History, Mathematics, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Wargame Before The War

26 Comments

This is interesting. They did a pretty good job of gaming it out.

[Update Monday morning]

Your feel-good story of the day, if true: Russia has no options for victory, only defeat.

Oh, and by the way, I don’t think this would be “World War III.”

26 thoughts on “The Wargame Before The War”

  1. WWIII has already be triggered thanks to Putin. It would be interesting to note how fighter resupply from the West would impact the air scenarios. It’ll be interesting to see logistically and tactically how well this works. It would be naive beyond credibility to assume AWACS are not already patrolling (with fighter escort) well inside the Polish border with Ukraine to provide side view look down for air support. Being relayed via real time using Starlink terminals on encrypted channels. I suspect a lot of this has already taken place, many of the GTAM attacks require pre-positioning and are not “lucky” happen-stance. The question is whether Ukraine has enough pilots to ferry into Poland to retrieve the planes and fly them back with Ukraine AF markings. Armed.

    2. Rand,
      I think it naive to think that China is not involved at least at a strategic level. That they can bankroll Russia outside of the Western banking system is not just chump change.

      OTOH they need do little as long as the West is buying Russian oil. And I suspect payment is not in Bitcoin either.

      1. In fact, as long as we continue to buy Russian oil the more I will become convinced that Ukraine was a diversion tactic by the Biden administration to deflect, deflect, deflect. I guess they must think that if it gets really bad, like it did in Afghanistan, that when NATO Article 5 is invoked we rush to the mutual defense! With all the blankets, medical kits and anti-racist/anti-white-rage training the NATO armies need. It sure is obvious Europe is in need of the latter.

  2. I think WW1 was a world war. Read about Lettow-Vorbeck in Africa. He only surrendered after the Armistice. The Japanese fought the Germans at Tsingtao. Admiral Von Spee won at Coronel and lost at the Falklands off of South America. The British fought long campaigns in Iraq. The first shot in anger from an American at a German after the declaration of war was at Guam. But, to be honest, I could say that the Seven Years War could be counted as a World War. The British fought the French in North America, Europe, and India. And that was in the 1750s.

    1. Yes, the Great War was also known as the World War. It didn’t get called World War I until World War II came along. When WWII started, there was some debate what to call it. Winston Churchill said it was the Unnecessary War because he believed it could’ve been prevented had France and the UK stood up to Hitler in the 1930s.

  3. There was a German held part of New Guinea in 1914. The Australians, who never saw a war they didn’t want to get in to, went there and took it over.

  4. Oh, you amateur strategists might think WW-III is an issue worth addressing, or what we should do regarding Ukraine, but the real professionals at the Pentagon know to stay focused on the threat from a jet-fuel leak in an access tunnel at a 1940’s fuel-storage facility in Hawaii that was reported on back in December.

    Pentagon spokesman John Kirby just spent more time talking about the environmental cleanup of the Hawaii fuel leak than he did about the largest war in Europe since WW-II, which itself is at most a distraction from the threat of climate change.

    Yeah, there’s a reason this administration lost a 20-year war to men who have sex with goats.

    1. I guess the gender and equity training is going well that they could focus on an environmental cleanup.

  6. Why am I not surprised that U.S. Marines playing Russians did a better job using the Russian Military than the Russians.

  7. I’m having trouble with the claim of 10,000 Russian deaths. The Soviets had about 13,000 deaths in 8 years in Afghanistan. Has combat really been that intense in the past week or two? Wouldn’t we have ample video evidence of it?

    1. IDK, but Afghanistan is not Ukraine, and Afghanis are not Ukrainians. Ukrainians have a modern military, and they’re not fighting in mountains. Apparently the Russians were caught by surprise, in that they expected no resistance (and many of them didn’t know what their mission was). So I wouldn’t be shocked if their casualties are that high. I saw on Twitter today by Trent Telenko that they’ve lost 1200 officers. So do the math.

      1. This is probably one of those stories that is less likely than others…but I read a story last week about mobile crematoria the Russians have, to deal with the bodies of their war dead – pop them in, and in an hour or two there is no record of their existence.

        Seems a lot of trouble to go to but is not outside the realm of reprehensible behavior for a communist.

        1. The fact that it looks like the Russians lost another Flag officer now, 2 so far. Between the lost of the flag officers and the seer incompetence displayed with communications, so far I say they are taking it on the nose.
          The Russian have to publicly announce 500 you know it has to be at least 5 to 10x that , and that announced number is old at this point.

  8. Good to see the Hunter Biden laptop gang hard at work re-purposing those 15 year old laptops they had as spares. And the usual suspects are falling for it.
    Wonder if any Biden Burismas emails are on it too.

  9. The war game, while interesting, is not suprising, since it follows general SOP. Take the 4 coastal Oblasts (you already have Crimea), invest Odessa. Take or destroy the main bridges across the Dnieper, proceed up the left bank to Kiev, and Taras Bulba’s your uncle!

    Good question about Russia incompetence. Combat or logistics? I’d bet the latter, since it’s easier to FUBAR. I assumed the Russians could only deploy one quintile or so against the Ukraine, with the rest to deter NATO, just as the US has to watch it’s back againt China. But why the bottom quintile. Overconfidence (from corrupted reporting)? They have to have known what Ukraine had, and know what a billion dollars worth of antitank and antiaircraft munitions would mean? Chinese sandbox? Sheesh. I’m too old to live through an EMP attack.

    1. Has the Rasputista, the Spring thaw that starts in the South, bogged down things? There is a lot of Ukraine and relatively few all weather roads… You will note the ‘snake like’ advances on the map.

  10. You Americans are so provincial. The first “world ware” was the 7 Years War. This is the war of which a tiny portion was what Americans call the French and Indian Wars The next “world war” was the collection of wars waged by Napoleon, who the US allied with in a losing cause, but they still came out smelling like roses. The third “world war” was WWI, but the first modern industrial war was the US Civil War, where much of the modern nasty killing technologies and logistics were perfected so that Europeans could kill each other more efficiently.

      1. You’re at least half wrong. From the history.com website:

        In addition to the victories in Canada, Great Britain beat back French forces in Guadeloupe, Martinique, Havana, Manila, West Africa and India, wresting Pondicherry from the French on January 16, 1761.

        I believe Pondicherry was actually the last battle of the war.

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