Russia's War Against Ukraine

[GDS_Starfury]

8 fully armed F-15s from Lakenheath landed in Poland today.  8)

[GDS_Starfury]

ah politics....

[Gusington]

DJ Shadow is awesome.

And Pete you bring up a point that a lot of talking heads mentioned...they are very wary of a mistake being made and starting a war, on any side.

Russian Navy has closed parts of the Black Sea, near Odessa, btw.

[Pete Dero]

There are confirmed reports that there are now about 300 U.S. troops in Ukraine including Special Forces.

News on CNN 20 minutes ago : The United States has moved some US forces out of Ukraine and ordered the evacuation of most of its embassy staff on Saturday as fears mount that a Russian invasion of the country could potentially take place in the next few days.

President Biden and the other guy are on the phone right now. 

[GDS_Starfury]

Invasion: the newest olympic winter sport

[Gusington]

^Who will be the biggest loser?

[Toonces]

If you enjoy Red Storm Rising, I highly recommend Red Army by Ralph Peters. 

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Army-Ralph-Peters/dp/1451636695/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2HKLSCYO5SPYQ&keywords=red+army+ralph+peters&qid=1644691584&sprefix=red+army+ra%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1

[Pete Dero]

^Who will be the biggest loser?

Russians never play fair. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/sports/russia-doping-sochi-olympics-2014.html
Russian Insider Says State-Run Doping Fueled Olympic Gold

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/02/11/russia-olympics-doping-scandal/
A timeline of Russia's state-sponsored Olympic doping scandal

https://apnews.com/article/winter-olympics-russia-getting-away-with-it-60f7e4f7c54ae3fe65d966ff5a159e9b
At Olympics and beyond, getting away with it is Russia's way

https://time.com/5746344/russia-banned-olympics-2019/
Russia Banned From Global Sports Competitions, Including Olympics, for 4 Years For State-Sponsored Doping

[JasonPratt]

There are confirmed reports that there are now about 300 U.S. troops in Ukraine including Special Forces.

Okay, that's where I got confused; Fox News was showing the 82nd Airborne arriving somewhere else, and talking about forces in the Ukraine -- or maybe showing some of the 300 troops arriving in the Ukraine but talking about the 82nd sending 3000 and I mistook where.

Training and advising makes sense. Sending 3000 advanced troops of the 82nd to Poland or Germany (or spread over both) still doesn't make good defensive sense, but I suppose it could signal that we're willing to punch into Russian territory if Putin steps too far over the line.

Biden has already caved disastrously on giving away the security of a free nation (such as it was, since the situation there was admittedly not uncritical already for various reasons). But if Putin is staging an elaborate bluff demonstration then he and Biden might come to some arrangement where Biden cedes the Ukraine as a Russian sphere of diplomatic influence; and in return gets to sell the deal as a win to keep America out of war by waving a piece of paper declaring "PEACE IN OUR TIME! LET'S GO BRANDON INDEED!" or words to that effect. ;)

Sarcasm aside, he needs a big political win, and he has repeatedly shown he's willing to take the easiest available apparent route to get something he can try to sell as a big political win. So I fully expect that factor to play out.


Meterologically, I heard yesterday that Feb 15th is projected to be the firmest ground available in the region until summer dries things up, so if Putin is going to go then every day after the 15th will shorten his window for the motorized troops.

(I'm assuming there are no foot troops per se anymore, but they'd be in increasing trouble, too. The Russians know how to build tanks and tracked APCs with good ground pressure stats for dealing with snow and mud, so that's less of a factor; but you can only get so many troops forward with tracked APCs, and without troops to hold the mud the tanks will have trouble in urban and wooded areas.)

[GDS_Starfury]

Maybe things have changed a lot during my lifetime, and no doubt this is a great place to learn otherwise  8) -- but Airborne Divisions (per se) are not designed primarily for defense. You only use them that way as a last resort, not as a first preliminary response. You get a decent quality dirt-level merely airmobile rifle division to come in and do defense. (Or an airmobile rifle corps.)

you might want to check up on the US Army's TOE and while your at it the mission parameters for an airborne division.

[ArizonaTank]

If you enjoy Red Storm Rising, I highly recommend Red Army by Ralph Peters. 

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Army-Ralph-Peters/dp/1451636695/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2HKLSCYO5SPYQ&keywords=red+army+ralph+peters&qid=1644691584&sprefix=red+army+ra%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1

I briefly knew Ralph Peters when I was in the Army (many, many years ago). Very smart guy.

I don't often agree with his politics, but I believe that he does know the Russian military pretty well.

[ArizonaTank]

... Sending 3000 advanced troops of the 82nd to Poland or Germany (or spread over both) still doesn't make good defensive sense, but I suppose it could signal that we're willing to punch into Russian territory if Putin steps too far over the line.
...

I think it is mainly to reassure the new NATO members (the ones closest to Russia).

But the move is also to keep Putin from thinking that while he has 100,000 plus troops rolling around, they might "get lost" in the snow and casually slice off a piece of Poland.

Even if there was the political will in NATO, I don't think the alliance could pull together enough force in time to seriously intervene against the Russians in Ukraine itself. NATO would want heavy units for that. It would take many months to put a serious force of heavies in place.

[ArizonaTank]

Putin's yacht was undergoing repairs in Germany. A few days ago, it pulled the plugs and left early before the work was complete. Seems Putin would not want it in a western port if sanctions were 'suddenly' imposed.

https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-news/putins-yacht-graceful-abruptly-leaves-germany-amid-sanctions-warnings-over-ukraine-articleshow.html

[al_infierno]

The most notable part of that article IMO is the realization that Putin doesn't trust Russian docks to service his superyacht.   :-[

[JasonPratt]

Mission Statement: On order, the 82nd Airborne Division, the 82nd Airborne Division rapidly deploys within 18 hours of notification, strategically deploys, conducts forcible entry parachute assaults and secures key objectives for follow-on military operations in support of U.S. national interests. The 82nd Airborne Division is an active airborne infantry division of the United States Army specializing in joint forcible entry operations.

https://www.army.mil/82ndAirborne#org-about

According to the United States Army, the mission statement of the 82nd Airborne Division is pretty much exactly what I was talking about.

Now, obviously there are exceptions, Bastogne being the classic example of a last-ditch desperate deployment to save a crumbling situation. Stalin's first two or three airborne corps (out of ten, or maybe twelve I forget -- I know he had plans for fifteen eventually) got chewed up into paste in the first few months of Barbarossa when they were emergency deployed on defense, perhaps most notably punching down the blitz at Smolensk; after which Stalin occasionally reconfigured remaining divisions into the epic Guards Divisions which more-or-less saved the Soviet Union time and time again, not least the Guards Army rolling up to relieve the siege of Stalingrad. But (aside from one airdrop operation, I can't recall where at the moment), their exception contrasts the rule: they were reconfigured to stop being airborne divisions, and so generally fought better at standard rifle division missions than their doomed forebears in the opening months. You send the airborne div to defense as the last option, not the first response. (Unless the blitz happens to be overrunning airborne divs you stacked up at the border over the past several months, along with millions of rubles of parachutes laid out on the ground in the past few days, for some reason.  ::)  ^-^  :-" Then the divs may be defending as a first response, being already there on the scene of the surprise attack -- but that wasn't why they were there.)

So I'm back to the question, why send 3000 troops of the 82nd to the Russian border from Fort Bragg? Do Poland and Germany have air supremacy sufficient to cover a jump assault behind Russian lines ("forcible entry parachute assaults" to "secure key objectives") with ground forces powerful enough to reach them (in "follow-on operations" of "joint forcible entry operations") before they're destroyed?

Because if not, then they're just there to look awesome as a political message to Poland and Germany: see how confident we are at putting up some of our most famous elite units to stand with you?

Or if so, then they're there as a political message to Russia (a la MacNamara's "new language of diplomacy" ;) ), sort of like deploying tactical nukes to launchers at the border and showing them off.

Presumably, if they were there for actual operational plans already in existence, they wouldn't be shown off to the press. But neither would those plans be defensive.