Officer of Engineers

Oh give me a break. That is ludicrous. We couldn't cut the Iraqis off from Kuwait through airpower. What makes you think you could a much more vaster Russia with much more superior engineer regts?

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Chimo

Anon

This is entirely true, and that's including the full weight of Army attack aviation in the mix too.

troung

Yep don't have to open the morning newspaper and read about another hapless American conscript beaten to death in our nonprofessional army.

And what about the ARVN?

He lost power because he fell out with Dostum over the flow of Greenbacks. Once Dostum switched sides and took over northern Afghanistan and captured a large part of the DRAAF, the game was up. The gas and oil hurt, losing the Uzbeks was fatal.

The Uzbeks, Mongols, Arabs, Turks and Persians have contolled it since Alexander. Afghanistan was a way point for Turko-Mongols to the Middle East and India so plenty have taken it over. Pashtun rule is a "new" thing (came with gunpowder).

And America had the NA who were in a stalemate with the Taliban at the time. America removed the Taliban's big advantages; the IEAAF, Pakistan and came with a lot more money.

A handful of SOF teams would have raised some hell on their own but sure as hell would not have taken Kabul, Jalalabad, the Hazarajat or Kandahar without the NA. It was more a case of America throwing its effort behind the NA and providing airsupport, but more important money.

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To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

zraver

Q- A- Geogrpahy

1- The Tigris and Eurphrates run to the Gulf south South by South east. From the west side of the rivers there is no natural water barrier from the Karbala Gap to Kuwait city.

2- Iraq was not trying to advance its tanks and thus did not need a heavy logtrain to maintain it's occupation. And when Iraq's Army did try to move enmasse we did cut them off completely with less than 24 hours warning, and we did it twice A- Khafji, not one iraqi tank or APC mad eit back to thier lines B- along the highway of death, the only ones who survived are the ones who abandoned the veihicles and left the hardpan and highway and hoofed it north on foot.

3- Russia has just a few magor rail and road routes from European Russia to the battlefeild. The battlefeild will be running east-west along a North-South axis against the grain of the land where the rivers run North-South. This means every magor river is a choke point with out a land route around them. They have to use bridges and fords

4-Also Russian lines have to pass either north or south of the pripreit marshes forcing them to telegraph supply convoy movements to orbiting satalites, so that the USAF would know where to concentrate agaisn't fords and poontoon bridges.

5-If we postulate a Russian invasion of Europe then the Dniepr, Donitz, Vistula and and Oder all have to be crossed. Cut those bridges, and pipeline pumping stations and the supply of fuel is cut. Russia does not have enough tankers to keep those tanks supplied. Even if the engineers can throw up pontoons. Russia is still very much a rail based economy and poontoons will not support a freight train.

Note=The T-90 has a non combat range of 550km with external tanks(1600L of fuel). Deisel weighs 1.8363 pounds per liter or 2938 pounds per tank load. with just 3 refuelings each tank needs 8814.24 pounds of fuel. In other words every Russian tank platoon needs a dedicated tanker truck. Then those trucks themselves need fuel, the BMP's need fuel, the artillery, the helicopters, the trucks carrying food and ammo ect ect.

During the Cold war the Warsaw Pact relied on pre-posistioned stocks of fuel to sustain it's advance. They would not have that in a renewed push west, or even if defending thier state in some hypothetical invasion.

Even the US Army with it's superior logitics set up and heliborne fuel depots was forced to take an operational pause during OIF to refuel.

Officer of Engineers

We're talking two different things here and you're confusing the issue. There is absolutely no way can we NATO (as a whole which means the US and Allies) can cut interior Russian LoCs. That is prepostruous. Any operations outside of Russia however is doomed to Russian failure not only because of lack of LoC but because even Poland can managed local superior forces.

zraver

Colonel, look at the number of rivers there is a finite amount of bridges able to handle the trains and a finite amount of puping stations for the pipelines and very finite amount of trucks. Can we cut thier communications, no just seriously degrade them, but we can almost assuredly cut thier logisitcs network, and do so quickly. Russia still does not have enough modern highways with only 43,000Km total carrying 53% of it's surface trailer load capacity vs 74,600 km of US interstates alone not counting US highways. Most roads are still seasonal and vulnerable to the rapiutsa(sp?) "rainy season", she and depends on the rail network for bulk transportation. Almost none of this network is hardened beucase when it was built during the Cold War any US bombers would be carrying nukes not PGM's. Hell the Russian's only have a single 2 track line supplying all of Siberia.

hell colonel you only have to take out 20 bridges in the US to cut it in half along the Mississippi (although we could divert north of the great lakes during good weather and Canadian hospitaility.

VovaLee

Don't argue with religious fanatics. It is hopeless.

Officer of Engineers

On a warfooting, you want to know how fast the Soviet engineering regiments can repair those railways and clear those roads? Come on, you're talking about an army that built roads in Afghanistan just to support their invasion. A feat that is equal if not greater than the US invasion of Iraq. Any hole that you can make, Soviet engineers will have it fixed within 24 hours. Any bridge that you can flatten, they will have built another one within a week.

And if we did cut off the Iraqis, then how the hell did 75% of the Iraqi Army managed to cross back into Iraq at the start of the Ground War? And we didn't stop Al Khafji. They took the town and the furthest point was blunted by a USMC LAR battalion, not airpower.

wangrui961

I don't think any country can win a land war against Russia . They seemed never be beated Naplon , Hitler,.......both were overd by Russia.
US,a great AF and navy , the army can't even will Iraq without the help of AF and Navy.

VovaLee

wangrui961... You in the US forum.
They know about East Front very little.

omon

you all compare wrong things, compare russian and american soldger. russian soldger don't even have socks, chokolate bars mre's, air conditionered housing,gym uniforms,and countless other things, take all that away for americans, i doudt they will fight as good as russians, every nation after mongolia tried to invade russia with supperior weapons ;napoleon germans ..ect. nobody made it.if russians try to invade US will get their ass kicked,so will us if it tryes to do the same. givin' any soldger too many gadgets and other things to make his life better is not good idea,

Anon

Shut up troll.

zraver

double post

zraver

1- Building a bridge to take a 4000 ton train is a world apart form building a bridge to take less than 100 ton veihicles, specially in Rusisa where they abut the rails end to end at the same location (left and right side rail bars end at the same point) vs the wests off set rail placement. Russian trians go clack clack clack not clickety clack like the wests and each of those jars Russian, and Western) transfers a huge amount of energy.

The amount of roads the can build wont matter, evne if they have enough tanker and transport trucks. if you only have 2 days of fuel and you wont be geting anymore for a week your dead (assuming the USAF doesnt keep blowing the bridges, you can take a bridge down faster than you can put it up)

re-read what I said about Khafji, not one Iraqi tank made it back, they wer einto the town before we knew what hit us. They achieve dalmsot perfect tactical suprise. 75% of the iraqi army returned on foot, minues tanks, trucks, BMP's artillery etc. It wa sa desert version of the Failase Pocket.

Omon,
Let me start by saing that I do not doubt one bit that the Russian soldier loves his nation, and will make incredible sacrafices in its defense. However your statement is wrong, in March 1918 Russia surrendered to Imperial Germany with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It gave up the Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states.

VovaLee

http://worldaffairsboard.com/showthread.php?t=22464
Georgiy Konstantinovich Zhukov