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Mordor Doesn’t Have a Prayer Against The Russian Military
Why the United States Will Lose a War with Russia
I never cease to be amazed by the pervasive belief that the US military is superior to any other on the planet. Upon what basis is this faith founded? The US has not engaged in a real war since Korea. No one in the US military has ANY experience with high-intensity conflict. —Will Schryver, military analyst
If the United States launches a nuclear “decapitation” strike on Russia that kills President Putin and his Generals, Russia has a backup system in place that will automatically retaliate. The Dead Hand system is designed to collect data from sensors scattered across Russia on radiation, heat and seismic activity confirming a nuclear strike. If the system does not receive instructions from Moscow’s Command Center with a given period of time, the system will autonomously launch 4,000 tactical and strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States ensuring the complete destruction of the country and the incineration of hundreds of millions of Americans. Moscow’s message is simple: “Even if a preemptive strike takes out our leaders, our ‘dead hand’ will still kill you all.” —Dead Hand, Planet Report
Most Americans continue to believe that the United States will prevail in a conventional war with Russia. But that is simply not the case. For starters, Russia’s state-of-the-art missile technology and missile defense systems are vastly superior to those produced by western weapons manufacturers. Secondly, Russia can field an army of more than 1 million battle-hardened combat troops who have experienced high-intensity warfare and are prepared to engage whatever enemy they may face in the future. Third, the United States no longer has the industrial capacity to match Russia’s impressive output of lethal weaponry, artillery shells, ammunition, and cutting-edge ballistic missiles. In short, Russian military capability far exceeds that of the US in the areas that really count: High-tech weaponry, military industrial capacity, and experienced manpower. In order to drive this overall point home, I’ve taken excerpts from the work of three military analysts who explain these matters in greater detail underscoring the dramatic shortcomings of the modern US military and the problems it is likely to encounter when faced with a more technologically advanced and formidable adversary. The first excerpt is from an article by Alex Vershinin titled The Return of Industrial Warfare:
The war in Ukraine has proven that the age of industrial warfare is still here. The massive consumption of equipment, vehicles and ammunition requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply – quantity still has a quality of its own…. The rate of ammunition and equipment consumption in Ukraine can only be sustained by a large-scale industrial base.
This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. Currently, the West may not have the industrial capacity to fight a large-scale war….
The Capacity of the West’s Industrial Base
The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either…. In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days....
Flawed Assumptions
The first key assumption about future of combat is that precision-guided weapons will reduce overall ammunition consumption by requiring only one round to destroy the target. The war in Ukraine is challenging this assumption….. The second crucial assumption is that industry can be turned on and off at will….. Unfortunately, this does not work for military purchases. There is only one customer in the US for artillery shells – the military. Once the orders drop off, the manufacturer must close production lines to cut costs to stay in business. Small businesses may close entirely. Generating new capacity is very challenging, especially as there is so little manufacturing capacity left to draw skilled workers from….. The supply chain issues are also problematic because subcomponents may be produced by a subcontractor who either goes out of business, with loss of orders or retools for other customers or who relies on parts from overseas, possibly from a hostile country….
Conclusion
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that war between peer or near-peer adversaries demands the existence of a technically advanced, mass scale, industrial-age production capability….. For the US to act as the arsenal of democracy in defence of Ukraine, there must be a major look at the manner and the scale at which the US organises its industrial base…. If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must first radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime. The Return of Industrial Warfare, Alex Vershinin, Rusi
Bottom line: The United States no longer has the industrial base or the requisite stockpiles to prevailin a prolonged war between two near-peer powers. Simply put, the US will not win an extended conventional war with Russia.
Here’s how analyst Lee Slusher summed it up in a recent post on Twitter:
….The US effectively had monopolies on many decisive capabilities, like precision-guided munitions, night-vision, global strike, etc. I think the absence of high-intensity conflict between the US and other nations had a lot to do with these asymmetries. There was no need for the US to apply mass when its advanced capabilities—or even just the threat of them—were sufficient to achieve political aims….. The list of nations with advanced capabilities continues to grow. At the same time, Western militaries and defense industrial bases continue to erode. The West exchanged its large standing armies for a reliance on boutique American capabilities that were once decisive but are now increasingly commonplace. This has left the West without its technological edge and without its previous military mass. Those who still believe in US military supremacy fail to realize these changes. Worse still, most of them entertain cartoonishly underrated notions about Russian military capabilities. They fail to realize Russia has both a technological edge and military mass. The reputation the US military had was deserved for a time, but everything changes. Lee Slusher @LeeBTConsulting
Waltzing Toward Armageddon with the Merchants of Death
Bottom Line: America’s adversaries—Russia, China, Iran—have either caught up to or surpassed the US in advanced missile technology, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), electronic warfare, cutting-edge missile defense systems etc—which is gradually increasing parity between the states while ending the period of US military supremacy. The American century is rapidly drawing to a close.
Let’s move on to military analyst Number 2, Will Schyver, who draws similar conclusions to those of Vershinin but from a slightly different angle. Check it out:
I am more convinced than ever that the US could NOT establish air superiority against Russia — not in a week; not in a year. Never. It simply could not be done. It would be a logistical power projection challenge well beyond the current capabilities of the United States military.
American air power would prove substantially inferior to the extremely potent and abundantly supplied air defenses fielded by the Russians.
Just as the majority of HIMARS-launched GMLRS rockets, HARMS missiles, ATACMS missiles, and British Storm Shadow missiles are now being shot down in Ukraine, the vast majority of US long-range precision-guided missiles would be shot down, and the US would very rapidly deplete its limited inventory of these munitions in a futile attempt to overwhelm the Russian capacity to keep shooting back.
American suppression of enemy air defenses would prove inadequate to the task of defeating extremely sophisticated, deeply layered, and highly mobile air defense radars and missiles….the war in Ukraine has made perfectly clear that all manner of western air defense systems are inferior to even the decades-old Soviet S-300 and Buk systems that Ukraine originally deployed. And even if western systems were formidable, they simply don’t exist in anything approaching the numbers necessary to provide credible defense in broad scope and depth.
Welcome to the game-changing missile age.
To complicate matters even further, scant US munitions inventory and insuperable production limitations would allow the US to prosecute an air war against Russia or China for only a few weeks at most.
Moreover, in a high-intensity combat scenario in either eastern Europe, the China seas, or the Persian Gulf, the maintenance demands for US aircraft would overwhelm its proximate supply. Mission-capable rates would plummet even lower than their notoriously abysmal peacetime standards.
The US would, quite literally after only a few days, see sub-10% mission-capable rates for the F-22 and F-35, and sub-25% rates for almost every other platform in the inventory. It would be a huge embarrassment for the Pentagon … but hardly a huge surprise…..
Simply put, US air power as a theater-wide undertaking could not be sustained in the context of a non-permissive regional and global battlefield against one or more peer adversaries.
In eastern Europe, Russia would savage NATO bases and supply routes. The Baltic and Black seas would effectively become Russian lakes where NATO shipping could not venture….
Many are convinced these are unfounded hysterical assertions. In my view, the simple military, mathematical, and geographic realities of the situation dictate these conclusions, and those who resist them are typically blinded by the myth of American exceptionalism and its attendant ills to such a degree that they are unable to discern things as they really are….
I am increasingly persuaded that, if the US chooses to make direct war against either Russia, China, or Iran, it will result in a war against all three simultaneously.
And that, amazingly enough, is just one of multiple hard truths that the #EmpireAtAllCosts cult, and those acquiescing to its delusional designs, ought to give more serious consideration as they continue staggering towards the abyss of a war they could never win…. Staggering Towards the Abyss, Will Schryver, Substack
There’s a lot to chew on here but, in essence, Schryver is weighing Russia’s impressive air defense capability against America’s “scant munitions inventory and insuperable production limitations”, the combination of which suggests that a US military offensive would likely peter-out before inflicting serious damage on the enemy. Once again, our military analyst infers that the United States will not win in a direct confrontation with Russia.
Finally, we’ve excerpted a longer blurb from Kit Klarenberg who is more of an investigative journalist than military analyst. In a piece titled Collapsing Empire: China and Russia Checkmate US Military, Klarenberg details, what he calls the “unrelentingly bleak analysis of every aspect of the Empire’s bloated, decaying global war machine.” If even half of what the author says is true, then we can be reasonably certain that the United States escalation with Russia is the fasttrack to a military catastrophe unlike anything the world has seen since the fall of Berlin in May, 1945. Take a look:
On July 29th, …. RAND Corporation published a landmark appraisal of the state of the Pentagon’s 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS), and current US military readiness… Its findings are stark, an unrelentingly bleak analysis of every aspect of the Empire’s bloated, decaying global war machine. In brief, the US is “not prepared” in any meaningful way for serious “competition” with its major adversaries – and vulnerable or even significantly outmatched in every sphere of warfare….the Empire’s worldwide dominance, are judged to be at best woefully inadequate, at worst outright delusional.
From the Rand Report:
“We believe the magnitude of the threats [self-created] the US faces is understated and significantly worse…In many ways, China is outpacing the US…in defense production and growth in force size and, increasingly, in force capability and is almost certain to continue to do so…[Beijing] has largely negated the US military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment. Without significant change by the US, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor.”
“At minimum, the US should assume that if it enters a direct conflict involving Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea, that country will benefit from economic and military aid from the others…This new alignment of nations opposed to US interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war…As US adversaries are cooperating more closely together than before, the US and its allies must be prepared to confront an axis of multiple adversaries.” Commission on the National Defense, Rand
As the Commission report spells out in forensic detail, Washington would be almost completely defenceless in such a scenario, and likely defeated nigh on instantly…. It’s not just being spread too thinly across the Grand Chessboard that means the Empire’s military “lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.”…
The RAND Commission found Washington’s “defense industrial base” is completely “unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs” of the US, let alone its allies. “A protracted conflict, especially in multiple theaters, would require much greater capacity to produce, maintain, and replenish weapons and munitions” than is currently in place….
For decades, the US military “employed cutting-edge technology to its decisive advantage for decades.” This “assumption of uncontested technological superiority” on the Empire’s part meant Washington had “the luxury to build exquisite capabilities, with long acquisition cycles and little tolerance for failure or risk.” Those days are long over though, with China and Russia “incorporating technology at accelerating speed”….. America’s “defense industrial base” is today crumbling, riddled with a myriad of deleterious issues…
To address these problems, the Commission calls… to reindustrialise the US after years of outsourcing, offshoring and neglect. No timeframe is provided, although it would likely take decades…..
We have entered a strange, late-stage Empire era, comparable to the Soviet Union’s Glasnost, in which elements of the US imperial braintrust can see with blinding clarity Washington’s entire hegemonic global project is stumbling rapidly and irreversibly towards extinction… Collapsing Empire: China and Russia Checkmate US Military, Kit Klarenberg, Substack
Once again, we see the same criticisms reiterated over and over again: Insufficient industrial capacity, dwindling stockpiles, “insuperable production limitations”, and diminished technological superiority. When we add these to the myriad logistical problems of conducting a war in eastern Europe with an ad hoc army of inexperienced volunteers who have never seen combat, we can only conclude that the United States cannot and will not prevailin a prolonged conflict with Russia. Even so, Washington continues to fire ATACMS missiles into Russia (13 more were launched over the past two days) apparently believing that there will be no response to the provocation. Even so, NATO Command continues to entertain illusions of victory by pressing for preemptive “precision strikes” on Russian territory welcoming the prospect of a direct conflagration between NATO and Russia. And even though, both France and the UK threaten to deploy combat troops to Ukraine thinking the inexorable trajectory of the war can somehow be reversed. It’s madness.
Five centuries of primacy have produced a cadre of western elites so drunk with hubris that they are incapable of seeing what is painfully obvious to everyone else, that the imperial model of western exploitation (the ‘rules-based order’) is collapsing and that new centers of power are rapidly emerging. It appears now that these same elites are prepared to drag the world into a catastrophic Third World War to preserve their grip on power and to prevent other nations from achieving the independence and prosperity they’ve earned. Fortunately, Washington will fail in this effort just as it has failed in all its other interventions dating back to 1945. Because the United States no longer has the technology, manpower or industrial capacity needed to win a war with Russia.
It’s a whole new ballgame.
Select Commentary (from UNZ original thread)
The two best equipped armies in Europe were kitted out by USSR – both Ukraine and Russia. No nation in Europe could match them for manpower or equipment.
The following video I posted B4 . The main point at the end was that this missile could defeat ALL NATO airports, thus grounding and destroying them. For example in the video says that a war game where China attacks are large US Air force base in Japan which WOULD have taken 200 plus missiles to destroy, can now be accomplished by 4-5 Oreshnick. In all taken wargame scenarios whereby Russia fights NATO, it needs air superiority to prevail, and when this isn’t the case, NATO LOSES. So Russia can soon have a weapon in numbers that can take out all European NATO Military airports.
I did also come across a Asian Times story that China could produce 1000 state of that arts missiles per day. WHEN ONE LOOKS AT THE CAR PLANT THAT TAKES ROUGHLY 3 MINUTES TO ASSEMBLE A CAR, the level of automation, China if pressed could produce large amounts of armaments., since they are the largest manufacturing base the world has seen thus.
https://asiatimes.com/2024/03/america-has-no-ukraine-plan-b-except-more-war/
Re: “How many casualties is the USA prepared to accept? The USSR suffered about 27 million dead in a population of 190 millions in WW2.”
Whatever one thinks of the Russians, whether one hates them, loves them or falls someplace in between, it ought to be inarguable that one does not play games and conduct brinksmanship with a nation in possession of 2,000 nuclear warheads. Unless one has a death wish, that is…
The U.S. lost somewhat fewer dead in WW2 than half a million confirmed military KIA. The USSR – which is to say Russia – lost that many dead in some battles and campaigns. The Siege of Leningrad for example, or the Battle for Berlin in 1945, or at Stalingrad.
We are speaking of a nation and people who suffered on an almost unimaginable scale, but managed not only to survive but to prevail in the conflict. They had help, of course, but we ought to pause to ponder the strength and fortitude such an effort took. One should not trifle with such a people and nation.
The Chinese also suffered enormously during that war, which was not the only conflict roiling China at the time: The Nationalists and communists fought throughout the 1930s pausing only to fight the external enemy in the Japanese long-enough to drive them out – to restart the revolution in 1945, concluding it only with the victory of communists and the establishment of the PRC in 1949.
During the 1960s a series of talks were held between American and PRC parties, diplomats and soldiers and so forth. In one interview, discussing the nuclear advantage then held by the U.S., an American general boasted that with the push of a button, U.S. nukes could wipe out as many as two-hundred fifty million Chinese, a quarter of a billion people. The Chinese general shrugged and said his nation had always had people to spare and that such losses would not prove insurmountable.
There is no question that the U.S. could inflict catastrophic damage on either or both nations; there is also no question that they could wipe our country off the map in return. Does it really make sense to boast and brag and act like a bully when such formidable opponents have allied themselves?
Whether the foreign policy establishment in Washington wants to face it or not, the American century has ended, our era of geopolitical hegemony. A multipolar world is emerging, and times are changing. We’d better start swimming with the tides of history instead of against them, or we are apt to find ourselves drowning in the onrushing current. That starts by back off – way off – from the insane jingoism and sabre-rattling against Moscow. Make peace with them before it is too late.
The difficulty, as always, is how to take action. Our political class are simply parasites that do NOT listen to us, do not obey the Constitution, and do not act in our best interests. The fact is, that our democracy is dead in substance (alive in form). We are ruled by puppet masters that have found the way to kidnap an entire country(s) by stealing/infiltrating/controlling the “corner office”. The “million dollar question” is what is their end-goal. Are they simply :
-oligarchs who want to make more money,
-are they technocrats vying to implement efficiency and eugenics,
-are they craven idealogues who want more power, or
-are they religious zealots who want to create the environment for the return of God and their misinterpreted role as the chosen people.
In the meantime, they have proliferated within our bureacracy, NGO’s, universities, think tanks, agencies, educational systems, and, of course, within the financial industry and many businesses. At this point, with the rot so deep, there is no easy “turnaround”. Wokism has become “normalized” and god-fearing, hard working, honor driven middle class families have been made “abnormal”. What concrete steps can we take?
HA… where do you get this bs from. You are so obtuse it isn’t funny. You are so far from making any sense. You sound pitifully seeking attention. Here is WHY?
The game of escalation has changed completely. The new Russian missile can make dissappear any target in Europe but is no threat to the US with it’s medium range and non nuclear threat.
Russia has finally realized that the old Colonial Banksters need a WW3 reset and none need it more than the City of London. That is why the English are going all in to get it started because the Bank of England is broke. Myself and others fear a false flag on the UK population blamed on Russia. The British Elite calculate that Americans will rush into war on their side.The Russian have signaled to the US we got this and we are no threat to you with our new weapons. Drawing a border between Russia and Poland has been something I predicted since 2023 and now it looks like a Russian necessity. The Ukraine problem will not be resolved, rather Ukraine will be disolved. This will keep Blackrock and Monsanto out and result in the UK, the Ukraine war Bonds guarantors, becoming insolvent.
I doubt the US Army command will agree to a nuclear Armagedon. So stop trolling for the English. A US war with Russia has been gamed many times and 100 million lucky Americans will die immediately. The survivors and the World population will face a slow death and a ten year nuclear winter. No one wins a nuclear war, silly.
‘In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days.’ — Alex Vershinin
Sounds about right. So why do belligerent little British bulldogs like Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer bark furiously at the Russian bear, which can upend them with one casual swipe of its big paw?
Do Brits have a death wish? Do they still believe their own bullshit about being a second-rate power that still ‘punches above its weight’? Do they expect the brave French to come to their aid with General Gallieni’s fleet of taxis?
All that sensible Americans [I know — oxymoron, right?] can do is pull the plug on NATO and the special relationship. Sauve qui peut. If little Britain gets flattened after biting the bear’s ankles, don’t ask us to help. Can pay; won’t pay.
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Copyright © Mike Whitney, Global Research, 2024
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