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https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-apparently-gets-its-rear end-handed-to-it-in-war-games-2019-3 The US has been getting 'its rear end handed to it' in war games simulating fights against Russia and China In war games simulating a high-end fight against Russia or China, the US often loses, two experienced military war-gamers have revealed. "In our games, when we fight Russia and China, 'blue' gets its rear end handed to it," David Ochmanek, a RAND warfare analyst, explained at the Center for a New American Security on Thursday, Breaking Defense first reported. US forces are typically color-coded blue in these simulations. "We lose a lot of people. We lose a lot of equipment. We usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggression by the adversary," he said. At the outset of these conflicts, all five battlefield domains — land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace — are contested, meaning the US could struggle to achieve the superiority it has enjoyed in the past. In these simulated fights, the "red" aggressor force often obliterates US stealth fighters on the runway, sends US warships to the depths, destroys US bases, and takes out critical US military systems. "In every case I know of, the F-35 rules the sky when it's in the sky," Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defense and an experienced war-gamer, said Thursday. "But it gets killed on the ground in large numbers." Neither China nor Russia has developed a fifth-generation fighter as capable as the F-35, but even the best aircraft have to land. That leaves them vulnerable to attack. "Things that sail on the surface of the sea are going to have a hard time," Ochmanek said. Aircraft carriers, traditional beacons of American military might, are becoming increasingly vulnerable. They may be hard to kill, but they are significantly less difficult to take out of the fight. Naval experts estimate that US aircraft carriers now need to operate at least 1,000 nautical miles from the Chinese mainland to keep out of range of China's anti-ship missiles, according to USNI News. "If we went to war in Europe, there would be one Patriot battery moving, and it would go to Ramstein [in Germany]. And that's it," Work explained, according to Breaking Defense. "We have 58 Brigade Combat Teams, but we don't have anything to protect our bases. So what difference does it make?" "If we went to war in Europe, there would be one Patriot battery moving, and it would go to Ramstein [in Germany]. And that's it," Work explained, according to Breaking Defense. "We have 58 Brigade Combat Teams, but we don't have anything to protect our bases. So what difference does it make?" Simply put, the US military bases scattered across Europe and the Pacific don't have the anti-air and missile-defense capabilities required to handle the overwhelming volume of fire they would face in a high-end conflict. In a conflict against a near-peer threat, US communications satellites, command-and-control systems, and wireless networks would be crippled. "The brain and the nervous system that connects all of these pieces is suppressed, if not shattered," Ochmanek said of this scenario. Work said the Chinese call this type of attack "system destruction warfare." The Chinese would "attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time," Work said. "On our side, whenever we have an exercise, when the red force really destroys our command and control, we stop the exercise and say, 'let's restart.'" "These are the things that the war games show over and over and over, so we need a new American way of war without question," Work stressed. Ochmanek and Work have both seen US war games play out undesirably, and their damning observations reflect the findings of an assessment done from last fall. "If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic contingency or China in a war over Taiwan, Americans could face a decisive military defeat," the National Defense Strategy Commission — a bipartisan panel of experts picked by Congress to evaluate the National Defense Strategy — said in a November report. The report called attention to the erosion of the US's military edge by rival powers, namely Russia and China, which have developed a "suite of advanced capabilities heretofore possessed only by the United States." The commission concluded the US is "at greater risk than at any time in decades."
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:31 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 09:17 |
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lol, so lets just keep dumping more and more money into the Military Industrial Complex furnace, that'll totally fix the issue
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:35 |
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Why are you repeating right wing talking points? This is just whining for more money through corporate mouthpieces.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:37 |
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The Glumslinger posted:lol, so lets just keep dumping more and more money into the Military Industrial Complex furnace, that'll totally fix the issue The only real takeaway from this is that if you fight a near-parity country on their home turf then you're going to get owned. There isn't some sort of gap the military could bridge by throwing more money at the DoD. The Chinese and Russians have played catch up and there's no going back.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:38 |
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we should just spend DoD $$$ on shitposters on twitter instead
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:41 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:The only real takeaway from this is that if you fight a near-parity country on their home turf then you're going to get owned. There isn't some sort of gap the military could bridge by throwing more money at the DoD. The Chinese and Russians have played catch up and there's no going back. Yeah, any world war 3 is going to be hell for the countries on which the battles are actually fought. We've been lucky that we haven't had to fight a major war in the US since the mechanization of war. Though honestly, it would be a loving miracle if a real WW3 happens that involves bombing of the participants (ie Russia/China/US/EU/India/Iran) and no nukes get thrown around. I have trouble imagining a case where China bombs a US city that doesn't result in us launching a shitload of nukes, so I personally think this is all just posturing
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:41 |
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reads more like an ad for anti-missile systems
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:42 |
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The Dipshit posted:Why are you repeating right wing talking points? This is just whining for more money through corporate mouthpieces. The US will get utterly brutally owned in any shooting war with China or Russia isn't a right wing talking point. The USM does everything it can to suppress the results of these war games because they keep wanting easy money for worthless boondoggles. The right wing wants more money for the military no matter what, as if they're feeding some sort of martial spirit that grows in power with every budgetary increase.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:42 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:The US will get utterly brutally owned in any shooting war with China or Russia isn't a right wing talking point. The USM does everything it can to suppress the results of these war games because they keep wanting easy money for worthless boondoggles. The right wing wants more money for the military no matter what, as if they're feeding some sort of martial spirit that grows in power with every budgetary increase. but why would you suppress the results of war games where you get owned if you want additional funding? you exaggerate the missile gap not understate it
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:45 |
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congress will increase the budget but earmark the extra money for tanks and aircraft carriers that the military doesn't want, lol
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:46 |
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Typo posted:but why would you suppress the results of war games where you get owned if you want additional funding? Because they high ranking officers would probably get fired as congress/executive branch tries to find competent people to turn poo poo around, and the MIC would be forced to stop profiteering like crazy and actually spend the money effectively. SO its better for them to just pretend that the status quo is cool and good
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:47 |
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The Glumslinger posted:Because they high ranking officers would probably get fired as congress/executive branch tries to find competent people to turn poo poo around, and the MIC would be forced to stop profiteering like crazy and actually spend the money effectively. SO its better for them to just pretend that the status quo is cool and good Imperial power also depends on the image of invulnerability. If everybody knows they can call our bluff then it puts American hegemony in a shaky position.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:50 |
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i for one am shocked that simulations designed to expose weaknesses are in fact exposing weaknesses in a cumbersome, half-obsolete military apparatus that still thinks it's gonna be fighting Guadalcanal every Tuesday
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:50 |
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doubtful that either of these wars will kick off ww3. taiwan will probably be peacefully annexed by china within 15 years and no one but the poles will want to die in the baltics. the US should really fear a de facto alliance between china, iran, russia and a neutralized europe, which, lol, it just so happens to be doing through its own incompetence
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:50 |
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it's me I'm RAND and i have a perfect working model of the universe. *uses it to demonstrate the surprising result that planes have to land sometimes and are not invulnerable during this period*
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:53 |
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The US armed forces are a reflection of American society insofar that the closer you get to the top, the larger the proportion of incompetents and careerists who have kept failing upwards grows. Hence the first and usually last instinct of a general is to cover their own rear end and gently caress everything else. Though I am a bit doubtful of Russia's capability to wage any kind of protracted war effectively on account of them being a petrostate who would be invading their own customers in the proposed scenarios.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:54 |
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jai hind
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:55 |
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color me shocked that "assume permissive air space for drones" and "pay off one local group to kill another local group" tactics fall apart in a conventional warfare scenario
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:56 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:"In our games, when we fight Russia and China, 'blue' gets its rear end handed to it," David Ochmanek, a RAND warfare analyst, explained at the Center for a New American Security on Thursday, Breaking Defense first reported. US forces are typically color-coded blue in these simulations." Found the Project for the New American Century rebrand Also the only wargame that somewhat accurately simulates fighting Russia and China is literally Defcon
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:56 |
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russia's military is legit 50% terrible for everything except garrison duties and 50% pretty good China's military is an unknown and the next war they will either surprise everybody with how good they are or be a dumpster fire
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:57 |
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KaptainKrunk posted:doubtful that either of these wars will kick off ww3. taiwan will probably be peacefully annexed by china within 15 years and no one but the poles will want to die in the baltics. lol it's not incompetence, our president is a russian asset
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 20:57 |
America's massive incompetent military complex is a giant welfare project that keeps the doors open and ready, in the event America actually for real needed an effective military it still has by far the greatest capacity to build one. Don't mistake the F-35 being a joke for them not being able to build something that works if it were actually important. They're already building new updated F-15 airframes that will outperform every other jet they'll ever face, and that's an evolution of a cold war era design. If there's one thing America excels at it's killing.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:00 |
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:01 |
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the US military is really problematic the only real question is how problematic do you think china/russian MIC are and do you think they are worse or better
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:02 |
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Cerebral Bore posted:The US armed forces are a reflection of American society insofar that the closer you get to the top, the larger the proportion of incompetents and careerists who have kept failing upwards grows. Hence the first and usually last instinct of a general is to cover their own rear end and gently caress everything else. I don't think any kind of imperial contest in the 21st century is going to be "protracted." All the forces that will fight in a theater are already committed. The US Fleet Response Plan is for a CSG to be deployed within 30 days, but the war will already be decided within a month. A protracted war would require total mobilization, and there's no way the stakes will get that high without also going nuclear. In that case, whoever is closer to home has the advantage, even for a country as dysfunctional as Russia.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:02 |
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Typo posted:but why would you suppress the results of war games where you get owned if you want additional funding? well it would make sense if you need to convince people that your current wunderwaffen will totes get a sick 90:1 KDR and win a future war on their own, which is absolutely a thing people push because doing otherwise raises real questions about competency/procurement that might threaten people's jobs/reputations/opportunities to make megabucks while doing as little as possible but like... the entire point of these wargames (beyond training) is to find and expose weaknesses to be addressed and somehow "the US would take real casualties and material damage in a conflict with a major power on their own turf that somehow stayed non-nuclear" is being translated to "the US gets brutally owned" - this is some combination of asking for yet more military funding and suggesting that emphasis shift back to building capability to fight conventional military conflicts against relative peers rather than optimizing our ability to remotely bomb weddings and goat herders Wheeee posted:If there's one thing America excels at it's killing. and killing-related logistics
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:04 |
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Wheeee posted:America's massive incompetent military complex is a giant welfare project that keeps the doors open and ready, in the event America actually for real needed an effective military it still has by far the greatest capacity to build one. All planes have to land no matter how good they are, and airbases don't move. You can just throw up a bunch of missiles to destroy everything on the ground. Planes can't be in the air forever.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:06 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:I don't think any kind of imperial contest in the 21st century is going to be "protracted." All the forces that will fight in a theater are already committed. The US Fleet Response Plan is for a CSG to be deployed within 30 days, but the war will already be decided within a month. A protracted war would require total mobilization, and there's no way the stakes will get that high without also going nuclear. In that case, whoever is closer to home has the advantage, even for a country as dysfunctional as Russia. there's the case to be made 21st century conventional war will look more like a 18th century war than 20th century war in the sense that 20th century wars were fought with WW/cold war mass conscript armies where you can lose whole armies in a week and have another 5 armies ready in 6 month to send in in the 18th century if you lose your army that's it, you can't rebuild it for the rest of the war in time without compromising quality. So instead of having frontlines where two armies are constantly fighting each other you'll have 2 armies wondering around trying to avoid unfavorable engagements and wars are decided by 1-2 big battles instead of 4 year grinds
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:07 |
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hmmm good point op lets not have ww3 then
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:09 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:I don't think any kind of imperial contest in the 21st century is going to be "protracted." All the forces that will fight in a theater are already committed. The US Fleet Response Plan is for a CSG to be deployed within 30 days, but the war will already be decided within a month. A protracted war would require total mobilization, and there's no way the stakes will get that high without also going nuclear. In that case, whoever is closer to home has the advantage, even for a country as dysfunctional as Russia. Sure, but they'd still be starting a war against the countries whose money they need to keep the lights running. And I doubt that trade relations would just normalize the moment that they stop the shooting.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:09 |
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also, definitionally, wouldn't world war 3 starting in the first place automatically mean the US lost that is, lost in its stated quest to maintain hegemony (lol rip) and preserve what it defines as "world peace" regardless of who wins a hypothetical world war 3, the US will first lose by the contest kicking off, and so the thread title is kind of like "duh?", in addition to all the other ways
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:10 |
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Seriously though, any serious military conflict between the major nuclear armed powers would be over in an hour, regardless of the state of the rest of their conventional military. And also in all seriousness, one hour is probably an exaggeration in the amount of time it would take. Like from what I understand, during the cold war, NATO policy on any invasion from beyond the iron curtain was to be retaliated with by immediately launching the missiles, end of question
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:10 |
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poty posted:hmmm good point op lets not have ww3 then weird
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:10 |
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Cerebral Bore posted:Sure, but they'd still be starting a war against the countries whose money they need to keep the lights running. And I doubt that trade relations would just normalize the moment that they stop the shooting. The issue isn't an actual war really happening, the issue is the threat to American hegemony and our ability to call all the shots all the way up to their border. If Russia or China can feint a punch and make us blink then it creates a whole new paradigm. I'm not implying America's decline as a hyperpower is bad, it just is what it is.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:11 |
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Feldegast42 posted:Seriously though, any serious military conflict between the major nuclear armed powers would be over in an hour, regardless of the state of the rest of their conventional military. And also in all seriousness, one hour is probably an exaggeration in the amount of time it would take. The stakes were also a lot higher during the Cold War. Are we going to let the nukes fly over Latvia? It's doubtful.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:14 |
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when were carriers last relevant for doing anything other than an imperialism anyway, 1950?
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:15 |
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Admittedly, the study was almost certainly done to help lobby Congress, and at the same time, the US' edge it had since the 1990s has clearly dulled. This is probably more to do with China then Russia, although the Russian military has recovered to some degree (not so much its surface navy). China has quitely been building up a blue water navy that would seriously give the USN a run for its money in the Pacific in the next decade, and while most Americans still think they are running around with some fishing boats with missles to attached to them...their latest vessels seem modern, capable and they are building a lot of them. Moreover, the Chinese had made substantial strides in aerospace. Obviously, the US is going to sink more money into boondoggle projects, but there may be actually a point they would have an advantage. This isn't mean they are going to invade California, but our ability to launch wars of adventure may seriously be curtailed.
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:15 |
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pln tryna storm taiwan would be such a shitshow can you even imagine
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:16 |
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Prav posted:when were carriers last relevant for doing anything other than an imperialism anyway, 1950? they're pretty good for humanitarian efforts not as good as "not doing an imperialism to begin with" but having a floating city that you can just pop down next to a disaster area is pretty good
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:16 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 09:17 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:All planes have to land no matter how good they are, and airbases don't move. You can just throw up a bunch of missiles to destroy everything on the ground. Planes can't be in the air forever. yes, we all remember how Trump's missile strike on Shayrat back in 2017 completely obliterated the Syrian air force in a single blow and completely prevented their ability to use that base forever, and we're definitely sure none of this "targeting fixed facilities," "hitting planes on the ground," and "degrading command and control" works in reverse or would have any impact on an adversary's ability to target US airbases at optimal times
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# ? Mar 11, 2019 21:17 |