Posted on 11/03/2015 12:34:19 PM PST by ghost of stonewall jackson
For those villagers eagerly snapping pictures on the side of a road in the Czech Republic in late September, the appearance of the line of U.S. “Stryker†armored fighting vehicles must have seemed more like a parade than a large-scale military operation. “We are demonstrating operational freedom of maneuver across Eastern Europe,†Col. John V. Meyer III told a reporter.
But not everyone is convinced. “This Stryker parade won’t fool anyone in Moscow,†says retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor. “The Russians don’t do many things well, but they have been subverting, destabilizing, invading and conquering their neighbors since Peter the Great. And what’s our response: a small unit of light armored trucks.â€
In early September he circulated a PowerPoint presentation showing that in a head-to-head confrontation pitting the equivalent of a U.S. armored division against a likely Russian adversary, the U.S. division would be defeated. “Defeated isn’t the right word,†Macgregor told me last week. “The right word is annihilated.†The 21-slide presentation features four battle scenarios, all of them against a Russian adversary in the Baltics.
In effect, the debate between Macgregor and McMaster is a battle over whether the Army’s BCT structure is capable of matching up against what Army thinkers call a “near peer†competitor, like Russia. The dispute is fundamental–focusing on whether, in a future conflict, the U.S. military can actually win. Even inside the Pentagon, that is very much in doubt. A recent article by defense writer Julia Ioffe reported the “dispiriting†results of a Pentagon “thought exercise†between a red team (Russia) and a blue team, NATO. The “table top†exercise stipulated a Russian invasion of the Baltics, the same scenario proposed by Macgregor. “After eight hours of gaming out various scenarios,†Ioffe wrote, a blue team member concluded that NATO “would lose.â€
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
It’s my read that we NEVER know the whole story. Between our own media and TASS (Are they still the official Russian news?) there isn’t much truth, information or news.
I guess History called the morons in our government, and she wants the 2nd Armored Division back.
Good One
A couple of weeks ago I was talking with an active duty LTC, Field Artillery Branch, he said that he went on two deployments to Iraq as a captain and major, and all his battalion did was convoy escort and military police type work. They did not take their 155 guns and there were no guns present for them from the artillery battalion they replaced. It too had done MP type work. He said he had good NCOs, but they knew more about patrolling than doing fire missions, emplacing and moving the M-109s and towed 155mm they had back in the states. And his Fire Direction Center folks were bare proficient because their Tacfire/ATAADS etc were sitting state side, thus there was no way to do MOS sustainment training.
Thus, if this writer says that the Russians could take on and eliminate a us armored division, I am hesitant to contradict him.
truly frightening, fellow patriot. obama has crippled the army
This is a really interesting article. thanks for posting.
Thanks Obama.
The Colonel advocates for more divisions in Europe—more self-contained and independent divisions that would be a little more immune to political influences and influences from other branches. Not a very popular view with political class folks.
How about the $%&*# Europeans fielding their own divisions for a change?
You may be right.
The US and Russia/USSR went round and round, each threatening the other with the "bigger stick." I do remember the Cuban missile crisis. The was fifty+ years ago. JFK called Castro's [USSR] bluff and the crisis ended.
I still don't believe that the Russians are better off financially today than they were fifty years ago. I still think that they are bloated with some kind of self-importance that in no way matches their $$$ levels. THE "BIGGER STICK" costs and Russia doesn't have, I believe, enough rubles to match the USA.
I hope that our next president has the backbone to do what JFK did and what Ronald Reagan would have done if the same crisis had occurred. Reagan did bust the bank of the USSR and it was dasvidania Gorbachev.
They are. But when an axis of commie/fascist evil resumes threats against other nations, everyone gets ready to play. As for trade and government income related civilian chatter, the more demurring our defense posture, the more likely the nuke exchange that aging lefties wake up from nightmares crying about.
Maybe foreign commies/fascists and their domestic friends should do something instead of only talking too much.
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