023 thread (a couple months ago) about whether or not Pershings would be included in the CMFB module. So I'm excited to see that they have been.

Excellent news! I am a happy camper now! Thanks for the update!

So, coming at this from an artillery perspective, it's apparent that 'mass' means different things to different people. A lot of  folks think of mass as something like the Old Guard forming up in columns trying to smash through the heights behind La Haye Sainte in the early evening of 18 June 1815 (which failed), or the tanks of VIII Corps trying to smash past Caen on 18 July 1944 (which kinda sorta worked). Which, sure, that is mass. But that kind of raw and naive mass has been increasingly unreliable for centuries.
The inexorable trend over the centuries has been for units to fight more and more dispersed - the current concentrations in the Ukraine would have been unthinkably thin in 1943.
As time has passed soldiers and their kit at the front line became more dispersed while at the same time firepower and other effects are becoming more concentrated - or massed - in both time and space. This trend is very obvious with artillery once indirect fire became the norm. The fire from of dozens and eventually hundreds of guns spread out over dozens or hundreds of square kilometres could be massed into a single area at about the same time, first winning WWI and then critically influencing the way WWII was fought. Note that this isn't strictly a function of range - the Paris gun had an absurdly long range, but didn't really affect the course of WWI. That said, increasing range definitely drove dispersion.
The ultimate (so far) development of massing effects is PGM (incl ATGM). In some ways that sort of seems counter intuitive - how can less guns/rounds = more mass? - but it really isn't. The effect you want can now be concentrated, or massed, at exactly where you want (to within a metre or two), exactly when you want it (to within a few seconds).
On a graph over time you get two crossing lines; massing of manpower and equipment is falling fast, while massing of effects is rising about as fast.
 
tl;dr: you should be skeptical of massed manpower and equipment. It's been dying for a long time. No pun intended.
 

Maybe they need to return to the style of manual used when the M-16 was first issued...


 
Not sure where this fits in, sub-FM perhaps? 

For those of you who have never heard of this system before, lets read a description from RU propaganda source Sputnik. Reads like an advertisement for this thing. 😀
 
 

This video is a part of "Ukrainska pravda" article about first operations of naval drones. Alas in didn't translted to English as whole, only as shortened atricles, so briefly:
1. First strike on Russian ships in the sea not far from Sevastopol should be conducten in the night from 16th on 17th September 2022. Five drones with 108 kg HE onbaoard each, despite large waves could approach to Sevastopol. Russian flagman frigade "Admiral Makarov" was spotted as main target. 70 km was left to the traget. But... Elon Musk turned off Starlink and UKR drones have lost control. Minister of digital transformation Fedorov (one of initiator of drone program), who was present in situation room tried to communicate with Musk, but he didn't want to listen. Attempts to convince him through US military channels also failed. Operation was foiled, Russian ships after this could launch missiles futher. By the way, by statistic, less then 50 % of Kalibrs were intercepted. Only two UKR drones could return to base. Other either sunk or self-exploded because of waves hit, being uncontroled. One of them was washed ashore near Sevastopol several days ago, so that was first unplanned ("thanks" to Musk) appearance or UKR naval drones on public.
2. Afer this incident with Musk, developers team researched returned drones and made many improves in construction. Gradually drones got three independent communication systems to avoid losing of control. 
So next attack was in the night from 28th to 29th of October. Four drones sailed to Sevastopol harbor, three prepared to attack Russian ships on the roadstead. Three drones attacked "Admiral Makarov" again, but only one could breack throug the waves and hit the ship in the stern part. Frigade lost speed in half and turned to harbor. In that time three other drones sneak to Streletskaya Bay, but was shelled by Russian coastal assets.
Fortunately almost near the entrance to the bay the minesweeper "Ivan Golubets" has stood and she got own 108 kh HE - explosion damaged trilling compartment. Other drones in this moment struck oil terminal. 
Damaged Russian frigade sailed to Streletskaya Bay too - Russian artillery from the coast mistakingly shelled the ship and frigade also returned fire.
In this khaos, two drones, which coouldn't approach to frigade in first attack followed them and could sneak to the bay. Russians turned on all own EW assets, so GPS signal was lost, reserve communication was partially supreswed too, but allowed to control drones by TV channel. Vice-admiral Neyizhpapa, who served long time in Sevastopol and knew all bays, personally sat in drone operator chair - first drone was directed on second frigade "Admiral Essen" but hit the point between her and ASW frigade "Ladnyi", slightly damaged both (in the artcile claimed the drone was directed between two ships, but likely unstable control caused dron missed and hit a pier between ships)  
3. After this attack, new drone "SeaBaby" was designed. Unlaike "Maliuk" with 108 kg of HE, It could carry 850 kg of HE (now it equipped also with thermobaric launchers). Also this drone got new comm system with 300 000 $ cost and was build from radio-transparent materials. Also unlike "Maliuk", developed in coperation with SBU and private companies, "SeaBaby" was designed and built exclisivley by own SBU engineers and IT team. Exactly "SeaBaby" drones hit Kerch bridge at the second time on 17th of July 2023.
The team, developed "Maliuk", after SBU decisiosn to develop own drone by own team signed agreement with GUR (Intelligence Service Directorate) and soon "Magura" drone project has appeared - these drones are under Budanov's hand. In September 2023 "Magura" in first time damaged Russian patrol ship "Sergey Kotov", though damages weren't heavy. Also claimed "SeaBaby" and "Magura" struck several other Russian ships and auxiliary vessels, but damages also weren't critical or weren't confirmed. 
4. In July 2023 Russia broken "grain agreenment" and became strike on UKR ports and elevators. Their patrol ships threatened to intercept any cargo vesels, sailing from UKR ports. Zelenskiy on Stavka meeting demanded to force Russian ships get away from western part of Black Sea. Was made a decision to show Russians theuir fleet will be vulnerable even in Novorossiysk, their second base. Cooperated operation was planned by Zaluzhnyi, Maliuk (SBU chief), Budanov (GUR chief), Neyizhpapa (Naval forces chief), Oleshchuk (Air Forces chief). So, ib the night on 4th August 2023 new  fastest drone "Mamai" went to sea. "Mamai" has lighter warhead than "SeaBaby" - 450 kg, but this is fastst drone, it can sail with a speed 110 km/h. On the way operators had many temptatins to hit tankers, carring Russian oil, but command prohibited atatck any civil vessel in neutral waters, even Russian. At last "Mamai" encountered LLS "Olenegorskiy gorniak" and successfully struckj it on the roadstead of Novorossiysk. In the article no mentions about other destroyed target - likely there were two drones, because off-shore oil terminal was hit too. On the next day other "Mamai" damaged Russian tanker "Sig", suppliying Russian miliyry. These attcks gradually forced Russians to minimaze own presence in western part of the sea and this allowed Ukraine to avoid new blocade. Reasons for Russia was not so military, but economical - after these atatcks insurance companies and freight companies have been rising own prices, so to calm situation and prices Russia was forced to withdraw. 
By the way western partners were very dissatisfied with these attcks on Novortossiysk and Kerch strait - UKR leadership got many suggestions "do not do this anymore" - Novorossiysk is a huge hub for Kazakhstan and "grey" Russian oil, which go to markets, bypassing sanctions as other brands or for delution of brands. With one hand we help Ukraine, with other hand we buy an oil in Russia, supporting their capability to wage a war. Damned real politic. Even recent scandal that Pentagon bought Russian oil only confirms this.
So, if you ask why Ukraine don't hit seriously Russiaon oil export infrastructre, adress this question to Washington.         
 
 
 

Because their sustainable military budget is maybe 1.5x the budget of the University of California.  Not the state of California, just the larger of the three state university systems.  
The Russian navy isn't doing particularly well against a country that has no navy.
The Russian army is stalled out with what it's currently holding against, as has been repeatedly pointed out, a country that was expected to last a week at most.  It's closing on 2 years, and they've pissed away the better part of 50 years of soviet production.
Russia has no tech industry and depends on China for any tech.  Russia is a tiny customer to China compared to the west.
The main thing that keeps Russia on the world stage is the leftover nukes from the USSR.  I don't think anybody really expects that Russia would use them unless directly attacked by an overwhelming force, but if Russia collapses in a chaotic way those nukes could get scattered to a lot of places that we would be a lot less happy to have them.
Russia needs to lose badly in Ukraine, but not collapse internally to the extent that nuclear materials get scattered around willy nilly.  The west needs to support Ukraine in winning for the same non-proliferation reasons that they want to avoid Russian collapse: we promised protection in return for giving up the legacy nukes.  Ukraine gained independence as the 3rd largest possessor of nuclear weapons on the planet and gave them up voluntarily.  If you still had them, none of this would be happening now, and every little state with nuclear aspirations is watching closely.  If we abandon you there will be a mad rush of nuclear proliferation among much less stable countries.

Well #1 could be said about any nation or alliance on earth.  As to NATO/Russia match up:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293174/nato-russia-military-comparison/
And I am pretty sure this list has not been fully updated to account for Russian losses in this war.
If we are going to be acknowledging things well lets at least be consistent.  The Russia military is broken as far as great power projection and will remain so for some time to come.  Right now it cannot gain ground against a minor regional power who was not supposed to last 2 weeks let alone 2 years.  Their professional military are dead in fields and burnt out hulks all over Ukraine right now.  The have cobbled together a mixture of mercenaries and conscripts, along with Cold War era equipment and minefields from hell to hold onto where they can manage to.  The Russia economy is making weird belching sounds while it is both overheating and compressing.  The Russian people are a ticking time bomb as casualty rate climbs to a half-million and the Russian government now has to put out all those widow and VA cheques.
The West has got issues...lord knows that is true.  But this entire "We are weak and puny" while "Russia is strong and made of resolve" is a gross oversimplification and weak tea.  The West does have a sacrifice problem and it is a doozy.  In this dimension I am far more concerned about China than Russian competition however.  Russia is breaking itself on the worst idea it has had since 1905 and all we had to do was keep shoving money and last-gen technology into Ukraine to do it.  If we are collectively too dumb to understand this, then we deserve what happen next.  But I do not think we are.  I think we will reload and reset.  This war might be heading into endgame next year but there will be another game right after it.  

Naturally. I would be in favour of some joint action sea-air with Finland and Balts to make life in Kaliningrad...harder, there would probably be some non-military ways to do it. But it's pointless anyway, since Kremlin does not care about its own citizens there or anywhere else, except several districts of Moscow itself.
There was already Russian KH-55 discovered several months after its fall, anyway.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/military-object-found-polish-forest-was-russian-missile-media-2023-05-10/
There are some new developments lately in EW/ radar front here that are difficult to explain (perhaps themselves effect of captured muscovite elecronic devices), my vote  it could be connected to it. Overall, the incident is small one, compared to what is happening in Ukraine.
If anybody likes statistics:
And these actions would be... War with Russia? No, thanks, we have bad experiences here in the past of charging alone in helpless wars. NATO-level decisions; period. And if you mean about AA assets that even America can't provide, we would gladly accept some from AFU, if not the fact they are engaged in real war.

In general, in my opinion, missile attacks on Ukrainian cities today play a negative role for the Russians. Russia today is conducting one of the most successful information and psychological campaigns against the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin has successfully undermined Ukrainians' faith in its leadership and is quite successful in countering the mobilization of Ukrainians, pitting them against military officials.
However, massive attacks on rear cities reduce the effectiveness of these informational and psychological actions, returning Ukrainians to reality and indicating who their true enemy is.

It is the fact that the entire thing is seen via UAS that is the game changer.  The UA picked that small armor column up well back, queued any shooters - ATGM or indirect fires (looks like some DPICM at the end - and then provided any corrections and BDA.  That lead Russian tank had a roller on it and of course it was first to go.
Anything short of complete air superiority, and I mean from ground level to freakin space, is not going to solve this easily.  And even then, as we learned in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, a small two man ATGM team is still damned hard to find.  Now they have systems that can reach kms.
Cleansing a minefield for tens of kms behind it is simply not practical right now.

I would be *very* hesitant to imagine that the Russian state will break up in a formal way. Marginal parts of it, such as Chechnya might go but even then, it's far more likely that some sort of unspoken palatinate develops. The Russian state inhabits a number of tough neighborhoods along its extensive borderlands and the folks there are unlikely to prefer being under the tutelage of a Chinese/Kazakh/Turkish/etc local hegemon. If forging out on their own had been viable economically, strategically, militarily, they would likely have done it in 1990 to 1991. 
Russia seems alot more like a mid to late Ottoman state. It will persist in a slow decline.

My wish for Christmas is 'Swan Lake' on Russian TV on repeat.

Kind of combining @Aragorn2002 @Haiduk  @Harmon Rabb and others...
Prayer for Ukraine, not original.
"Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen."
I can thank God I get to be a member of this forum and sit in my clean cloths, freshly showered, dry and warm, belly full, relaxed under a sky free of enemy drones and missiles, with no worry to man my position in a cold muddy trench to hold off the next enemy assault, and take in and share thoughts on the military and political nature of present and future conflicts 
 

This has been an interesting discussion to follow exactly because it fails to address the elephant in the room, which is that no one has managed to make any significant progress across unmined terrain either. Why would we expect advancing along a hypothetical cleared lane in a minefield to go any better than advancing along an actual clear lane?
Last year, some folks on this thread were doing back of the envelope math to show that the front is too wide to be effectively covered by artillery. In this scenario, even if every inch of the front was mined, the solution for an attacker would be to find the gaps and breach there. But it's looking like there are no gaps any more.
Perhaps drones and infantry anti-tank weapons have improved to the degree that the number of people required to hold each kilometer has been greatly reduced? The intuitive solution to this is to bring greater mass to bear. Even 10 guys with ATGMs can't stop 20 tanks. But then the attacker also needs 20 lanes, otherwise the traffic jam will inevitably give the defender's artillery time to target the area. Enter all these wacky ideas for rapidly clearing minefields.
Let's say that the Aerial Winch Kit 2000 is 100% effective. A squadron of AWKs just opened up 20 lanes in a weakly-defended area of the front. 20 tanks are ordered through, 10 of them are immediately destroyed by ATGMs. How long do the survivors have before artillery rains down on their heads? If the answer is "not long enough", then we're back at trying to figure out how to wipe out artillery at ever-greater distances, and the minefield is not the real problem.

What I am not seeing here is how to deal with the fact that if you mass for a breach you will get spotted, then the enemy has time to prepare (by shelling the breaching vehicles and/or fuelling up helicopters). 
It seems to me the jump teams (which can start dispersed) have got to be doing quite a bit of work sanitising the area before you can breach, then you end up breaching slowly because you just can't concentrate valuable equipment before it becomes himars/lancet fodder. Your drone defence will have to be airtight too. 

I'm not personally a fan of the Colorado decision for pragmatic political reasons but I think folks need to relax a bit. First off, Trump's trial in DC is going to provide ample evidence of an attempt to overthrow the election (in other words, the government) and the legal reasoning in Colorado is based at least in part on precedents set by Gorsuch. This is not some radical move...in most other political eras it would be uncontroversial. Indeed...it shouldn't be controversial now given that Trump is literally talking about being a dictator if he wins reelection. I would have preferred that they waited later in the cycle. That's all. 
As to civil war...I've heard talk of it for years, have seen the fascists marching down my streets, threatening my neighbors (in one particular instance on 1/5, they told one with a pride flag on his lawn "We will come back for you later."). What I will tell you is that once they actually went after the state...on 1/6...and were ejected from the Capitol they got the absolute crap beaten out of them and have never returned to DC. I think an actual armed insurgency would be the end of them, quickly and decisively. Fort Sumter's never turn out well.
So...not bring it on exactly but I'm not losing sleep over it. 

If only there was a good simulation to help work some of this out....
 
It needs mentioning here that "snow" is an extraordinarily variable thing. It is quite possible that 95% of the time the mines work more or less normally, but that there is some combination of thaw, refreeze, and more snow or freezing rain that would disable most mines temporarily. A question I am pondering very hard is could such circumstances be created by carefully controlled flooding somewhere. Find just the right low lying spot, knock down an otherwise inconsequential dyke, and create the conditions for a few kilometer stretch to freeze solid enough. to support at least light vehicles. It would probably have to be timed at warmish moment before a hard freeze. I realize that is a very complicated basis for a plan, but the entire defensive scheme on both sides in Ukraine depends on the assault being slowed enough to let all the supporting fires come to the party. If a couple of brigades of light vehicles could suddenly just floor it right through a section of the defenses things might get very lively.

So as the Chairman exhorts us to 'seek truth from facts', 'learn from the peasants' and 'conduct rigorous self-criticism', I visited a  pro-Russian feed to see what they are showing lately in the way of hohol doom and destruction that has been hidden from we bourgeois dupes and stooges in our echo chamber.
Hilarity ensues (for some definition of hilarity).  Yes, there's also some destroyed equipment but no context (where, when, how much).
1. "Training of Belarusian military personnel with soldiers of the Wagner Group continues."
2. Wot, behind the rabbit?
3. Dumb alligator tricks
4. OK, some beardos talking and walking is the righteous fist of Allah or sumfink?
*****
Zoka got outed and his site was repurposed, but Geroman is still on the job. The footage is not without interest, but hardly supports the claims in the caption (that's true of UKR footage of course at times).
Here too.
Not sure I've ever seen a UA soldier in a steel pot with no helmet liner though, so not clear these hapless hohols aren't Russian or separs.
5.  OK, this does seem to be a UA road column being shot to hell but jump cuts make it hard to tell what's going on. The drone strikes clip is actually more interesting to me:  I know it's very much 'anecdata' and this is a built up (rubbled) battlespace, but do the Rooskies lean toward using SPV drones and Lancets in clusters as ersatz mortars, as opposed to the more curated strikes we see posted by the UA? (no firm conclusion reachable here, just something to look for)
Anyway, for what it's worth.
 

If NATO got involved in this war now I am not so sure we would cut through the RA to be honest.  First off we would not be doing strategic strikes into Russia as we would be bounded by escalation constraints as well.  Second we cannot have this discussion and leave China out of it.  If we threw in on Ukraine, China would be heavily motivated to support Russia more in order to act as strategic spoiler.  Russia sux, but China does not.  We cannot move NATO fast enough for China not to see this coming.
 So if we were fighting in the same box as Ukraine could we fix some things?
- Air superiority.  I have to be honest I really am not sure.  Above 2000 feet we could do SEAD and kill most of those IADS.  But if China started pushing a lot of MANPADs we would be challenged and face stiff loses.  My bet is Russia would go for denial, denial and denial.  We could lose hundreds of very expensive aircraft trying to do SEAD the old fashion way.  All the while long range loitering munitions would be swarming our own airfields along with Deep Strike.
- ISR.  If China supplied C4ISR support, we would also be in trouble.  We can not blind space or operational ISR outside of Ukraine.  And tactical has gone UAS.  We pretty much have all the ISR pointed at this problem so any improvement on the Russian side would be a very bad thing.
- PGM.  Our stuff still blows up.  Chinese HJ-12s are an absolute knock-off of the Javelin.  Not sure how you feel about an ATGM team that can hit at 5 kms, fire and forget, with high accuracy…but it concerns me.  China also has equivalent HIMARs systems etc so get ready for our big fat logistics back end to get mauled.  Hell Russia could hit us from inside Russia itself.
- Unmanned.  China has zero qualms about pushing Russia fully autonomous unmanned systems.  They likely lead the planet on this technology, along with UGVs.  The RA would be getting smart and distributed very quickly.  We have no answer for fully autonomous unmanned systems.  EW does not work. SHORAD does not work.  UGV is a nightmare in the wings.
- Minefields still work.  We would still need to fight through roughly 20km of extremely heavily mined belts facing all that above.  I am betting we would see loses much like the UA did last Jun.  Except entire Bns stopped cold.  
- Manpower.  To your point- NATO direct involvement would take Russian force mobilization off the leash.  We would be facing potentially millions of troops - even hastily trained and ad hoc equipped with left over Russian, Iranian and Chinese equipment.  
- Logistics.  Our logistics is ridiculously large and frankly we have not practiced conventional wartime logistics in about 30 years.  We cut them back and depleted them.  Hell back in 06 Iraqi insurgency managed to cut off operational LOCs coming up from Kuwait…and they did not have a fraction of what we would be facing.
- Willpower.  We would balk at the first real military disaster.  If we lost 1000 in a day we would go into collective political shock.  If the RA could drag this out the public would turn on the whole thing.  How many NATO nations are willing to lose thousands of people over Ukraine?  Russias willingness to take losses is already well established.  I do not think we would take 100k in a year…nor could we sustain it.
So my guess is that we would have to shoot for a quick war but be unable to deliver.  This is not Iraq.  We cannot bomb Russian strategic targets with impunity.  If we went down that road then this is a “would we win WW3 discussion” not a Ukrainian discussion.  China would be heavily invested in dragging this thing out and so would Russia.  Our combined arms and equipment is not somehow immune to being lost…we have seen plenty evidence of this.  
And frankly our doctrine and training is lagging.  We do not have unmannned doctrine and training for what we are seeing in this war.  We would try traditional mech manoeuvre after establishing what we think is air superiority and wind up bogged down by pretty much what ate the RA at the beginning of the war.  Only way this goes differently is if the RA is dumb enough to try to fight the same way we would.
In my estimation, if we had to fight this war with similar constraints as Ukraine we might actually do worse because they have higher experience levels than we do.  We have equipment but not as much as we think.  The US is divide in spending money let alone spilling blood.  
Now if we want to talk about a non-nuclear WW3 scenario things get more interesting.  We likely would not even bother with Ukraine and instead attack along several other fronts/theatres.  Here we could strike deeply into Russia and we might see a more traditional but extremely costly outcome.  Then of course “we broke it we bought it” and we would be trying to manage a broken Russia with China watching and waiting to help us mess that up.