U.S. blocks Turkey's F-35 equipment over S-400 deal with Russia

beerftw said:

Controlling the skies does not mean controlling all the skies in a country, you simply need to control it to the point you are fighting. Cas is close air support not forward air support,therefore not meant to go farther than the troops, otherwise it becomes ground attack rather than cas. I think you still believe the purpose of dedicated cas is as forward assault and not cas, because simply if you move your troops that far forward without air supremecy, your own troops can be annihilated by enemy aircraft, or denied resupply, and the mere fact someone would plan an event where that happens would mean there are some grossly incompetent leaders who were incapable of thinking ahead.

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You don't even understand what you're arguing and you're trying to educate me? Give me a break.

Cordelier said:

Sometimes all it takes is one to be done.

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Yeah, except no.

Actual nation-states realize the dangers of implementing nuclear weapons onto the battlefield. Your insinuation that it's impossible to have a peer conflict because nukes will start flying is baseless.

Jredbaron96 said:

Yeah, except no.

Actual nation-states realize the dangers of implementing nuclear weapons onto the battlefield. Your insinuation that it's impossible to have a peer conflict because nukes will start flying is baseless.

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A peer conflict outside of each peers country not going nuclear is possible. Ie If the US and Russia were directly fighting in say Syria and kept the fighting to that area. The chances of it expanding are quite high however. The US or Russia would likely seek to limit resupply by hitting ports, or factories in each others country to gain an advantage. The minute home countries are attacked the chances of the war becoming larger expand drastically.

I do not believe that any two nuclear powers except for India and Pakistan have actually engage in direct warfare. The use of proxies has been the standard and fighting in non homeland countries. That is due to the risk of expansion of the war, eventually leading to the use of nukes

As it stands currently Putin would get his $2.5 billion deal on the S-400 while Turkey gets screwed on sanctions. Its lira has already lost a third of its value against the USD$. Erdogan's party in the March elections got blown out of major cities. Erdogan cancelled the mayor's race in Istanbul they lost to try again June 23rd. Erdogan makes as much sense as Trump does while both of 'em kiss Putin's ass.


Turkey has until next month to cancel a messy multibillion-dollar Russian arms deal or face harsh US penalties

22 May, 2019,


Turkey has a little more than two weeks to decide whether to complete a complex arms deal with the U.S. or risk severe penalties by going through with an agreement to buy a missile system from Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

As it stands now, the U.S. State Department’s current offer is the final one, multiple sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity told CNBC when asked whether the deadline had room for more extensions.

Turkey, a NATO member, is slated to receive the Russian-made S-400, a mobile surface-to-air missile system, next month. The S-400 is said to pose a risk to the NATO alliance as well as the F-35, America’s most expensive weapons platform.

“NATO countries need to procure military equipment that is interoperable with NATO systems. A Russian system would not meet that standard,” said a U.S. State Department official who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter. “We underscore that Turkey will face very real and negative consequences if it completes its S-400 delivery,” the official added.

In 2017, Ankara brokered a deal reportedly worth $2.5 billion with the Kremlin for the S-400 despite warnings from the U.S. that buying the system would come with political and economic consequences.

In multiple efforts to deter Turkey from buying the S-400, the State Department offered in 2013 and 2017 to sell the country Raytheon’s Patriot missile system. Ankara passed on the Patriot both times because the U.S. declined to provide a transfer of the system’s sensitive missile technology.

Turkey has until next month to cancel a messy multibillion-dollar Russian arms deal or face harsh US penalties • KENTRON.am • News from Armenia and Artsakh


US should keep Turkey as a Nato ally but make it the number one punching bag after Russia.

Jredbaron96 said:

Because there will be times when we cannot guarantee air superiority. That's a simple fact that in the face of an IADS we may not be able to fly uncontested air operations, which is why aircraft like drones and helicopters are so much more important; they're much more survivable than a fixed wing gunship.




Time and time again wars and decisive battles have been fought without one side having control of the skies. As much as the air force likes to talk about how it's impossible to conduct operations without air superiority or at least parity, numerous times have militaries done just that. The most prominent recent example is the Serbian forces in Kosovo, which despite being armed with only a handful of obsolete Soviet SAM launchers, and being targeted by tens of thousands of sorties Serbian forces recorded losses to air strikes in the dozens, not thousands as NATO expected.

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There is no non-NATO Air Force on the planet capable of meaningfully contesting us for the skies. Any air war will go like Iraq in 91, the first few dozen pilots will be dumb/patriotic enough to try, they will be shot down effortlessly and with no casualties to us and then they will stop risking air assets.

EMNofSeattle said:

There is no non-NATO Air Force on the planet capable of meaningfully contesting us for the skies. Any air war will go like Iraq in 91, the first few dozen pilots will be dumb/patriotic enough to try, they will be shot down effortlessly and with no casualties to us and then they will stop risking air assets.

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Hell, it was so one-sided that they were actually flying them to Iran! The most "advanced" aircraft in service in the Iranian Air Force are the 6 MiG-29s and the 20 Su-22s they were "gifted" in 1991. They also sent them 24 Su-24s and 12 Su-25 ground attack fighters.

Iraq realized that the US was destroying their air force at will, both in the air and on the ground. I still remember the awe of landing at Camp Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Row after row of "modern" defensive bunkers built on the air base. Now those had only been built a few years before by the French. And they had been guaranteed as being "impenetrable" aircraft bunkers, that no nation on the planet could penetrate short of a major airstrike.

This is where most of the forward based Iraqi Air Force was situated. And in each bunker you can see a single penetration had happened, and the inside of the bunkers were destroyed.



Iraq decided that they would rather give their aircraft to their former enemy, rather than see them destroyed one by one on the ground. In 2003 they even took the step of burying them in the desert.

Ask any OIF-OEF veteran who flew into Ali Al Salem, and I am sure they can tell you the experience of landing on that runway, and seeing row after row of aircraft bunkers. There are dozens of them, each and every one destroyed.

Interesting side note, Kuwait and France are still involved in legal battles over those bunkers. They were still new when Iraq invaded, and were still being paid off. Once it was realized how easily the US defeated them, Kuwait refused to make any further payments, claiming that they were defective. Even almost 30 years later the legal battle is still going on.

beerftw said:

If you look at all those points you will realize their budget does not mean squat, it is how they spend it,

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Wow, they must be super geniuses to compete with only one tenth the resources. If only we could be as smart as Vlad.

Seriously? That's just kissing Russian ass. What a joke.

Be real.

EMNofSeattle said:

There is no non-NATO Air Force on the planet capable of meaningfully contesting us for the skies. Any air war will go like Iraq in 91, the first few dozen pilots will be dumb/patriotic enough to try, they will be shot down effortlessly and with no casualties to us and then they will stop risking air assets.

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Using Iraq as a metric is a terrible idea given how pitiful the Iraqi military was when it came to general competence.

Jredbaron96 said:

Using Iraq as a metric is a terrible idea given how pitiful the Iraqi military was when it came to general competence.

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Yes, let’s use the Russians who’s technology is obsolete and suffer from a massive lack of war fighting experience compared to us, or the Chinese who we will never to war with because it can’t profit either of us as a metric instead

Jredbaron96 said:

Using Iraq as a metric is a terrible idea given how pitiful the Iraqi military was when it came to general competence.

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This is just something I had to shake my head at.

Iraq was far from incompetent. They were actually one of the most competent militaries in the region. With little to give it away beforehand they conducted a 5 division invasion at 2AM which caught Kuwaiti forces completely off guard. They were able to keep the Kuwaiti Air Force so tied up that they could target very few ground forces. They lost 20% of their air assets, then had to run and land in Saudi Arabia because their ground bases by then were being overrun.

By nightfall of the first day, they had secured all of their military objectives. They had eliminated the Kuwaiti military (air, land, and sea) as an effective force and only a few scattered units that were able to turn tail and run made it to the safety of Saudi Arabia.

And that is "pitiful"? Holy crap, that is the exact opposite of what that means.

The reason they were destroyed piecemeal by the coalition forces are many. For one, there was a large technology gap, that no amount of numbers of equipment could offset. Also the bulk of their military were conscripts, with little training who had been drafted between the invasion itself and the start of ground operations by coalition forces in 1991.

Then you have the effect of the US deception operations. One of the most forgotten aspects of the war is the large amounts of time dedicated towards Marines in the theater. Saddam and his forces believed that the main thrust would come form the 2nd Marine Division, sitting off-shore in their amphibious ships. A lot of time was spent by those forces doing all the steps of conducting an amphibious assault, only to turn around at the last minute and return to their ships.

Back in 1992 I was shown photos of the giant sand table set up in a gym in Kuwait City. On it you had about 20 miles of coastline replicated over an area the size of a basketball court. And they had been watching, all of the defenses (being regularly bombarded by the BBs) were pointed out to sea, and they knew what ships were where, with what Marine units. They really were preparing to fight something like the Battle of Iwo Jima or Tarawa all over again.

But it was all a ruse. He and his Generals assumed no other invasion was possible (other than a single column from the South) because such attacks are almost impossible. Except he did not count on a relatively new US development that was already in place. GPS. The coalition forces did not have to follow the maps, did not have to stay on the roads. They simply went cross-country, something no other military in the region had ever been able to do before.

And caught them from the South and West, while they were looking to the East. And yes, the Marines did indeed make their landing. Via helicopter, they took and held Kuwait City Airport. The landing craft stayed inside the ships.

The US also spent a huge amount of time destroying any communications they could find. By the time the ground war started, almost no Iraqi military units were transmitting anything. As soon as they would try to fire up even a Regimental sized command post, coalition fighters were coming in to take it out. Almost their entire C&C system was dark because command posts knew if they started transmitting instructions they would have missiles coming shortly afterwards.

In fact, they learned from this and actually did much better in 2003. With the advent of the Internet, a lot of their communications traffic in 2003 was actually via the Internet and not broadcast. Even the US found it had a hard time circumventing that.

This is the fallacy I keep seeing over and over again. People who seriously under-estimate the capabilities of their enemies. If anything, their biggest problem was the reliance upon the adapted "Warsaw Pact" doctrines that had been taught to them by their Soviet military advisors. That is a doctrine that has failed over and over again since WWII. And it only worked then because it was employed by a massive country with bodies to spare to throw at the enemy. Every time it was tried against more modern military forces it has failed.

But yea, continue to fool yourself that they were incompetent. I am sure you also believe all German soldiers were fat and wore lederhosen, and the Japanese soldiers all wore glasses and had buck teeth.

EMNofSeattle said:

Yes, let’s use the Russians who’s technology is obsolete and suffer from a massive lack of war fighting experience compared to us, or the Chinese who we will never to war with because it can’t profit either of us as a metric instead

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Be very careful with that claim.

Remember, in 1991 we went to kick Iraq out of Kuwait with a military that had not fought anything more than a short skirmish in almost 20 years. Almost all of our forces were children during Vietnam. And at that time, the Soviets had been fighting in Afghanistan for a decade.

It is not that the Russian technology is obsolete, that is not the case at all. It is simply of a very different design philosophy than that of the US.

During WWII, the US followed a similar practice to what the Soviets-Russians used. The individual lives matter little, so long as we can swarm the enemy down in number of forces and equipment. Most admit the M4 was one of the worst tanks developed during the war. Yes, there were worst tanks in the war, but this thing was developed in 1942, after every major country was already involved. And it sucked. But we were able to throw so many of them into Europe (over 40,000) that this did not matter.

And it is not like Russia has not been involved in fighting for the past 20 years. Maybe you missed all the flare-ups with their neighbors in the last decade or so.

And China, they are kind of a paper tiger. Their Army is impressive because of it's size, but equipment wise not so much so. They have almost no ability to project power, and have not had a serious military action since they spent a few weeks beating up Vietnam in 1979.

Hell, it is only recently that they finally retired the last of the Type 59 tanks from active service. It is still their #2 tank, with around 2,000 in service in Militia and Guard units. This is literally a 1960 era copy of a 1950 tank. That would be like the US still trying to have the National Guard use M46 Patton tanks.

EMNofSeattle said:

Yes, let’s use the Russians who’s technology is obsolete and suffer from a massive lack of war fighting experience compared to us,

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The Russians have fought in Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, Chechnya, and Dagestan since the end of the Cold War. I'd be reluctant to say they have no warfighting experience.

Oozlefinch said:

This is just something I had to shake my head at.

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Lol

With little to give it away beforehand they conducted a 5 division invasion at 2AM which caught Kuwaiti forces completely off guard. They were able to keep the Kuwaiti Air Force so tied up that they could target very few ground forces. They lost 20% of their air assets, then had to run and land in Saudi Arabia because their ground bases by then were being overrun.

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Not only were the Kuwaiti Armed Forces significantly smaller and weaker than the Iraqi Invasion Force, the actual invasion was conducted by the Republican Guard who had rehearsed it for months on end. It was an invasion against a severely weaker opponent who's main highway led straight to the capital.

The reason they were destroyed piecemeal by the coalition forces are many. For one, there was a large technology gap, that no amount of numbers of equipment could offset. Also the bulk of their military were conscripts, with little training who had been drafted between the invasion itself and the start of ground operations by coalition forces in 1991.

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You are actually correct, most of the Iraqi Army was conscript. But you also leave out the severe levels of incompetence demonstrated throughout the Iraqi military.

"Iraqi troops made no concentrated efforts to avoid being outflanked, and counterattacks were carried out almost entirely through frontal assaults which did nothing but produce lopsided casualties against the Iraqis."

"Iraqi divisional commanders frequently failed to report vital information to the general staff, including information on enemy troop movements, results of engagements, and losses sustained by their own forces, leaving the general staff with a very incomplete picture as to how the ground war was developing."

"The frontline commanders at the end of the Iraqi VII Corps line had failed to report that the 26th Infantry Division had been overrun by U.S armored and mechanized forces. Instead, they told Lt. Gen. Ahmad Ibrahim Hammash, the VII Corps Commander, only that a small force of eight French tanks and four APCs had skirted the flank of the 26th Infantry Division while making it's way towards al-Busayyah."

-Arabs at War, M. Pollack Kenneth

If anything, their biggest problem was the reliance upon the adapted "Warsaw Pact" doctrines that had been taught to them by their Soviet military advisors.

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Feel free to point out where in Soviet doctrine it says to stay in your fighting position while the enemy overruns your buddies, or continue to fire artillery at the same location and make no adjustments.

Jredbaron96 said:

The Russians have fought in Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, Chechnya, and Dagestan since the end of the Cold War. I'd be reluctant to say they have no warfighting experience.

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They’ve fought limited proxy battles and internal disturbances, they have never fought and won a major conventional war unassisted. They got the snot beat out of them in WW1 and their industrial base could not have sustained a war with Germany without US assistance in WW2.

All Russian wars since then have been minor affairs except Afghanistan where they turned out to be no match for tribesman with access to easy cash from the anti communist Saudi royal family and weapons from the US.

They can inflict heavier casualties on us then we might be used to in a war, but they could not win one and their Air Force would be heavily bloodied just fighTing the Polish and Royal Norwegian Air Forces in the opening days of any hypothetical war before we show up to finish them off.

Jredbaron96 said:

For the threat?

Back when the A-10 was built the primary air defense system of Soviet (and other Communist) ground forces were anti-aircraft guns like the ZSU series. These were guns that fired shells that detonated through proximity fuses, essentially a rapid fire flak gun. The A-10 was built with these in mind, and therefore the A-10 was heavily armored in order to withstand shells, the exact kind used by the ZSU-23.

Self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, or SPAAGs like the ZSU were very popular because they were in particular very effective against CAS and helicopters. The problem was that helicopters and CAS soon developed precision guided munitions and long range missiles, which out-ranged most SPAAGs. In response, the Soviets started equipping their units with Surface-to-air missiles. Today SAMs have largely supplemented SPAAGs as the primary air defense system; they're more effective, have longer range, and therefore offer more defense against air threats.

The problem is by the time the A-10 went into production, SAMs had become commonplace, and that was something the A-10 simply wasn't designed to withstand. No aircraft really can, just like modern warships can't really defend themselves against anti-ship missiles with armor. Modern missiles are just too powerful. To beat SAMS you either need to fly high, fly low, or be stealthy/sneaky. The A-10 can do none of those things. That's why the Air Force wants to get rid of it; they know in the event of a war against a peer/near peer opponent, like Russia, China, or even Iran, the A-10 is going to be too vulnerable. It can't fly high enough to avoid missiles, since it's a single seater, the pilot has to focus entirely on not crashing when flying low, and it's not stealthy, nor can it hide and hover like an attack helicopter.

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You do know the A-10 has proven itself in defended airspace right? Remember the Gulf War and all the stories of them rolling in ripping to shreds tank columns and going through intense ADA and manpads and flying back with half a wing when they were done.
CSAF Misrepresents A-10 Combat Record in First Gulf War
Appendix - Air Force Performance In Operation Desert Storm | The Gulf War | FRONTLINE | PBS

Jredbaron96 said:

The A-10 got withdrawn from attacking Republican Guard formations during the Gulf War and had to be replaced by F-16s. Try again.

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I have never seen or heard that. I would suggest some proof please.

PirateMk1 said:

I have never seen or heard that. I would suggest some proof please.

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"The other problem is that the A-10 is vulnerable to hits because its speed is limited. It's a function of thrust, it's not a function of anything else. We had a lot of A-10s take a lot of ground fire hits. Quite frankly, we pulled the A-10s back from going up around the Republican Guard and kept them on Iraq's [less formidable] front-line units. That's line if you have a force that allows you to do that. In this case, we had F-16s to go after the Republican Guard."

Air Force Magazine

EMNofSeattle said:

They’ve fought limited proxy battles and internal disturbances, they have never fought and won a major conventional war unassisted. They got the snot beat out of them in WW1 and their industrial base could not have sustained a war with Germany without US assistance in WW2.

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This is at best misleading at worst downright false.

Russian performance in WWI was certainly detestable, but that's what happens when your country is rotting from the inside. But during WWII major Lend Lease supplies did not start arriving until late 1942, at which point the Germans were well on their way to operational failure in Case Blue. While I agree without American material assistance subsequent Soviet offensives would have struggled with logistical affairs, it's a veritable stretch to say they could not have succeeded without it.

All Russian wars since then have been minor affairs except Afghanistan where they turned out to be no match for tribesman with access to easy cash from the anti communist Saudi royal family and weapons from the US.

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Given that American forces have also failed to achieve a strategic victory in Afghanistan after an even longer conflict than the Soviets had, what is this supposed to say?

Oozlefinch said:

Be very careful with that claim.

Remember, in 1991 we went to kick Iraq out of Kuwait with a military that had not fought anything more than a short skirmish in almost 20 years. Almost all of our forces were children during Vietnam. And at that time, the Soviets had been fighting in Afghanistan for a decade.

It is not that the Russian technology is obsolete, that is not the case at all. It is simply of a very different design philosophy than that of the US.

During WWII, the US followed a similar practice to what the Soviets-Russians used. The individual lives matter little, so long as we can swarm the enemy down in number of forces and equipment. Most admit the M4 was one of the worst tanks developed during the war. Yes, there were worst tanks in the war, but this thing was developed in 1942, after every major country was already involved. And it sucked. But we were able to throw so many of them into Europe (over 40,000) that this did not matter.

And it is not like Russia has not been involved in fighting for the past 20 years. Maybe you missed all the flare-ups with their neighbors in the last decade or so.

And China, they are kind of a paper tiger. Their Army is impressive because of it's size, but equipment wise not so much so. They have almost no ability to project power, and have not had a serious military action since they spent a few weeks beating up Vietnam in 1979.

Hell, it is only recently that they finally retired the last of the Type 59 tanks from active service. It is still their #2 tank, with around 2,000 in service in Militia and Guard units. This is literally a 1960 era copy of a 1950 tank. That would be like the US still trying to have the National Guard use M46 Patton tanks.

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I disagree with you on the M4. It was not the worst tank of the war. It was a good tank that was designed and used for maneuver warfare and troop support not hunting other tanks. Was it perfect, no. But it wasn't bad either. Its best features were reliability and maintainability which where without doubt the best of any tank in that war. It could do what needed to be done when it needed to be done, and was available to do it. The reason the 75mm gun was used throughout the war was because the HE shell it fired was more useful for most missions than the newer 76mm guns because it carried more explosive in the warhead. Bigger boom is usually better for most things infantry support. It was only later in the war when the 76mm gun became the standard gun.

EMNofSeattle said:

They’ve fought limited proxy battles and internal disturbances, they have never fought and won a major conventional war unassisted. They got the snot beat out of them in WW1 and their industrial base could not have sustained a war with Germany without US assistance in WW2.

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Not true at all.

In WWI, they certainly were not "getting the snot beat out of them". Now granted, their offensives were rather poorly conducted and generally failed through most of the war. But like the Western Front against French and the rest of the alliance it was remarkably stable overall.

However, the Brusilov Offensive was hardly a failure. In 1916 this single offensive broke the back of the Austro-Hungarian Army (and largely put them out of the war), forced the German Army to pull huge amounts of manpower and resources out of the Verdun Offensive, and captured almost a third of modern Ukraine.

What ended Russian activity in the war is the exact same thing that defeated German activity in the war. Internal revolt, civil war, and the collapse of their government. Neither Germany nor Russia left because they were "defeated".

And they did not get a lot of assistance from the US in WWII either. Want to know what the biggest contribution of the US was to the Soviet War Effort?

The truck. The one thing that plagued Russia was logistics. And they were trying to resolve that when the war started, so the US stepped in and sent them huge numbers of trucks. That way they could dedicate all of their industrial power to producing things like tanks, artillery, and barrage rockets.

Funny how you mention "their industrial base could not have sustained a war". Meanwhile, during the war they churned out over 65,000 T-34 tanks during the war. SO go ahead and take that silly claim of lacking the industrial base and put it somewhere else.

EMNofSeattle said:

All Russian wars since then have been minor affairs except Afghanistan where they turned out to be no match for tribesman with access to easy cash from the anti communist Saudi royal family and weapons from the US.

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No, what they learned is what the US did a few decades earlier. That a superpower can loose to a dedicated local opponent that has support from another super power. Afghanistan has a history of defeating huge empires, and the Soviets were no different. Like the English before them, they thought they could step in and act like conquerors.

Which is why the US handled things much different there. They already had a working relationship with the main opponents of the Taliban, and simply backed them in kicking them out. It did not help that much of the strength of the Taliban were the same kinds of foreign fighters that the Afghans did not trust in the first place.

EMNofSeattle said:

They can inflict heavier casualties on us then we might be used to in a war, but they could not win one and their Air Force would be heavily bloodied just fighTing the Polish and Royal Norwegian Air Forces in the opening days of any hypothetical war before we show up to finish them off.

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And once again, hubris raises it's head.

Anybody that thinks the Russians would be a pushover is a fool. Especially if they look at the history of Russia. They are able to withstand overwhelming odds, and to push back with huge numbers because the majority of the citizens truly believe in Russia.

Oh, not the government, but their own people and country. Germany found that out twice. Even with a civil war tearing apart their country the Russians still sent up enough forces to the border to turn many German offensives. This was until the first coalition government asked for an armistice and it was granted.

I have no doubt that fighting Russia in a serious conflict would be a bloody thing. It is a country that spans a continent, over 6.6 million square miles. With a population of almost 147 million people. With a military almost 6 million men strong (including paramilitary). Second only to North Korea (the US is 4th at just over 5 million).

Anybody who thinks that would be an easy victory is only fooling themselves. Especially if they are comparing the Russian Air Force to that of Poland and Norway. The Russian Air Force is the second largest in the world. They are also considered to be 9th in the world when it comes to quality of aircraft and quantity. But that is something that has been changing rapidly in the last 10 years as their newest generation of aircraft has come online.

Neither Poland nor Norway rank in the top 10 anywhere.

PirateMk1 said:

I disagree with you on the M4. It was not the worst tank of the war.

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Context.

I never said it was the worst tank of the war. I said it was one of the worst tanks made during the war. And yes, there is a big difference. A tank designed in 1936 and built in 1942 is still a 1936 tank.

Going into WWII, most of the tanks other than a few German ones were really horrible. Underpowered, undergunned, underarmored, and often underwhelming. The French and Polish tanks especially were laughingly bad, as were the Italian tanks.

But when you look at the tanks produced during the war, that is something very different.

The T-34 was developed in the time period between the war starting, and the Soviets entering the war. And it was one of the finest tanks made in the era.

Ignore the various Panzer I through IV tanks, those are also pre-war tanks. During the war, the Germans produced the Tiger I (1,347 built) and II (492 built), and the Panther (6,000 built).

Compared to all of those tanks made during the war, the M4 only appears on "greatest" lists because of the number made (almost 50,000), and that they were used by the winning side. The German war era tanks were superior to those of the US. However, they only built about 8,000 of them. That means around 7 US tanks for every "modern" German tank (closer to 15 to 1, most were actually on the Eastern Front against the Soviets). Even a crappy tank will do good with those odds.

Oozlefinch said:

Most admit the M4 was one of the worst tanks developed during the war. .

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I was very specific when I phrased that statement the way I did. And I still stand behind that statement. Of all the tanks developed during the war, it was probably the worst that made it to mass assembly.

Jredbaron96 said:

This is at best misleading at worst downright false.

Russian performance in WWI was certainly detestable, but that's what happens when your country is rotting from the inside. But during WWII major Lend Lease supplies did not start arriving until late 1942, at which point the Germans were well on their way to operational failure in Case Blue. While I agree without American material assistance subsequent Soviet offensives would have struggled with logistical affairs, it's a veritable stretch to say they could not have succeeded without it.



Given that American forces have also failed to achieve a strategic victory in Afghanistan after an even longer conflict than the Soviets had, what is this supposed to say?

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I know you’re pro Russian but give it up, the Soviets themselves admitted they couldn’t win without American support.

The very best case scenario assuming no US support and no second front is a negotiated settlement with Germany after highly disproportionate casualties. Just look at how terribly they performed against Finland.

We’ve suffered far fewer casualties and achieved more of our objectives then the Soviets

EMNofSeattle said:

I know you’re pro Russian but give it up,

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In what regard am I pro-Russian? That I don't agree with the narrative that the Red Army was nothing but a massive horde that drowned the Germans in bodies?

The very best case scenario assuming no US support and no second front is a negotiated settlement with Germany after highly disproportionate casualties. Just look at how terribly they performed against Finland.

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The likeliest scenario for a no-American involvement would end with German forces being pushed back to the pre-Barbarossa border (with some variations) and then a negotiated settlement.

We’ve suffered far fewer casualties and achieved more of our objectives then the Soviets

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In WW2?

Oozlefinch said:

Neither Germany nor Russia left because they were "defeated".

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This is misleading.

While it's true Russia's departure from the war was driven by it's own internal collapse more than anything, that doesn't change the fact that the Russian Imperial Army had been defeated time and time again by the Germans. With the exception of the Brusilov offensive the Russian performance in WWI was very poor, and in the end it was the constant weight of it's military defeats that did contribute to the collapse of the Russian Empire.

As for Germany, it's military situation is hopeless regardless of it's internal affairs. Even without internal revolution Germany's Imperial Armies are disintegrating and it's strategic position is collapsing. Even if by some miracle the Empire manages to remain cohesive throughout the Winter of 1918-1919 the German Armies simply don't have the capacity to further resist the Allied Powers for much longer; manpower at that point had been exhausted, and Germany's industrial capacity had been depleted by blockade and poor economic management.

Jredbaron96 said:

In what regard am I pro-Russian? That I don't agree with the narrative that the Red Army was nothing but a massive horde that drowned the Germans in bodies?



The likeliest scenario for a no-American involvement would end with German forces being pushed back to the pre-Barbarossa border (with some variations) and then a negotiated settlement.




In WW2?

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In Afghanistan.