In a War With Russia, US and NATO Doesn't Stand a Chance: Russia vs the United States - Who Would Win?

In a War With Russia, US & NATO Doesn’t Stand a Chance. Putin orders Russia’s air force to prepare for a ‘time of war’ “under any conceivable scenario, Russia does have the means to basically completely destroy the USA as a country in about 30min (the USA, of course, can do the same to Russia).

Any US war planner would have to consider the escalatory potential of any military action against Russia.” This still begs the question of whether Russia could challenge the USA militarily if we assume, that neither side would be prepared to use nuclear weapons, including tactical ones.

Typically, we use the yearly IISS Military Balance or a source like Global Firepower and tallies of the number of men, main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry combat vehicles, combat aircraft, artillery pieces, bombers, missiles, surface ships, submarines, etc. presented by each side in a chart.

The reality is that such bean counting means absolutely and strictly nothing. if a war happens between China and Russia then the fact that China has, 1000 tanks in its Yunnan province, will make no difference to the war at all, simply because they are too distant.

When we apply this caveat to the Russian-US conventional military balance we immediately ought to ask ourselves the following questions: What part of the US military worldwide would be immediately available to the US commanders in case of a war with Russia? On how many reinforcements could this force count and how soon could they get there?

Keep in mind that tanks, bombers, soldiers and artillery do not fight separately – they fight together in what is logically called “combined arms” battles. So even if the USA could get X number of soldiers to location A, if they don’t have all the other combined arms components to support them in combat they are just an easy target. Furthermore, any fighting force will require a major logistics effort. It is all very well to get aircraft X to location A, but if its missiles, maintenance equipment, and specialists are not there to help, they are useless.

Armored forces are notorious for expending a huge amount of petroleum, oil and lubricants. According to one estimate, in 1991 a US armored division could sustain itself for only 5 days – after that it would need a major resupply effort. Finally, any force that the US would move from point A to point B would become unavailable to execute its normally assigned role at point A. Now consider that “point A” could mean the Middle-East, or Far East Asia and you will see that this might be a difficult decision for US commanders.

We have one very good example of how the US operates, Operation Desert Shield. During this huge operation it took the US six months and an unprecedented logistical effort to gather the forces needed to attack Iraq. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia had been prepared for decades to receive such a massive force (in compliance with the so-called Carter Doctrine) and the US efforts was completely unopposed by Saddam Hussein.

In case of war with Russia, which country neighboring Russia would have an infrastructure similar to the one of the KSA, prepositioned equipment, huge bases, runways, deep ports, etc. How likely is it that the Russians would give the USA six months to prepare for war without taking any action? One might object that not all wars run according to the “heavy” scenario of Desert Storm.

What if the US was preparing a very ‘light’ military intervention using only US and NATO immediate or rapid reaction forces. The Russians have no fear of the military threat posed by NATO. Their reaction to the latest NATO moves (new bases and personnel in Central Europe, more spending, etc.) is to denounce it as provocative, but Russian officials all insist that Russia can handle the military threat.

As one Russian deputy said “5 rapid reaction diversionary groups is a problem we can solve with one missile”. A simplistic but basically correct formula. the decision to double the size of the Russian Airborne Forces and to upgrade the elite 45th Special Designation Airborne Regiment to full brigade-size has already been taken. Russia preempted the creation of the 10,000 strong NATO force by bringing her own mobile (airborne) forces from 36,000 to 72,000. This is typical Putin.

While NATO announces with fanfare and fireworks that NATO will create a special rapid reaction “spearhead” force of 10,000, Putin quietly doubles the size of the Russian Airborne Forces to 72,000. the battle-hardened Russian Airborne Forces are a vastly more capable fighting force then the hedonistic and demotivated multi-national Euro force of 5,000 NATO is struggling hard to put together. The US commanders fully understand that.