Do not watch the video, it is literal, just a time waster and does not make a real analysis, just something superficial. It does not even evaluate the capacity of Ukraine or the type of war being fought.
Some time ago you gave an overlook of the Russian hardware they use and what they lost. Do you have any new insights how many tanks, ifv, apc, etc they have left? Any clues how realistic Ukrainian claims towards Russian losses are?
With a channel name like this i`d think you would go much deeper in the covert operations side of things. There is a article written by the journalist (former US army ranger and former USSF) Jack Murphy who states that the attacks in russia are done by CIA assets. Lets make a thought experiement: The US attacks mexico. All forces in the US (goverment + cartels) are united. The cartels or whoever blow up the dam for the panama canal or the whole canal. Kind of simmilar to the northstream and other pipelines. Couple this with other covert actions like against the railway lines (as we have recently seen but that at a much worser scale and more frequently) and pipelines (also happened last year more than one might have heard of against russian interests). Not to forget the potential of cartels and other mexican national groups and other international groups in the US itself. Now give mexico modern anti aircraft and rocket artillery, as well as modern anti ship capabilities and see what happens to the conventional US military not to forget the US itself.
Wrong to say the US lost against Iraq, etc. They won against the conventional forces within a few weeks (Iraq). But to hold the peace and stop them from fighting eachother is close to impossible. Afghanistan was left with a democratic government with Taliban pretty much hiding until the US left. And then the afghan military dropped their weapons. Vietnam was a guerilla war and its impossible to win against civilians. The US won just about all the battles and after the Nguyen Hue Offensive, the north vietnamese wanted to make a peace deal. They broke it as the US had decided to leave, knowing it was political impossible to reverse and come back strong to Vietnam. The US has never lost a conventional war.
There is one key factor, if the US were fighting Ukraine they wouldn’t have been training their general staff since 2014. Much of the improvements in UAF organisation & tactics are thanks to their hard work with the US & NATO armies.
@@hydra70Oh but they are so quick to throw in the "But iraq had the 5th largest army" propaganda. They have no idea that the huge chunk of that army was conscripts
My pre watch answer before you present yours is that we could relatively easily take and put troops in any ukrainian city in a timely manner. The only issue is it would turn into a shit show trying to occupy Ukraine. It would make this middle east insurgency we all know and hate look like child's play. We don't have the man power or resources to occupy Ukraine against its will.
Fair assessment. Disabling the regular military force is one thing, the next phase of a partisan war is an entirely different one. Expect no less determination from Ukrainians than what they show towards Russia now. In our time, where the ruthless decimation of a population until submission is unthinkable, winning a war against a nation with a population in the tens of millions is practically impossible.
It depends. Say we "liberate" them from some future, hypothetical tyrant and offer them some outlandish offer like making them a US territory (or even the 51st state), followed by a massive public works/infrastructure program? We also have good relations. It'll never happen, but, again...we fought the Nazis, have been supporting them for decades and would certainly rack up a hell of a lot fewer casualties in the process than the Russians.
I disagree if we put the same effort Russia has into it we probably could occupy Ukraine. Causalities would be huge but probably smaller than Russia's so far. Just think Russia has or is mobilizing 800,000 conscripts which for the US population would be 2 million. Plus we are used to insurgencies now
@@JanisFever The US would NEVER have the force to occupy the territory of ukraine. It's fucking large and the manpower needed would be absolutely insane. Not only that even transport would be a huge issue without the NATO EU countries. You don't just flip a switch and all soldiers are in the ukraine, if you want to bring a million+ forces to ukraine that would take several years. The russians are doing just okay in ukraine right now, normally experts think about 3:1 losses for the attacking party.
The United States did not actually lose the actual war fighting, for example, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those countries were invated almost entirely. Afghanistan was invated extremely fast led by special forces and Iraq quite quickly as well. The point, of course, is that they cannot stay in those countries forever, and it is practically impossible to turn such countries into stable democracies.
I think people also oversimplify the defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq succumbed to civil war and insurgency after we destroyed the government and dismantled the military in less than a year, but the Iraqis did not want us to stay and resented us, plus Iran was involved helping fan the flames of the insurgency. Afghanistan, we destroyed the T ban’s Govt in a matter of months, but family tribal conflict, political and security corruption, and the constant change of tribal loyalty and allegiance made it hard to stabilize the country. What I’m saying is, the US can destroy and ruin a country and Govt if it wanted to, but it’s stabilization operations that hinder it because of the complexities of peace/nation building.
The West is too used to black and white viewpoints. One side versus another. Afghanistan was like multiple feuding teams. A lot of hostile history between different cultures.
The U.S never fought aginst enemies who could shoot back. Iraq war? Iraq was sanctioned with low morale they were starving and in no way in hell shooting down stealth aircrafts, it was a pariah state
@@u2beuser714 What kinda wack job statement is that? Seems like you need a gentle reminder of Iraq's position as the 5th largest military back in its time with far more equipment than what Ukraine had at the start of the conflict
Spoiler: the country with the most advanced equipment because we have the best engineers and most money steamrolls everywhere else. China, the closest thing to a rival, will only sort of match us when they do innovation rather than copycat
It took the US around 2 months to destroy the Iraqi army. Need to be honest that Iraq was fighting without any support from anyone and the Russian could probably defeat Ukraine in the same amount of time or maybe bit longer. People just not realize how much intelligence the American provides, it's not that hard to hit a fuel or ammunition depot it's much harder to locate them and this one done by the American.
So the Afghan forces had surely the intelligence of the US and 20 years of training but the fell within days to a force in sandals. People have short memory. Surely there were US satellite intelligence but the first month they have been on there own with the weapon s. Ok some Javelins.
@@captainchaoscow Afghan fighter didn't destroy the American army, didn't hit ammunition or fuel depot or anything like that. They were bothering the American and killing some soldiers, putting ambush on mountain roads and so on far cry compere to Ukraine. The Ukrainian received help from day one even before the war. They received training, weapons, intelligence, fuel, food etc.
"A perfect modern battle plan is nothing so much as a score for an orchestral composition, where the various arms and units are the instruments, and the tasks they perform are their respectful musical phrases. Every individual unit must make its entry precisely at the proper moment, and play its phrase in the general harmony." - General Monash, Australian Imperial Force, WW1.
2:20 I think the problem is that people don't understand the difference between the layers of war. 3:1 is the approximate, rule of thumb, ratio of combat power that an attacking unit wants to have in order to take a defended position. It is not the ratio that an attacking army needs to have in order to overcome a defending army. It is a rule of thumb that applies to the tactical layer, and to the tactical layer only. It does not apply to the operational or strategic layers. Two armies can shuffle their troops around to achieve those local 3:1numerical advantages even if they are globally at numerical parity.
One point I think is critical and often overlooked is that the US has more combat experience over the last 25 years than almost any other military in the world. Several have zero experience, like China. Some, like Russia and France, have some. The transition from largely theoretical to the practical under tremendous pressure is a challenging one.
People always over look this. There like “just do combined arms.” If you look at the shit the U.S. army did at the start of Iraq/Afghanistan and the capabilities they had before pulling out is night and day. China thinks it can just copy that. You can’t.
@@gregpaul882 yeah, there’s no way to replicate that at the tactical level. No number of colonels and generals trying to move pieces three hundred or two thousand miles away will ever replicate the pressure of executing while under fire.
Ukraine is using more ammunition in one week than Iraq did during the entire war. USA has zero experience in fighting even remotely serious opponents. You can't become stronger by fighting toddlers.
While not..when they are the only country invading, toppling, occupying other smaller countries..they should have huge combat experience against rice farmers in Vietnam, fighting brothers and cousins in iraq and the rest that couldn't put up any real fight..what shocks me the most is that they were not able to win any
The US won almost all battles it fought in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The problem was that it never succeeded in destroying the enemy's will to fight nor winning the public support of US forces. Locals supplied and sheltered insurgents and they joined insurgents at high enough rates to stave off total defeat. The US gave up after getting tired of spending money and lives without changing the status quo.
It's not even that. we did destroy their will to fight. the Taliban were quite literally willing to formally surrender in 2002. but Bush and his regime wanted more blood, and a very different agenda than they sold to the public and so they could not accept that peace. the military did every single thing that was asked for it, but some things are beyond the force of arms.
@@thanhvinhnguyento7069 It can work if its allowed to be used all out. The US was never allowed to use its full firepower in Vietnam It had hands tied behind its back the whole time. if the US was allowed to cross the DMZ and bomb any target without any reprosecution from Soviets and China they could have captured Hanoi within 2 months and destroyed the majority of the NVA. Now what happens AFTER the invasion well not sure.
@@voidwalker9223 the US cannot even fully control the south and you expect it can invade the north. There are even more north Vietnamese aces than american aces. How can the US invade the north if it cannot even establish air superiority, The US were allowed to bomb beyond the DMZ that is why you have 800 POW pilots that were caught in north vietnam
Conventionally yes but an insurgency would let the outcome be the same as Iraq and Afghanistan. Defeating an opponent's military doesn't equate to victory. Even if Russia had taken Kiev, it would still face a massive insurgency.
Ukraine isn't a jungle nor a mountainous country, though. It is mostly just plains after plains after plains. No way a guerrilla movement would have the same effect as in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam.
@@mekingtiger9095 South west in Ukraine there are big mountains and large areas of mountainous terrain. And Iraq is mostly plains as well right, desert and cities? I do not see your point- i i understand the difference from Vietnam, but i cant see why a guerrilla could not operate i Ukraine? They did in Cherson all through the Russian occupation of it.
@@mekingtiger9095 where would you hide in wheat fields as an insurgent. In vietnam we had channels of all sizes,swamps, jungles, trees lines as far as eyes can see and villages every few km. Also mountains throughout the middle of the country
The Taliban did have "almost no money at all" they received regular significant investments from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries in the Middle East, as well as direct material support from the same.
It's wrong to say that Russia didn't have the resources to further develop it's military doctrine. Russia has a lot of resources and money. But being autocracy/kleptocracy it takes the short sighted action of stealing the money instead of reinvesting it (and stealing a smaller percentage of a much larger economy).
Per capita russia is actually right around the world average for GDP. it's in no way a rich or productive country. much of their military power comes from the USSR, which plundered half of europe for resources, manpower and technology and leveraged it's non-russian republics and puppets. russia has produced relatively very little in the way of military hardware and technology since the fall of the USSR. and yes, part of that is because of russia's endemic corruption.
Russia wasnt looking to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield but to bring them to the negotiation table. Which happened 3 times. The war would have been over in April as Ukraine was about to sign a agreement. NATO interfered and stopped Ukraine from signing a peace agreement.
Correct. Russia has poured a lot of money into developing and building new military assets including submarines, air defense, fighters etc. They did have the money. They just didn't have the oversight to keep that money where it was supposed to be.
@@MuffHam That is in fact an impossible scenario - NATO cannot force a party to fight. It can only give the tools to fight with. But if Ukraine and Russia want peace there isn't a whole lot NATO can do about it.
Key difference between US and Russian performance in most of these wars... is that US never lost during the high intensity phase. Both Iraq and Afghanistan was lost during the notorious insurgency phase. And insurgency has more to do with difficulty in occupation, nation building, and policy making than military. Certainly something the US has failed to grasp after 20 years. Vietnam is the closest to a defeat to a on paper weaker foe during the high intensity phase. Problem is US weren't losing militarily, although I guess one can argue what that even means. But US couldn't have achieved their political aims, with or without domestic support, so it was a lost cause regardless. But US militarily(ie. on the battlefield) could and did beat the NVA and Vietcong. Russia is struggling against Ukraine militarily, not because it couldn't achieve its geopolitical goals, nor is it struggling to suppress insurgents... no it is struggling to even beat Ukraine's conventional military. The disparity is massive and a simple comparison with US failures miss the nuance of how big of a disaster this is for Russia. Soviet-Afghan war is a failure to quell an insurgency(albeit the Soviets still controlled less territory than coalition forces)... Ukraine is not the same type of failure as Soviet-Afghan war or US-Afghan war. Anyway, simply put, US would beat Ukraine. occupying it is another story, but the US would at least have gotten through the high intensity phase in short order.
One thing that many people forget about Afghanistan is the US was never going to "win" because you cannot force a style of govt on a people who don't want it because they've been governed by tribes for millennia. Military and politically the United States could defeat Ukraine but it could never conquer it because it would be facing an insurgency on a mass scale because the vast majority of the population would fight the occupation until they die. And in our modern time we don't intentionally kill civilians on mass just to force them into submission like we did in WWII and before
Correct.The main reason Afghanistan was never developed is because the tribes never accepted any central government.No taxes, no development.Basically all development even before the invasion was done with foreign help.
Yep. It's also telling that, at the peak of US commitment, only about 50,000 of the half-million US troops in Vietnam were actual combat troops. There was a similar ratio fighting the Taliban.
@@mrd7067 True but that doesn't mean much, the overwhelming majority were pilots who were shot down during the early stages before we brought wild weasels but the numbers are acceptable given the complexity of the operations. I think he meant losing a military engagement on the overall big picture, a few dozen POWs in a thousand-personnel operation means very little to the overall military engagement. The numbers: U.S. Air Force (332 POWs), Navy (149 POWs), and Marine Corps (28 POWs) Notable POWs. Everett Alvarez, Jr., USN pilot John L. Borling, USAF pilot, Charles G. Boyd, USAF pilot And the list goes on and they are mostly pilots, the U.S. managed to adapt that's why we have SEAD and DEAD since then. The possibility of the NVA taking any American ground personnel was thin but it happened in very rare occasions.
The 3:1 ratio seems more misleading. As far as I can find it is the ratio for a local level attack to succeed, not about the total amount of troops you need to bring to win the war. If you have 1.5 times the forces of your enemy and can man the frontline with 1:1 ratio, you can leverage the remaining extra troops to get a local 3:1 advantage and break through the line at various points. Then the success of your war depends on the effect breakthroughs have and how many times you need to repeat it to end the war, because you still lose more people on the offensive. A couple of times and you could win it, a thousand times and you need to bring more people.
An army that works together where all the component parts are focused on the same goal will perform a lot better than one where every group is constantly fighting each other. The latter system may make it safer for an authoritarian state to keep power but it will not be nearly as effective in a war against an enemy that works together
Lockheed Martin is authoritarian Military Industrial Complex Pfizer is totally authoritarian Com' Monsanto you remember U.S Federal Reserve totally authoritarian Company. Even no one can ask them questions Alen Musk you think that he hates Authoritarian American is 30 Trillion in dead. Do you think that the Americans can do something about it. The answer is big no you can not do anything about it. Do you think it is right or natural think to happen. I believe not
@@MohamedAli-tu4so Hm, I don't know. At least in the West I can say something like "current leader stinks poo poo" in public without either being beheaded or fearing that my next morning tea will taste like cyanide. Yeah, corporations have great influence over politics and internal affairs. And yeah, I might be ommited by the Great Media so as to not let me draw attention at best and I might get cancelled by Twatter snowflakes and crybabies at worst, but are you seriously wanting to compare that to what would actually happen if I did the same thing in actual autocratic countries?
While we lost Veitan and afganstan... we won milltarly... Like was at any point the US under threat of occupation? Where we even getting pushed out of those countries? I believe the answer tio both of those question was no... We got up a left while we were winning because we got bored.
The same rule would effectively apply here, and it’s even what everyone assumed would be true initially for Ukraine too. That the army would fight a losing battle against Russia and then disperse into the population to continue waging a long-term insurgency that’ll one day outlast the occupation even if it takes multiple decades.
Well typically US occupation is also viewed as mostly harmless, if one takes into account what occupation usually looks like. For Vietnam and Afghanistan in historical terms, its more like good sport and no hard feelings.
We didn’t get bored lol that’s the worst cope of all time. The fact is it’s the longest war in US history. And we were unable to stop the Taliban for a variety of reasons. The war was doing nothing except killing and wounding more and more US soldiers. Also, there is no such thing as winning a war military but losing politically. War is just a form of political maneuvering. And in the end, to the Taliban, it doesn’t matter if they lost militarily. They still control Afghanistan again. You’re thought process is what gets us into these wars in the first place.
"We got bored" Cope, people died on both sides, families were broken and a lot of money-resources went down the drain. The people who did win were the people who invest or owned the factories that made the weapons.
@@a3cools115 the people who won in Vietnam are all the people who were saved from the encroachment of communism as a result of the US's almost complete victory over the side supplied by the soviets. At the height of the Soviet union, 2/3 hospitals lacked hot water and production projects took around 7 times more materiels than US construction projects because communism ruined allocative efficiency. THAT is what countries were saved from when we saved them from communism.
What's important to note and what would be very important in whether one does do better over the other is whether the US underestimates or overestimates Ukraine or not. The main issue with Russia is that they were unprepared for Ukraine to actually push back. Which lead to this giant mess we're in now. This mess is still possible with the US. But completely depends on how their initial invasion is handled.
@@ZioStalin What??? Actually quite the contrary after the Vietnam humiliation their military doctrine completely called for total force dominance, like they did in operation desert storm even to the point of overestimating Iraqi forces and crushing them. If you are referring to the post occupation insurgence in Iraq and Afghanistan that's another story which is after the military conquest of those countries, so please think before writing total nonsense...
@@shalala4217 They lost almost all of the wars they fought, including Iraq and Afghanistan, AFTER VietNam. They were kicked in the ass by goat herders with rusty Kalashnikovs.
@@shalala4217 the US has a habit of underestimating it's enemies. Just look at what they were saying about Russia at the start "These sanctions will cripple Russia, wreck their economy, they running out of missiles, ammo and drones" and they're still repeating these poorly researched talking points in the media. All their "analysts" on BBC and Sky and CNN repeating US state dept propa ganda that didn't foresee Russia lasting this long. They're doing the exact same thing with China "Chinese equipment are fake, they've not fought any major wars, these sanctions will put them where they belong" etc.
@@ZioStalin That isn't an accurate reading. The Taliban and Iraqis were never able to inflict notable losses on American forces even during the occupation - about 7K in total. Neither could fight militarily either. The US wasn't even close to getting it's ass kicked. But in both cases a new government could not be set up and neither does the US have the brutality to fight against guerilla warfare.
I would say that it’s hard to argue that we lost in Iraq or militarily in Afghanistan. We replaced Iraq’s government with one friendly to the US and put down an insurrection threatening it. I’m Afghanistan, we took out Al Qaeda and removed the Taliban. Fact is that after 20 years, the Afghan people still couldn’t get their shit together enough to hold the nation together and keep the taliban out. So we left and said “we did our best to create something for you” Neither of those -in any shape or form- can be seen as a defeat for the US military.
Maybe the US should stop trying to "create" things for people. What one interprets as are creation another considers "the destruction of his land and killing of his friend and family". The
@@bellyofthebeast6605 maybe. But we didn’t go into Iraq or Afghanistan to “create” democracy. We went there to remove governments who the US felt represented a threat to the country. Regardless of whether you think they were or not…the US wanted Al Qaeda dead and the Taliban and Saddam Hussein out of power. The Pottery barn rule (you break it/you buy it) -and a desire not to have to do the same thing again- dictates that you have to replace the government with something. So why wouldn’t we replace it with a democracy friendly to the US. But we didn’t invade either just to “create” anything. We were destroying shit in one and draining a swamp to destabilize Iran and Syria in the other
spent 20 years and half a tril of USD to replace Taliban with... Taliban (and leave it fully equiped with gear to the point they now have airforce). Yeah, the most decisive medal for participation I would say, great job..
US normally doesn’t fail in warfare. It fails in nation building and I honestly can’t figure out why it tries to do this… If you don’t want to colonize an area then you should get it out as soon as your military objectives are done.
Yes, absolutely. Even before watching the video, i can say that the US focus on SEADS would've given them the skies after about a month of air campaigns. See Desert Storm. Also, the US command structure is way more flexible, with better trained and educated petty officers making better decisions way faster than the top-down russian structure does.
please don't talk about desert storm. you know iraq was militarily and economically exhausted after the war with iran. a war which was maintained by America since the two sides were being (secretly) armed alternately so that they mutually destroy each other but that is not the point. iraq is not an opponent comparable to ukraine of 2022. the iraqis did not have access to advanced technologies which ukraine received from all of nato to the point of drying up the stocks of all the western countries! the iraqis weren't trained as much as the ukrainians as well. rather, we should talk about the vietnam war. over 58k americans were killed. go see the number of american planes and helicopters shot down by the vietcongs. 25 ac130, 31 b52 (17 in combat), 5600 helicopters, 578 uav ect...
@@polduran Well if you want to talk about Vietnam, the Soviets supplied the NVA with advanced weapons and aircraft. So NATO should do the same without anyone crying about it being escalation.
@@firepower01 yes like the americans when they armed the mujahideen in Afghanistan. on the other hand Ukraine is a question of national security, an existential struggle for Russia. let's remember what almost happened when cuba went over to the soviet side! 638 assassination attempts, one invasion attempt plus one planned. the entire american military apparatus pleaded for the annihilation of cuba for this affront! Russia legitimately has every right to destroy this trap.
It's a nice theoretical discussion, but in reality Ukraine would fight the US completely differently than they are fighting Russia. Most likely more in an insurgent type of way. It would be interesting to see how the US would do against a more technological advanced insurgency ( that in that scenario would most likely be heavily supplied by Russia)
@@matsv201 No insurgency is how you fight in order to deny your enemy their capabilities and set the battle in your favor. Most Taliban and other insurgents did NOT use human shields but worked in small groups with limited technology. More often than not insurgent camps were far away from villages in mountains.
According to the box the main course on some MREs are in, having an MRE is a force multiplier, so realistically, you could have one soldier and a thousand MREs and they'd be able to single handedly win a war.
Hello. First, I enjoy your videos tremendously, and I actually went to your video listing to ensure I didn't miss any recent videos, and sure enough, I got back to about one year ago, and this was the only video I had not watched yet. With all respect, I must disagree with one of your statements in this video. War is complicated, and it's possible for a country to win a war militarily while also losing a war politically. This is exactly what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan. For example, both Vietnam and Afghanistan were approximately 19.5 years of continuous warfare and occupation of a foreign country by US forces. During that time, the US military maintained a relatively free-flowing route for logistics and troop movement. In combat, the US absolutely decimated the enemy when you compare losses in equipment and casualties between the two forces. I'm not looking up the numbers at the moment, but based on memory, the US lost approximately 55,000 men in Vietnam. The estimates for total North Vietnamese and VietCong are approximately 1.1 million. The real difference in this war is the fact the US was fighting to prevent the spread of communism, an idealology opposed to democracy and capitalism, while the North was literally fighting for their homes, family, friends, and future as an independent nation (from their perspective). This, combined with waivering support from the population at home, who saw little benefit of fighting half way around the world and losing US lives for gains they were never going to realize, resulted in Vietnam absolutely ending in a political loss. However, there should be no doubt that even back then, prior to the US truly being considered an absolute professional high-tech combined arms military force that it is today, the US won the Vietnam War militarily. In other words, the US inflicted far more losses on the enemy it fought for nearly 20 years straight, in addition to doing so while not waging total war. When I say total war, I mean something like WWII, where we were determined to push the enemy back to the last man and building no matter what it took, including indiscriminate mass bombing of cities and use of the nuclear bomb. In Afghanistan, it was nearly 20 years of an insurgency-based war, as you noted. And once again, I fully admit that the war was lost from a political standpoint. However, the US and coalition forces (their NATO allies assisting in-country) lost less than 3,000 men in combat during that entire time period, compared to estimates ranging around 20,000 to 40,000 for the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIL. This was a victory purely from a military standpoint, but it was ultimately a political loss as the US had no interest in staying there forever, and it's now apparent that regardless of US efforts to prepare the Afghan military, they would never have the will to defend the country against the resurgent Taliban moving in as the US withdrew. Now, if Afghanistan was a total war where we subjugated the population and established a permanent presence, it would have ultimately been a political victory as well. However, the cultural differences, distances between the two territories, and the brutality it would require to do so simply made absolutely no logical sense, which is why we eventually withdrew. We definitely made the mistake of thinking we could withdraw and keep any lasting gains there, but the Taliban definitely did not "beat" the US military from a combat perspective. I found it odd that you also mentioned Iraq, though. In both Iraq invasions and wars, the US absolutely rolled over Iraqi forces, which were considered quite sizable at the time of both invasions, and analysts were concerned over the potential for massive casualties. As I'm sure you're aware, on both occasions the US crossed the border and essentially took the entire country within weeks. Of course, the second war was more difficult, and we stayed much longer, but once again, we never intended to stay in Iraq forever or commit to total war and subjugate its people. I'd also like to add that Ukraine has been keeping Russia at a stalemate for nearly three years now, while the US and NATO are only contributing a fraction of their wealth and military resources. Ukraine has prevented Russia from obtaining air superiority despite only having a fraction of their air force. Ukraine has destroyed about 20% of the Russian Black Sea fleet while having no navy of its own. You replace Ukraine with the US's professional army, modern equipment and technology, significantly more trained service members, and quantities of equipment on the ground versus Ukraine, an air force that would obtain air superiority in a matter of days, a navy that would have cleared all Russian Black Sea assets within weeks at best, all combined with world-class logistics, intelligence, and ISR, and Russia would be handily defeated. Absolutely zero doubt in my mind, and that's not even counting the NATO support that comes with the US as a package deal. Finally, to put everything into perspective and to support my assessment of the wars mentioned above. In less than two years of fighting Ukraine, Russia has lost more than double the men than the US has in all wars and conflicts from 1946 through the present (total US KIA is approximately 102k during that time period). Now, when you take that fact and combine it with the fact it includes two wars that lasted nearly 20 years each, this is precisely why I categorize those as political losses rather than military losses.
@@lordfedjoe Of course they would do that. Why do people post such retarded things when they know nothing about the topic? Saddam in 1991 had one of the most dense AA systems on the planet, never mind thousands of MANPADs.
One of the things not mentioned was the objective. The scenarios could only be compared if the objectives are similar making Ukraine cede territory and changing its government. One of the things not mentioned in regards to that is that the US might be too good at what it does. What I mean is that the US would quickly make it impossible for Ukraine to fight them conventionally. Meaning the majority of its personnel would not be able to fight and thus would not die on the battlefield similar to the Iraqi army in the initial invasion. These personnel would then be able to wage a very devastating insurgency on the US and in that space, the US can be defeated. In contrast if Russia completes all of its political objectives it would mean that it has essentially destroyed the Ukrainian military and in the territory it annexes would not face as much resistance from the local population since they are ethnically Russian (i.e. Crimea). This of course means first they would have win which is very very difficult but these differences do pose unique challenges and benefits for both sides in the same scenario.
The US military won both Iraq and Afghanistan. They were political failures. The military operations completely stunted the opposition forces and we're unable to respond. Iraq is a function county and Saddam is going. Afghanistan could have remained indefinitely, 22k personnel killed or wounded over 20 years are losses the nation can deal with, each is a tragedy but as a group a statistic. The failure was training and establishing a government
Huh... I assume this is a rhetorical question😄. Wherever and whenever the US was allowed to open up; gloves off; we have no single peer in the sphere of warfare. We will quickly remember how to drop dumb bombs, thermo munitions, cluster bombs and call in fire for effect w/ HE & WP in mass. Also, unlike the Russians, our Light Infantry is the backbone of our ground forces, and we actually use the Infantry to protect our Armor. We have no peer in Combined Arms battlefield preparation, ISR, fix by fire, maneuver, and destroy. We would never even allow a near-peer to retreat on a Tactical or Operational effort. Surrender on all three levels, yes, but never retreat on the bottom two tiers. Strategic levels, I really can not intelligently speak on, that's for General's.
It's literally nato vs Russia without the man power and equipment. The same thing happened with the us and the middle east. Every nation that didn't like nato contributed to their failure in the middle east.
a single infantry man with an rpg could very easily take out a tank with a well placed shot . though said , a tank is still very much a valuable asset to have in a battle as it could take hell lot of punishment and still be able to shoot back .
People say this and yet at the same time America was able to drive into Baghdad with nothing but Abrams tanks and Bradley’s and the Iraqi militias that were heavily dug in to this urban battlefield had little to no effect of stopping the advance. An armored formation can just as easily pin down an infantry force. It’s all about cohesion, support and training.
I'm not trying to defend Russia in any way but it's very disingenuous to compare the war in Ukraine with the war in Iraq. There wasn't a military alliance in the Middle East that the US had to really worry about like Russia has to worry about nato and what their next move is. And there wasn't countries that was joining this alliance that boarder the US like Finland is doing now. Common sense says they have to be very frugal with their forces and resources b/c they don't know what nato will do next.
At 4:56 Taliban Taliban actually had a fairly good budget. They were looting their cultural icons and selling them on the black market, just like ISIS did later. Isis had 100 million dollars per month coming in, not sure what the Taliban had....
The USA would have remembered to bring along fuel and food for the vehicles and troops respectively in the drive to Kiev. And also not start the invasion at the beginning of the mud season.
@ 6:39 Officer training and giving instructions to tank crews, tank crews all stand there nodding... With ear protection on. This could explain a few things 😅
The answer to this question is always yes lol There's a reason the scariest classification we give to enemies is "near peer", which they won't be for long because we'll cripple their logistics, air power, communications, power grid, air defense, and radar systems before we ever step foot on their soil
I think the conflict would much more come down to who has the will to fight. I get the feeling US soldiers wouldn’t be so keen in going up against actual advanced weaponry, like what’s getting sent to Ukraine right now.
That US weaponry that the Ukrainians are fighting with? As well as the training they've been getting since 2014. Don't forget that the US has a lot more tactical flexibility and capability. Plus the targeting information that the Ukrainians are getting is from US satellites. They wouldn't be getting that. The US would be going up against Russian weapons and doctrine. That doctrine has poor military education on the low and middle levels and poor communication amongst branches, so they don't react in real time. Day 1 US doctrine is to suppress air defenses. That's only a few anti-air missiles. The Russians don't have abundant man portable AA launchers. It might take longer than an actual day, but after that, it's over. Any tank concentrations, supply depots are destroyed.
@@recoil53 The US on paper could defeat a Russian trained and armed military, but that military would still be better armed than anything the US fought since the WW2. The US could 100% take out major Ukrainian defenses without major losses, but at some point they would need to send in troops. Even if the major Ukrainian defenses ARE destroyed, the Ukrainians would be left with more 'advanced' toys than any other country that has fought the US. I get the feeling that American troops would break down in tears when the Ukrainians started firing more advanced weapons than Ak-47s and RPGs at them.
@@ashmarten2884 Doubtful, but it's irrelevant - they wouldn't be left with anything other than infantry weapons. The artillery is gone, no armored vehicles. Extremely few equivalents to Stingers and Javelins.
@@recoil53Um, the Ukrainian Astartes out with thousands of igla style manpads. Unless you think a few thousand is a few. Not to mention that it is unlikely that their artillery and others systems would be completely destroyed before the invasion. It would likely take months to take apart the IADS in the first place.
I think Russia deeply underestimated Ukraine and I don't blame them. 1. America spent 20 year's building up Afghanistan's military giving them American weapons, training, intel and despite support from American air support the Afghan government was toppled within a short time period. 2. Ukraine was given less American weapons and training and was still deeply corrupt with pro Russian factions within the country and spies all over the place. 3. Ukraine is similar size and similar population to Afghanistan except the terrain is much better for tanks, artillery and armored vehicles. 4. Nato Had been on the decline with declining military spending and many beginning to not believe in the NATO project. 5. Despite sparking an uprising in the Donbass and taking Crimea the west still did very little to fight back against Russia which in Russia's eyes meant that the west cared very little for Ukraine. To Russia NATO would not do anything and all Russia had to do was march their armies in, take some strategic locations and comedian Zelensky would cower and flee the country along with Pro western politicians and all Russia would have to do was march into Kiev and install their puppet. Maybe Russia would have to fight a pro-longed guerilla war but that's nothing they cant handle and over time the Ukraine people would eventually submit.
On qualitative bases as well as vertical & horizontal integrations, I believe our forces (USA) would do far better than Russian (or any other formal force on the planet) when faced another formal conventional force.
@@cameronspence4977 I really believe in our men and women and the qualitative difference in our training, platforms and various applied solutions. That is not to say there are not good men and women, training, platforms and solutions in other countries; I just believe we have more of it than any other country on the planet and they work together well, because we practice them. We are also capable of making mistakes like how we pulled out of Afghanistan, but I am sure we have learned lesson because of it.
@@johndewey6358 20 years ago... you would have been right. I can tell you with out a doubt that the caliber, education, training and combat readiness of the modern US soldier is not something you should feel proud about. I worry about our combat readiness.. but hey. Only one way to find out, and looks like everyone is pushing for it.
The US Army is probably the weakest branch of the Armed Forces. The US has, for about the past hundred years, relied on air power and naval power. In those spheres the US is basically uncontested.
Pre-watch answer: Yes. For one thing, we'd rapidly take control of the skies and then move forward. Even if we reverse the situation a bit, with Russia feeding the Ukrainians weapons, we'd topple the government and then have to deal with an insurgency. That's where thongs would get messy.
thank you. What makes me like your videos beside their educational offer is your fair assessment of the events; which is very rare these days with the so called experts in Twitter and MSM.
I would be really interested in seeing your discussion with Brian from The News Atlas. You have different points of view but are polite and mindful. So it would be enjoyable talk I think
Kudos for pointing out that raw numbers are not in any way representative of the old "3 to 1" rule, but the rest leaves me a bit cold. The most appropriate scenario would be to imagine if the US alone (ie with no NATO support) were to attack Ukraine via say Poland and Belarus, with Ukraine receiving intel, logistics support, reinforcements, replacements and volunteers from Russia, China and another dozen small to mid tier nations. In other words the mirror of the scenario that happened in real life. My guess is that the US would fare almost exactly as the Russians did, or at best as they themselves did in Iraq in Gulf War II. In other words they would stomp all over Ukraine for the first few months but once the battle lines settled in they would be ground down in a low level war of attrition that they could never hope to win. History has shown time and again that the US way of war is fantastic at winning grand set piece battles but lousy at wars of attrition or asymmetric warfare.
Exactly. In any comparable mirrored scenario, the US would have the same problems (I think worse because the raw production capability of the US's opponents is much higher.) as Russia has been having. Then you add in the oil production of Russia and the, ironically, more stable government of Russia than the US currently has. (No really, the popularity of Putin legitimately appears to be much, much higher than Biden has.)
the usa alone would destroy every munitions and fuel depots, radars, air bases and military depots, naval ship,, command and control and bridges etc etc etc if necessary in the first 24 hours.. get a grip
@@johnnyllooddte3415 lol, no. That isn't how it would go and you clearly have no idea how warfare works, let alone how the US does warfare if you think anything remotely close to that would happen.
The US would obliterate Russia on an open battle field. However if Russia survived the first year, It would gain a distinct advantage. Russian can endure suffering. Americans cannot.
Thank you a lot fur such great video. It is also useful to keep in mind, that in the beginning Russia hoped for some sort of hearts & minds campaign, therefore they were very hesitant on striking the critical infrastructure(water, energy, etc) during the early days of the campaign when they still had a chance to make a significant shock and awe effect. US in similar scenarios, Iraq for example, left the enemy without any water and light even before the US ground forces crossed the border.
@@MohamedAli-tu4so If that were true, Russia wouldn't be bombing every bit of civilian infrastructure it could see. It refrained from striking said infrastructure early in the war because it thought it would be unnecessary.
@@dasbubba841 NATO kept pouring fuel in to the fire. So Russia is reacting. Russians believe Ukrainians are their people. Zlenisssky is the one who is trying to fight with NATO help
The day the war started i stated: "Either it ends this week and Russia wins, or it will go on for a few years and Russia lose" The logic behind it is when you totaly take out the logistics of a nation, there is no way they can have an effective war, and they would just grind down and lose. You might as well give up, by that point there is no way of winning. Most people have forgotten. But russia did a what i would call "first 21 century attack" on Ukraine. People think of modern war as the combat start at the border, then they drive to the capital, and take it... Like.. Well most war in the 20 century. Russia shown actually how it will be done in the future. only.. that they failed. First fighters take out the air defense, then paratroopers take the airfield and then heavy carriers bring in IFV and tanks . The fight start at the capital. They was pretty close to succeeding. The reason why they failed was due to a lack of combined forces training and to little air transport. If US would do the same (and they probobly will in the next war) they will do a few things differently. Firstly there would way more paratroopers. Probably 5 times as much. There would also be more helicopters. And more than one airfield would be taken. Landing of the transporters would also be more closely timed. Why drive to Baghdad when you can fly.
Not only what you just said but what makes the US Armed Forces stands out from the rest is their training. I served in the US Army and we were constantly training.
We kind of gutted All the industry, Unless you are going to do Emonate domain over all the old factory's this will take some serious work. You would need to start building new factorys. And changing the education system, Right now it is broken, completely and is no longer MERRIT based. Semper Fi.
I feel like this video really went no where. There was no sort of explanation of much. I would've liked for you to clear up the geography question. Also you put forth many ideas of well maybe this or maybe that but you don't expand on any of these points. I saw the video was only 8 minutes and I figured this wasn't going to be much of anything and I was right. I did watch the whole video. I thought you would touch on sanctions somewhat and how that is or isn't a thing for Russia. How drones are being used. Or the aircraft carriers. This could and should've been so much better. But it just felt like talking to some kid that kinda gets things
Is a phantom US supplying like 50b$ a year from the side with infantry weapons that can one shot Abrams and CAS? A shadow NATO supplying pin-point intel on US depots etc that can be hit? Depends on that. To be an apt comparison, Ukraine should be supplied 800b$ a year in armament since it's given as much as yearly Russian military budget so the aid should match US military budget.
insane cope. Funny how Soviets were able to supply Vietnam with all the AA/AAA guns, aircraft and SAM's to shoot down all those USAF aircraft and US Army choppers in that war, and people sniffing the copium over smaller things like Javelins and a few Bradleys here and there think it's basically like NATO invading. Also "one shot things" wtf? Real life isn't an RPG.
@@MrCampasaurus Cope what? Russian military being a mess doesn’t change that Ukraine got the biggest military aid since WW2 land lease. And US lost in Vietnam, who is coping now?
FYI the Taliban didn't actually win. Their government was overthrown within weeks. Unfortunately, the Afghan people were too afraid of the Taliban to actually defend their own country and just chose to give it back to them. The US didn't hand Afghanistan over to the Taliban. We handed the country over to the Afghan government whos solders and President just ran... now the people have to deal with the brutal dictators we removed until they grow the balls to remove them themselves.
Afghanistan deserves exactly what it gets with the Taliban for being too cowardly to defend themselves and their freedom. Same thing goes with the South vietnamese.
A majority Pashtun country/people supporting a majority Pashtun, pro-Pashtun government/former government/current government and not supporting a non-majority Pashtun (minority Tajik) government of former corrupt warlords. Installed and backed by a foreign occupying force that also incentivized individuals accusing their own people of working for the Taliban, for a cash reward, where the accused would be arrested, detained without trail or evidence, tortured for years in prison. Wow, I’m shocked. Someone should’ve told the Pentagon and White House. Oh, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction did. Hmm how odd. Americans have always had a hard time accepting that the Pashtuns, which consist of almost half the entire population, actually supported the Taliban. Afghanistan was more than the relatively cosmopolitan Kabul. The Afghanis were cowards for not defending their country? Who do you think we had been fighting for 20+ years? People that weren’t “defending” their country against the foreign occupying military backed government and said foreign occupying force? Lmao
Two things. Real air power, and better logistics. Even if Russia was giving them equipment to use against us, most of them would've been bombed to kingdom come.
If you ask me it all comes down to air supremacy. The fact that Russia was never able to establish any kind of air superiority along with relatively small air numbers means they were never able to disrupt those supply lines. The US with its multiple aircraft carriers and massive network of refueling aircraft would establish air dominance immediately and from that point on, the outcome would already be decided, the only question from there would be how long until they bleed out. You want to see what the US can do against an organized/structured modern military? Look no further than the Gulf War. You want to see what total air domination does to supply lines? Look at "The Highway of Death".
If the Taliban had access to modern ATGMs, MANPADS, satellite intelligence, smart mortar systems, secure communications etc. The US would have suffered very high losses.
You seem to not understand the difference between an emergency and a conventional stand up military no country in history has ever won against insurgency not even Russia that just slaughter's whole villages
Not really. Tactics adapt to different situations, and the one thing the US military is above all others in (besides logistics) is adaptability. In Afghanistan we went in with the mindset of COIN. Since our intelligence networks are accurate, we’d see that they have all of this modern Gear and change our plans accordingly. We would go in with a full air campaign, wiping out the SAM network, then target all of the other infrastructure that would facilitate the Taliban’s military movements and then we would send in the ground forces to steamroll them. Looking at Iraq (DS and OIF) we demolished their military piece by peace before we even stepped foot into Iraq itself.
@@sunnycat69 Nonsense, there are alot of examples of conventional armies wiping out insurgencies. Russia did it recently in Chechnya, China in XinJiang and Tibet, the list goes on. Colonial empires crushed insurgencies so regularly they had handbooks written about how to do it efficiently. Western armies are simply held back by their delusions of intelligence and moral superiority when handling insurgencies.
The US would level the whole country. Russia attempted a political solution in the first months, with not enough troops for a full war, with Ukraine fully mobilized and heavily supported on all aspects by US, Nato, Europe, etc. Now that Russia has amassed troops and equipment, we might see a more conventional example of their capabilities.
One thing to remember, Ukraine had the strongest military in Europe, by numbers they had around the whole European NATO Combined + they had military experience (something that's lacking in most NATO countries) and they have support of the whole NATO. So it gets you thinking about Russian capabilities....
In a conventional war Russia would fold like Iraq in a couple of weeks. But with Russia still probably having some functional nukes, it's a moot question.
@@dominikjakaj1999 That’s a thought terminating cliche. Limited war is possible without nuclear escalation. For example, a war where the US intends to cripple Russia’s military and infrastructure without destroying the Russian state itself.
@@drksideofthewal It’s idiotic thinking like that which will one day lead to a nuclear war. The US almost started a nuclear war over Soviet nukes sitting in Cuba, and you think Russia’s going to let NATO come in and cripple its military? To say nothing of the fact that most American cruise missiles are nuclear capable and Russia has no way to discern if a tomahawk flying at Moscow has a nuclear warhead. What are the chances that if the roles were reversed, the US military backbone was crippled, and Russia were off the American coast sending nuclear-capable missiles and bombers all over the US and potentially landing its soldiers in the hundreds of thousands on American territory, that America would not resort to at least tactical nuclear weapons (if not a strategic first strike) to stop this? The idea that the US has any control over escalation while trying to destroy the Russian military is a fantasy. A stupid, dangerous, fantasy.
Wait how could it be said we lost to Iraq? In all tthe 3 Iraq wars I know of we've won handly... even tthe most recent onw that took the longest as it was a peace keeping operation we still won because Iraq said we are at peace now so we don't need your help... Like if that's a loss so is WW2.
With a channel name like this i`d think you would go much deeper in the covert operations side of things. There is a article written by the journalist (former US army ranger and former USSF) Jack Murphy who states that the attacks in russia are done by CIA assets. Lets make a thought experiement: The US attacks mexico. All forces in the US (goverment + cartels) are united. The cartels or whoever blow up the dam for the panama canal or the whole canal. Kind of simmilar to the northstream and other pipelines. Couple this with other covert actions like against the railway lines (as we have recently seen but that at a much worser scale and more frequently) and pipelines (also happened last year more than one might have heard of against russian interests). Not to forget the potential of cartels and other mexican national groups and other international groups in the US itself. Now give mexico modern anti aircraft and rocket artillery, as well as modern anti ship capabilities and see what happens to the conventional US military not to forget the US itself.
I never understood why people always compare budgets of countries that is so different in all aspects? For example, lets say average US private salary is 2000$ a month (its 1833$ rn) while in Russia average private salary is 500$ a month (it was 400$ in 2016). In reality 1.000.000 of US privates would need military budget of 2 billion dollars, while in Russia they would only cost 500 mil. Same goes for armour and stuff, in US it cost WAAAY more to produce a tank, than in Russia, because again salaries of factory workers is WAAAY less in Russia. I know that it would be stupid to say that US and Russia have equal military strength because of that, but its not THAT bad as you see when compare their budgets.
That's correct if you assume that manufacturing is 100% domestic. But in reality modem military equipment is made of a lot of imported technologies and raw materials which have dolarized market values so in the end getting X materials cost the same in the US and in Russia making the US budget a lot more capable of buying stuff in international markets.
Plus the corruption problem of authoritarian countries which have less checks making huge amounts of money getting lost into corrupted officials hands or downgraded equipment.
@@shalala4217 here in US corruption is even bigger problem, we just dont speak about it. Its easy to stole a few billlions when US military doesnt even know how much it spends.
The 3:1 figure mentioned is also for an entrenched or dug in opponent, and while ukraine was on high alert leading up to the special operation, i think “entrenched” is a bit of a stretch
@@centeroftheuniverse7196 Cause this special military operation claim only serves one purpose. To hide the truth from the russian people. It is so obvios it is depressing none russians fall for it. Intervention wars are still wars. That is why iraq was called a war.
Anyone that "considers the US military lost against weaker enemies like iraq, afghanistan, and vietnam" is either uninformed or trying to feed you a biased agenda. To start a video this way does not bode well for credibility moving forward.
The US losses in Vietnam, Afghanistan (The US did not loose in Iraq) were due to political reason, not Military losses. They weren’t overpowered. PS Im not an American
Technically speaking, the US did win in Afghanistan (the 2001 invasion and originally removing Al Qaeda from power), though the Afghan war that came afterwards with the nearly 2 decades of nation building was a defeat. One must remember that invading, destroying armies and toppling governments is entirely different from counter insurgency and nation building. The latter is significantly harder, if not nigh impossible.
US did not lose in Afghanistan, US got Afghan under it controlled and installed Pro-US government within weeks. Afghan was once a major non-nato ally for years until US GAVE UP in 2020. In 20 years, US lost about 5k troops, only thing US lost in Afghan, are money and interests as US see threats elsewhere rises like China in the Indo-Pacific. As for Vietnam, it depends on how you view, some say US lost and some say US gave up. Which is understandable because wars cost money and lives. From 1940s to when Vietnam war ended, US was in back to back wars, and sometimes in multiple wars at the same time. US took down Japan in the mid 1940s, 1950s Korean war and Vietnam wars. US did all that while protecting Europe and NATO from USSR. US was and is a bad ass country. Going to wars thousands of miles away across the giant ocean is never easy. US faced huge logistics problems, heck even Russia is having some logistic problems in Ukraine despite them sharing borders.
You suggested that the US lost Vietnam Iraq and Afghanistan. Militarily they didn't lose any of those wars. They lost the war's politically. Meaning they had control over the situation on the ground until they pulled out. The US is not very good at nation building as it was say after world war II.
A war lost is still a lost, whether its militarily or politically. In Korean war, USA lost both when the ill-equipped Chinese army was able to drive the American out of North Korea.
If a fighter dominates someone in a cage match and wins his belt and leaves the match, it doesn't mean he lost the match even after getting the appointment to submit. There is a big difference between getting driven out like in the US revolutionary war, or an unconditioned serenader like Germany and Japan in WII. Occupying a territory and maintaining order and security take cooperation from the people Thus when you pull ou,t the opposition takes over because the country you occupied doesn't have the know how or lacks the will to maintain the established government. This is the danger of trying to be the world police. If the people live under the reign of a tyrant, it is the duty for the people to cast the tyranny off, John Adams ... Not a foreign power.. we could have stayed in Iraq and Afghanistan for 100 years maintaining security, and things would have never changed It's impossible to be liberators if the people don't want to be liberated... This in turn turns to occupation and we see all through history that occupation never ends well..
Its not actually how they could perform better, its how much sooner the training and the promised military aid( tanks, jets, air defenses, Long range munitions) are going to arrive. And to makes matter worse, there are talks on different YT channels about Western Industries lagging in the production of ammunition for Ukraine
6:33 Talking about Kharkiv and Kherson - there were basically no Russian defenses, as they still thought they were advancing (why defense, if you're attacking?), so Ukraine just used its advantage in numbers (and Russia's neglegance) and attacked in few different places, leaving Russia with no reserves to cover the Kharkiv wing. The reason the same approach doesn't work this time is because Russia increased its numbers - still smaller than Ukraine's, but at least enough to man all the trenches and def lines (which were created this time btw). As to the vid - we know for certain how USA performed against armies which were backed up by other major powers (hello Korea & Vietnam), and there's no reason to believe it would perform better today, if, let's say, Russia was backing up Ukraine against USA.
For the United States to occupy Ukraine and bend it to its political will, and remake the country in its image would be just as difficult as it was in any of the places we have tried in the last 50 years. which is to say not impossible, but close to it. But in terms of trying to do the thing that the Russians are currently trying to do, which is utterly annihilate the ability of the country to make conventional war, reduce every piece of large infrastructure to rubble, and completely dismantle its government probably would take about a week. The US military may be absolutely terrible when it comes to 'regime change" or "bringing democracy", but when it comes to simply breaking everything, there is no more capable force in the history of man
The USA won easily in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Their problem was maintaining control over countries and populations that didn't want them there. Democracy didn't work, because the regimes in these countries always ended up massively corrupt. The Korean war ended in stalemate, because in the end the quantity of Chinese soldiers was just too much.
In the case of China, we could have (and should have) just used our nukes. Nuking several Chinese cities along the border of NK and then without the supply routes those Million ChiComs would have been rolled back. Unfortunately, Truman didn’t sign off.
@@Agent0range67 It’s coping. “We won!” “How come your enemies are running the place, then?” “Doesn’t matter, shut up, we won!” The US won so hard in Afghanistan the entire place is run by Taliban now.
The problems the US faced in Nam can be boiled down to two words...Governmental Stupidity. Our troops performed...their leaders did not. As far as US lot Russia performing better? Easy...US fought for 20 years and lost about 5000 troops. Russia has been fighting for a year, and has lost about 100K troops and enough equipment to severely hinder their ability to conduct non nuclear combat on a large scale.
Yes. Who do you think helped train the Ukrainian troops. They change and update their doctrine whenever they can but Russia hasn't changed it since WWII. U.S also doesn't have the corruption or maintenance problems of Russia.
I think they'd do very well. America has always had much higher quality gear, training, experience and logistics than Russia. The main reason America did terrible in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan is it turned into a guerilla war. Something no nation is really tooled to deal with. Russia ran into the same issues in Afghanistan in the 80s. Fighting guerilla wars is incredibly hard. Especially when your military is geared towards a conventional war like what the Ukrainian war has become. I think Ukraine would be in a much worse state if it was an attack like the Russians did. Where they seized land fast. The RU advance failed due to old battle doctrines, their logistics failed, and their quality of weapons were (and still are) terrible. Military vehicles as we all saw broke down so much Ukrainian farmers stole broken down tanks with tractors. All of the things I just listed, America has the opposite of. High quality well maintained weapons, our logistics has been phenomenal going as far back as WWII, and the US military constantly tweaks its battle doctrines so they can fight as effective and efficiently as possible. I think the real problem the US would have is pacifying a rebellious public just as the RUs would have trouble doing if they beat the UA. There's a reason why people call the American military a war machine. It's a well oiled war machine.
I think Iraq in the early 90s had a more equipped army than Ukraine and the US wiped them out in a conventional war. Obviously different types of invasions but it gives me the idea that yes we would have
Iraq in the 90s had more troops but lower morale and relatively worse tech than Ukraine is vs the US. Overall, while having more stuff, Iraq from the 1990s is a weaker opponent than Ukraine is.
The nation would be China. USA is already engaging it in trade war, chips war, high tech war and whatever non-military war to slow down China from surpassing USA. I wondered when would USA be able to repay over 800 billion USD back to China, with interest ?
I don't think so if Russia helps Ukraine together with Nato against the US, it would be a much more difficult and disadvantageous for the US to penetrate the battle field if both Russia and Nato helps Ukraine against them..
Your hypothetical/initial thesis (that the US lost to weaker enemies) is flawed from the outset. America easily won the battlefield wars. They just couldn’t build install friendly governments without a paper cut insurgency. The US also isn’t willing to wipe out civilians en masse. As for Vietnam, they were getting massive arms support from Russia and had a huge manpower advantage.
The US never conducted an actual land invasion of North Vietnam because they were worried it could lead to nuclear war with China or the USSR. The comparison is flawed at best.
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Did you say the US lost in Iraq?????
Lol
Do not watch the video, it is literal, just a time waster and does not make a real analysis, just something superficial. It does not even evaluate the capacity of Ukraine or the type of war being fought.
Some time ago you gave an overlook of the Russian hardware they use and what they lost. Do you have any new insights how many tanks, ifv, apc, etc they have left? Any clues how realistic Ukrainian claims towards Russian losses are?
With a channel name like this i`d think you would go much deeper in the covert operations side of things.
There is a article written by the journalist (former US army ranger and former USSF) Jack Murphy who states that the attacks in russia are done by CIA assets.
Lets make a thought experiement:
The US attacks mexico. All forces in the US (goverment + cartels) are united.
The cartels or whoever blow up the dam for the panama canal or the whole canal. Kind of simmilar to the northstream and other pipelines.
Couple this with other covert actions like against the railway lines (as we have recently seen but that at a much worser scale and more frequently) and pipelines (also happened last year more than one might have heard of against russian interests).
Not to forget the potential of cartels and other mexican national groups and other international groups in the US itself.
Now give mexico modern anti aircraft and rocket artillery, as well as modern anti ship capabilities and see what happens to the conventional US military not to forget the US itself.
Wrong to say the US lost against Iraq, etc. They won against the conventional forces within a few weeks (Iraq).
But to hold the peace and stop them from fighting eachother is close to impossible.
Afghanistan was left with a democratic government with Taliban pretty much hiding until the US left. And then the afghan military dropped their weapons.
Vietnam was a guerilla war and its impossible to win against civilians. The US won just about all the battles and after the Nguyen Hue Offensive, the north vietnamese wanted to make a peace deal. They broke it as the US had decided to leave, knowing it was political impossible to reverse and come back strong to Vietnam.
The US has never lost a conventional war.
There is one key factor, if the US were fighting Ukraine they wouldn’t have been training their general staff since 2014. Much of the improvements in UAF organisation & tactics are thanks to their hard work with the US & NATO armies.
Truth. In this alternate universe with Russia training their general staff, I don't think they would've been nearly as effective.
You're right. The US has never fought a war against someone they have trained and armed in the past.
@@hydra70Oh but they are so quick to throw in the "But iraq had the 5th largest army" propaganda. They have no idea that the huge chunk of that army was conscripts
Russians are still fighting like WW2.
Not only that, but we wouldn’t be actively helping them with recon and intelligence.
I don’t think having Russia in your corner would be as helpful.
My pre watch answer before you present yours is that we could relatively easily take and put troops in any ukrainian city in a timely manner. The only issue is it would turn into a shit show trying to occupy Ukraine. It would make this middle east insurgency we all know and hate look like child's play. We don't have the man power or resources to occupy Ukraine against its will.
Fair assessment. Disabling the regular military force is one thing, the next phase of a partisan war is an entirely different one. Expect no less determination from Ukrainians than what they show towards Russia now. In our time, where the ruthless decimation of a population until submission is unthinkable, winning a war against a nation with a population in the tens of millions is practically impossible.
It depends. Say we "liberate" them from some future, hypothetical tyrant and offer them some outlandish offer like making them a US territory (or even the 51st state), followed by a massive public works/infrastructure program? We also have good relations.
It'll never happen, but, again...we fought the Nazis, have been supporting them for decades and would certainly rack up a hell of a lot fewer casualties in the process than the Russians.
Well, neither does russia so that's something
I disagree if we put the same effort Russia has into it we probably could occupy Ukraine. Causalities would be huge but probably smaller than Russia's so far. Just think Russia has or is mobilizing 800,000 conscripts which for the US population would be 2 million. Plus we are used to insurgencies now
@@JanisFever The US would NEVER have the force to occupy the territory of ukraine. It's fucking large and the manpower needed would be absolutely insane. Not only that even transport would be a huge issue without the NATO EU countries. You don't just flip a switch and all soldiers are in the ukraine, if you want to bring a million+ forces to ukraine that would take several years. The russians are doing just okay in ukraine right now, normally experts think about 3:1 losses for the attacking party.
The United States did not actually lose the actual war fighting, for example, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those countries were invated almost entirely. Afghanistan was invated extremely fast led by special forces and Iraq quite quickly as well. The point, of course, is that they cannot stay in those countries forever, and it is practically impossible to turn such countries into stable democracies.
I think people also oversimplify the defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq succumbed to civil war and insurgency after we destroyed the government and dismantled the military in less than a year, but the Iraqis did not want us to stay and resented us, plus Iran was involved helping fan the flames of the insurgency. Afghanistan, we destroyed the T ban’s Govt in a matter of months, but family tribal conflict, political and security corruption, and the constant change of tribal loyalty and allegiance made it hard to stabilize the country. What I’m saying is, the US can destroy and ruin a country and Govt if it wanted to, but it’s stabilization operations that hinder it because of the complexities of peace/nation building.
@@elchinoguerito8915 sounds likea whole bunch of excuses lol
Same can be said with Veitnam, if you look at battle field casualties US was far below veitcong or NVA. They were just more willing to keep going.
The West is too used to black and white viewpoints. One side versus another. Afghanistan was like multiple feuding teams. A lot of hostile history between different cultures.
Iraq was very heavily defended too. They were trained well and equipped handsomely by the old Soviet Union. Their defeat was not to be taken lightly.
Spoiler : yes
The U.S never fought aginst enemies who could shoot back. Iraq war? Iraq was sanctioned with low morale they were starving and in no way in hell shooting down stealth aircrafts, it was a pariah state
@@u2beuser714 talking about Iraq or Russia? Because that could describe both.
@@u2beuser714 What kinda wack job statement is that? Seems like you need a gentle reminder of Iraq's position as the 5th largest military back in its time with far more equipment than what Ukraine had at the start of the conflict
Spoiler: the country with the most advanced equipment because we have the best engineers and most money steamrolls everywhere else. China, the closest thing to a rival, will only sort of match us when they do innovation rather than copycat
@The Original NPC wouldn’t be strange if they did tbh 😂
It took the US around 2 months to destroy the Iraqi army. Need to be honest that Iraq was fighting without any support from anyone and the Russian could probably defeat Ukraine in the same amount of time or maybe bit longer.
People just not realize how much intelligence the American provides, it's not that hard to hit a fuel or ammunition depot it's much harder to locate them and this one done by the American.
So the Afghan forces had surely the intelligence of the US and 20 years of training but the fell within days to a force in sandals.
People have short memory. Surely there were US satellite intelligence but the first month they have been on there own with the weapon s. Ok some Javelins.
@@captainchaoscow Afghan fighter didn't destroy the American army, didn't hit ammunition or fuel depot or anything like that. They were bothering the American and killing some soldiers, putting ambush on mountain roads and so on far cry compere to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian received help from day one even before the war. They received training, weapons, intelligence, fuel, food etc.
it took about a week actually
@@johnnyllooddte3415 there was a lot of bombing on the Iraqi army before the actual invasion so you can't ignore it. The actual invasion took a month.
The invasion was to build our military budget as well that y why spent alot time there.
"A perfect modern battle plan is nothing so much as a score for an orchestral composition, where the various arms and units are the instruments, and the tasks they perform are their respectful musical phrases. Every individual unit must make its entry precisely at the proper moment, and play its phrase in the general harmony." - General Monash, Australian Imperial Force, WW1.
It's more like bagpipes. A constant ittitating drone, punctuated by sharp screeches and screams.
2:20 I think the problem is that people don't understand the difference between the layers of war. 3:1 is the approximate, rule of thumb, ratio of combat power that an attacking unit wants to have in order to take a defended position. It is not the ratio that an attacking army needs to have in order to overcome a defending army. It is a rule of thumb that applies to the tactical layer, and to the tactical layer only. It does not apply to the operational or strategic layers. Two armies can shuffle their troops around to achieve those local 3:1numerical advantages even if they are globally at numerical parity.
One point I think is critical and often overlooked is that the US has more combat experience over the last 25 years than almost any other military in the world. Several have zero experience, like China. Some, like Russia and France, have some. The transition from largely theoretical to the practical under tremendous pressure is a challenging one.
People always over look this. There like “just do combined arms.” If you look at the shit the U.S. army did at the start of Iraq/Afghanistan and the capabilities they had before pulling out is night and day. China thinks it can just copy that. You can’t.
@@gregpaul882 yeah, there’s no way to replicate that at the tactical level. No number of colonels and generals trying to move pieces three hundred or two thousand miles away will ever replicate the pressure of executing while under fire.
Ukraine is using more ammunition in one week than Iraq did during the entire war. USA has zero experience in fighting even remotely serious opponents. You can't become stronger by fighting toddlers.
While not..when they are the only country invading, toppling, occupying other smaller countries..they should have huge combat experience against rice farmers in Vietnam, fighting brothers and cousins in iraq and the rest that couldn't put up any real fight..what shocks me the most is that they were not able to win any
@@kennethbryan3738 blah blah blah blah. This isn’t a world in which saying words makes them true.
Sorry to hear you were sick bro. Well done for another fantastic video
The US won almost all battles it fought in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The problem was that it never succeeded in destroying the enemy's will to fight nor winning the public support of US forces. Locals supplied and sheltered insurgents and they joined insurgents at high enough rates to stave off total defeat. The US gave up after getting tired of spending money and lives without changing the status quo.
It's not even that. we did destroy their will to fight. the Taliban were quite literally willing to formally surrender in 2002. but Bush and his regime wanted more blood, and a very different agenda than they sold to the public and so they could not accept that peace. the military did every single thing that was asked for it, but some things are beyond the force of arms.
When superior firepower and technology isn't equal to gaining trust and support of the locals.
When will the us learn that violence is sometimes not the answer to problems
@@thanhvinhnguyento7069 It can work if its allowed to be used all out. The US was never allowed to use its full firepower in Vietnam It had hands tied behind its back the whole time. if the US was allowed to cross the DMZ and bomb any target without any reprosecution from Soviets and China they could have captured Hanoi within 2 months and destroyed the majority of the NVA. Now what happens AFTER the invasion well not sure.
@@voidwalker9223 the US cannot even fully control the south and you expect it can invade the north. There are even more north Vietnamese aces than american aces. How can the US invade the north if it cannot even establish air superiority, The US were allowed to bomb beyond the DMZ that is why you have 800 POW pilots that were caught in north vietnam
Conventionally yes but an insurgency would let the outcome be the same as Iraq and Afghanistan. Defeating an opponent's military doesn't equate to victory. Even if Russia had taken Kiev, it would still face a massive insurgency.
Ukraine isn't a jungle nor a mountainous country, though. It is mostly just plains after plains after plains. No way a guerrilla movement would have the same effect as in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam.
@@mekingtiger9095 South west in Ukraine there are big mountains and large areas of mountainous terrain. And Iraq is mostly plains as well right, desert and cities? I do not see your point- i i understand the difference from Vietnam, but i cant see why a guerrilla could not operate i Ukraine? They did in Cherson all through the Russian occupation of it.
@@mekingtiger9095 Heard of Urban Warfare?
@@hansonlee5847 Urban Warfare isn't all of warfare there is. In fact, a significant portion of guerrilla movements takes place in the countryside.
@@mekingtiger9095 where would you hide in wheat fields as an insurgent. In vietnam we had channels of all sizes,swamps, jungles, trees lines as far as eyes can see and villages every few km. Also mountains throughout the middle of the country
The Taliban did have "almost no money at all" they received regular significant investments from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries in the Middle East, as well as direct material support from the same.
It's wrong to say that Russia didn't have the resources to further develop it's military doctrine.
Russia has a lot of resources and money. But being autocracy/kleptocracy it takes the short sighted action of stealing the money instead of reinvesting it (and stealing a smaller percentage of a much larger economy).
Per capita russia is actually right around the world average for GDP. it's in no way a rich or productive country. much of their military power comes from the USSR, which plundered half of europe for resources, manpower and technology and leveraged it's non-russian republics and puppets. russia has produced relatively very little in the way of military hardware and technology since the fall of the USSR. and yes, part of that is because of russia's endemic corruption.
Russia wasnt looking to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield but to bring them to the negotiation table. Which happened 3 times. The war would have been over in April as Ukraine was about to sign a agreement. NATO interfered and stopped Ukraine from signing a peace agreement.
@@MuffHam russia was certainly trying to instantly win with the kiev invasion, but you're right if we're talking about russia in the following months.
Correct. Russia has poured a lot of money into developing and building new military assets including submarines, air defense, fighters etc. They did have the money. They just didn't have the oversight to keep that money where it was supposed to be.
@@MuffHam That is in fact an impossible scenario - NATO cannot force a party to fight. It can only give the tools to fight with.
But if Ukraine and Russia want peace there isn't a whole lot NATO can do about it.
Key difference between US and Russian performance in most of these wars... is that US never lost during the high intensity phase. Both Iraq and Afghanistan was lost during the notorious insurgency phase. And insurgency has more to do with difficulty in occupation, nation building, and policy making than military. Certainly something the US has failed to grasp after 20 years.
Vietnam is the closest to a defeat to a on paper weaker foe during the high intensity phase. Problem is US weren't losing militarily, although I guess one can argue what that even means. But US couldn't have achieved their political aims, with or without domestic support, so it was a lost cause regardless. But US militarily(ie. on the battlefield) could and did beat the NVA and Vietcong.
Russia is struggling against Ukraine militarily, not because it couldn't achieve its geopolitical goals, nor is it struggling to suppress insurgents... no it is struggling to even beat Ukraine's conventional military. The disparity is massive and a simple comparison with US failures miss the nuance of how big of a disaster this is for Russia. Soviet-Afghan war is a failure to quell an insurgency(albeit the Soviets still controlled less territory than coalition forces)... Ukraine is not the same type of failure as Soviet-Afghan war or US-Afghan war.
Anyway, simply put, US would beat Ukraine. occupying it is another story, but the US would at least have gotten through the high intensity phase in short order.
ukraine hade no chance without NATO and USA .iraq hade no help from any athare country
One thing that many people forget about Afghanistan is the US was never going to "win" because you cannot force a style of govt on a people who don't want it because they've been governed by tribes for millennia.
Military and politically the United States could defeat Ukraine but it could never conquer it because it would be facing an insurgency on a mass scale because the vast majority of the population would fight the occupation until they die.
And in our modern time we don't intentionally kill civilians on mass just to force them into submission like we did in WWII and before
Correct.The main reason Afghanistan was never developed is because the tribes never accepted any central government.No taxes, no development.Basically all development even before the invasion was done with foreign help.
The US has never lost a military engagement, even in Vietnam. They have however, lost the political game.
Yep. It's also telling that, at the peak of US commitment, only about 50,000 of the half-million US troops in Vietnam were actual combat troops. There was a similar ratio fighting the Taliban.
@human being are you?
@human being yes, professionally.
If the US has never lost a military engagement in Vietnam why were there americans captured by the vietnamese? Why were there US POWs?
@@mrd7067 True but that doesn't mean much, the overwhelming majority were pilots who were shot down during the early stages before we brought wild weasels but the numbers are acceptable given the complexity of the operations. I think he meant losing a military engagement on the overall big picture, a few dozen POWs in a thousand-personnel operation means very little to the overall military engagement.
The numbers: U.S. Air Force (332 POWs), Navy (149 POWs), and Marine Corps (28 POWs)
Notable POWs.
Everett Alvarez, Jr., USN pilot
John L. Borling, USAF pilot,
Charles G. Boyd, USAF pilot
And the list goes on and they are mostly pilots, the U.S. managed to adapt that's why we have SEAD and DEAD since then. The possibility of the NVA taking any American ground personnel was thin but it happened in very rare occasions.
The 3:1 ratio seems more misleading. As far as I can find it is the ratio for a local level attack to succeed, not about the total amount of troops you need to bring to win the war.
If you have 1.5 times the forces of your enemy and can man the frontline with 1:1 ratio, you can leverage the remaining extra troops to get a local 3:1 advantage and break through the line at various points. Then the success of your war depends on the effect breakthroughs have and how many times you need to repeat it to end the war, because you still lose more people on the offensive. A couple of times and you could win it, a thousand times and you need to bring more people.
An army that works together where all the component parts are focused on the same goal will perform a lot better than one where every group is constantly fighting each other. The latter system may make it safer for an authoritarian state to keep power but it will not be nearly as effective in a war against an enemy that works together
Lockheed Martin is authoritarian Military Industrial Complex
Pfizer is totally authoritarian Com' Monsanto you remember
U.S Federal Reserve totally authoritarian Company. Even no one can ask them questions
Alen Musk you think that he hates Authoritarian
American is 30 Trillion in dead. Do you think that the Americans can do something about it. The answer is big no you can not do anything about it. Do you think it is right or natural think to happen. I believe not
@@MohamedAli-tu4so I am talking about the Navy, Air force, Army etc. Why are you bringing up unrelated groups?
@@MohamedAli-tu4so Hm, I don't know. At least in the West I can say something like "current leader stinks poo poo" in public without either being beheaded or fearing that my next morning tea will taste like cyanide. Yeah, corporations have great influence over politics and internal affairs. And yeah, I might be ommited by the Great Media so as to not let me draw attention at best and I might get cancelled by Twatter snowflakes and crybabies at worst, but are you seriously wanting to compare that to what would actually happen if I did the same thing in actual autocratic countries?
While we lost Veitan and afganstan... we won milltarly... Like was at any point the US under threat of occupation? Where we even getting pushed out of those countries? I believe the answer tio both of those question was no... We got up a left while we were winning because we got bored.
The same rule would effectively apply here, and it’s even what everyone assumed would be true initially for Ukraine too. That the army would fight a losing battle against Russia and then disperse into the population to continue waging a long-term insurgency that’ll one day outlast the occupation even if it takes multiple decades.
Well typically US occupation is also viewed as mostly harmless, if one takes into account what occupation usually looks like. For Vietnam and Afghanistan in historical terms, its more like good sport and no hard feelings.
We didn’t get bored lol that’s the worst cope of all time. The fact is it’s the longest war in US history. And we were unable to stop the Taliban for a variety of reasons. The war was doing nothing except killing and wounding more and more US soldiers.
Also, there is no such thing as winning a war military but losing politically. War is just a form of political maneuvering. And in the end, to the Taliban, it doesn’t matter if they lost militarily. They still control Afghanistan again. You’re thought process is what gets us into these wars in the first place.
"We got bored" Cope, people died on both sides, families were broken and a lot of money-resources went down the drain. The people who did win were the people who invest or owned the factories that made the weapons.
@@a3cools115 the people who won in Vietnam are all the people who were saved from the encroachment of communism as a result of the US's almost complete victory over the side supplied by the soviets.
At the height of the Soviet union, 2/3 hospitals lacked hot water and production projects took around 7 times more materiels than US construction projects because communism ruined allocative efficiency.
THAT is what countries were saved from when we saved them from communism.
What's important to note and what would be very important in whether one does do better over the other is whether the US underestimates or overestimates Ukraine or not. The main issue with Russia is that they were unprepared for Ukraine to actually push back. Which lead to this giant mess we're in now. This mess is still possible with the US. But completely depends on how their initial invasion is handled.
Well, the US has a history of underestimating its enemies and getting kicked in the butt, so we can assume they would.
@@ZioStalin What??? Actually quite the contrary after the Vietnam humiliation their military doctrine completely called for total force dominance, like they did in operation desert storm even to the point of overestimating Iraqi forces and crushing them. If you are referring to the post occupation insurgence in Iraq and Afghanistan that's another story which is after the military conquest of those countries, so please think before writing total nonsense...
@@shalala4217 They lost almost all of the wars they fought, including Iraq and Afghanistan, AFTER VietNam. They were kicked in the ass by goat herders with rusty Kalashnikovs.
@@shalala4217 the US has a habit of underestimating it's enemies. Just look at what they were saying about Russia at the start "These sanctions will cripple Russia, wreck their economy, they running out of missiles, ammo and drones" and they're still repeating these poorly researched talking points in the media. All their "analysts" on BBC and Sky and CNN repeating US state dept propa ganda that didn't foresee Russia lasting this long. They're doing the exact same thing with China "Chinese equipment are fake, they've not fought any major wars, these sanctions will put them where they belong" etc.
@@ZioStalin That isn't an accurate reading.
The Taliban and Iraqis were never able to inflict notable losses on American forces even during the occupation - about 7K in total. Neither could fight militarily either. The US wasn't even close to getting it's ass kicked.
But in both cases a new government could not be set up and neither does the US have the brutality to fight against guerilla warfare.
I would say that it’s hard to argue that we lost in Iraq or militarily in Afghanistan. We replaced Iraq’s government with one friendly to the US and put down an insurrection threatening it. I’m Afghanistan, we took out Al Qaeda and removed the Taliban. Fact is that after 20 years, the Afghan people still couldn’t get their shit together enough to hold the nation together and keep the taliban out. So we left and said “we did our best to create something for you”
Neither of those -in any shape or form- can be seen as a defeat for the US military.
Maybe the US should stop trying to "create" things for people. What one interprets as are creation another considers "the destruction of his land and killing of his friend and family". The
Finally a smart person, military we won, political we lost.
@@bellyofthebeast6605 maybe. But we didn’t go into Iraq or Afghanistan to “create” democracy. We went there to remove governments who the US felt represented a threat to the country. Regardless of whether you think they were or not…the US wanted Al Qaeda dead and the Taliban and Saddam Hussein out of power. The Pottery barn rule (you break it/you buy it) -and a desire not to have to do the same thing again- dictates that you have to replace the government with something. So why wouldn’t we replace it with a democracy friendly to the US. But we didn’t invade either just to “create” anything. We were destroying shit in one and draining a swamp to destabilize Iran and Syria in the other
spent 20 years and half a tril of USD to replace Taliban with... Taliban (and leave it fully equiped with gear to the point they now have airforce). Yeah, the most decisive medal for participation I would say, great job..
US normally doesn’t fail in warfare. It fails in nation building and I honestly can’t figure out why it tries to do this… If you don’t want to colonize an area then you should get it out as soon as your military objectives are done.
Yes, absolutely.
Even before watching the video, i can say that the US focus on SEADS would've given them the skies after about a month of air campaigns. See Desert Storm.
Also, the US command structure is way more flexible, with better trained and educated petty officers making better decisions way faster than the top-down russian structure does.
please don't talk about desert storm. you know iraq was militarily and economically exhausted after the war with iran. a war which was maintained by America since the two sides were being (secretly) armed alternately so that they mutually destroy each other but that is not the point. iraq is not an opponent comparable to ukraine of 2022. the iraqis did not have access to advanced technologies which ukraine received from all of nato to the point of drying up the stocks of all the western countries! the iraqis weren't trained as much as the ukrainians as well. rather, we should talk about the vietnam war. over 58k americans were killed. go see the number of american planes and helicopters shot down by the vietcongs. 25 ac130, 31 b52 (17 in combat), 5600 helicopters, 578 uav ect...
@@polduran Well if you want to talk about Vietnam, the Soviets supplied the NVA with advanced weapons and aircraft. So NATO should do the same without anyone crying about it being escalation.
@@polduran You seem extremely confused and your statement literally conflicts with itself. Did someone forget to take their meds this morning?
@@firepower01 yes like the americans when they armed the mujahideen in Afghanistan. on the other hand Ukraine is a question of national security, an existential struggle for Russia. let's remember what almost happened when cuba went over to the soviet side! 638 assassination attempts, one invasion attempt plus one planned. the entire american military apparatus pleaded for the annihilation of cuba for this affront! Russia legitimately has every right to destroy this trap.
@@BravoCheesecake I only respond to logical arguments, the rest I leave it to the dogs.
You failed to mention the greatest Common Denominator of "Losing" v Winning regarding the U.S. i.e. "POLITICS".
It's a nice theoretical discussion, but in reality Ukraine would fight the US completely differently than they are fighting Russia. Most likely more in an insurgent type of way.
It would be interesting to see how the US would do against a more technological advanced insurgency ( that in that scenario would most likely be heavily supplied by Russia)
That is the type of war the US was preparing Ukraine for, until we realized how terrible Russia was.
Insurgancy is how you fight after you lossed.
@@matsv201 No insurgency is how you fight in order to deny your enemy their capabilities and set the battle in your favor. Most Taliban and other insurgents did NOT use human shields but worked in small groups with limited technology. More often than not insurgent camps were far away from villages in mountains.
@@scifidude184 insurgency is by definition fighting in a way that you can use secondary features as sheelds, not uncommon borders to other countries
According to the box the main course on some MREs are in, having an MRE is a force multiplier, so realistically, you could have one soldier and a thousand MREs and they'd be able to single handedly win a war.
Hello. First, I enjoy your videos tremendously, and I actually went to your video listing to ensure I didn't miss any recent videos, and sure enough, I got back to about one year ago, and this was the only video I had not watched yet.
With all respect, I must disagree with one of your statements in this video.
War is complicated, and it's possible for a country to win a war militarily while also losing a war politically. This is exactly what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
For example, both Vietnam and Afghanistan were approximately 19.5 years of continuous warfare and occupation of a foreign country by US forces. During that time, the US military maintained a relatively free-flowing route for logistics and troop movement. In combat, the US absolutely decimated the enemy when you compare losses in equipment and casualties between the two forces. I'm not looking up the numbers at the moment, but based on memory, the US lost approximately 55,000 men in Vietnam. The estimates for total North Vietnamese and VietCong are approximately 1.1 million.
The real difference in this war is the fact the US was fighting to prevent the spread of communism, an idealology opposed to democracy and capitalism, while the North was literally fighting for their homes, family, friends, and future as an independent nation (from their perspective). This, combined with waivering support from the population at home, who saw little benefit of fighting half way around the world and losing US lives for gains they were never going to realize, resulted in Vietnam absolutely ending in a political loss. However, there should be no doubt that even back then, prior to the US truly being considered an absolute professional high-tech combined arms military force that it is today, the US won the Vietnam War militarily. In other words, the US inflicted far more losses on the enemy it fought for nearly 20 years straight, in addition to doing so while not waging total war. When I say total war, I mean something like WWII, where we were determined to push the enemy back to the last man and building no matter what it took, including indiscriminate mass bombing of cities and use of the nuclear bomb.
In Afghanistan, it was nearly 20 years of an insurgency-based war, as you noted. And once again, I fully admit that the war was lost from a political standpoint. However, the US and coalition forces (their NATO allies assisting in-country) lost less than 3,000 men in combat during that entire time period, compared to estimates ranging around 20,000 to 40,000 for the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIL. This was a victory purely from a military standpoint, but it was ultimately a political loss as the US had no interest in staying there forever, and it's now apparent that regardless of US efforts to prepare the Afghan military, they would never have the will to defend the country against the resurgent Taliban moving in as the US withdrew. Now, if Afghanistan was a total war where we subjugated the population and established a permanent presence, it would have ultimately been a political victory as well. However, the cultural differences, distances between the two territories, and the brutality it would require to do so simply made absolutely no logical sense, which is why we eventually withdrew. We definitely made the mistake of thinking we could withdraw and keep any lasting gains there, but the Taliban definitely did not "beat" the US military from a combat perspective.
I found it odd that you also mentioned Iraq, though. In both Iraq invasions and wars, the US absolutely rolled over Iraqi forces, which were considered quite sizable at the time of both invasions, and analysts were concerned over the potential for massive casualties. As I'm sure you're aware, on both occasions the US crossed the border and essentially took the entire country within weeks. Of course, the second war was more difficult, and we stayed much longer, but once again, we never intended to stay in Iraq forever or commit to total war and subjugate its people.
I'd also like to add that Ukraine has been keeping Russia at a stalemate for nearly three years now, while the US and NATO are only contributing a fraction of their wealth and military resources. Ukraine has prevented Russia from obtaining air superiority despite only having a fraction of their air force. Ukraine has destroyed about 20% of the Russian Black Sea fleet while having no navy of its own. You replace Ukraine with the US's professional army, modern equipment and technology, significantly more trained service members, and quantities of equipment on the ground versus Ukraine, an air force that would obtain air superiority in a matter of days, a navy that would have cleared all Russian Black Sea assets within weeks at best, all combined with world-class logistics, intelligence, and ISR, and Russia would be handily defeated. Absolutely zero doubt in my mind, and that's not even counting the NATO support that comes with the US as a package deal.
Finally, to put everything into perspective and to support my assessment of the wars mentioned above. In less than two years of fighting Ukraine, Russia has lost more than double the men than the US has in all wars and conflicts from 1946 through the present (total US KIA is approximately 102k during that time period). Now, when you take that fact and combine it with the fact it includes two wars that lasted nearly 20 years each, this is precisely why I categorize those as political losses rather than military losses.
The US would have prepped the area with an air campaign lasting as long as necessary to wear them down before sending in ground forces.
You can't do that bro. This is not Middle East. Ukraine is flooded with Stinger missiles.
@@lordfedjoe
Of course they would do that. Why do people post such retarded things when they know nothing about the topic? Saddam in 1991 had one of the most dense AA systems on the planet, never mind thousands of MANPADs.
@@lordfedjoe lol Stinger missing don't have range to hit B-2 bombers or F-22
One of the things not mentioned was the objective. The scenarios could only be compared if the objectives are similar making Ukraine cede territory and changing its government. One of the things not mentioned in regards to that is that the US might be too good at what it does. What I mean is that the US would quickly make it impossible for Ukraine to fight them conventionally. Meaning the majority of its personnel would not be able to fight and thus would not die on the battlefield similar to the Iraqi army in the initial invasion. These personnel would then be able to wage a very devastating insurgency on the US and in that space, the US can be defeated. In contrast if Russia completes all of its political objectives it would mean that it has essentially destroyed the Ukrainian military and in the territory it annexes would not face as much resistance from the local population since they are ethnically Russian (i.e. Crimea). This of course means first they would have win which is very very difficult but these differences do pose unique challenges and benefits for both sides in the same scenario.
The US military won both Iraq and Afghanistan. They were political failures. The military operations completely stunted the opposition forces and we're unable to respond. Iraq is a function county and Saddam is going. Afghanistan could have remained indefinitely, 22k personnel killed or wounded over 20 years are losses the nation can deal with, each is a tragedy but as a group a statistic. The failure was training and establishing a government
same for Vietnam. The south Vietnam government literally collapsed without a fight.
Huh... I assume this is a rhetorical question😄. Wherever and whenever the US was allowed to open up; gloves off; we have no single peer in the sphere of warfare.
We will quickly remember how to drop dumb bombs, thermo munitions, cluster bombs and call in fire for effect w/ HE & WP in mass.
Also, unlike the Russians, our Light Infantry is the backbone of our ground forces, and we
actually use the Infantry to protect our Armor. We have no peer in Combined Arms battlefield preparation, ISR, fix by fire, maneuver, and destroy. We would never even allow a near-peer to retreat on a Tactical or Operational effort. Surrender on all three levels, yes, but never retreat on the bottom two tiers. Strategic levels, I really can not intelligently speak on, that's for General's.
It's literally nato vs Russia without the man power and equipment. The same thing happened with the us and the middle east. Every nation that didn't like nato contributed to their failure in the middle east.
We didn’t lose militarily in Vietnam or Afghanistan ……just politically as we lack the will
a single infantry man with an rpg could very easily take out a tank with a well placed shot . though said , a tank is still very much a valuable asset to have in a battle as it could take hell lot of punishment and still be able to shoot back .
Do you think tanks are just found in the open by themselves and you walk around & pick them off like mushrooms growing under some trees?
People say this and yet at the same time America was able to drive into Baghdad with nothing but Abrams tanks and Bradley’s and the Iraqi militias that were heavily dug in to this urban battlefield had little to no effect of stopping the advance. An armored formation can just as easily pin down an infantry force. It’s all about cohesion, support and training.
Glad you made it. We missed you
glad your better. great having u back.
I'm not trying to defend Russia in any way but it's very disingenuous to compare the war in Ukraine with the war in Iraq. There wasn't a military alliance in the Middle East that the US had to really worry about like Russia has to worry about nato and what their next move is. And there wasn't countries that was joining this alliance that boarder the US like Finland is doing now. Common sense says they have to be very frugal with their forces and resources b/c they don't know what nato will do next.
The USA military isn't stupid enough to think they can accomplish anything in 3 days, they actually have think tanks and proper inventory...
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Of course, yes.
At 4:56
Taliban
Taliban actually had a fairly good budget. They were looting their cultural icons and selling them on the black market, just like ISIS did later. Isis had 100 million dollars per month coming in, not sure what the Taliban had....
The USA would have remembered to bring along fuel and food for the vehicles and troops respectively in the drive to Kiev. And also not start the invasion at the beginning of the mud season.
US has a functional GPS system so the drivers don’t get lost on the way to the war.
@@stimproid Good thing the US dont have Lieutenants as drivers then :P
@@CallsignYukiMizuki Oof ;)
@ 6:39 Officer training and giving instructions to tank crews, tank crews all stand there nodding... With ear protection on. This could explain a few things 😅
The answer to this question is always yes lol
There's a reason the scariest classification we give to enemies is "near peer", which they won't be for long because we'll cripple their logistics, air power, communications, power grid, air defense, and radar systems before we ever step foot on their soil
I think the conflict would much more come down to who has the will to fight. I get the feeling US soldiers wouldn’t be so keen in going up against actual advanced weaponry, like what’s getting sent to Ukraine right now.
That US weaponry that the Ukrainians are fighting with? As well as the training they've been getting since 2014.
Don't forget that the US has a lot more tactical flexibility and capability. Plus the targeting information that the Ukrainians are getting is from US satellites. They wouldn't be getting that.
The US would be going up against Russian weapons and doctrine. That doctrine has poor military education on the low and middle levels and poor communication amongst branches, so they don't react in real time.
Day 1 US doctrine is to suppress air defenses. That's only a few anti-air missiles. The Russians don't have abundant man portable AA launchers.
It might take longer than an actual day, but after that, it's over. Any tank concentrations, supply depots are destroyed.
@@recoil53 The US on paper could defeat a Russian trained and armed military, but that military would still be better armed than anything the US fought since the WW2. The US could 100% take out major Ukrainian defenses without major losses, but at some point they would need to send in troops.
Even if the major Ukrainian defenses ARE destroyed, the Ukrainians would be left with more 'advanced' toys than any other country that has fought the US. I get the feeling that American troops would break down in tears when the Ukrainians started firing more advanced weapons than Ak-47s and RPGs at them.
@@ashmarten2884 Doubtful, but it's irrelevant - they wouldn't be left with anything other than infantry weapons.
The artillery is gone, no armored vehicles. Extremely few equivalents to Stingers and Javelins.
@@ashmarten2884 The US lost over 10, 000 aircraft /helicopters during the Vietnam War. And it wasn't by rice farmers with AK's. Lol
@@recoil53Um, the Ukrainian Astartes out with thousands of igla style manpads. Unless you think a few thousand is a few. Not to mention that it is unlikely that their artillery and others systems would be completely destroyed before the invasion. It would likely take months to take apart the IADS in the first place.
I think Russia deeply underestimated Ukraine and I don't blame them.
1. America spent 20 year's building up Afghanistan's military giving them American weapons, training, intel and despite support from American air support the Afghan government was toppled within a short time period.
2. Ukraine was given less American weapons and training and was still deeply corrupt with pro Russian factions within the country and spies all over the place.
3. Ukraine is similar size and similar population to Afghanistan except the terrain is much better for tanks, artillery and armored vehicles.
4. Nato Had been on the decline with declining military spending and many beginning to not believe in the NATO project.
5. Despite sparking an uprising in the Donbass and taking Crimea the west still did very little to fight back against Russia which in Russia's eyes meant that the west cared very little for Ukraine.
To Russia NATO would not do anything and all Russia had to do was march their armies in, take some strategic locations and comedian Zelensky would cower and flee the country along with Pro western politicians and all Russia would have to do was march into Kiev and install their puppet. Maybe Russia would have to fight a pro-longed guerilla war but that's nothing they cant handle and over time the Ukraine people would eventually submit.
On qualitative bases as well as vertical & horizontal integrations, I believe our forces (USA) would do far better than Russian (or any other formal force on the planet) when faced another formal conventional force.
That is absolutely true and this video title is a joke to suggest anything different
@@cameronspence4977 I really believe in our men and women and the qualitative difference in our training, platforms and various applied solutions. That is not to say there are not good men and women, training, platforms and solutions in other countries; I just believe we have more of it than any other country on the planet and they work together well, because we practice them. We are also capable of making mistakes like how we pulled out of Afghanistan, but I am sure we have learned lesson because of it.
@@johndewey6358 20 years ago... you would have been right. I can tell you with out a doubt that the caliber, education, training and combat readiness of the modern US soldier is not something you should feel proud about. I worry about our combat readiness.. but hey. Only one way to find out, and looks like everyone is pushing for it.
US would perform better but it would end up like nazi germany eventually because of many factors
@@johndewey6358 You needed to pull out of Afghanistan to be able to support the new proxy war you were about to start in Ukraine.
Is this channel on Nebula or Curiosity Stream?
Zerohedge had an article stating one in three American soldiers deemed to obese for combat operations
The US Army is probably the weakest branch of the Armed Forces. The US has, for about the past hundred years, relied on air power and naval power. In those spheres the US is basically uncontested.
Pre-watch answer: Yes. For one thing, we'd rapidly take control of the skies and then move forward.
Even if we reverse the situation a bit, with Russia feeding the Ukrainians weapons, we'd topple the government and then have to deal with an insurgency. That's where thongs would get messy.
thank you.
What makes me like your videos beside their educational offer is your fair assessment of the events; which is very rare these days with the so called experts in Twitter and MSM.
Check Theduran they are so meticulous
I would be really interested in seeing your discussion with Brian from The News Atlas. You have different points of view but are polite and mindful. So it would be enjoyable talk I think
Kudos for pointing out that raw numbers are not in any way representative of the old "3 to 1" rule, but the rest leaves me a bit cold.
The most appropriate scenario would be to imagine if the US alone (ie with no NATO support) were to attack Ukraine via say Poland and Belarus, with Ukraine receiving intel, logistics support, reinforcements, replacements and volunteers from Russia, China and another dozen small to mid tier nations. In other words the mirror of the scenario that happened in real life.
My guess is that the US would fare almost exactly as the Russians did, or at best as they themselves did in Iraq in Gulf War II. In other words they would stomp all over Ukraine for the first few months but once the battle lines settled in they would be ground down in a low level war of attrition that they could never hope to win. History has shown time and again that the US way of war is fantastic at winning grand set piece battles but lousy at wars of attrition or asymmetric warfare.
Exactly. In any comparable mirrored scenario, the US would have the same problems (I think worse because the raw production capability of the US's opponents is much higher.) as Russia has been having. Then you add in the oil production of Russia and the, ironically, more stable government of Russia than the US currently has. (No really, the popularity of Putin legitimately appears to be much, much higher than Biden has.)
The USA is great at fighting army's, not so great at fighting a "idea or belief"
the usa alone would destroy every munitions and fuel depots, radars, air bases and military depots, naval ship,, command and control and bridges etc etc etc if necessary in the first 24 hours.. get a grip
@@johnnyllooddte3415 lol, no. That isn't how it would go and you clearly have no idea how warfare works, let alone how the US does warfare if you think anything remotely close to that would happen.
Russia intel is giving the tank drivers paper maps because they dont have gps.
war virtually has 2 fronts, the frontline and the Homefront
The US would obliterate Russia on an open battle field. However if Russia survived the first year, It would gain a distinct advantage. Russian can endure suffering. Americans cannot.
We have been at war piratically always. This is some thirdy cope. You all learn your lesson the hard way.
@@axelkoch9173 who is “we?”
FYI this video didn't come up on my feed, I had to go looking for it.
Thank you a lot fur such great video. It is also useful to keep in mind, that in the beginning Russia hoped for some sort of hearts & minds campaign, therefore they were very hesitant on striking the critical infrastructure(water, energy, etc) during the early days of the campaign when they still had a chance to make a significant shock and awe effect. US in similar scenarios, Iraq for example, left the enemy without any water and light even before the US ground forces crossed the border.
They actually expected to win hearts and minds? Poopaganda-duped ignorance is bliss.
Russia cares human suffering. U.S does not
@@MohamedAli-tu4so If that were true, Russia wouldn't be bombing every bit of civilian infrastructure it could see. It refrained from striking said infrastructure early in the war because it thought it would be unnecessary.
@@dasbubba841 True, but there's no point in using logic on rationally-challenged trolls.
@@dasbubba841
NATO kept pouring fuel in to the fire. So Russia is reacting. Russians believe Ukrainians are their people. Zlenisssky is the one who is trying to fight with NATO help
get well you are the man Brian
Haven’t watched the video yet but I think the US would actually use their air force and SEAD operations
As well as using infantry to properly support tanks, artillery to react sooner to what's going on, etc.
The day the war started i stated:
"Either it ends this week and Russia wins, or it will go on for a few years and Russia lose"
The logic behind it is when you totaly take out the logistics of a nation, there is no way they can have an effective war, and they would just grind down and lose. You might as well give up, by that point there is no way of winning.
Most people have forgotten. But russia did a what i would call "first 21 century attack" on Ukraine.
People think of modern war as the combat start at the border, then they drive to the capital, and take it... Like.. Well most war in the 20 century.
Russia shown actually how it will be done in the future. only.. that they failed.
First fighters take out the air defense, then paratroopers take the airfield and then heavy carriers bring in IFV and tanks . The fight start at the capital. They was pretty close to succeeding.
The reason why they failed was due to a lack of combined forces training and to little air transport.
If US would do the same (and they probobly will in the next war) they will do a few things differently. Firstly there would way more paratroopers. Probably 5 times as much. There would also be more helicopters. And more than one airfield would be taken. Landing of the transporters would also be more closely timed. Why drive to Baghdad when you can fly.
0:30 How did the US "lose" against Iraq? Saddam's regime was removed in 2 months. I don't get it.
Not only what you just said but what makes the US Armed Forces stands out from the rest is their training. I served in the US Army and we were constantly training.
And we train with NATO forces which as you can see is helpful to be able to work alongside forces but receive aid, weapons and ammo and it works.
Not putting Strelkov in roman attire is a huge miss, IMO
We kind of gutted All the industry, Unless you are going to do Emonate domain over all the old factory's this will take some serious work. You would need to start building new factorys. And changing the education system, Right now it is broken, completely and is no longer MERRIT based.
Semper Fi.
I feel like this video really went no where. There was no sort of explanation of much. I would've liked for you to clear up the geography question. Also you put forth many ideas of well maybe this or maybe that but you don't expand on any of these points. I saw the video was only 8 minutes and I figured this wasn't going to be much of anything and I was right. I did watch the whole video. I thought you would touch on sanctions somewhat and how that is or isn't a thing for Russia. How drones are being used. Or the aircraft carriers. This could and should've been so much better. But it just felt like talking to some kid that kinda gets things
Is a phantom US supplying like 50b$ a year from the side with infantry weapons that can one shot Abrams and CAS? A shadow NATO supplying pin-point intel on US depots etc that can be hit? Depends on that. To be an apt comparison, Ukraine should be supplied 800b$ a year in armament since it's given as much as yearly Russian military budget so the aid should match US military budget.
insane cope. Funny how Soviets were able to supply Vietnam with all the AA/AAA guns, aircraft and SAM's to shoot down all those USAF aircraft and US Army choppers in that war, and people sniffing the copium over smaller things like Javelins and a few Bradleys here and there think it's basically like NATO invading.
Also "one shot things" wtf? Real life isn't an RPG.
@@MrCampasaurus Cope what? Russian military being a mess doesn’t change that Ukraine got the biggest military aid since WW2 land lease. And US lost in Vietnam, who is coping now?
FYI the Taliban didn't actually win. Their government was overthrown within weeks. Unfortunately, the Afghan people were too afraid of the Taliban to actually defend their own country and just chose to give it back to them. The US didn't hand Afghanistan over to the Taliban. We handed the country over to the Afghan government whos solders and President just ran... now the people have to deal with the brutal dictators we removed until they grow the balls to remove them themselves.
Afghanistan deserves exactly what it gets with the Taliban for being too cowardly to defend themselves and their freedom.
Same thing goes with the South vietnamese.
A majority Pashtun country/people supporting a majority Pashtun, pro-Pashtun government/former government/current government and not supporting a non-majority Pashtun (minority Tajik) government of former corrupt warlords. Installed and backed by a foreign occupying force that also incentivized individuals accusing their own people of working for the Taliban, for a cash reward, where the accused would be arrested, detained without trail or evidence, tortured for years in prison. Wow, I’m shocked.
Someone should’ve told the Pentagon and White House. Oh, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction did. Hmm how odd.
Americans have always had a hard time accepting that the Pashtuns, which consist of almost half the entire population, actually supported the Taliban. Afghanistan was more than the relatively cosmopolitan Kabul.
The Afghanis were cowards for not defending their country? Who do you think we had been fighting for 20+ years? People that weren’t “defending” their country against the foreign occupying military backed government and said foreign occupying force?
Lmao
Two things. Real air power, and better logistics. Even if Russia was giving them equipment to use against us, most of them would've been bombed to kingdom come.
If you ask me it all comes down to air supremacy. The fact that Russia was never able to establish any kind of air superiority along with relatively small air numbers means they were never able to disrupt those supply lines. The US with its multiple aircraft carriers and massive network of refueling aircraft would establish air dominance immediately and from that point on, the outcome would already be decided, the only question from there would be how long until they bleed out. You want to see what the US can do against an organized/structured modern military? Look no further than the Gulf War. You want to see what total air domination does to supply lines? Look at "The Highway of Death".
If the Taliban had access to modern ATGMs, MANPADS, satellite intelligence, smart mortar systems, secure communications etc. The US would have suffered very high losses.
True
You seem to not understand the difference between an emergency and a conventional stand up military no country in history has ever won against insurgency not even Russia that just slaughter's whole villages
Not really.
Tactics adapt to different situations, and the one thing the US military is above all others in (besides logistics) is adaptability.
In Afghanistan we went in with the mindset of COIN.
Since our intelligence networks are accurate, we’d see that they have all of this modern Gear and change our plans accordingly.
We would go in with a full air campaign, wiping out the SAM network, then target all of the other infrastructure that would facilitate the Taliban’s military movements and then we would send in the ground forces to steamroll them.
Looking at Iraq (DS and OIF) we demolished their military piece by peace before we even stepped foot into Iraq itself.
@@sunnycat69 Nonsense, there are alot of examples of conventional armies wiping out insurgencies. Russia did it recently in Chechnya, China in XinJiang and Tibet, the list goes on.
Colonial empires crushed insurgencies so regularly they had handbooks written about how to do it efficiently. Western armies are simply held back by their delusions of intelligence and moral superiority when handling insurgencies.
I mean IIraq in the gulf war had the most sophisticated air defense in the world along with thousands of tanks and got absolutely wiped
Is the floor made of floor?
The US would level the whole country.
Russia attempted a political solution in the first months, with not enough troops for a full war, with Ukraine fully mobilized and heavily
supported on all aspects by US, Nato, Europe, etc.
Now that Russia has amassed troops and equipment, we might see a more conventional example of their capabilities.
pretty much well said
One thing to remember, Ukraine had the strongest military in Europe, by numbers they had around the whole European NATO Combined + they had military experience (something that's lacking in most NATO countries) and they have support of the whole NATO. So it gets you thinking about Russian capabilities....
@@Adi-bo5do naval power of Europe is barely working, almost no air defense, no personnel. And lots of planes but not a lot of missiles and bombs
I like the idea of reexamining larger militaries and reconsidering their effectiveness
A better question would be How would the US perform in Russia?
how is that a better question when the answer is it would lead to a nuclear war
In a conventional war Russia would fold like Iraq in a couple of weeks. But with Russia still probably having some functional nukes, it's a moot question.
Let's hope we never have to find out.
@@dominikjakaj1999
That’s a thought terminating cliche. Limited war is possible without nuclear escalation. For example, a war where the US intends to cripple Russia’s military and infrastructure without destroying the Russian state itself.
@@drksideofthewal It’s idiotic thinking like that which will one day lead to a nuclear war. The US almost started a nuclear war over Soviet nukes sitting in Cuba, and you think Russia’s going to let NATO come in and cripple its military? To say nothing of the fact that most American cruise missiles are nuclear capable and Russia has no way to discern if a tomahawk flying at Moscow has a nuclear warhead.
What are the chances that if the roles were reversed, the US military backbone was crippled, and Russia were off the American coast sending nuclear-capable missiles and bombers all over the US and potentially landing its soldiers in the hundreds of thousands on American territory, that America would not resort to at least tactical nuclear weapons (if not a strategic first strike) to stop this?
The idea that the US has any control over escalation while trying to destroy the Russian military is a fantasy. A stupid, dangerous, fantasy.
Wait how could it be said we lost to Iraq? In all tthe 3 Iraq wars I know of we've won handly... even tthe most recent onw that took the longest as it was a peace keeping operation we still won because Iraq said we are at peace now so we don't need your help... Like if that's a loss so is WW2.
Obviously
With a channel name like this i`d think you would go much deeper in the covert operations side of things.
There is a article written by the journalist (former US army ranger and former USSF) Jack Murphy who states that the attacks in russia are done by CIA assets.
Lets make a thought experiement:
The US attacks mexico. All forces in the US (goverment + cartels) are united.
The cartels or whoever blow up the dam for the panama canal or the whole canal. Kind of simmilar to the northstream and other pipelines.
Couple this with other covert actions like against the railway lines (as we have recently seen but that at a much worser scale and more frequently) and pipelines (also happened last year more than one might have heard of against russian interests).
Not to forget the potential of cartels and other mexican national groups and other international groups in the US itself.
Now give mexico modern anti aircraft and rocket artillery, as well as modern anti ship capabilities and see what happens to the conventional US military not to forget the US itself.
I never understood why people always compare budgets of countries that is so different in all aspects?
For example, lets say average US private salary is 2000$ a month (its 1833$ rn) while in Russia average private salary is 500$ a month (it was 400$ in 2016).
In reality 1.000.000 of US privates would need military budget of 2 billion dollars, while in Russia they would only cost 500 mil.
Same goes for armour and stuff, in US it cost WAAAY more to produce a tank, than in Russia, because again salaries of factory workers is WAAAY less in Russia.
I know that it would be stupid to say that US and Russia have equal military strength because of that, but its not THAT bad as you see when compare their budgets.
That's why he speaks of doctrine.
What you describe is called Purchasing Power Parity :)
Perun also has a great video about military budgets, where he addresses it.
That's correct if you assume that manufacturing is 100% domestic. But in reality modem military equipment is made of a lot of imported technologies and raw materials which have dolarized market values so in the end getting X materials cost the same in the US and in Russia making the US budget a lot more capable of buying stuff in international markets.
Plus the corruption problem of authoritarian countries which have less checks making huge amounts of money getting lost into corrupted officials hands or downgraded equipment.
@@shalala4217 here in US corruption is even bigger problem, we just dont speak about it. Its easy to stole a few billlions when US military doesnt even know how much it spends.
The first difference is our missiles would actually hit their targets and not random apartment buildings
answer: no one knows.
You can have the best weapon systems and doctrines in the world on paper, but reality hits different.
I like the way you talk
The 3:1 figure mentioned is also for an entrenched or dug in opponent, and while ukraine was on high alert leading up to the special operation, i think “entrenched” is a bit of a stretch
Why you calling the war special military operation
@@sH-ed5yfWhy are you fixating on this? Are intervention wars not operations?
@@centeroftheuniverse7196 Cause this special military operation claim only serves one purpose. To hide the truth from the russian people. It is so obvios it is depressing none russians fall for it.
Intervention wars are still wars. That is why iraq was called a war.
Honesty yes in an invasion. However being OIF vet once insurgency starts it a crap toss up. No invading nation can prevail during insurgency.
Anyone that "considers the US military lost against weaker enemies like iraq, afghanistan, and vietnam" is either uninformed or trying to feed you a biased agenda. To start a video this way does not bode well for credibility moving forward.
The US losses in Vietnam, Afghanistan (The US did not loose in Iraq) were due to political reason, not Military losses. They weren’t overpowered.
PS Im not an American
Technically speaking, the US did win in Afghanistan (the 2001 invasion and originally removing Al Qaeda from power), though the Afghan war that came afterwards with the nearly 2 decades of nation building was a defeat.
One must remember that invading, destroying armies and toppling governments is entirely different from counter insurgency and nation building. The latter is significantly harder, if not nigh impossible.
US did not lose in Afghanistan, US got Afghan under it controlled and installed Pro-US government within weeks. Afghan was once a major non-nato ally for years until US GAVE UP in 2020. In 20 years, US lost about 5k troops, only thing US lost in Afghan, are money and interests as US see threats elsewhere rises like China in the Indo-Pacific.
As for Vietnam, it depends on how you view, some say US lost and some say US gave up. Which is understandable because wars cost money and lives. From 1940s to when Vietnam war ended, US was in back to back wars, and sometimes in multiple wars at the same time. US took down Japan in the mid 1940s, 1950s Korean war and Vietnam wars. US did all that while protecting Europe and NATO from USSR.
US was and is a bad ass country. Going to wars thousands of miles away across the giant ocean is never easy. US faced huge logistics problems, heck even Russia is having some logistic problems in Ukraine despite them sharing borders.
You suggested that the US lost Vietnam Iraq and Afghanistan. Militarily they didn't lose any of those wars. They lost the war's politically. Meaning they had control over the situation on the ground until they pulled out. The US is not very good at nation building as it was say after world war II.
A war lost is still a lost, whether its militarily or politically. In Korean war, USA lost both when the ill-equipped Chinese army was able to drive the American out of North Korea.
If u leave the match u automatically have lost the match
If a fighter dominates someone in a cage match and wins his belt and leaves the match, it doesn't mean he lost the match even after getting the appointment to submit. There is a big difference between getting driven out like in the US revolutionary war, or an unconditioned serenader like Germany and Japan in WII. Occupying a territory and maintaining order and security take cooperation from the people Thus when you pull ou,t the opposition takes over because the country you occupied doesn't have the know how or lacks the will to maintain the established government. This is the danger of trying to be the world police. If the people live under the reign of a tyrant, it is the duty for the people to cast the tyranny off, John Adams ... Not a foreign power.. we could have stayed in Iraq and Afghanistan for 100 years maintaining security, and things would have never changed
It's impossible to be liberators if the people don't want to be liberated... This in turn turns to occupation and we see all through history that occupation never ends well..
Its not actually how they could perform better, its how much sooner the training and the promised military aid( tanks, jets, air defenses, Long range munitions) are going to arrive. And to makes matter worse, there are talks on different YT channels about Western Industries lagging in the production of ammunition for Ukraine
6:33 Talking about Kharkiv and Kherson - there were basically no Russian defenses, as they still thought they were advancing (why defense, if you're attacking?), so Ukraine just used its advantage in numbers (and Russia's neglegance) and attacked in few different places, leaving Russia with no reserves to cover the Kharkiv wing. The reason the same approach doesn't work this time is because Russia increased its numbers - still smaller than Ukraine's, but at least enough to man all the trenches and def lines (which were created this time btw).
As to the vid - we know for certain how USA performed against armies which were backed up by other major powers (hello Korea & Vietnam), and there's no reason to believe it would perform better today, if, let's say, Russia was backing up Ukraine against USA.
The number one difference between how the US and Russia is Logistics
For the United States to occupy Ukraine and bend it to its political will, and remake the country in its image would be just as difficult as it was in any of the places we have tried in the last 50 years. which is to say not impossible, but close to it.
But in terms of trying to do the thing that the Russians are currently trying to do, which is utterly annihilate the ability of the country to make conventional war, reduce every piece of large infrastructure to rubble, and completely dismantle its government probably would take about a week.
The US military may be absolutely terrible when it comes to 'regime change" or "bringing democracy", but when it comes to simply breaking everything, there is no more capable force in the history of man
The USA won easily in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Their problem was maintaining control over countries and populations that didn't want them there. Democracy didn't work, because the regimes in these countries always ended up massively corrupt. The Korean war ended in stalemate, because in the end the quantity of Chinese soldiers was just too much.
Interesting logic "We won the battle but lost the war"
In the case of China, we could have (and should have) just used our nukes.
Nuking several Chinese cities along the border of NK and then without the supply routes those Million ChiComs would have been rolled back.
Unfortunately, Truman didn’t sign off.
@@Agent0range67 It’s coping.
“We won!”
“How come your enemies are running the place, then?”
“Doesn’t matter, shut up, we won!”
The US won so hard in Afghanistan the entire place is run by Taliban now.
US didn't win in Vietnam or in Afghanistan.
Just say you won the conventional war phase but lost the occupation phase. Simpler and straightforward as oppose to this word juggling.
The problems the US faced in Nam can be boiled down to two words...Governmental Stupidity. Our troops performed...their leaders did not. As far as US lot Russia performing better? Easy...US fought for 20 years and lost about 5000 troops. Russia has been fighting for a year, and has lost about 100K troops and enough equipment to severely hinder their ability to conduct non nuclear combat on a large scale.
Yes. Who do you think helped train the Ukrainian troops. They change and update their doctrine whenever they can but Russia hasn't changed it since WWII. U.S also doesn't have the corruption or maintenance problems of Russia.
I think they'd do very well. America has always had much higher quality gear, training, experience and logistics than Russia. The main reason America did terrible in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan is it turned into a guerilla war. Something no nation is really tooled to deal with. Russia ran into the same issues in Afghanistan in the 80s. Fighting guerilla wars is incredibly hard. Especially when your military is geared towards a conventional war like what the Ukrainian war has become. I think Ukraine would be in a much worse state if it was an attack like the Russians did. Where they seized land fast. The RU advance failed due to old battle doctrines, their logistics failed, and their quality of weapons were (and still are) terrible. Military vehicles as we all saw broke down so much Ukrainian farmers stole broken down tanks with tractors. All of the things I just listed, America has the opposite of. High quality well maintained weapons, our logistics has been phenomenal going as far back as WWII, and the US military constantly tweaks its battle doctrines so they can fight as effective and efficiently as possible. I think the real problem the US would have is pacifying a rebellious public just as the RUs would have trouble doing if they beat the UA.
There's a reason why people call the American military a war machine. It's a well oiled war machine.
I think Iraq in the early 90s had a more equipped army than Ukraine and the US wiped them out in a conventional war. Obviously different types of invasions but it gives me the idea that yes we would have
Iraq in the 1990s was way more powerful than ukraine today and they got torn apart in days
Iraq in the 90s had more troops but lower morale and relatively worse tech than Ukraine is vs the US. Overall, while having more stuff, Iraq from the 1990s is a weaker opponent than Ukraine is.
That is quite insulting to everyone in the Ukrainian armed forces. These guys would do pretty well against US.
Iraq didnt have a key aspect which is portable AA and AT missles
@@CharcharoExplorer dude iraq 1991 operated soviet era airdefennces which at the time were advanced and had a shit load of tanks and atillery
Yea we may have lost a few wars but I’d challenge you to find a single nation now that could stop us from coming back for round 2.
The nation would be China. USA is already engaging it in trade war, chips war, high tech war and whatever non-military war to slow down China from surpassing USA. I wondered when would USA be able to repay over 800 billion USD back to China, with interest ?
I don't think so if Russia helps Ukraine together with Nato against the US, it would be a much more difficult and disadvantageous for the US to penetrate the battle field if both Russia and Nato helps Ukraine against them..
Your hypothetical/initial thesis (that the US lost to weaker enemies) is flawed from the outset. America easily won the battlefield wars. They just couldn’t build install friendly governments without a paper cut insurgency. The US also isn’t willing to wipe out civilians en masse. As for Vietnam, they were getting massive arms support from Russia and had a huge manpower advantage.
The US never conducted an actual land invasion of North Vietnam because they were worried it could lead to nuclear war with China or the USSR. The comparison is flawed at best.
Short answer:
Of course.
Bro, they'd just do another desert storm, and it'd be over in less than a week