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#1
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Edit: the rough equivalent for the United States would be getting stalemated by Brazil.
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The poster formerly known as The Dark The Vespers War - Ninety years before the Twilight War, there was the Vespers War. |
#2
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I'm very much aware that all of these comparisons are apples-to-oranges. There are simply too many variables at play in each case to draw any meaningful conclusions re a hypothetical WWIII. We're dealing with a lot of counterfactuals. Essentially, I've been playing devil's advocate in this thread, trying to find a bright side for those who want to believe that a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Late Cold War period would have been evenly matched, or at least competitive. IMHO, that's an essential premise of TWILIGHT:2000 in all of its iterations. -
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Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module |
#3
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Instead of bludgeoning away at a narrow segment of the front line with a tank army backed by entire regiments of heavy artillery like they did in WW2, the Russians attack piecemeal, across a broad front, in dribs and drabs. They throw a company of tanks or motorized infantry at a perceived soft spot in the Ukrainian defenses, get wrecked, then try again, and keep trying, until the Ukrainians are forced to pull back. Gains are often minimal, but the costs are still high. Since February 2022, I've been wondering why this has been the case. Yeah, by employing late-WW2 operational tactics, the Russians would be losing a regiment or division at a pop, but they'd much more likely force a significant breakthrough that would collapse Ukrainian defenses and lead to bigger, faster territorial gains. In the long run, though, the Russians don't seem too concerned about incurring casualties. It's weird. In any case, what the Russians have succeeded at, once again, is absorbing massive manpower and materiel losses without significant negative political or economic consequences (at least, to date). The West has not demonstrated, since WW2, that it can do the same. And, despite decimating its own military in the process, as things stand, Russia will probably win a strategic victory over Ukraine (as it did v. Chechnya). Quote:
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Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module Last edited by Raellus; 11-26-2024 at 01:57 PM. |
#4
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Overestimating for downstream overmatch is what gives us F-22s and F-35s when the world's second army is installing wood screws and bare metal cockpit interiors on "stealth" aircraft. Also, for what it's worth, I've never seen an adversary in Iraq that could match us in a stand-up fight. There was political and strategic underestimation of what would be required, and the simple fact is that unless we were prepared to kill every man, woman, and child in the country, the lack of a uniformed enemy more or less necessitates that the men in camouflage are eventually going to go home and life is going to continue - more or less - as it did before they came. As for the actual enemy, there's a reason the most successful tactics largely centered around single shots taken followed by exfil, and roadside bombs; winning a standup fight was essentially impossible, due to the level of overmatch brought to the table even at the small unit level. Engaging a squad of Marines in Karmah meant that you were attacking three to six machine guns, three grenade launchers, ten rifles, and anywhere between 13 and 26 rockets, and that's before QRF shows up; there's only so much that sandals and faith in Allah bring to the table against a baker's dozen guys that know how to leverage that. |
#5
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As for underestimating a near-peer adversary, the USA has made that mistake before. Even after its shocked-the-world victory over Russia in 1905, Japan's military capabilities and competence were sneered at by the USA and its western allies, much to their detriment in 1941-'42. Just a few years later, Douglas McArthur underestimated the Chinese* prior to their entry into the Korean Conflict and the result was a stalemate along the 38th parallel. *To consider the PLA a near-peer adversary in 1951 is being very generous. -
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Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module Last edited by Raellus; 11-26-2024 at 05:08 PM. |
#6
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Oh, God, no, not at all. I was just highlighting the small unit-scale disparity. We saw much the same (but to a lesser degree, edging somewhat towards more parity) in Vietnam, and the Russians saw similar in Afghanistan in the 80s.
It was more engaging with the concept that we "lost to dirt farmers," a common refrain (not ascribed to you, or your words, but you get my meaning as shorthand). Dirt farmers don't win stand-up fights, because they very often literally can't. It's a much easier proposition, however, for that invading country to collectively get tired of spending money and trickling a few thousand lives over the course of ten or twenty years and decide to go home. This isn't to say it's not a victory for the occupied nation, because it absolutely is, but it's a victory derived from a wholly different mechanism than a battlefield defeat due to a lack of training, or faulty organization or doctrine, or hardware that simply cannot match the enemy's capability, or - I would contend - from underestimating the enemy tactically, operationally or even strategically, because there are such wildly different dynamics at play than in the conventional conflicts we organize militaries to engage. There's no way to put a bullet through an idea, or to drop a bomb and change hundreds or thousands of years of cultural gestalt, and this simple concept seems lost on in the minds of every leader who's ever had the thought to send soldiers to fight a population that can hide among civilians for the simple reason that they - for the most part - ARE civilians. Quote:
I can't deny at all your points on the Russo-Japanese conflict, or the Chinese entry in Korea, but that's somewhat outside of the scope of the modern jet, nuclear, missile, and information ages of warfare, where we're looking at a case where a civilian company in one nation can cover an invaded country with satellites and provide non-jammable coverage against the efforts of what was supposedly the second army on the planet, and where sending last-generation hardware from one side can drag a three-day special military operation into a three-year slaughter without any feet, wheels, track, or tread on the ground. Last edited by HaplessOperator; 11-27-2024 at 02:24 AM. Reason: Removed extra forum markup; still getting the hang of it, and probably always will be. |
#7
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#8
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An example: In Al Anbar, 2005, for a significant part of the year in the vicinity of the city of Karmah, we were prohibited from pre-emptively engaging individuals carrying obvious heavy weapons with ammunition. PK machine gun, RPG, M69 or D-37 mortar, doesn't matter, can't shoot them, doesn't matter if they see you, start running, take up positions, can't shoot them, no firing until they engage you first. Those might be poor farmers on their way to hand those weapons in for buybacks, you see. Almost universally, they were simply transporting them to another location for hiding away, protected by the aegis of dumbass RoE. I'd argue that no one benefits, really, but merely that it's next to impossible to militarily force a change of culture without undertaking utterly repugnant actions. It's also not really what a military is built to do, and certainly not with two hands tied behind your back and both balls taped to one leg. |
#9
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I assume the other one you're talking about is Vietnam, where similar political concerns essentially kept us fighting with our hands tied behind our backs, trickling soldiers in slowly so as not to be offensive to the sensibilities of a hand-wringing public or politicians afraid of getting their constituencies' mandates mussed, and where the political realities of fighting against a guerrilla force When it comes to superpowers doing actual superpower things, you can't really find an example of a stalemate, because there aren't any. About the closest you can point to is the Korean War, with the entire military apparatus of China and North Korea fighting us before anything resembling modern American doctrine of technologically-enabled maneuver warfare or full spectrum dominance was even a sparkle in anyone's eye. Those F-16s, F-15s, and F-22s come in awfully handy against an enemy that's stuck with duct-taping GPS receivers to their instrument panel, though, and I haven't met a BMP that can survive the ordnance equivalent of a gnat fart, and threat systems weren't any more advanced or better armored 25 years ago. That you're talking about Russia potentially, possibly breaking a stalemate against such a weak adversary after three years is sort of telling in and of itself. The last time Russia had any real chance of winning a conventional war against the West was probably back around 1979-1983 or so. Sure, they're a wild nuclear threat, assuming they've been able to maintain their arsenal, but that's a fairly long shot, too. We have an arsenal somewhat smaller, and spend as much maintaining our nukes each year as they allocate for their entire military budget. Last edited by HaplessOperator; 12-16-2024 at 11:38 AM. |
#10
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I also posted the following: The Cold War Soviet military was never tested against a near peer adversary, and neither was the US military. The lessons derived from the post-Soviet collapse period are informative, but by no means conclusive. We're making sweeping inferences from the poor performance of the rump Russian military in Chechnya and the USA's stellar performance in Desert Storm. Therefore, whatever the conclusion one arrives at- the USSR as paper tiger or as formidable foe- we're essentially dealing in counterfactuals. The purpose of the OP was to support a plausible alternate reality where the Twilight War, as described in 1e or 2-2.2e canon (4e didn't exist yet), could have occurred. ... In other words, the goal here is to make the game work. And, on principle, I want to hedge against succumbing to the twin traps of overconfidence in one's own side and underestimating the adversary. -
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Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module Last edited by Raellus; 12-16-2024 at 03:46 PM. |
#11
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Counterfactuals aren't always accurate, but they very well can be used to draw basic inferences. It's not as if we can't draw valid inferences or critiques from those two well-understand wars against multiple well-understood forces using well-understood equipment; the same can be said of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. It's not as if we all haven't seen two years of videos of an up-armored, modernized T-80 being killed by a single Carl Gustav hit, or a T-90AM worn the hell out by a bone stock ODS Bradley, or "hypersonic" missiles being shot down by Stingers and Iglas during terminal approach. No, these aren't engagements against NATO troops using NATO equipment, except in the cases where they're using gifted pld war stock that was too out of date to be modern by ten years even when I was serving, and I'd be retired this year, but that should tell anyone watching all this something in and of itself. Last edited by HaplessOperator; 12-16-2024 at 07:05 PM. |
#12
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I hear you. Again, i am playing devil's advocate. Why stop now?
Russia eventually reconquered Chechnya. I've written entire essays on how the Iraqi and Soviet armies are not synonymous earlier in this thread so if your curious, you know where to look. We've also seen M1 tanks taken out by RPG-7s in Iraq and an F-117 shot down over Serbia by an SA-3 SAM so... Out of curiosity, since you strongly believe that the Soviet Union was no match for NATO from the mid-1980s through... today, why are you a T2k fan, given its central premise and all? -
__________________
Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module |
#13
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I think a big part of what happened is just that time marched on, and we know a lot more than a couple of random guys from the 80s. I personally find it a lot more believable to just assume the Soviets went a little more nuke-happy. I don't believe they weren't a match for NATO; a conventional one, no, but they posed (and Russia now poses) a credible nuclear threat. |
#14
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In the 80s I believed much more in the Soviets than I do now. As time has moved on I feel the timeline must be changed earlier and earlier. Given you have to explain an alternate history now (rather than the projected future back in 1984) who cares if the alt history starts in 1989 or 1972. Red Dawn threw like 7 Alt history sentences to us to set the stage for that conflict. Last edited by kato13; 12-16-2024 at 09:20 PM. |
#15
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There were a bunch of mistakes on the American side that made the shootdown easier. The airfield was being spied on by Serbs who were transmitting information back to the military about what was flying and when. Allegedly there was also a mole somewhere in Italy with access to operational information sending that to the Serbs as well. On the night of the shootdown, weather had grounded the EA-6B Prowlers that had been escorting F-117s with radar jammers and HARM missiles to counter SAM batteries. The Nighthawks were using the same ingress and egress routes they had used before, making them predictable. The SAM battery had been told where to emplace to be able to engage the Nighthawks. This battery had previously tried to engage twice without being able to lock on to an aircraft. The low frequency radar spotted the flight at a range of 15 miles (the normal range against a fighter was 200 miles). The tracking radar never saw the aircraft, and at first the guidance radar didn't either. They had been directed to only do short periods with the radar on to avoid getting a HARM fired at them, but since the battery CO had been told the Prowlers weren't firing, he lit off the guidance radar a second time. By coincidence, that happened at the same time that one of the Nighthawks was dropping a bomb, and the radar saw the inside of the bomb bay at a range of 5 miles (normal range 50 miles). A pair of SA-3 were fired. Neither achieved a direct hit and the first detonated too far away to cause damage, but the second one detonated close enough to the Nighthawk to cause damage that led to its crash. The guidance radar never saw the other two Nighthawks that weren't open while it was emitting. So yes, an SA-3 shot down an F-117, but it took a rather remarkable string of actions to get there - the air defense knew where the aircraft would be, when they would be arriving, may have known what the targets that night were, knew there was no SEAD escort, took advantage of that knowledge to make a second try that would have likely gotten them killed if there was a SEAD escort, and got lucky with the timing on the second try. It ended up being a combination of complacency on the American side, good intelligence work and a gutsy battery commander on the Serb side, and a dollop of luck on top that allowed that shootdown to happen.
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The poster formerly known as The Dark The Vespers War - Ninety years before the Twilight War, there was the Vespers War. |
#16
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I mention these events because taking into account the tendency for the US, the UK, my own country, to misunderstand the motivations of its adversaries can absolutely be used in our various attempts to devise alt-histories that would bring about the Twilight War. Likewise the tendencies of the Warsaw Pact nations and other belligerents to misunderstand the motivations of the US and the NATO countries. I really enjoy seeing those elements in T2K alt-histories, because that sort of thing has resulted in wars and the direction of conflicts countless times in human history.
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#17
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Two, the US never really tried to decisively defeat the PLA. We never attacked mainland China, and once the Chinese got involved, never had enough troops to wage any sort of decisive offensive campaign (Chinese had 1.7x the troops the Americans and their allies did). While in modern times US systems have advanced substantially compared to peer/near peer tech, another thing that sets the US apart is largely the level of training that troops get. Training like this would become a luxury as a Twilight level war would eat up troops as fast as you could deploy them, which is the real reason why I think you would see "parity" between the combatants (especially once nukes started flying and casualties really ramped up). |
#18
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The Shermans alone outnumbered the entire T-34 force without counting any of the other American tanks in use, or the Churchill, Cromwell, and Centurion tanks of British forces in Korea. The 8th King's Royal Hussars had 6 Cromwell and 64 Centurion and the 7th Royal Tank Regiment had 20 Churchill in-country in November 1950). With a small Canadian contingent of Shermans also serving, the UN forces had more than three times as many tanks as the North Koreans, and I'm pretty sure it was more than three times even excluding the Chaffees that were horribly outclassed by the T-34.
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The poster formerly known as The Dark The Vespers War - Ninety years before the Twilight War, there was the Vespers War. |
#19
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#20
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Korea is a good example. It was not a popular war. The American public was especially war-weary after the preceding four years of total, world war. There was little political will to expand the war. Truman pursued a negotiated peace. Although this probably contributed to his defeat to Eisenhower in 1952, Ike (now a civilian) continued the policy. This is, I believe, is actually an argument in defense of the Red Army. In WW2, the Soviet Union survived massive military casualties and still managed to defeat the German military. Although there were number of factors that contributed to this ultimate victory, a major one was the willpower and total control of the vicious Soviet dictator. Would the USA have continued to fight on two years into the war if it had been the ally to sustain millions of casualties? We'll never know, but I doubt it. We're seeing something similar today in Ukraine. By many estimates, the Russians have already lost twice as many troops KIA (100,000 being a conservative estimate) in just under three years of combat in Ukraine than the USA lost in nearly ten years in Vietnam (58,000). We saw the American public largely turn against the war in Vietnam, in large part due to mounting casualties (with few strategic gains to show for them). Because of Putin's unchecked power, the Russian public has no choice but to accept rising casualties and economic costs, even without significant strategic success to show for them. The war in Ukraine grinds on. To bring this back to WWIII/the Twilight War, NATO's strategic military decisions would be more impacted by the public's attitudes towards the war than would the Warsaw Pact's. This would give the latter more leeway in conducting military operations. This is a strategic advantage. Quote:
*Douglas MacArthur pushed hard for strategic bombing of mainland China, even advocating the use of nuclear weapons. This is one of the reasons Truman sacked him. It's also ironic because it was MacArthur's refusal to take seriously then copious available intelligence reports of China's imminent entry into the war that allowed the PLA to push UN forces back to the 38th Parallel in the first place. To your point, given how North Vietnam withstood a greater tonnage of bombs than the entire Axis absorbed during WW2, I doubt that strategic bombing of China- a much larger country- would have made a decisive difference in the outcome of the Korean War. -
__________________
Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module Last edited by Raellus; 01-07-2025 at 11:57 AM. |
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