"What if" we all woke up tomorrow at war with Russia

ubersonic said:
What exactly would happen though? In a ground war with Russia we would fair worse than Ukraine, in an air war we would be annihilated. Aside from rattling a sceptre the is nothing we can do to them so they probably would just ignore us lol.
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Russia doesn't have much power projection so its very hard to imagine how any war exclusively between the UK and Russia would play out. I don't imagine our leaders are stupid enough to invade Russia, nor the Russians stupid enough to try invade us (risking full NATO intervention).

But, pound for pound I'd fancy our military over Russia's. The Russian army is poorly trained, poorly led and poorly equipped, which is why they're scrambling to professionalise their army. Take a look at how they got on in Grozny. Even the more recent 'victory' in Georgia is looked upon as a humiliation by even Russian leaders.

On the nuclear side of things, you explicitly say:

We can't nuke them because we don't have enough to cause massive damage and they would nuke us back completely obliterating us.
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We've more than enough warheads to pretty much exterminate the Russian people several times over, which is what our nuclear arsenal is intended for. So you're entirely incorrect when you claim we can't do enough damage.

Neither side is likely to use tactical nukes to try eliminate the other sides military as that might well invite a full nuclear exchange, something neither side would survive.

A future war with Russia would be absolutely devastating for us Brits, we no longer have the military resources to project power without assistance as it stands and that's against Guerrilla type advisories in the middle east...

We have a bare bones army, stretched so thin that any more cuts would break it, a navy with no operational aircraft carriers and aging destroyers etc and an air force with a barely functioning Eurofighter and some seriously obsolete Typhoons... do we even have bombing capability now?

Russia, despite our opinions of it, have a massive military and a naturally tough mentality.... and given the state of France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK would probably crush us through sheer weight of numbers.

So War looks inevitable, conscription hits but we still lack in the infrastructure to build, tanks, Planes, Helicopters and ships... we rely on America for support who will stay out of the fight as long as they can.... Sound familiar?

Personally if I was Russia I'd surprise spank the U.S out of the fight early with a massive assault on their soil..... Preferably none nuclear, the rest of nato etc wouldn't then be in a position to intervene, and would then be playing the waiting game to see who wins.
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There is no much ignorance in this post. NATO has a much larger military than Russia, we're vastly wealthier and have a great deal more manpower. Russia is not a superpower, its barely even a great power economically.

Also, we alone have one of the highest military budgets in the world and ample power projection. Its true we're a bit stretched by recent cuts, but the difference is our economy is rich enough to double or even treble military spending without too much hardship. Drop foreign aid and shave a bit off other departments and we'd be able to respond to any Russian threat.

Russia's economy is contracting and is already smaller than Italy's. Its foreign currency reserves are being tapped daily to keep things running. Russia cannot outspend us, which is what most wars are decided by.
 
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Vidar said:
We have a bare bones army, stretched so thin that any more cuts would break it, a navy with no operational aircraft carriers and aging destroyers etc and an air force with a barely functioning Eurofighter and some seriously obsolete Typhoons... do we even have bombing capability now?
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Is the Type 45 an ageing destroyer now?

If they are, most of Russia's gear is ancient.
 
Thompson_NCL said:
On the nuclear side of things, you explicitly say:



We've more than enough warheads to pretty much exterminate the Russian people several times over, which is what our nuclear arsenal is intended for. So you're entirely incorrect when you claim we can't do enough damage.

Neither side is likely to use tactical nukes to try eliminate the other sides military as that might well invite a full nuclear exchange, something neither side would survive.
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Not so sure on that, the environmental impact of exhausting our entire arsenal against them would be pretty nasty but people over-estimate modern nuclear weapons (they are also relatively speaking substantially cleaner than older nukes) - detonating 1 of our trident warheads over the centre of Moscow and at first they've barely even know it happened in the suburbs (not really much of an exaggeration). While a few would make a nasty mess of the city (and be enough to make it unlivable for miles around) you'd have to expend an entire sub's arsenal to do the Armageddon thing proper to just that city and surroundings.

Direct damage (not including long term effects) our entire nuclear arsenal would only cover something like 1.5% of the land mass of Russia (obviously they'd be used for maximum effect). While the long term impacts would be more global and far more devastating I doubt we'd come anything close to making Russia entirely an unlivable wasteland.
 
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Rroff said:
Not so sure on that, the environmental impact of exhausting our entire arsenal against them would be pretty nasty but people over-estimate modern nuclear weapons (they are also relatively speaking substantially cleaner than older nukes) - detonating 1 of our trident warheads over the centre of Moscow and at first they've barely even know it happened in the suburbs (not really much of an exaggeration). While a few would make a nasty mess of the city (and be enough to make it unlivable for miles around) you'd have to expend an entire sub's arsenal to do the Armageddon thing proper to just that city and surroundings.

Direct damage (not including long term effects) our entire nuclear arsenal would only cover something like 1.5% of the land mass of Russia (obviously they'd be used for maximum effect). While the long term impacts would be more global and far more devastating I doubt we'd come anything close to making Russia entirely an unlivable wasteland.
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You're right, people do overestimate the destructive power of nuclear weapons. However a single 100kt warhead would wipe out central Moskow and kill off most of the population within 60 km2. It would take a few warheads the entire metro area of Moscow into glass, but there would be no need. The collapse of government, infrastructure and so forth would kill vastly more people than the warhead did.

Most of Russia's population is located in the West of the country and fifty or so 100kt warheads would be enough to destroy all the major city centres, kill most of the Russian people and cause chaos for the rest.

Not that I propose we ever test this theory.
 
This PDF was linked to in the Ukraine thread.

But it has also revealed some of the constraints on Russia’s exercise of military power; primarily, its limited capacity to sustain an operation of this size. Indeed, it is obvious that there are insufficient resources – military and financial – under the Kremlin’s command to sustain military operations at the current level for over a year: the military capabilities required to carry out the operation are already reaching their limits. It might be too early to definitively assess that Russia’s military capacity is overstretched by the
crisis in Ukraine, but some facts are evident. Twenty-eight military units were required to generate the approximately 90,000 troops stationed on the Russo–Ukrainian border and within Crimea in spring 2014.

These units were drawn from a relatively limited geographic area in this early phase of
the operation against Ukraine. To sustain this deployment and the required intensity of fighting, it was necessary to call upon more units.
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A non-nuclear war would still be very messy but if reports like the above are accurate, then taking over Western Europe isn't going to happen...
 
We are long overdue a world war, just be prepared to die, it's going to happen sooner or later. It will be over in a flash anyway.

Muwaha ha ha ha haaaa

 
Send the SAS in and be home for Christmas? :)

I imagine for the UK there would be an urgent focus on trying to hold Norway/Finland/Sweden as I believe is planned to some degree (?), which means basically every Royal Marine and his dog is over there over night. Then I suppose we'd bolster our Navy by any means so that we could win the lengthy naval battle that would follow if mainland Europe fell.

Then it's just a case of hounding the US for some subs & patriot missile defence systems for our insanely vulnerable naval facilities and waiting for their 10 super carriers to do their thang'! I'm wasted sitting here I know.
 
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Russia would lose, even if China chipped in.

They would however use a tactical Nuke at some point though and then the gates are wide open for letting the insects rule the world.
 
OhEsEcks said:
Join the Russians because I hate you all.

I am now probably on a list. HI GCHQ!
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Every person in the UK is on one of gchq's lists, according to Snowden the UK has the most comprehensive domestic spying operation in the world based at gchq, tempora is their name for the cyrrent software/operation.
 
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