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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. |
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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. |
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#4
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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. |
#5
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Additionally, I won't ever say the Taliban were the good guys, but they certainly did put a crimp in things like Afghan opium production and Man Love Thursday, which both exploded back again after the US and the Northern Alliance temporarily kicked the Taliban out into Pakistan. In effect, the US military became the security force for illicit Afghan opium farming and heroin production for 20 years. Given the fairly rich legacy of certain US governmental organizations in the trafficking of narcotics, I would argue this wasn't exactly accidental. |
#6
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Let me start by saying I think the Red Army is, and always has been, capable and worthy of respect. It would always give the US and NATO a real run for their money.
However, in the T2K lore, it seems just the opposite has come to pass. The US and NATO and other allies (ROK, etc) are getting their ass kicked at every turn. The idea that the Red Army could get in a protracted war with China, then lose some of their WARSAW Pact allies to the West and then charge through Poland causing the collapse of Western Europe is crazy. And then, it's the US Government that falls apart- crazy! In My Humble Opinion. Let's remember, it was the Soviet Union that actually fell apart. It was the Red Army that was much more hollow and ineffective than we had thought, while the US was more capable than we imagined. In the end, it's just a game and the GM can determine how he wants to create reality so it shouldn't matter at the PC level. |
#7
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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. 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; 12-02-2024 at 07:00 PM. |
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#9
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I find it to be one of our interesting blind spots, much like the way we think wars start only when a rifle is fired, that we don't look at the events leading up to the dissolution but only try and analyse it from its preceding situations. To put it simply, the West spent decades preparing for that very moment to crush the USSR and people seem to think we stood quietly and suddenly it just fell over. If you look at Russian literature from 2000 to today you get a very different view. Their narrative points to a lot of shady intelligence dealing in the periphery. An interesting point is all the oligarchs who made money from the dissolution were prior criminals, smugglers & so on and by definition these people worked with foreign intelligence agencies. |
#10
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They worked, actively, to undermine the US and it's government going as far back to the 1930s. In fact, their primary export for decades was counter-intelligence engineered destabilization of foreign countries, so if they collapsed by similar operations by the West / the US, it would be fitting, but I am skeptical. The record of success by the US in ops like that just isn't that good. Take Cuba, for example. Just about every single "intelligence" asset we ever had in Cuba was a double agent, meanwhile they had numerous assets imbedded in our own intel agencies. The USSR and Russia never had a Robert Hanssen. Etc. Our humint was never that good, and there's was often superb. |
#11
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If you thought America's brief Hollow Army phase after Vietnam was something, you should prepare to have your mind blown. They seem to have suffered through a similar situation worse by several degrees, more pervasive, and lasting from WWII essentially to the collapse. |
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