Nato lives and dies by fighting delayed actions if the hammer ever fell in the Ukraine or anywhere else in Europe until America re-enforces with air and land power.
Right now Germany has about 400 main battle tanks and about 4000 armored fighting vehicles, they have about 700 fighters and they are woefully short of artillary as they have under 200 heavy guns and about 250 MLRS. Its unlkely that Germany would commit all of those to the field.
France would probably be drawn into the fight as well, they have about 400 tanks and more AFV in the 7000 range, They have over 1000 fighters that they can commit, They're heavier on heavier artillary with about 900 guns but only have 60 MLRS systems
The other military that would heavily contribute would be the Brits with 400 tanks and 7000 AFV's as well as 900 aircraft and shy of 200 artillary pieces.
So I doubt that those forces would fully commit because that would be silly. But lets say that the Brits and French and Germans each put half of their tanks in the field at 600 and put half of their AFV in the field at about 9000, move their heavy artillary pieces into the field at 750 and move a bunch of their aircraft into the field at about 2000 (Doubtful but I'm just playing the game)
The Russian's who I would say have the initiative and the defensive positioning have about 15000 main battle tanks, 28,000 AFV, 14,000 artillary pieces in the heavy gun, self propelled and MLRS and 3082 fighters and bombers available that they can even strip from their secured Eastern and Southern and Northern Military groups to re-enforce.
They could leave a sizable reserve and still put several thousand tanks several thousand AFV/APC, several thousand Artillary pieces and a lot more fighters in the air. at any one time.
They would also be able to move a lot of men with rifles forward.
To be honest, America should have been re-enforcing NATO by now as a strong message to Putin and sending arms to the Ukraines and advisers instead of sending several tonnes of Rations best served hot.
As it stands if the balloon goes up (I don't know if it will now as Russia is getting everything that they want) all they need to do is slow down American Re-enforcements by Sea and batter the NATO forces to at the very least a high tech standstill that the Russians will probably win due to a superior supply situations and superior numbers. (remember in the whole grand Libya NATO action, NATO aircraft ran out of smart bombs within 30 days).
I've basically said that based on pure math that NATO is now going to have to accept the Status Que that the Crimea is going to stay Russia and be garrisoned and that the Ukraine is probably going to at some point be broken up into a lose federation that Russia will slowly find a way to gobble up over the next several years.
I believe that because of NATO reluctance and the slowness of their reply that any kind of confrontation is not winnable.
Will sanctions work? Probably in the long run they might, but I doubt that the Russians are going to give up their wins.
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