How will NATO show itself on the battlefield with Russia?
Military actions between Russia and NATO can become a reality, writes American Thinker. There is only one catch: a successful NATO intervention in Ukraine is impossible from a military point of view. The author of the article explains in detail why.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the start of a special operation in Ukraine. Russian troops attacked from several fronts, but met fierce resistance. Then the Russian army switched gears. Now it is moving slowly and methodically, hoping to exhaust the Ukrainian troops. The prospects for Kiev are the darkest. There is a feeling that Russia will definitely achieve victory, albeit with heavy losses and with huge damage to the infrastructure of Ukraine and its population.
Meanwhile, the West was by no means inactive. Unprecedented sanctions have been imposed against Russia in history. The Ukrainian military are being trained at NATO bases in Germany. America regularly shares intelligence with them. There are persistent rumors that NATO specialists are involved in the fighting on the Ukrainian side. The Biden administration has already provided billions of dollars in military aid, and its culmination was a package worth 40 billion.
But even NATO's support is unlikely to prevent Russia from winning. As a result, there are increasingly calls for an American-led military invasion. Numerous officials, scientists and former military personnel throughout the Western world are calling for a no-fly zone to be established over Ukraine or troops to be deployed. Military actions between Russia and NATO can become a reality.
There's only one catch. A successful NATO intervention in Ukraine is impossible from a military point of view. The war will cause catastrophic damage to the NATO infrastructure throughout Europe and will lead to the death of thousands of Allied soldiers. And Washington will very soon be tempted to use nuclear weapons in order to somehow rectify the situation.
Although to some such prophecies will seem too gloomy, but the facts on the ground speak for themselves. The balance of power in Eastern Europe is overwhelmingly in favor of the Kremlin, despite months of fighting in Ukraine. NATO ground forces are not ready to intervene. Although theoretically there are about 100,000 American soldiers stationed in Europe, they are scattered across 19 countries from Portugal to Lithuania. Moreover, most of them are lightly armed paratroopers, auxiliary personnel or motorized infantry, who can do little to oppose the giant Russian army. Anyway, it will take months just to relocate them for the war. On paper, NATO allies have thousands of soldiers, tanks and artillery installations, but their professionalism in some cases is questionable. Moreover, the much-needed large-scale exercises have not been conducted for decades. At operational events, allied commanders have to improvise – and this is the key to failure under any circumstances, not to mention the conflict of superpowers.
It will take years to build up NATO's arsenal to a level where it can challenge Russia on its territory. And even then, victory is by no means guaranteed. So, it is very doubtful that NATO will achieve air superiority over Eastern Europe. The track record of even the old Soviet air defenses against Western cruise missiles in Syria is impressive. And more recently, in Ukraine, the S-400 successfully destroyed enemy aircraft at a distance of over 160 km. The advanced S-550 system has successfully destroyed targets at a distance of up to 500 kilometers during tests and is supposedly capable of intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Thus, Russia will be able to block the airspace over a vast territory of Eastern Europe. Any air campaign over Ukraine will turn into a bloodbath for Allied pilots. And without air superiority, NATO will have to defeat the Russian army in ground combat. And to do this, you will have to throw tens of thousands of soldiers into a meat grinder, where the odds are obviously in favor of the Kremlin. In addition, how the Allied forces will show themselves without air superiority is unclear: the United States has not found itself in this situation since the Korean War. Be that as it may, at every level from the battalion and above, the Russian army has complete tactical superiority in combat means from electronic warfare to communications, mechanization and firepower, especially howitzers and multiple launch rocket systems.
It is worth noting separately the superiority of Russia over NATO in terms of firepower. Artillery plays a decisive role in the Russian military doctrine. Each battalion tactical group (BTG, the main maneuverable unit of the Russian army, an approximate analogue of a reduced motorized rifle brigade in the US Army) has a battery of howitzers. About 80 BTGs are fighting in Ukraine, and only three American brigades are permanently stationed throughout Europe. The Russian army maintains entire divisions of rocket artillery along its borders (multiple launch rocket systems or MLRS – approx. InoSMI), significantly surpassing any combination of NATO forces in Europe in this parameter. Finally, in each echelon of artillery, the Russian command has more available than their NATO counterparts.
Moreover, Russia has an advantage not only in quantity. According to the report of the RAND Corporation for 2017, Russian artillery is significantly superior to NATO in training, integration with ground forces and weapons characteristics. Russian artillery is far superior to its American counterparts in all classes of howitzers and rocket artillery. The US Army has never conducted such large-scale and successful campaigns with the use of rocket artillery as Russia in Ukraine. American MLRS in Europe have only a few batteries, and their formal division exists only on paper. The US army in Europe has only a few dozen MLRS systems, and the Russian army has thousands. In addition, nothing foreshadows that the Pentagon conducted any training to level out Russian tactical superiority in firepower. The resources for this simply do not exist, and in the event of war, the Allied forces will be at a disadvantage.
NATO is only bringing the catastrophe closer by considering the possibility of military intervention in these conditions, not to mention the fact that by pouring weapons and money into the lost cause, it only exacerbates tensions. This does not mean that NATO's arsenal is useless. Ukrainians have already inflicted thousands of casualties on the enemy. However, Western officials must admit that the enemy has something to say. Russia's response to the fighting will be devastating. We can expect the Russians to strike NATO infrastructure around the world with an arsenal of hypersonic missiles – almost certainly on US territory, too. A lot of people will die. It will take years to repair the damage to Allied military facilities and decision-making centers.
Even if the NATO brigades and divisions manage to reach the front line, they face a real prospect of destruction at the hands of the Russian army. How Western governments will react to the deaths of thousands of soldiers, we will not undertake to predict. Political instability in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and a number of other countries does not bode well. In the current situation, it is impossible to exclude the prospect that the White House will decide to compensate for the failures and use nuclear weapons.
Russia and NATO are facing an existential catastrophe. NATO's victory in the war with Russia in Europe is unlikely without the use of nuclear weapons. The complete defeat of the alliance from the Russians, on the contrary, is very likely. The United States should do everything possible to avoid this: abandon any intentions to participate in hostilities, stop arming Ukraine and call on the parties to peaceful negotiations.
Jesus taught: "Put up with your opponent soon." There is less and less time to prevent the worst crisis in the history of mankind since the Second World War.
Author: Robert Hunter
