Europe vs US wars. Who would win - Part 2.

cross training my ass we teach you lot how not to be idiots in return you shoot people for us

 

And you know this how exactly?

I myself have helped train and trained alongside a great many of these. I have worked with a Royal Marine Captain who was attached to my unit so he could get more specialized Amphibious Warfare, Desert Warfare and Jungle Warfare training then were available in the UK.

I have served now for over 15 years, and seen such training operations a great many times. So unless you can speak from first-hand knowledge I find your arguments rather baseless.

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And you know this how exactly?

I myself have helped train and trained alongside a great many of these. I have worked with a Royal Marine Captain who was attached to my unit so he could get more specialized Amphibious Warfare, Desert Warfare and Jungle Warfare training then were available in the UK.

I have served now for over 15 years, and seen such training operations a great many times. So unless you can speak from first-hand knowledge I find your arguments rather baseless.

 

I think UK would be just as good at the battalion level, but the US is miles ahead in anything larger than battalion size.

I really hate to say it, but I think the US would stand a chance of taking Germany, or atleast part it. Then the Europeans would be mobilized, counter attack and destroyer all the US force. The problem is some of the bases are shared so it would be hard for the US to do anything without the Europeans knowing about it. I don't see the point in trying it, the US would just lose about 100,000 troops KIA, casualties and POW's which I would personally just shoot anyway in a war, and lot of aircraft, it would also be very important training for the European forces and commanders. Once the Europeans get the mix of equipment right, finish training division and corps sized forces, I don't see the US being able to win in a land campaign.

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I think UK would be just as good at the battalion level, but the US is miles ahead in anything larger than battalion size.

I really hate to say it, but I think the US would stand a chance of taking Germany, or atleast part it. Then the Europeans would be mobilized, counter attack and destroyer all the US force. The problem is some of the bases are shared so it would be hard for the US to do anything without the Europeans knowing about it. I don't see the point in trying it, the US would just lose about 100,000 troops KIA, casualties and POW's which I would personally just shoot anyway in a war, and lot of aircraft, it would also be very important training for the European forces and commanders. Once the Europeans get the mix of equipment right, finish training division and corps sized forces, I don't see the US being able to win in a land campaign.

 

Wow, makes me glad that you are not in the military. Although higher level commands giving orders like that would more then likely working strongly in the favor of the US.

This is no longer 1941. And I am sure that if that kind of order was ever passed down either officially or unofficially, you would likely have a revolt among the armed forces of that nation. The vast majority of us are not butchers, and if some Officer was to tell me to shoot prisoners I would absolutely refuse to comply, without question.

Doing so is a war crime so serious that even doing so "under orders" would earn you a short walk on the end of a rope. And after the outrage of the military under such orders, imagine the reaction from the civilians. Hell, we put panties on the head of somebody and people start to scream of "war crimes" trials. Purposefully shooting thousands upon thousands of legitimate POWs from countries that are part of the Hague and Geneva Conventions and Protocols is without precidence.

If that happened, I expect the war would afterwards be very short. It would be along the level of using chemical weapons. The population of the nation that did it first would probably try to lynch it's leadership, and other countries in their Alliance would likely quickly seperate themselves and make a seperate peace so they were not tied to the atrocity.

 

Europe has yet to dip their feet in the "stealth stink" (silent but deadly). Meaning, the operation of low observable aircraft...a few have been given training in the B-2 in USAF/RAF exchange programs to prepare for operating the JSF.

 

I think you are right it would work against the Europeans to murder tens of thousand of US troops. My apologies.

 

Ok that they aren't mobilized, i don't think that in tense nerves situation any EU government allows reinforcements to those bases, and the air support have to come from usa only because i think it's difficult to make sorities with EU AA defending USA's bases, that are not USA's but are shared and in majority of cases USA troops are a little part. I don't know if you know bases shared with US troops in Europe, but usually ammo depots and other supports are often km away from the base in other sites. Let's take as an example camp Darby, near Livorno is one of the main bases in europe, in camp Darby there are usually ammo and logistics units, sometimes operative units. The base is shared with Col Moschin (Ita army tier1) on the other side on the canal and other NATO troops, there are two regiments of Italian paratroopers within 20 km (Folgore and Tuscania), would the support units take Florence during the first night? The airports are shared and there w'd be clashes between airmen and the europeans will manage to blow the runways and USAF planes

 

How long would it take for the Europeans to get this mix right? You also have to remember that Europe wouldn't suddenly form into a single cohesive unit. The U.S. military is (I believe offhand) currently bigger than all of the European militaries put together. European militaries come from dozens of different countries with different languages, cultural practices, doctrine, and equipment. The U.S. would be a tremendous advantage in terms of command and control. Look at Libya, Europe had to rely on the U.S. for most C&C and recon roles. A squadron of F-16s here, Rafales there, and Migs over there aren't suddenly going to come together and defeat 3 squadrons of U.S. aircraft operating in sync and with the coordination a multi-country alliance could never develeop. You also have to consider political divisions. What if France and Britain have fundamentally different views on how to win the war?

That said, I don't see the U.S. winning a land campaign just because it wouldn't make much sense. What could they gain from occupying Europe? I think in a sandbox scenario the U.S. would steamroll Europe in a ground war scenario, but once you mix geographics and hostile civilain populations into the mix it becomes a very different situations. I think the U.S. would just end up blockading much of Europe and launching countless airstrikes in the region with its much superior long range penetrators. I could see some amphibious operations in Iceland or some other smaller islands to serve as a bases. Such a conflict would be mostly an air and naval battle. It's also impossible to forsee what other alliances would be made with Russia, China, etc.

 

Most likely, the U.S. would withdrawal most of its forces as the road to war escalated. If something did spontaneously break out I think some of the naval bases could serve as beachheads for follow on troops. The U.S. can mobilize reactionary forces much more quickly than European countries. It constantly has MEUs and "tier 1" army units capable of deploying anywhere in the world within 48 hours. It could rather quickly reinforce a naval base with 2,000 or 3,000 forces with all their equipment and even some armor. Most people don't realize how long it takes most units just sitting at bases to mobilize. You're talking about weeks in most cases, and maybe even months with heavy units. As I said earlier though, the U.S. would probably quickly abandon these bases.

 

It's hard to keep the control of naval bases, ships in enemy harbours are in danger, Naples is not Norfolk, who can keep the control in 48h of euro harbours? Marines in Sigonella that are responsible for Mediterranean and already engaged with other units? With the support of Ammo team of Livorno? And in 48h they can arrive everywhere ok, but when they are already there, moving with choppers with still italian, french and german air forces operatives is ok?. Going into friend territory and redeploy is lot easier than a debarquement and without air superiority is a suicide. Carriers near coasts are in danger if u are attaccking a country with an air force and antiship missile batteries. By example they can reach Beirut in 48h because they are already in Italy, 6th fleet in Naples, Marines in Sigonella and Ammo in Livorno, ok, let's pack, 48h and let's go there...but who can be in europe in 48h when the guys supposed to be there in 48h are the ones that you sayd whithdrowed or engaged?

 

You are making several key mistakes here.

The US forces would not be living in a vacuume. They would be seeing the mobalization of the enemy forces, and mobilizing themselves. You can't simply go up to the host government and decide to mobilize without other nations finding out, and responding in kind. So as say Italy is mobilizing, so is the US.

And the US keeps units from Battalion to Division size in a constant state of mobilization, ready to deploy anywhere from within 6-48 hours.

Let's take this scenario for example. The US discovers an Italian mobilization (from SIGINT, HumanINT, or some other source), and activates it's own units. Within hours, Battalions of US Army and US Marines will start airlifting to their destination. At the same time, any other assets will be moving in or arriving, either dropped off or airlifted from their Amphibious carriers, or moved from other countries.

At the same time, air assets also start to move. Naval air units from all over will converge, as will Air Force (remember, we had no problem launching strikes from the US, attacking Iraq, then flying back to the US).

The US constantly has units packed up and ready to go on this short of a notice. That is how we had "boots on the ground" in Saudi Arabia within 48 hours of the invasion of Kuwait. And why we could invade Grenada with over 7,000 troops less then a week after the coup. A large percentage of our ground troops and aviation assets are on "stand-by" 24-7, just for this kind of instance.

And with longer warning, we can be even more prepared. An incident like you try to make out would not just "happen". Like WWII, we would see it coming weeks or even months in advance.

But no other nation on the planet keeps so many troops in a stand-by status at all times. And remember, no European nation could conduct such operations within a few days either. Your average military unit at base during peace time is normally at around 40-65% readyness. They have equipment being fixed, training going on, individuals on leave or under medical convelescence, all kinds of things. Plus everything they normally do not keep "on hand", from fuel and bullets to rations and field supplies.

You go up to any Garrison Division, and they might be able to put together 1-2 Battalions within 72-96 hours, if they are lucky. And those would largely be ad-hoc units, or where some units are canibalized of supplies and equipment to outfit the others.

This is simple logistics. If you think some Tank unit in France has 100% of it's equipment in operating condition while in garrison with no threat on the horizon, you have no idea what you are talking about.

And you may be to young or not remember the Cold War, I am not. We constantly knew the readyness and status of almost every major Soviet unit, just as they knew the same of our units. And the preperation of such units was constantly monitored and evaluated. Any change was obvious and caused a similar change in the forces of the other side.

And remember, when computing attack-defense numbers, you generally want to attack with a 3-5 times or larger force then the defending force. So if they have a Battalion, better bring a Division. If they got a division, better bring a heavy Brigade. So the US would not need anywhere near as many forces in the defense as Europe would need in an attack.

And this is only going over the military, not touching the political side. If you think every country in Europe would go along with something like this, you are insane.

 

I think it would take the European 2-3 years to get the right mix, 4 years to get enough equipment. It wouldn't be a disagreement between the UK and France, it would be blocks of countries wanting to do different things. I think European would join together to defend themselves from the US, maybe even after a year or two giving more powers to a central government, nodoubt the EU. There would still be disageements about what should be built where, but the EU would take control of the situation. This is why I see the UK joining the US rather than Europe, we really don't want to give more power to the EU.

 

I simply do not see this ever happening because Europe (and the EU) is an unholy mess.

And by that, I mean when talking about concensus.

If you try to get the general opinon over something from 5 European nations, you get 5 different answers. They caon't considate on anything. Not everybody wants the currency, they speak many different languages, and many even try to hold onto their traditional units of measure.

And a military command would be even worse. Imagine the reaction of Germany and the UK if the overall commander of such an operation was a French General, or a Portugese General? Think about what would happen if an Italian Brigade Commander ordered 2 Greek Battalions to assault a fortified position, as he held his own Italian Battalion in reserve.

I can see things already being an unholy mess, and units leaving the battle and countries ignoring the orders of the "Supreme Commanders" and doing things the way they want to do them instead.

 

The whole thing would be better off run by the UK telling everybody else what to do. The problem is France would also want to do that, then you would have countries going off into blocks, one support the UK and the other France. The French would want all the equipment to be their equipment and expect Europeans countries to pay France for it. Countless times in alliance wars the French have been defeated, by the British and their allies. So I don't really think it could work unless the British were in control.

The EU can't get anything important done when you have 3 different EU leaders all wanting different things for political and not military reasons.

 

There is no evidence that the USA could defeat any small nation conventionally, let alone the EU.

The US, at the height of its military power, could not defeat Vietnam.

 

I suggest you figure out what "conventional" wars are. Then read a lot more history about the conflict in Vietnam than you currently have.

 

The only thing that can take as long time as you describe is a political decision (and here we're talking about a fictional war USA vs whole of EU united and both of things are very hard), entire ita army can be activated in 2/3 weeks, from a NATO report of 80's. Now the army is a lot smaller and efficient, we don't have hundreds of structures to mobilize and a great distance to travel from a depot to another one. And the problem still persists, the first thing before boots on the ground is air superiority, to get air superiority you need a base near Europe and a huge struggle of AWACS and Tankers, sending C5 Galaxy without having air superiority it's a pigeon shoot. As you say also EU intelligence can smell the war, and in that case in your opinion they'd let c5 or c17 with reinforcements arriving in airports (that are shared) and ships in the bases? If activating a reserve brigade is matter of 1 week, closing and defending a small airspace is a matter of hours.

 

There's no way in hell the entire European military can mobilize in 2/3 weeks. More like 3-6 months....or longer.

 

Yawn.

So what advantage did Vietnam have that the EU does not?

 

If the USA attacked the EU, the EU would take 6 months to mobilize its military? Really, that's what your saying?

 

My money to standoff. Or US victory in very-long-term. Europe simply lacks offensive equipment to fight a country on the other continent without foothold. No strategic bombers, no serious fleet(meaning somehow capable fighting US Navy or evading it and striking the mainland). On the other hand Europe itself and it's armies is too big and advanced to deal with. Preparations to Gulf War took almost a year. And you can't achieve total air superiority over it, like it was in Iraq. And there won't be any foothold for US this time. So, if conventional, it would turn into throwing thousands of cruise missiles into Europe. Everything would depend of Euros ability to shot them down. If unconventional, then total US victory, cuzz i don't think they have an early warning of a missile attack system, so they won't be able to respond. It is just my opinion.

 

Actually, preperations for the Gulf War took just over 6 months. And about half of that was not military, but political. Waiting to form the coalition that would be used to attack Saddam, getting the UN the time it needed to try it's endless and useless resolutions (get out of Kuwait or you go to bed with no ice cream). And finally a lot of it was waiting for the right time of year to strike (after the hotest time of the year, before the spring wind and rain storms swept into the region).

But Saddam attacked on 1 August 1990, counter-offensive started on 17 January, the counter-invasion on 24 February. It was all done by 28 February. So it was far less then a year.

However, the biggest advantage anybody has in attacking Europe is simply the fact that it is not a single country. It is many countries, each with their own agendas, their own militaries, and their own political requirements. Anybody that thinks they would ever respond to anything as a unified body is simply kidding themselves.

Heck, just look at Europe prior to WWII. Germany chopped off piece after piece of other nations, and most of Europe did nothing, wanting to believe the lies that that was "their last territorial advance". It was not until they attacked Poland that most of Europe finally woke up. And by then, it was just to late.

Personally, I find such threads as this interesting (because of the logistics involved), but also disturbing because they actually seem to believe that this could happen. If Europe really wanted the US totally off the continent, that is really easy to do. Pull out of NATO, and form a new Pan-European organization without the US involved at all.

But because of the thousands of years of distrust, I doubt that would ever happen. The US is convient because it is not only larger then Europe, the US is also a "Global nation", and will do what it thinks is in it's own best interest, without to much care as to what other nations think. We do not have to appease our "German-Americans", our "English-Americans", or our "French-Americans".

Plus they like the US involved in NATO because if push came to shove, we can bring a lot of really neat toys that they do not have. After all, what other nation has "Heavy Bombers"?

Well, France had the Mirage IV, retired in 1996.
The UK had the Victor, retired in 1969 and converted to fuelers (which were retired in the early 1990's).
The Soviets had the Bison (M-4), the Bull (Tu-4), the Badger (Tu-16), the Bear (Tu-95), and the Blackjack (Tu-160). Out of all of those, the only one surviving is the Tu-160, of which the Russian Air Force has 16.

Meanwhile, the US still has around 80 B-52 bombers, 90 B-1 bombers, and 20 B-2 bombers. That is a powerfull strike arm that no other country can match.

But trust me, no country in Europe is going to simply attack the US in the bases in Europe. All they have to do is do like France did, and pull out of NATO. Then the US just packs up and leaves.

 

Considering that the redeployment of troops is military preparation, which started 7th august 1990, it took 5 month to prepare.

I assuming that "Europe" would have sort of united command and common policy in this scenario. Idea of US attacking a number of European countries, which don't form some kind of union or visa versa is totally senseless to me.

Now they have sort of common market, currency and even supernational government. Their salvation is that US can't use all it's might, but only navy, marines corps and long-range aviation. ~500 F/A-18 (considering all AC would be avaliable, which is impossible) might be not enough to deal with Europe's combined AF.

In my mind it was so cuzz a lot of countries those times thought that they are the most smartass nation on entire Earth.Everybody was toying with Germany and trying to set it on their enemies. During this game Germany became stronger and when people realized it is too dangerous, it was too late for many of them.

Who is the dog and who is it's tail?

Have to correct you,
Tu-22M3 and Tu-95 are in service in RuAF. There are ~150 Tu-22 and ~64 Tu-95. It makes our strategic bombers fleet bigger than yours.
There are China's 120 Tu-16 copies too.

 

The UK would currently not join the rest of Europe in a war against the US. We dislike the EU and don't really have that much in common with the southern and eastern European countries. The UK would use the war to retake Ireland and the oil and gas fields from Norway. Then the UK would be the USA's aircraft carrier again like in WW2, with added bases in Cyprus and Gibraltar. Then I only see British Isles and US victory in a few of years at the most.

 

Earlier you said it took a year, now you say it took 5 months. Please make up your mind.

It is senseless. And no, Europe does not have any kind of "EU command structure". It has a shell of one, but no authority to do anything.

I did not say bomber, I said heavy bomber. "Strategic" basically means just that it can carry a nuclear payload.

The Tu-22M is a bomber, but not a heavy bomber. It's actual role is more like that of the FB-111 then that of the B-1 or B-2. Smaller bomb load, more of a strike and penetration aircraft then a conventional strategic aircraft. Well designed to penetrate defenses and launch a nuclear payload, or even against a single target. But these are not "Bomb Trucks" like the Tu-4 was.

I did mention the Tu-95, however there are no more Tu-95/Tu-95M bombers in service in Russia. Those have all been retired, however the Tu-95Ms (cruise missile platform) is still in service. So while these were Heavy Bombers, they are not anymore.

And I did not mention China because I was listing the assets of European nations.