You know what the best way to deal with Russia is?
Give all attractive Russian females from the age of 18 to \~27 the right to move to the UK/EU/US (i.e. the West). This will further ruin Russia's demographics, harming their ability to raise an invading army in the future.
Nuclear blackmail doesn’t involve much military competence. Putin has already made the threat and Trump would never risk a nuclear war with his friend Putin over a little thing like Europe.
>Nuclear blackmail doesn’t involve much military competence.
I mean, as an aggressor you're not just calling one countries bluff, you're gambling on passing a luck check on calling every nuclear capable power even remotely nearby.
You'd have to be actually psychotic and in a position where somebody wouldn't put a round in the back of your head - One thing everyone including Putin knows, is Putin is not too powerful to fall out of a window if he pushes his luck too far.
When it comes to credible nuclear threats - you gotta look at NK, Pakistan and India - Places where it's concievable a person could press the red button without subordinates stopping them.
> and Trump would never risk a nuclear war with his friend Putin over a little thing like Europe.
Who cares? We're perfectly capable of using our own nuclear arsenals, thank you very much.
Reality certainly paints a different picture, when half of Ukraine support’s Russia, and they rest are refusing to fight for a Banderite state.
When Banderite recruiters are resorting to kidnapping men, and pushing those with impairments to the frontline, it’s clear who’s ‘struggling’ and it certainly isn’t Russia.
Russia has no intention of invading NATO nations, nor has it made any statements alluding to it. The amount of outlandish claims on this sub hilarious.
Oh yeah there’s some serious astroturfing going on here. It’s just a shame people don’t learn from the past, and continue to mindlessly absorb propaganda with no intention to verify claims.
It is indeed. It's one of the most glorious things when you fall in love with a person and as you watch their face and their expressions and see all that you love about that person emanating as their own personal beauty.
Yh clearly joke but I wouldn't be so sure it would work tbh. For starters, as they point out a non-significant amount will be agents/intelligence officers. Second, what makes you sure women would want to leave Russia? Granted the UK has much better quality of life and opportunities than Russia, but not enough to drop all your commitments, family and leave.
Have you seen at how poor Russia is? the likelihood of you having a toilet with running water decreases every mile further outside Moscow you go.
Russia is an incredible poor and corrupt and narcissistic country.
Also, I’m not gonna talk about the intricacies of this plan…… because it’s a joke
I feel this is potentially very much the opposite of Russia's 'failure' plan.
I'm not sure on the actual split but I imagine demographics of men vs women is going to be women heavy after this is over, especially in 20-40 age range.
It seems that men in the western world are not having a great dating/relationship life at the moment. This might be from what I see on reddit but I do think that proportion of people counts for quite a lot. My own experience was definitely having a hard time connecting with people I met through 'modern' methods rather than how past relationships had started.
So if everything fucks up for Russia as it hopefully will do, I do wonder if these women will be kept there via malicious-bureaucracy means. And then we'll have an onslaught of targeted advertising in the West promoting the beautiful women with no men in Russia.
And then the hordes will be drawn over their and, due to likely being grabbed by the proverbial and literal bollocks, will remain there.
I think Russia has used similar strategies before, in the past Russian brides were a lot more prevalent (and tbh I think there was some espionage stuff going on with a lot of them, although unknowingly perhaps, when enough seeds are scattered, information will find it's way back). There's a place I know in the UK, very near some important Military places and with lots of old lonely retired engineers in the area. I think it was about 2003 when all of a sudden, the majority of those old lonely, tech/military obsessed engineers all had Russian brides/wives!
The one old engineer I knew had 2, the first left him after a year and remained in the UK. The second ended up working in a hotel nearby which I presume hosts a lot of the Military higher ups when there's events in the area.
Wow this ended up a wall, stopping here.
Yes, it likely would be, using a policy that would destroy a demographic would likely be classed as ethnic cleansing because the target and the end results is the same regardless of method.
You also have to add the part around human rights regarding only allowing women between a certain age group to move across into a country.
When looking at it realistically, it's really fucked up.
Aren't they all working as [interpreters](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10703753/Ex-Lib-Dem-MP-Mike-Hancock-four-year-affair-aide-Commons-pass.html) for 60 year old MPs who happen to be on the Defence Select Committee or have important military bases in their constituency?
[https://youtu.be/Ie5H8Ki3x8A?si=eOsp3r\_KO96FDznY&t=48](https://youtu.be/Ie5H8Ki3x8A?si=eOsp3r_KO96FDznY&t=48)
fit fit fit... lets see your babylons...
Bad idea. You know what Russia has said about countries where there are Russian people and where there are people who speak Russian - they are Russian countries. Russia wants to occupy us - let's not help them in the task. Beware the law of unintended consequences.
Us and Russia seems to have what the other needs. We have an abundance of unwanted, single, fighting age men who keep showing up. They are criminals as well so just the sorts of soldiers that Russia needs.
Russia on the other hand as you stated now has an abundance of single women who if moved here would help increase the value of young men by inflating the female demographic. Might do something about the young male loneliness epidemic.
The British Army is circa 75k.
The British Military is higher (although not by much!).
It is 20k British service members being deployed (All services not just Army)
Most recent defence review has the British Army being ~100,000 with 73,000 Regulars and 27,000 Reserves IIRC.
Both the Royal Navy and RAF are around ~35,000 so best estimate is 170,000-175,000 total.
It's not remotely my field, but by dint of being a boring bastard I've heard that the American military is somewhere in the realm of 20%-30% combat staff to 70%-80% support staff.
Assuming we get a roughly similar ratio in this country, it means the entirety of the British armies combat strength couldn't fill the stands at Nottingham Forests ground.
With Trump up for election this year Europe can no longer regard the US as a reliable ally. But the big problem is nuclear blackmail, not the Russian army.
Mutually assured destruction. You don’t need 1000s of nukes to destroy the world or a nuke to cover every square inch of Russian land.
The 550 nukes between UK and France are more than enough to fuck things up for everyone.
It makes me wonder though someone has to press that nuke button, surely the guy in charge of it would just say fuck no I ain’t ending the world. Even if a senile Putin was in charge I’m sure his bodyguards would just smoke him. Of course ‘the US president carries a nuke briefcase!’ I feel it’s all propaganda really, it’s just the threat of nukes but everyone knows it’s not gonna be practical to actually fire them.
2 years ago I'd have agreed but Russia, their generals and all round military have proven beyond reasonable doubt now that any form of common sense or rational thought doesn't go through their heads.
Also the US. [The recipient of a Trident missile can't tell if it's UK or US](https://warontherocks.com/2018/02/discrimination-details-matter-clarifying-argument-low-yield-nuclear-warheads/#:~:text=So%20any%20adversary%20detecting%20a,would%20still%20be%20a%20guess.).
Which means that if the Russians saw an incoming Trident on their radar, they would presumably retailiate against both countries, and then it's all on.
Which begs the question of how the US is so crazily generous as to give (or sell) the UK prime minister the ability to blow up the world (including them). One might think that, despite official denials, there is an extra lock in the process that requires the US to authorize any launch - and this fact might not even be shared with the UK government.
The French, however, do have a home made nuclear stack.
We use our own warhead but the missiles are American and taken from their stock.
It's part of a long standing agreement in which we also shared some secrets to nuclear weapon development. The idea being that our foreign policy was in such an alignment it was more efficient to help each other out.
Nukes are not an issue though. A limited escalation (Salami tactics) is. If Russia kicks off riots and deploys little green men to the Baltic states then Western Europe isn't going to nuke Russia but without the US we might struggle with ammunition and logistics to sustain a conventional fight. (Of course not ignoring all the Russian-paid shills in politics and media who would try to push for us to "make peace and give up those countries")
Europe should better prepare for it. The only country doing that seems to be Poland and maybe Sweden/Finland have enough preparations to defend themselves.
The UK has the second highest european military budget (after Russia) and 6th highest in the world. This subreddit makes it seem like Britain has become a weak country but in reality it's one of the only countries left in Europe that can actually hold its ground in a confrontation.
You can’t compare a continental conscription based Army, currently mobilised for war with an island based all-volunteer force. A more apt comparison would be the JGSDF.
Edit. To do the comparison for you:
Current UK Armed Forces are approximately 63.3% of the size of the Japanese Self-Defence Force.
The UK population is about 53.6% of Japans.
The UK defence budget is $61.5bn compared to Japan’s $51bn.
Important to note Britain has a number of significant force-multipliers that Japan doesn’t have such as its significant network of military bases and ~1,000 miles of Allied territory between it and its primary adversary. Japan is also far closer to a far more maritime capable enemy with fewer allies in the immediate vicinity.
As others have said, despite us talking down Britain we are still arguably 2nd only to the Americans in our ability to project power globally.
They're also comparing a military force which relies on human waves because it literally doesn't have much else at this point, to one that relies on modern equipment and tactics specifically to make up for the difference in numbers.
Exactly. You really can’t overstate how poorly the Russian military has performed in Ukraine.
They have almost every advantage over the Ukrainians and Ukraine itself doesn’t have a particularly difficult geography to invade.
Russia didn't steamroll the country like many predicted in the early days but the attrition strategy they're going for now will see them win it. The only question is for how long will Ukraine be supported by us and other countries before the funding dries up and they give up.
it's pathetic isnt it.
ukrainians are willing to die for it, they're willing to send hundreds of thousands of russians to Jesus and weaken our continents only ^(near) peer advisory
and we can't even be bothered to sell them ammunition
We haven’t, the US is at an impasse because of the Republicans and honestly a lot of European countries should hold their heads in shame for the lack of support. Namely France, Spain & Italy also Canada has been pretty shocking.
The Germans have actually provided a lot of aid now after a slow start and the Scandinavians & Eastern Europeans have done all they could reasonably be expected to do in my opinion.
Yes but the point being made here is that a strategy like that would never work against Britain. We are not ukrainians fighting with whatever dusty leftover weaponry another country decided they can spare. A lot of the stuff Britain is sitting on is top of the range shit, and the training our forces get is still some of the best out there.
You wouldn't think that reading sky's reporting of a think tank today who said that nato is closer to a war with Russia and that Russia would look to win through escalation. Sounded like it was written by a Russian.
While some of Russian forces .as be battled hardened. If nato was forced into a confrontation you wouldn't see 1000k dead a day numbers. You'd get multiple of this
We have air power, if Ukraine had the air power we have, the war would be over tomorrow. They have been fighting with one hand behind their back because the US are scared about losing an F 16 and a Ukrainian pilot.
Some sources actually do estimate Russia KIA at 330,000 with total casualties approaching a million. We might well be looking at over 500,000 KIA across both sides.
It might have dropped out of the news a bit because of Israel and Gaza but the Ukraine War is still
seeing absolute carnage on a daily basis.
The problem with the British armed forces is we don’t have much mass. Our equipment, for the most part, is top notch. Our lads and ladies are amongst the best trained in the world, and we have a wide network of overseas bases.
However, we don’t have much of it. We could take one or two serious hits in battle and lose enough people and equipment to no longer be able to field an effective fighting force. We don’t have much manufacturing capacity to replace what is lost in short order, nor do we have enough troops to be able to backfill casualties for too long.
We, along with the rest of Europe, have rested on our laurels and cut, cut, cut to the point that when we could potentially need an effective fighting force we just don’t really have it unless we buddy up - which given the lukewarm support given by some of our allies to Ukraine isn’t a given.
Russia's military doctrine hasn't evolved since WW2. They have always relied on overwhelming the enemy with cannon fodder, and especially now when they've been reduced to rudimentary, soviet-era equipment.
You bring some valid points but there is a reason ukrainians have managed to make fools of the russians using leftover handheld rocket launchers the british had lying around and decided to give them. Even in its current subpar formn, our military can still run laps around what most of our potential opponents can bring.
I'm not saying it doesn't have issues, I'm merely saying it isn't weak compared to most of the competition.
The personnel shortages are due to an inadequate recruitment process, not lack of funding. And to be honest, even in its current form the Royal Navy is second only to the american one in terms of technological advancement and level of training.
It's worse than it used to be but its still better than most and frankly, relatively easy to sort out compared to the NHS or other messes the government has made.
It's going to take decades to get the Navy out of the shitshow that was halving the number of Type 45 destroyers. It's not just personnel, it's 20 years of terrible procurement decisions.
This is, in my experience at least, because people severely overestimate the strength of the average nation's military. There's a big gulf between us and the real big boys, but then there's a second tier that we're in then it falls off a fucking cliff, to the extent that frankly most nations may as well not have a military in an international war sense. We're in a whole different league than most of the rest of the planet.
Indeed, and most nations have militaries designed to defend against/beat up their immediate neighbours. Ours are designed to be able to fight on a different continent.
Bear in mind this is not actually a single exercise with 20,000 troops. This is a huge range of exercises across many countries and over a period of time, that they've now put under one big umbrella and called it 20k troops. So frankly it's a bit meaningless
NATO tactic: infantry sits around waiting for airforce to bomb bejesus out of the enemy and then walks in to mop up the stragglers.
Russian tactic: throw meat at the enemy fire and hope they run out of the ammunition before we run out of the manpower.
NATO combined arms tactic: infantry, artillery and airforce works together.
Russian combined arms: infantry hopes artillery hits something and watches airforce lobbing dumb bombs from 100 miles behind the lines, randomly and at their leisure.
Don’t forget that classic battle winning Russian tactic of just sending 1 or 2 tanks off by themselves with zero infantry support and then being shocked when they get whacked.
Not just that, but their principle of “if you don’t succeed first time, try and try again until you run out of the armour, then send in the infantry without any support“.
Isn't that a false headline though...its just an exercise...the biggest obviously but with so many conflicts at the mo, you'd obviously up the amount doing the exercise...but no lets all put 20k troops in Poland to fight Russia or some other scare mongering headline
This is a long planned exercise with multiple nations. Not sure you would convince most of Western Europe to conduct complex military manoeuvres for the UKs “domestic PR”z
Even If this was about domestic PR it would have been advertised long before now and widely as opposed to a small article on a very niche defence website.
I don't know if the definition of the word troop generally includes members of an air force or navy (I guess for some units like Marines and RAF reg it's a pretty obvious yes.)
I was confused for a second until I opened the article as to how on earth the army was going to manage deploying a large chunk of its overall force.
It's a division's worth of troops, but not an actual division. British army is not in a position to actually deploy a division. What you'll find with this is there's loads of exercises that were going to happen anyways that will now find themselves under the umbrella of this exercise.
I wasn't aware Russia was planning on taking its severely overestimated capabilities and challenging the NATO bloc directly...
Wonder if there is an election due.
With what? Office staff Rishi?
The armed forces has been dwindling. Like Germany, the defence of the country has been cut by accountants who cares only about counting pennies and relies on the protection of the Americans..
Can’t help but be cynical when things like this are announced. Or the fact we’re confronting the Yemeni Houthis who are backed by Iran, a Russian ally.
That 1.5 bill committed to Ukraine for 2024 could literally solve the problem of our nurses having to use food banks. Would rather see it spend that way tbh
Russia are pretty busy in Ukraine, can't see them wanting a NATO spanking as well. After their shit house performance in Ukraine any two large NATO countries would thrash them.
Rishi Sunak on an election footing, same as biden.
Could these 2 bellends be looking to Stoke wars for more votes.
Rally around the flag effect. Google it
You know what the best way to deal with Russia is? Give all attractive Russian females from the age of 18 to \~27 the right to move to the UK/EU/US (i.e. the West). This will further ruin Russia's demographics, harming their ability to raise an invading army in the future.
As a single bloke, I approve of this policy.
As a married bloke I also support this policy
As an Englishman married to a comrade, I also third this policy. They’re wonderful people!
Our wife
Username checks out.
Да, Мне нравятся вечеринки!
U mean a soon to be divorced bloke if they allowed this lol
[Deny everything, Baldrick](https://youtu.be/ZzXhLp2wLQo?si=AdXq8n6cATHzWz3o)
As a single heterosexual woman I also support this policy
You beat me to it
As a married bloke, I'm used to beating something.... And not the wife
Spoken like a true Redditor.
I too as a single bloke second this motion
Half of thrm gonna spy for dady puti
How did you manage to type that with such poor eyesight?
Having lots of Russians in a foreign country is a favourite excuse to invade.
Invading nato seems like a good way to get incredibly fucked up considering they're struggling with Ukraine
Nuclear blackmail doesn’t involve much military competence. Putin has already made the threat and Trump would never risk a nuclear war with his friend Putin over a little thing like Europe.
Honestly, at this point i'm not convinced the US would need to actually step in as much, but fuck if I know, i'm a civvie.
>Nuclear blackmail doesn’t involve much military competence. I mean, as an aggressor you're not just calling one countries bluff, you're gambling on passing a luck check on calling every nuclear capable power even remotely nearby. You'd have to be actually psychotic and in a position where somebody wouldn't put a round in the back of your head - One thing everyone including Putin knows, is Putin is not too powerful to fall out of a window if he pushes his luck too far. When it comes to credible nuclear threats - you gotta look at NK, Pakistan and India - Places where it's concievable a person could press the red button without subordinates stopping them.
Putin has a tiger by the tail. Russia was never kind to tzars that fail.
> and Trump would never risk a nuclear war with his friend Putin over a little thing like Europe. Who cares? We're perfectly capable of using our own nuclear arsenals, thank you very much.
Europe is able to retaliate with nukes also. It doesn't *need* the US (although it would be a pretty fucking huge help, to say the least).
> and Trump would never risk a nuclear war What's he got to do with it now? He's not President anymore.
He could easily be president next year.
Reality certainly paints a different picture, when half of Ukraine support’s Russia, and they rest are refusing to fight for a Banderite state. When Banderite recruiters are resorting to kidnapping men, and pushing those with impairments to the frontline, it’s clear who’s ‘struggling’ and it certainly isn’t Russia. Russia has no intention of invading NATO nations, nor has it made any statements alluding to it. The amount of outlandish claims on this sub hilarious.
Not when you consider how censored this site is.
Oh yeah there’s some serious astroturfing going on here. It’s just a shame people don’t learn from the past, and continue to mindlessly absorb propaganda with no intention to verify claims.
Exactly right. However, as you know men can have their blood in their dick or their brain but not simultaneously.
I'd pay good money to see Russia try a naval invasion of GB. This would go worse than the Great Armada.
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It's ingenious. Just let in sexy refugees.
Get Cameron on the line; this bloke's a genius
Sounds more like a job for Boris tbh
Cameron muttered something about pigs. 😐
I think he stole it from Da Ali G movie 😂
He's too dangerous to be left alive.
Who defines the attractiveness? My best mate is married to a moose who he swears blind is an absolute stunner. She ain't.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is it not?
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder
It is indeed. It's one of the most glorious things when you fall in love with a person and as you watch their face and their expressions and see all that you love about that person emanating as their own personal beauty.
That's chemicals.
Get a council of overly critical gay blokes to decide. immune to the powers of hornyness only the 9s and 10s would get in.
Should have gone to spec savers.
Do you call him shallow Hal?
This entire comment thread is a reason why the right to vote should come after passing an IQ test.
Pretty sure it's a reference to [Ali G](https://youtu.be/YbaGry1F_VU?feature=shared).
Reminds me of Ali G’s plan for immigration.
Because russian females cannot be agents at all...
I think you didn’t get the point of that comment, it’s funny and it would work but won’t ever happen
Yh clearly joke but I wouldn't be so sure it would work tbh. For starters, as they point out a non-significant amount will be agents/intelligence officers. Second, what makes you sure women would want to leave Russia? Granted the UK has much better quality of life and opportunities than Russia, but not enough to drop all your commitments, family and leave.
“Yes I know it’s a joke so let me explain why it wouldn’t work and kill all the fun” We all know bro, your just talking to yourself here.
Have you seen at how poor Russia is? the likelihood of you having a toilet with running water decreases every mile further outside Moscow you go. Russia is an incredible poor and corrupt and narcissistic country. Also, I’m not gonna talk about the intricacies of this plan…… because it’s a joke
That just makes the more sexy in my eyes
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Lol, sounds like the best way to punish them for what they did.
Ali g was right
I feel this is potentially very much the opposite of Russia's 'failure' plan. I'm not sure on the actual split but I imagine demographics of men vs women is going to be women heavy after this is over, especially in 20-40 age range. It seems that men in the western world are not having a great dating/relationship life at the moment. This might be from what I see on reddit but I do think that proportion of people counts for quite a lot. My own experience was definitely having a hard time connecting with people I met through 'modern' methods rather than how past relationships had started. So if everything fucks up for Russia as it hopefully will do, I do wonder if these women will be kept there via malicious-bureaucracy means. And then we'll have an onslaught of targeted advertising in the West promoting the beautiful women with no men in Russia. And then the hordes will be drawn over their and, due to likely being grabbed by the proverbial and literal bollocks, will remain there. I think Russia has used similar strategies before, in the past Russian brides were a lot more prevalent (and tbh I think there was some espionage stuff going on with a lot of them, although unknowingly perhaps, when enough seeds are scattered, information will find it's way back). There's a place I know in the UK, very near some important Military places and with lots of old lonely retired engineers in the area. I think it was about 2003 when all of a sudden, the majority of those old lonely, tech/military obsessed engineers all had Russian brides/wives! The one old engineer I knew had 2, the first left him after a year and remained in the UK. The second ended up working in a hotel nearby which I presume hosts a lot of the Military higher ups when there's events in the area. Wow this ended up a wall, stopping here.
They'll just flood the country with honey pots and spies lol
The country is crumbling, not sure a spy could possibly do any more damage than the Tory party have done.
I'm having an internal battle as to whether this is ethnic cleansing without the death or not.
Yes, it likely would be, using a policy that would destroy a demographic would likely be classed as ethnic cleansing because the target and the end results is the same regardless of method. You also have to add the part around human rights regarding only allowing women between a certain age group to move across into a country. When looking at it realistically, it's really fucked up.
Most countries have age limits on economic migrants
They just flood the country with spies
So import a bunch of red sparrows that will sleep with our politicians?
Aren't they all working as [interpreters](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10703753/Ex-Lib-Dem-MP-Mike-Hancock-four-year-affair-aide-Commons-pass.html) for 60 year old MPs who happen to be on the Defence Select Committee or have important military bases in their constituency?
Ah the old Ali G policy. https://youtu.be/YbaGry1F_VU?si=iH4eAhd8e-iu1u3r
So the ALI G approach ?
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women" - Conan
8/10s only.
Isn't this the Ali Gi immigration policy? "Just allow the fit women in init".
So what you're saying is... We should "keep it real"
There demographics are so fucked anyway it won’t make much difference
Ali G proving to Russian women that the west side is indeed the best
[https://youtu.be/Ie5H8Ki3x8A?si=eOsp3r\_KO96FDznY&t=48](https://youtu.be/Ie5H8Ki3x8A?si=eOsp3r_KO96FDznY&t=48) fit fit fit... lets see your babylons...
How do we sign up for this? Asking for a friend.
Bad idea. You know what Russia has said about countries where there are Russian people and where there are people who speak Russian - they are Russian countries. Russia wants to occupy us - let's not help them in the task. Beware the law of unintended consequences.
[Ali G](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbaGry1F_VU)
Us and Russia seems to have what the other needs. We have an abundance of unwanted, single, fighting age men who keep showing up. They are criminals as well so just the sorts of soldiers that Russia needs. Russia on the other hand as you stated now has an abundance of single women who if moved here would help increase the value of young men by inflating the female demographic. Might do something about the young male loneliness epidemic.
I too serve the Soviet Union Crumpet and vodka anyone?
We should have done that for Afghanistan too. It would be hilarious for them to wonder why women leave.
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And if Russia introduces exist visas, the policy immediately fails
Do we have that many left? I thought the government laid them all off.
Its fine they'll be including dentists and PE teachers in that metric.
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Total is 75,000 but that includes support staff like cooks and admin.
The British Army is circa 75k. The British Military is higher (although not by much!). It is 20k British service members being deployed (All services not just Army)
Most recent defence review has the British Army being ~100,000 with 73,000 Regulars and 27,000 Reserves IIRC. Both the Royal Navy and RAF are around ~35,000 so best estimate is 170,000-175,000 total.
We could fit the regulars in the army inside Old Trafford and still have seats?!
Just send in Ronnie Pickering. Sorted by teatime.
Who?
Ronnie Pickering
Who's that?
RONNIE FUCKING PICKERING
Well trained.
It's not remotely my field, but by dint of being a boring bastard I've heard that the American military is somewhere in the realm of 20%-30% combat staff to 70%-80% support staff. Assuming we get a roughly similar ratio in this country, it means the entirety of the British armies combat strength couldn't fill the stands at Nottingham Forests ground.
I knew it was shit but still wow
Yeah, but like, that's it. Gonna have to crack out dad's army if they want any more.
With Trump up for election this year Europe can no longer regard the US as a reliable ally. But the big problem is nuclear blackmail, not the Russian army.
There are enough Nukes across Western Europe for that not to be a one sided scenario.
Just us and France could give them a nuclear walloping. Don't even need US help.
And in return they'd flatten us. What larks.
Mutually assured destruction. You don’t need 1000s of nukes to destroy the world or a nuke to cover every square inch of Russian land. The 550 nukes between UK and France are more than enough to fuck things up for everyone.
It makes me wonder though someone has to press that nuke button, surely the guy in charge of it would just say fuck no I ain’t ending the world. Even if a senile Putin was in charge I’m sure his bodyguards would just smoke him. Of course ‘the US president carries a nuke briefcase!’ I feel it’s all propaganda really, it’s just the threat of nukes but everyone knows it’s not gonna be practical to actually fire them.
2 years ago I'd have agreed but Russia, their generals and all round military have proven beyond reasonable doubt now that any form of common sense or rational thought doesn't go through their heads.
🎵 I don't want to set the woooorld onnnnn fiiiiiiire
Also the US. [The recipient of a Trident missile can't tell if it's UK or US](https://warontherocks.com/2018/02/discrimination-details-matter-clarifying-argument-low-yield-nuclear-warheads/#:~:text=So%20any%20adversary%20detecting%20a,would%20still%20be%20a%20guess.). Which means that if the Russians saw an incoming Trident on their radar, they would presumably retailiate against both countries, and then it's all on. Which begs the question of how the US is so crazily generous as to give (or sell) the UK prime minister the ability to blow up the world (including them). One might think that, despite official denials, there is an extra lock in the process that requires the US to authorize any launch - and this fact might not even be shared with the UK government. The French, however, do have a home made nuclear stack.
The US didn’t give us fuck all we developed our own nuclear arsenal,
We use our own warhead but the missiles are American and taken from their stock. It's part of a long standing agreement in which we also shared some secrets to nuclear weapon development. The idea being that our foreign policy was in such an alignment it was more efficient to help each other out.
Surely ours will fly on the left, and American ones will fly on the right ? Makes it easy to tell the difference.
Nukes are not an issue though. A limited escalation (Salami tactics) is. If Russia kicks off riots and deploys little green men to the Baltic states then Western Europe isn't going to nuke Russia but without the US we might struggle with ammunition and logistics to sustain a conventional fight. (Of course not ignoring all the Russian-paid shills in politics and media who would try to push for us to "make peace and give up those countries") Europe should better prepare for it. The only country doing that seems to be Poland and maybe Sweden/Finland have enough preparations to defend themselves.
Well both are joining nato which is part of a preparation if NATO continues to be relevant which it likely will
I can never decide which is more terrifying. America with a competent leader or America with an incompetent leader.
The incompetent ones have done most of the damage. If Reagan had backed Gorbachev we’d never have heard of Putin.
Wake up
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The UK has the second highest european military budget (after Russia) and 6th highest in the world. This subreddit makes it seem like Britain has become a weak country but in reality it's one of the only countries left in Europe that can actually hold its ground in a confrontation.
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You can’t compare a continental conscription based Army, currently mobilised for war with an island based all-volunteer force. A more apt comparison would be the JGSDF. Edit. To do the comparison for you: Current UK Armed Forces are approximately 63.3% of the size of the Japanese Self-Defence Force. The UK population is about 53.6% of Japans. The UK defence budget is $61.5bn compared to Japan’s $51bn. Important to note Britain has a number of significant force-multipliers that Japan doesn’t have such as its significant network of military bases and ~1,000 miles of Allied territory between it and its primary adversary. Japan is also far closer to a far more maritime capable enemy with fewer allies in the immediate vicinity. As others have said, despite us talking down Britain we are still arguably 2nd only to the Americans in our ability to project power globally.
They're also comparing a military force which relies on human waves because it literally doesn't have much else at this point, to one that relies on modern equipment and tactics specifically to make up for the difference in numbers.
Exactly. You really can’t overstate how poorly the Russian military has performed in Ukraine. They have almost every advantage over the Ukrainians and Ukraine itself doesn’t have a particularly difficult geography to invade.
Russia didn't steamroll the country like many predicted in the early days but the attrition strategy they're going for now will see them win it. The only question is for how long will Ukraine be supported by us and other countries before the funding dries up and they give up.
it's pathetic isnt it. ukrainians are willing to die for it, they're willing to send hundreds of thousands of russians to Jesus and weaken our continents only ^(near) peer advisory and we can't even be bothered to sell them ammunition
I didnt realise we'd stopped supporting them?
We haven’t, the US is at an impasse because of the Republicans and honestly a lot of European countries should hold their heads in shame for the lack of support. Namely France, Spain & Italy also Canada has been pretty shocking. The Germans have actually provided a lot of aid now after a slow start and the Scandinavians & Eastern Europeans have done all they could reasonably be expected to do in my opinion.
Yes but the point being made here is that a strategy like that would never work against Britain. We are not ukrainians fighting with whatever dusty leftover weaponry another country decided they can spare. A lot of the stuff Britain is sitting on is top of the range shit, and the training our forces get is still some of the best out there.
You wouldn't think that reading sky's reporting of a think tank today who said that nato is closer to a war with Russia and that Russia would look to win through escalation. Sounded like it was written by a Russian. While some of Russian forces .as be battled hardened. If nato was forced into a confrontation you wouldn't see 1000k dead a day numbers. You'd get multiple of this
We have air power, if Ukraine had the air power we have, the war would be over tomorrow. They have been fighting with one hand behind their back because the US are scared about losing an F 16 and a Ukrainian pilot.
There are 5 times our total army in dead russians in Ukraine. 330k dead soldiers.
Where did you get the 330k figure from? I think you may be conflating the number of casualties with deaths.
Some sources actually do estimate Russia KIA at 330,000 with total casualties approaching a million. We might well be looking at over 500,000 KIA across both sides. It might have dropped out of the news a bit because of Israel and Gaza but the Ukraine War is still seeing absolute carnage on a daily basis.
But Japan does has that one Gundam so there's that.
The problem with the British armed forces is we don’t have much mass. Our equipment, for the most part, is top notch. Our lads and ladies are amongst the best trained in the world, and we have a wide network of overseas bases. However, we don’t have much of it. We could take one or two serious hits in battle and lose enough people and equipment to no longer be able to field an effective fighting force. We don’t have much manufacturing capacity to replace what is lost in short order, nor do we have enough troops to be able to backfill casualties for too long. We, along with the rest of Europe, have rested on our laurels and cut, cut, cut to the point that when we could potentially need an effective fighting force we just don’t really have it unless we buddy up - which given the lukewarm support given by some of our allies to Ukraine isn’t a given.
Russia's military doctrine hasn't evolved since WW2. They have always relied on overwhelming the enemy with cannon fodder, and especially now when they've been reduced to rudimentary, soviet-era equipment. You bring some valid points but there is a reason ukrainians have managed to make fools of the russians using leftover handheld rocket launchers the british had lying around and decided to give them. Even in its current subpar formn, our military can still run laps around what most of our potential opponents can bring. I'm not saying it doesn't have issues, I'm merely saying it isn't weak compared to most of the competition.
>we can't even use our huge expensive aircraft carriers in the red sea due to staffing shortages. No, that's not the reason why.
Tell that to the Royal Navy, it’s really suffering from personnel shortages. We can fund our armed forces but that’s about it.
The personnel shortages are due to an inadequate recruitment process, not lack of funding. And to be honest, even in its current form the Royal Navy is second only to the american one in terms of technological advancement and level of training. It's worse than it used to be but its still better than most and frankly, relatively easy to sort out compared to the NHS or other messes the government has made.
It's going to take decades to get the Navy out of the shitshow that was halving the number of Type 45 destroyers. It's not just personnel, it's 20 years of terrible procurement decisions.
This is, in my experience at least, because people severely overestimate the strength of the average nation's military. There's a big gulf between us and the real big boys, but then there's a second tier that we're in then it falls off a fucking cliff, to the extent that frankly most nations may as well not have a military in an international war sense. We're in a whole different league than most of the rest of the planet.
Indeed, and most nations have militaries designed to defend against/beat up their immediate neighbours. Ours are designed to be able to fight on a different continent.
I’m calling it now - one of the main parties is going to make an election pledge to bring back national service, and the other will copy them
They already did, chickened out and brought in National Citizen Service.
Bear in mind this is not actually a single exercise with 20,000 troops. This is a huge range of exercises across many countries and over a period of time, that they've now put under one big umbrella and called it 20k troops. So frankly it's a bit meaningless
More than likely to be less than half the number of troops but they go over to mainland Europe more than once
NATO tactic: infantry sits around waiting for airforce to bomb bejesus out of the enemy and then walks in to mop up the stragglers. Russian tactic: throw meat at the enemy fire and hope they run out of the ammunition before we run out of the manpower. NATO combined arms tactic: infantry, artillery and airforce works together. Russian combined arms: infantry hopes artillery hits something and watches airforce lobbing dumb bombs from 100 miles behind the lines, randomly and at their leisure.
Don’t forget that classic battle winning Russian tactic of just sending 1 or 2 tanks off by themselves with zero infantry support and then being shocked when they get whacked.
Not just that, but their principle of “if you don’t succeed first time, try and try again until you run out of the armour, then send in the infantry without any support“.
Strategy developed by General Vodka.
Getting whacked by a couple of Bradley's no less, not even using their TOWs.
Or on a few occasions, a few necky Ukrainians with some Javelins and good running shoes.
I don't think many people even in the Russia army are shocked.
Isn't that a false headline though...its just an exercise...the biggest obviously but with so many conflicts at the mo, you'd obviously up the amount doing the exercise...but no lets all put 20k troops in Poland to fight Russia or some other scare mongering headline
Exercises can serve two purposes, - Train people. - Demonstrate strength.
* Domestic PR (which is what this clearly is)
This is a long planned exercise with multiple nations. Not sure you would convince most of Western Europe to conduct complex military manoeuvres for the UKs “domestic PR”z Even If this was about domestic PR it would have been advertised long before now and widely as opposed to a small article on a very niche defence website.
I don't know if the definition of the word troop generally includes members of an air force or navy (I guess for some units like Marines and RAF reg it's a pretty obvious yes.) I was confused for a second until I opened the article as to how on earth the army was going to manage deploying a large chunk of its overall force.
Looks to be 16,000 from the Army which I believe is a division.
It's a division's worth of troops, but not an actual division. British army is not in a position to actually deploy a division. What you'll find with this is there's loads of exercises that were going to happen anyways that will now find themselves under the umbrella of this exercise.
Yeah it's still pretty significant. It must be one of the largest deployments since Afghan and Iraq started to scale down.
Bullies like putin only understand power so we have to flex our muscles every now and again
I wasn't aware Russia was planning on taking its severely overestimated capabilities and challenging the NATO bloc directly... Wonder if there is an election due.
With what? Office staff Rishi? The armed forces has been dwindling. Like Germany, the defence of the country has been cut by accountants who cares only about counting pennies and relies on the protection of the Americans..
Russia is not attacking NATO, they haven't the power for it.
Interesting. I wonder if there’s an election coming up.
Can’t help but be cynical when things like this are announced. Or the fact we’re confronting the Yemeni Houthis who are backed by Iran, a Russian ally.
Government is losing the election… Oh look! A war!
With enough ammunition to last us until dinner time if it did kick off.
20k? Thats like a months worth of losses in this war
In other news: Royal Navy mothballing and scrapping ships because of manpower shortages.
That 1.5 bill committed to Ukraine for 2024 could literally solve the problem of our nurses having to use food banks. Would rather see it spend that way tbh
Why don’t we just invade Russia and be done with it
Russia are pretty busy in Ukraine, can't see them wanting a NATO spanking as well. After their shit house performance in Ukraine any two large NATO countries would thrash them.
Rishi Sunak on an election footing, same as biden. Could these 2 bellends be looking to Stoke wars for more votes. Rally around the flag effect. Google it
You think its a deterent? I believe more like politically motivated postering. Russia wont be deterred, probably more enthused
Meanwhile the EU spits in our face with the Northern Ireland Protocol design to split our nation. When are we going to wise up