You know, in pulling up sources for this I ran across this utterly absurd UK operation which may be the single most british thing I’ve ever read about. So much logistical expenditure to inflict damage that was so minimal it was repaired in 24 hours. What a sublime metaphor for the collapse of the empire. (The HP Victor was such gorgeous plane, though. My god, roll-down windows in the cockpit? How can you not love it.)

It’s a neat example though, because it shows what doing something like this would actually look like, and the summary is “Stupid. It’d look stupid.” I don’t think, in any world, this is a strategy the US would employ to do anything except flex on some children hiding in caves or something. The only reason I bring this up is because you’ve handwaved away every other logistical capability of the US (like the establishment of FABs, the capturing of strategic assets like airports, carrier-based invasions, opposed landings (which are still dumb, no arguing), the elimination of EU air defense, seaborne shore transport, etc…) as non-viable because of a bunch of reasons, most of which boil down to “the EU also has armies”. And you know what? That’s completely fair! I am 100% willing to toss every single one of those potentially effective (except opposed landings) (the USMC would be so mad at me if they could read) techniques in the bin! Because I think we’ve finally arrived at an effective approach entirely within US capabilities that even you haven’t handwaved away yet.

Sure, It’s a stupid stupid strategy that would never be used in reality, but staged refueling of mass aerial assets enabling standoff strike missions via the arctic circle are at least completely and demonstrably within the capabilities of the US military. Personally, were I the one planning this, I’d prefer something like: the utilization of carrier-based assets to deny air supremacy to either side while coordinating seven IRF and three CRG deployments to establish strategic air staging points across a broad swathe of terrain, then use the incredibly popular mid-air refueling to enable rapid transit of air superiority fighters like the F22 which then base from the expeditionary air bases (I hope they want burger king). Or something more simple, like the elimination of strategic targets using combined carrier-based SEAD operations to disrupt the quite formidable EU AA operating in concert with submarine based near-shore under-envelope cruise missile strikes. Or combined naval and aerial saturation of the AA capabilities present in the theater using things like the B52 to force constricted operating times, eliminating the need for DEAD operations nearly entirely.

Or you know, the US could keep things simple, stick with tradition. Invade poland. Then just expand out from there.

Listen, the original point here was that anyone trying anything right now would leave them and the rest of the EU seriously vulnerable to Russian aggression. That’s what this whole thing was about, and I’m pretty damn sure THAT point has been exhaustively made by now. Even depleted as they are by the war in Ukraine, they are still a serious threat. And for what it’s worth, Russia failed to take Hostomel via a combination of ridiculously poor logistical planning (not accounting for delays in capturing the airport was the real death knell, if 2nd VDV group had been inbound earlier they would have taken it) and a ton of bad luck in the form of 3rd SpO, the most tenacious and underestimated bastards I have ever encountered. But the point here is that ruzzia was about an hour away from taking Kyiv, one of the best defended cities in Europe, and with the lessons learned they could pull a similar stunt on any of the border countries.

I don’t know that it would succeed, but do you want to risk that?

(I am getting so tired of explaining to americans that it’s not [some random band] ft. Babymetal but, in fact, Babymetal ft. [some random band]. Apropos of nothing I know, but still. Americans, man. We suck.)

I’m… not entirely sure how to respond to this one. First I guess I should clarify; are you actually asking me to break this down point by point? Because you complained about how long and “demoralizingly rambling” it was the last time I did that. These mixed signals, they’re difficult to decipher. Additionally: I mean, okay fair enough I suppose, claim I did whatever you need, I’m not going to blame/judge you for it. This isn’t a particular hardship for me, and I have no ill-will towards you because of this. I will say though, and only out of impish self-indulgence, that It’s A Little Weird how the only capabilities I have claimed an aircraft carrier bestows are things… you’ve also agreed they can do.

[…] they can use buddy transfer systems […]

Carriers are massive force multipliers, they allow you to project air power (and light land power) in areas where you could not at all […]

Add in that they can provide emergency power to shore based systems (no clue if they’ve ever done this, but it’s for sure in the design spec) and I think that’s actually it for things I have claimed about aircraft carriers. Did I miss something? Is all this vitriol really just predicated on a misunderstanding about naval aircraft that are fitted for mid-air refueling commonly being called ‘tankers’?

(Buddy I am the entire box of markers. Crayons too, probably.)

I’m not going to waste your time by expounding at length on this but dude:

logistics are not measured against your oppositions logistics

One wonders why they would bother instead of conquering the rest of EU by themselves.

Of course in combat missions tankers need to hold back from the combat zone.

thus USN can deliver 90 Abrams if all ships with LCACs were part of an assault.

Needless to say Gulf era Iraqi SAM systems were not up to contemporary Soviet or European standards

Just… stop.

Looking stuff up on wikipedia (et al.) and drawing what are, to you, reasonable sounding conclusions works really well sometimes. But there’s painfully fundamental errors in there, many that don’t even make sense in context. This thread is old, and it’s just the two of us here, and it is really clear you’re learning this on the fly. Which, not to discourage you from doing that! Please do, it’s super important to be versed in the subject given the slant of modern geopolitics.

Seriously, you’ve hit the point in the subject where you can’t easily guess the right answer no matter how clever you may be. Your guesses are good, too! Like there are some reasonable extrapolations and a few that, for unreasonable reasons, just aren’t correct. Really, with a bit more exposure I think you’ll be very good at this. But I get that I’m annoying, and that you have sunk a whole bunch of your identity into this being an accurate representation, and that america does not have anything like monopoly on patriotism. I do.

From one idiot on the internet to another, blah blah blah heartfelt sentiment, patronizingly phrased in that uniquely american way, slightly smug tone, sincerity, blah.

…

(divestment is a three letter word)

I salute your strategy of the great wall of rambling text, it truly is demoralizing at this time.

(My point exactly. And, since I lack even a shred of self awareness, here have six more paragraphs! I really tried to keep them on just one topic, at least)

First, let me say that you are correct on several points - you cannot have a land invasion or launch an occupation with air and naval assets alone. You’re also 100% correct that the US Navy does not have 1,100 F-35 Lightning II Cs, that was not what I meant to imply (afaik there are only ~105 F35Cs). Now obviously, to occupy conquered ground, you have to… occupy, the ground. This is very simple thing which, unfortunately, boats are famously ill suited to. Planes are, also, just garbage at it. I will make no attempt to deny these patently obvious facts, which I happily will cede to you without contest. Admittedly, this is a serious problem for my hypothetical invading army to overcome. Because unfortunately, the easiest way to transport large numbers of that really cool military stuff we all love, like tanks and rockets and red-blooded American heroes with red bandanas on their heads and plot armor a mile thick, is inside big planes or on big boats.

So lets just… ignore that problem. It’s inconvenient.

A nuclear supercarrier is a massive strategic asset, both physically and metaphorically. It lets you project force over a huge area that your mainland based assets simply do not have and that is absolutely invaluable in the geopolitical world. It lets you power small cities for disaster relief. And they are the most densely packed logistical hubs ever conceived. That last thing is why they’re valuable, really. Obviously they can service, fuel, coordinate and re-arm their compliment of aircraft and that alone is amazingly useful, but see, in this hypothetical invasion scenario, the most useful thing they could do would be to just…

Sit there.

No, really. Park a strike group out in the middle of the atlantic, run a tube over to an oiler, and you can keep a flight of air tankers circling overhead 24/7. Think about that, seriously, because this is what I think you’ve failed to understand the implications of. The US doesn’t particularly have the hardest troops or some innate superiority at warfare, but they are so far beyond the logistical capacity of any other nation that it’s genuinely scary.

Putting a carrier out there, a long long way away from harm, isn’t glamorous. But by doing so it enables the mainland US air assets to launch directly on missions, without a need for a forward air base. We do this all the time, too - every mission flown by a B2 Spirit takes off and lands at Whiteman Airforce Base (ranked #1 for “airbases with the most mask-off names”). Any strategic bomber is the same. So with one carrier, suddenly all ~900 of those 5th generation stealth multirole aircraft can be deployed for anything from interdiction to close air support. The limit becomes how much meth the pilot can handle and how many bombs can be strapped to one of those damn things.

THAT is what makes the US military a threat. I had a bunch more, explaining how the IRF and CRG can set up an Expeditionary Airbase in 24hrs and then just drop in C5 galaxies and what are you gonna do from there? And a bit about how most of the EU member states still use Gulf War era anti-aircraft systems, and those got merc’d by the damn F117. And a reaaaally boring bit about how the US’s Strategic Airlift capability is super duper astounding (seriously, a C5 can haul two abrams at once) which has been removed in editing, you’re welcome.

But… I honestly don’t think I need any of that. That the US can project it’s mainland-based assets into any arbitrary theater is already unbelievable. That a LCAC can carry an abrams to shore, that 24hr expeditionary airbases include utilities and fast food restaurants, that there is no EU counter to the B52’s standoff payload delivery, that the US has a damn paradrop conference table? Those are all a pale second to the reality that the US can bomb every last scrap of infrastructure you have, level your whole town, and the pilots that did it will be going home to their cliche Missouri family a few hours later. It’s the refinement of banal evil to the point that combat becomes, you know, a job. There’s nothing else like it, and it should terrify the fuck out of you because it sure as hell does me.

(I’m just ignoring everything about canada (because I’m just too tired) and what divestment means (because holy fuck nobody cares, not you, not me, nobody))

Apologies, lemmy is having a day. One moment while I sort this out…

deleted by creator

Ah man… Point by point breakdowns are usually the death knell of a discussion. It just spirals into longer and longer posts with less and less substance. For example:

if you understand that the US cannot invade despite their superior military

Where did I say that the US can’t invade? Ukraine has shown that nuclear deterrence is an extremely complicated subject. Would France actually be willing to end the world to save the Dutch? Nobody knows!

I am also confused about who you think Trump warned the EU against? His own America? He just wanted the EU to pay more to US industry.

Yes exactly. Trump isn’t good at this. His arguments are too small to get his fat little body off the ground. Trump, of course, says them anyways. Trump doesn’t care what humans think.

It creates a security obligation which the EU cannot fulfill towards Canada.

What’s the problem? Canada is aware of this going into it, so is the EU. It’s clearly a move that bolsters economies and not the respective militaries, at least in the near term, which is what is currently under threat. Long term, economic and military partnership between the EU and canada is blah blah blah longwinded nobody cares blah

Quite the opposite it has repeatedly pushed for more EU investment in military defense, a part of which would go to US industry.

But but but… That’s divestment. That’s doing divestment.

Etc.

Isn’t that just… miserable? All I’m doing is picking your nits, and that doesn’t really further anything because at no point does it address your thesis. I’m just batting at your arguments like a fat cat who wants you to stop bonking into it with the mouse but is too lazy to actually move off the mousepad. It doesn’t add anything, except incentive for this to turn into another boring internet slap fight. Honestly this feels like either we’re agreeing but not realizing it, or you have no experience with the military at all but don’t want to admit that (and I really do not think it’s the second option!).

Okay, here, how about I say: “Current US forces in the EU are not and never have been an occupying force - they could be casually sidelined by parking a big truck in front of the gates and stopping the beer delivery” and you please try to believe me. Not even joking, like, you’re right and it’s 100% true, I promise, and I have not argued anything else at any point. The forces the US stations in Europe (with the possible exception of some of the air assets at German-hosted bases like Ramstein) have no significant conventional defensive ability, they’re all sigint, liaison and a guard for the nukes. They could be rolled over by a determined enough girlscout troop (probably not by the boyscouts, though…).

Everyone knows that.

If you cross cancel the nukes from both sides in this hypothetical scenario (because it’s no fun to speculate when the end state is “absolutely everyone dies forever”) you’re left with a coalition of economically and culturally extremely powerful countries that just utterly lack a response to realities like “seven carrier strike groups” or “more than a thousand F35s”. Any hypothetical US occupation of the EU would obviously devolve into the exact kind of guerilla/insurgent warfare the US absolutely sucks at, but that doesn’t matter if this lunatic admin decides to have ROEs that are really relaxed about things like ‘civilians’. You just cannot win a war of attrition with the US right now, it’s pretty doubtful even the other superpowers could (that’s why they’re going the election interference route…) and provoking one by attacking US tripwire bases would be suicidal.

I feel like I should point out here that I do not like this. I’m not proud about this shit, honestly I’m too busy worrying about the “my country is burning down around me and I haven’t even got a bucket with which to staunch the flames” thing. But, the good news is (not for me I admit) that any significant mobilization to invade the EU will trigger a civil war in the US. To say that the idea ‘is as popular as giving children syphilis’ is to do a disservice to hyperbole. So I guess take heart that they’d have to roll over a great many americans (including me) before they ever get off the mainland.
…
Well, okay, these fuckers would happily do that (honestly they’d probably consider it a bonus), but the tree of moral victory is watered with the blood of martyrs. And fertilized with the paste their corpses have been ground into. And probably guided on a trellis made from what few bones weren’t ground into powder.
…
Or something, idk. This is getting dumb. I just really hope there’ll never be a chance for me to be proven right.

(It is late and I am tired, so I apologize if this comes accross as rude or similar. I’m really not trying to be.)

Invading across an ocean is hard, you need to be able to move significant forces in or nearby before hostilities start or face no resistance in the initial landing.

This isn’t WWII though, opposed landings aren’t something anyone still does. Besides that, in this hypothetical scenario everyone has nukes. It’s really just an exercise in how much aggression each side will tolerate before someone escalates to that point.

Look I’m not disagreeing with the broad sentiment that the EU needs to get it’s shit together and divest from the US militarily – the US has been practically begging for that since clinton, hell obama, biden and trump all warned against this exact fascist-takeover america-unreliable scenario. I also for sure am not assuming the US will not be the aggressor. I mean, we’re even threatening the EU with annexation right now. I seriously doubt it’ll get to that point, but it’s by no means ruled out.

Things like adding canada to the EU are excellent strategic moves, since it not only gives the EU an ally with many friendly airbases across the ocean but, waaaaay more importantly, it gives them economic strength with which to batter the US and bolster their own economies. This is an economic war, and the US probably won’t win it. Hoorayyy?

Originally, I live in the US now. While I’m all for EU countries breaking military ties with the US, no really that is a super important move, open warfare with American forces would be suicide. The US has been the lynchpin of NATO for decades, and is tied in to every layer of the EU military apparatus. There isn’t parity with the american military in any way with respect to this, and it’s the kind of strategic disadvantage that can’t be overcome without legislative reform and many years of buildup. At the moment, especially with trump helming this shithole, any government asking the US to vacate it’s bases will need to do so with the understanding that they only have economic resources to fall back on if the US just says “no”.

Yeah, because open warfare with the US is a great geopolitical move that will end super well for everyone except russia. 100% no russian victory in fomenting that particular brand of chaos. nope.

(that was the joke, I think)

This from a user on an instance that’s known for their open villification of any opinion that goes against the moscow and beijing dictated groupthi–

Wait, wait hold on. Could it possibly be that we both have deeply subjective views of the other large instances, because humans fall to tribalism faster than a kitten on a sock full of catnip? Maybe there’s a vested interest on every side to keep the early adopters of a decentralized social media platform infighting over meaningless stereotypes based on the letters that come after their username, making value judgements based entirely on dictated preconceptions instead of experiential conclusions and honest interaction?

… nah, probably not. And besides, it’s way more fun to just sling mud. Screw u, u commie scuzbucket.

(oh sorry, I’m native (Iroquois) and I realize now that that ‘us’ in my first comment was not at all clear about that)

The only reason the US isn’t solidly in the first camp is because they really nailed the genocide over here. Just look at, say, this meme for an example of how they were so effective people don’t even remember it happened to us.