In Defense of the Red Army

[Raellus]

Posted in the Putin's War in Ukraine thread:

Originally Posted by Mahatatain

Is anyone else surprised by how poor the Russian troops have performed? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they are doing badly, but I thought that even without their heavy artillery they would make quicker progress than they have. Has the average Russian infantryman been proved to not be as capable as we expected them to be?

Yes. And it's got me thinking. If the Soviet military at the height of the Cold War performed nearly as poorly as the Russian military in 2022, then Twilight:2000 becomes a fantasy RPG. We can't have that.

One could certainly argue that Russia's poor performance in the first week of its Ukrainian adventure is evidence that the Soviet Army wouldn't have stood a chance against NATO in a large-scale conventional war. Although there is a strong case to be made for that, in the spirit of this thread's foundational premise, I'm going to argue against that conclusion.

The Soviet military performs best when there is an existential threat to the Motherland. It did not perform well in the largely unprovoked Winter War against Finland, or the 1939 joint invasion of Poland. The Soviet Army excelled when it's back was against the wall (Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk), then turned successful defense into devastating offense. After almost collapsing under the weight of Barbarossa '41, the Red Army staged an epic come-back and went on to smash the Wehrmacht decisively, time and again.

In the v1 T2k timeline, the USSR is once again under existential threat. It really only starts kicking ass in central Europe when NATO forces are on the doorstep of the Soviet frontier.

Also, the Soviet military was designed to be wielded like a sledgehammer, not a precision scalpel. Russia's clumsy attempts to ape the successful strategy and tactics of the US invasion of Iraq has revealed its ill-suitedness for such focused operations. In T2k, the Soviets start having success when they begin employing massed artillery fires, Army-level attacks, and waves of AFVs. And then, of course, there's its use of battlefield tactical nukes.

Lastly, say what you will about the clunkiness of Soviet-era Red Army organization, logistics, and CnC, but its virtue lay in its simplicity, redundency, and sheer scale. Russia's attempt at a lean, mean military machine has revealed systematic flaws and shortcomings resulting from the last decade's attempts at "streamlining".

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