Twilight 2025

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Wars can go slow-fast-slow-fast- etc. World War 2 did that -- fast in Hitler's early "acquisitions," and the invasion of Poland to the "sitzkrieg" when it was a couple of more months before the Nazi's moved against France and the Low Countries and then Britain, slow again while Hitler massed his forces against Russia, etc.

Afghanistan has been on a slow burn since about 2005, but before that was a quick action.

I would think that the Twilight War would be fast action until about a year into the war, when production of ammunition became important. About 6-8 months later, it would be quick action again until the countries' leaders began to think more and more of nukes, and tried to save as many of their troops as possible until the nukes had already fallen -- then for 4-6 months, more hot action. Then we are at the rulebook timeline.

Originally Posted by unipus

The T2K timeline has never really matched up all that well with what most people have speculated about modern war, it seems.

I agree that most any prolonged war is only going to be prolonged because of major periods of low-intensity fighting, and WW3 could certainly be no exception -- especially when it gets to the broken-back aspect that makes up the meat of the setting.

It's up until then that's the problem. Soviet plans relied on taking the Rhine within 2-3 weeks. If the war in the Atlantic went on for more than a month or two, they knew they would not win. T2K settings usually flip the script on this somewhat and aren't about the usual Fulda offensive setup... nonetheless, we know that attrition rates of men and materiel would be astronomically high. Even by 6 months in there's not likely to be many if any planes left flying and all the good mech divisions will already be seriously depleted if not outright invalidated. Fuel is probably short by then. The smart munitions are all gone. Lots of other ammo is probably in short supply.

So on the one hand, yeah, that gets you into your slow phase of the war, while you wait for T-55s to show up from Kazakhstan and put every M48 left around into service. On the other hand the hand-waiving of "the first year of the war" has always seemed pretty silly to me. Even before the nukes it starts seeming absurd. Domestically it would probably be impossible to sustain. Etc. etc.

It seems that there are some real world things going on that I could possibly see resulting in some slow burn turning into a shooting war..

Belarus' forced landing of an airliner and claiming NATO massing of trips along they're border followed by Russia stating they'd defend them. Threats to NATO in response to troop movements along the border with Ukraine.

Chinese threats against Australia.

Israel and Gaza.

I could see some skirmish in Belarus/Ukraine/Poland.

Turkey and Iran invading Iraqi Kurdistan with some Syrian side action.

China naval duels with Vietnam, S. Korea, Australia.

Crazies turning protests into shooting wars with local LEO leading to federal involvement.