Down goes the money for more traditional hardware and troop numbers. NATO is struggling to figure out how to respond, with member nations holding differing perspectives on when Russian behavior crosses a red line. The greatest concern for Russia in this scenario would be how the Ukrainian military and police would respond. A review of the military balance in the immediate Baltic theater would seem to give Russia an initial advantage in an aerial campaign against NATO, if Moscow's political objective was to push NATO out of the Baltics. What would that look like? He added: "If there is a threat to the territorial integrity of our country, and for protecting our people, we will certainly use all the means available to us - and I'm not bluffing.". "In addition to the immediate death and suffering and economic and societal collapse, in the years following the war, the phenomenon of nuclear winter would exacerbate the catastrophe," he said, pointing to one study which found that more than five billion people could eventually die from a nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia. Another option for Russia, of course, is to shift to a conventional fight. There'd be attempts to "blind" the other by knocking out communications, including satellites, or even cutting the vital undersea cables that carry data. Bombers are particularly useful in this situation, as they could be used to actively hunt down what remained of Russias ICBMs, particularly those like the SS-27 mounted on 16-wheeled missile transport trucks. "I would not want to speculate how long it would take for humanity to recover," Glaser said. The lesson is that as long as nuclear weapons exist, there is a possibility they could be used. NATO said earlier this week it had stepped back from a floated idea to reinforce the alliance's military presence in countries bordering Russia, preferring for now to suspend cooperation with Moscow and give more time to talks. "No Americans have been under Russian artillery or rocket fire or been on the receiving end of significant Russian electronic warfare, the jamming and collecting, for example, not at tactical levels.". His statement was blunt: The Russia military would begin air strikes in neighboring Syria within the hour and the American military should clear the area immediately.It was a bout of brinksmanship between two nuclear-armed giants that the world has not seen in decades, and it has revived Cold War levels of suspicion, antagonism and gamesmanship.With the launch of airstrikes in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated a proxy war with the U.S., putting those nation's powerful militaries in support of opposing sides of the multipolar conflict. CNBC takes a look at the possible outcomes for Ukraine and what might happen in each of them: 1. Today, the fleet is split between Kalingrad and St. Petersburg, making it difficult to support a larger fleet. He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. ", Sign up for our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter. For now, Obama shows no signs of conceding to Russian control the regions Ukraine has controlled for decades. With hundreds of new aircraft, tanks and missiles rolling off assembly lines and Russian jets buzzing European skies under NATOs wary eye, it doesnt look like Russias economic woes have had any impact on the Kremlins ambitious military modernization program. The intervention threatens to upset Putins chessboard and injects a new force into the conflict that could beat Russias army in the field. The Army deployments are part of a broader U.S. military effort to reassure NATO allies rattled by Russia's actions. The following winter would be particularly harsh, sparing only those reasonably healthy and with access to food and the ability to warm themselves. Russias leadership would then warn that any attempt to retaliate would unleash the rest of the countrys nuclear weapons, killing millions more and destroying the U.S. as a military, political, and economic entity. Vladimir Putin accuses west of 'nuclear blackmail' in rare national address, This is what nuclear war between US and Russia would look like, according to scientists, Flesh-eating microbes are causing huge concern in the US, Man vanishes without a trace after sinkhole swallows up his bedroom while he sleeps, FBI issue safety warning about charging phones at airport. At some point either the Indians or the Chinese might be tempted to solve the problem through escalation, a step that could work as intended, or that could open the door to a much larger and more destructive conflict. About 100 yards across . "That's the basis of the sanctions that the United States and our partners imposed on Russia. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin). If war does break out it could rapidly become more destructive than the Russia-Ukraine War, with conventional and nuclear weapons exacting a horrific toll on both sides. The war game is notable because of the . For the small cadre of U.S. military professionals who've been working alongside Ukrainian government forces, the fight against Russian-backed rebels is a major change from their recent experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even a small-scale nuclear war between two smaller countries would have catastrophic consequences for the rest of the planet. Much of this has been directed at cyber activity - disruptive attacks aimed at undermining the fabric of Western society, influencing elections, stealing sensitive data. Ukrainian servicemen patrol near the chemical plant in Avdeevka, a town just north of the city of Donetsk, on June 20. Its not a situation where more nuclear weapons will make either side safer. But it is now developing some key technologies, new fighting tactics and a brazen geopolitical strategy that is. "We should be able to achieve our objectives and keep the Indo-Pacific, for example, free and open and prosperous into the future. With modern technology and nuclear weapons, some wonder what a new World War would look like. A 19FortyFive tradition we look at where World War III could start as we prepare for 2023. The nuclear surprise attack, known as a first strike, would primarily target Americas land-based nuclear arsenal. That's reflected in the fact that Russia maintains a lone aircraft carrier while the U.S. Navy's 10-carrier fleet operates on a continuing global deployment cycle. Russia's Victory Day parade is an annual extravagance in Red Square. The XII International Aviation and Space Show in Zhukovsky opened Tuesday for specialists and press, with members of the public invited to visit it from Friday, Aug. 28. Indeed, the Pentagon's senior leaders are asking questions that have been set aside for more than 20 years: Make no mistake: Experts agree that the U.S. military's globe-spanning force would clobber the Russian military in any toe-to-toe conventional fight. It's denial." Instead of carriers designed for offensive power projection at sea, the Russians are investing in an expanding fleet of submarines that can supplement their nuclear force and, conventionally, threaten an enemy surface fleet in nearby waters such as the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea or the Mediterranean Sea. April 27, 2023 4:01 am CET. After all, there is little reason to trust Russia at this point. 2023 BBC. "While we were focused on the broader Middle East," she says, "these countries went to school on the Western way of war. During the defense's cross-examination of E. Jean Carroll, Trump's attorney asked the writer why she "did not scream" when she was "supposedly raped.". Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. A nuclear war is extremely unlikely. How much are the Russians truly capable of? Franz-Stefan Gady, the specialist in future warfare, believes this will certainly yield benefits in 20 years' time but before then there will be a worrying gap. So far, the administration has pledged only "nonlethal aid" for training and gear such as Humvees, small drones and radar. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an attack that almost immediately resulted in a combination of sanctions and direct military support for Kyiv. The arrival of these weapons in China's arsenal is now making Washington think twice about going to war to defend Taiwan if China does decide to invade it. There are between 30,000 and 35,000 Russian-backed fighters in Eastern Ukraine, about 9,000 of whom are coming solely from the Russian front, Muzhenko estimates. Ukrainian troops face threats from insurgents and conventionally trained forces. Recent tests of US systems, by contrast, have not gone well. Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that he understands the peril of nuclear weapons. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. In the four-minute-long video, scientists play out a scenario where Russia is attempting to fight off members of NATO. It's not a desire to return to the Cold War.". The simulation assumes that Russia would target major US cities and there are no bomb threat warnings in those major cities. Russian soldiers sit atop their tank during military exercises in the southern Russia's Volgograd region, on April 3, 2014. The simulation begins in the context of a conventional conflictRussia fires a warning shot from a base near the city of Kaliningrad in an attempt to stop a U.S./NATO advance. After . In the final stage of the conflict, both Russia and NATO target the 30 most populated cities and economic centers of the other sideusing 5-10 nuclear warheads on each depending on population. Russias invasion of Ukraine is already one of the most destructive and lethal wars in recent memory, from the shelling of cities to the use of thermobaric vacuum weapons. Thats led experts and civilians, alike, to wonder whatif NATO and the U.S. become directly involved in the conflicta nuclear war between Washington and Moscow might look like. But while Russia's conventional forces are less impressive than its nuclear forces, there are specific conventional areas where the Russians excel among them aircraft, air defenses, submarines, and electronic warfare. According to a recent open-source study (not published in a peer-reviewed journal), such an all-out attack would kill as many as 104,241,000 Americans. Russian air force Su-30MKI fighter jet takes off during the MAKS-2015 International Aviation and Space Show in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015. Russia's inability to make progress may threaten the stability of the Putin government, inclining Moscow to contemplate dangerous escalation. Ethiopia has a civil war, Ukraine's separatist conflict has killed over 14,000 people since 2014, Syria's insurgency simmers on and Islamic State group is rampaging through parts of Africa. Those that survive would be left without power, medical care, communications, and viable food and fuel distribution networks. Not according to Michele Flournoy, who spent years right at the heart of US defence policy. Each location would likely receive a minimum of two nukes in case the first weapon fails to detonate. ", "Of course, we had no access whatsoever to classified information and often used 'simple' rules when allocating weapons to targets.". A 'concentrated' attack is needed to disrupt the stalemated war, Ben Barry said. The strike targets Americas remaining military bases, industry, energy, communications, and transportation facilitiespractically anything that makes 21st-century life worth living. Fortunately, there is good reason to believe that we will have some warning of war; as was the case along the Ukrainian border, Chinese preparation for conflict would be glaringly visible to everyone concerned. The result would be near-total devastation with global consequences. While fighting has thus far remained quite limited, the desire to defend national prestige can rapidly become poisonous for even the wisest and most sensible leaders. This conflict continuation would last only 45 minutes and have a toll of up to 3.4 million victims. Between Russia and the US alone, scientists concluded a nuclear war would kill 3.1 million people within 45 minutes. The second, more devastating countervalue scenario involves an all-out use of nukes to destroy the United States ability to wage war, with the side effect of reducing American society to a pre-industrial level of development. "The Russian defense industry is being rebuilt from ruins," said Vadim Kozyulin, a military expert at the Moscow-based PIR Center, a think tank. Video: As War Between Russia and Ukraine Continues in Europe, North Korea Appears To Be Rebuilding Its Nuclear Test Site (Veuer) The nuclear surprise attack, known as a "first strike," would . Did they look at how much in demand are Russian resources before the sanctioning Russia? ", Yet some see Putin's maneuvers in Syria as some broader geopolitical gambit that aims to secure a deal on Ukraine. "The embarrassment is just going to keep growing over this," Laura Harth, the campaign director at Safeguard Defenders, told Newsweek. Almost any imaginable conflict, however, would end up including the United States and very likely Japan, and would thus constitute a great power war. Five U.S. Army brigadesbacked up by fighters, bombers, and cruise missilesdrive from Poland to Kyiv, then on to Donetsk. A 2020 test of a ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk facility in northwestern Russia. As Russia wages war in Ukraine, experts have described what would happen in a nuclear strike, which is unlikely. There's nothing ordinary about Cold Response 2020. In that quest, he has raised the specter of resurgent Russian military might from Ukraine to the Baltics, from Syria to the broader Middle East. For defensive purposes, Russian planners would have to recognize the risk of NATO coming to Kiev's assistance. It remains unlikely that any of these disputes will develop into a global conflict, although the Ukraine War already has some aspects of great power war. Wed 26 Apr 2023 09.14 EDT Last modified on Wed 26 Apr 2023 16.13 EDT. But while Russia's conventional forces are less impressive than its nuclear forces, there are specific conventional areas where the Russians excel among them aircraft, air defenses, submarines,. So is it all doom and gloom? Farkas is stepping down from her post at the end of October, after five years at the Defense Department. Another aspect of the Russian military that gets overhyped is its Baltic Fleet, the smallest of Russia's main fleets and truly a shadow of its former self. Concerns over the ability of Ukraine to continue the war in the long-term might force Kyiv to take risky steps of its own to break the stalemate. "It's much more about the U.S. than it is about Syria and Assad," Galeotti said. Ukrainian soldiers train outside Kyiv on Feb. 21. The immediate fatalities and casualties that would occur in each phase of the conflict are determined using data from NUKEMAP, an online tool that was developed by Alex Wellerstein at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Russian has lined thousands of troops and large tank and artillery units along its Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian military was on alert on its easter border with Russia on Thursday amid reports that separatist forces launched attacks on a border crossing near the village of Marinyvka. "That's a world war when Americans and Russians start shooting at each other," said US President Joe Biden earlier this month, vowing he would not deploy American troops to Ukraine under any. It is well suited for relying on a particular set of capabilities known as "anti-access and area denial. Have your say in our news democracy. "The static airpower picture would favor the Russians because they have a lot of capability in terms of air defense and a variety of tactical and cruise and ballistic missiles," said Paul Schwartz, a Russian military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. After an initial burst of interest in the video, the view count didn't increase much until late February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and Putin made remarks alluding to the possible use of nuclear weapons, according to Glaser. A simulation shows how a nuclear war between Russia and NATO could potentially play out in a horrific scenario that would result in the deaths of millions of people around the world within hours. Paula Bronstein for Foreign Policy. Russia claims to have some 750 tanks in its western military region, though its unclear how much of that equipment is legitimately combat-ready. But the eye-rolling is hitting epic levels this month as Russia has taken over the . Here, Russian forces would seek to reinforce the breakaway regions in the Donbas with . ', In a rare address to his nation on September 21st, Putin announced a "partial mobilisation" of around 300,000 troops to the war in Ukraine. Dr. Farley is the author of "Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force" (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), "the Battleship Book" (Wildside, 2016), "Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology" (University of Chicago, 2020), and most recently "Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages" (Lynne Rienner, 2023). Russia has preserved, even modernized, its own "triad" with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, a large fleet of long-range strike aircraft and increasingly sophisticated nuclear-armed submarines. 30 Apr 2023 13:25:28 The willingness of the Biden administration to take risky rhetorical positions on the defense of Taiwan indicates that Washington has real concern over the prospects of a Chinese attack. If U.S. forces routed their Russian counterparts and neared the Ukrainian-Russian border, Russia might target them with tactical nuclear weapons (typically 20,000 tons of TNT or less) to stop their advance. Once that happens, all bets are off. As . Their targets are tanks,. But it is encouraging that the U.S. has not responded to Putins threats by raising its own alert status. SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images. Russia's military strategy is focused on access denial. Before its weapon systems are destroyed, Russia fires missiles launched from silos, road-mobile vehicles, and submarines. Fires generating soot could block sunlight, possibly for decades, causing global cooling and shortening growing seasons, causing worldwide food insecurity.. "It became clear that Russia is going to exercise a more ambitious policy in the Middle East. What Would a NATO-Russia War Really Look Like? "One of the ways to gain some quantitative mass back and to complicate adversaries' defence planning or attack planning is to pair human beings and machines," she says. China today spends more on defense annually than Russia, but still imports platforms and advanced weaponry from Russia. Russia has slightly more warheads overall about 8,500 but a slightly fewer 1,800 of them operational. In the current situation, lacking a direct U.S. and Russian confrontation, the likelihood of nuclear war is somewhere near zero. "We have not fought wars the way they do in kind of an urban, mixed urban and nonurban setting with UAVs, with electronic jamming.". March 22, 2014, 5:11 AM PDT. Meia Nouwens believes this leaves them with the choice of responding in either a "minimalist" or "maximalist" fashion, which carries the inherent risk of further escalating tensions. Russia has announced successful tests of its Zircon hypersonic cruise missile, proclaiming that it can defeat any defences anywhere in the world. The Russians recently announced plans for a naval exercise in the eastern Mediterranean this fall, but did not specify exactly when ships would deploy to the region. The borders of Russia today would also look different. Disputes between Athens and Ankara over energy exploration in the Aegean have driven the current tension, although the territorial disagreement underlying the argument have existed for decades. "In all likelihood, yes," he says. In our scenario, well look at a surprise nuclear first strike that leads to all-out war. There may also be a significant public backlash against a change of government led from Moscow. Since then, the simulation has received more than a million views. Staff officers often seethe quietly at an absence of precise political objectives for a war. Top editors give you the stories you want delivered right to your inbox each weekday. These five areas pose the greatest risk for the eruption of what we might be tempted to call "World War III.". "China's People's Liberation Army has built a new agency called the Strategic Support Force which looks at space, electronic warfare and cyber capabilities.". Here, the US has the qualitative edge over its potential adversaries and Michele Flournoy believes it can offset areas where the West is outnumbered by the vast size of China's People's Liberation Army. The United States signalled Friday that a. How badly would Russia suffer? "We cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated," Obama told the U.N. General Assembly in a major speech on Sept. 28. That is why just last month, leaders of five nuclear weapons states, including the United States and Russia, called the avoidance of war between nuclear powers their foremost responsibilities, and affirmed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.. Russian military and security forces would seek to remove the current government and state powers in order to insert replace them . Still more, living downwind from blast zones, would be at risk of illness or death from radioactive fallout. Ukrainian officials in Kiev have made repeated pleas for more. In our scenario, both sides are devastated with no winners. "If we put our minds together and really invest in the right technologies, the right concepts, and we develop those with speed and scale, we should be able to deter great-power war," she says. While this might result in a conventional victory, things could rapidly take a sinister turn. The exercise will feature the Black Sea Fleet's flagship, the guided missile cruiser Moskva, as well as several smaller escort vessels and large amphibious assault and landing ships, Russia's TASS news agency reported. Join the news democracyWhere your votes decide the Top 100, The world has been reminded of a global war threat after Vladimir Putin claimed he isn't 'bluffing' and accused the West of engaging in 'nuclear blackmail. Putin and his military have menaced the Baltic countries, who are among the newest and weakest NATO partners. Russia's aerospace industry, for example, has benefited greatly from international exports to non-Western nations, which go to Russia to buy effective fighter jets that are cheaper than their Western variants. ", You can listen Frank Gardner's full report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, guest-edited by General Sir Nick Carter, the former Chief of Defence Staff, Russia launches pre-dawn missile attack on Ukraine, Chaos at port as thousands rush to leave Sudan, Suspected IS chief killed in Syria, Turkey says. ", Ukrainian serviceman patrol near the chemical plant in Avdeevka, Donetsk region, on June 20, 2015. That's hypersonic missiles - super-charged projectiles that can fly at anywhere between five and 27 times the speed of sound and carry either a conventional or nuclear warhead. These five simmering disputes pose the greatest risk of erupting into "World War III" in 2023. The four-minute audiovisual piece called "Plan A", which was developed by researchers associated with Princeton University's Program on Science & Global Security (SGS), has seen renewed interest since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "We see some very sophisticated air defenses going into those airfields, we see some very sophisticated air-to-air aircraft going into these airfields," Gen. Phillip Breedlove, chief of the U.S. European Command and also the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, said Sept. 28. The ICBMs would target Americas nukes, including the 400 ICBM silos sprinkled across the western United States, nuclear bomber bases in Missouri and Louisiana, and missile submarine bases at Kings Bay, Georgia, and Kitsap, Washington. It's a unique battlespace, and the Americans who have provided training to Ukrainian forces are eager to collect intelligence about the Russians' new mode of combat. Russia currently occupies parts of Ukraine, but the U.S. still considers Moscow's March 2014 invasion illegal and its control there illegitimate. Experts inside Russia believe the incursion into Syria, along with Putin's aggressive speech at the United Nations on Sept. 28, signal his long-term interest in becoming a key player in the region. "This is really quite difficult for them. What Victory Will Look Like in Ukraine. Over the past year tensions between Greece and Turkey have increased substantially, driven in large part by Turkey's assertive foreign policy turn and by the domestic vulnerability of the Erdogan regime. The only alternatives are naval supply lines running from Crimea, requiring a passage of up to 10 days round-trip. This Is What a Nuclear War Between the U.S. and Russia Could Look Like, U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Did they Show more. Saturday 29 April 2023 01:15, UK. They're using sophisticated electronic warfare systems to jam the Ukrainians' communications, radar, GPS and early warning-detection equipment, said Ihor Dolhov, Ukraine's deputy defense minister for European integration. "The simulation was also supported by data sets of the nuclear weapons currently deployed, weapon yields, and possible targets for particular weapons, as well as the order of battle estimating which weapons go to which targets in which order in which phase of the war to show the evolution of the nuclear conflict. Russia still insists it has no plans to invade Ukraine. There will be no return to normalcy or status quo ante. Having said that, accidents can happen and disagreements between two seemingly rational parties can and do quickly spiral out of control. But modern wars are not toe-to-toe conventional fights; geography, politics and terrain inevitably give one side an advantage. However if every nuclear weapon was detonated at the same time, this is what it'd look like. The new forward operating base will give Russia the capability to fly combat air sorties, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance missions and drones across the Middle East. And those next five to 10 years could well see some of the most dangerous challenges to Western security. Mad men, unbound by reality and a survival instinct, might also choose nuclear war. Millions more injured in the attacks and unable to reach a hospital would likely succumb to their injuries. and Russian leaders understand that a full-scale nuclear war would be a civilization-ending event, Drozdenko explains. It might seem like the war in Ukraine is slipping from the radar of the world's media, implying it has reached stalemate and ground to . Did they test out problems with NATO structure? "It is good for us to be aware how they fight," said Evelyn Farkas, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, in an interview with Military Times on Sept. 10. However, the U.S. does not have the same security relationship with Ukraine as it does with NATO member nations and allies such as South Korea and Japan. The Kremlin blames the U.S. and NATO for causing the current crisis. "We are really at a strategic inflection point where we - the US, the UK and our allies - are coming out of 20 years of focusing on counter terrorism and counter insurgency, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lifting our gaze to realise we are now in a very serious great-power competition," she says. What would war between Russia and NATO look like? If your satellites are not communicating and your planners sitting in their underground command bunkers can't be sure what's going on, then it makes it extremely hard to calibrate the next move. He is a former Military Times Pentagon reporter and served as a Middle East correspondent for the Stars and Stripes. Offensive cyber attacks, whether disruptive or predatory, have become a regular daily occurrence, something known as "sub-threshold warfare". It's logistically complex. According to Glaser, a global thermonuclear war on this scale could certainly be considered a "worst-case scenario", although the title of the video hints at the fact that the sequence of events shown is simply part of the standard playbook. By FP Contributors. Russia on June 20 slammed the EU's extension of sanctions over its annexation of Crimea as "blackmail" and vowed it would not be pressured into returning the peninsula to Ukraine. Scientists at Princeton University decided to develop this potential scenario using "independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets. While it seems unlikely that a NATO ally would openly attack another NATO ally, past conflicts have brought the two countries up to the brink of war (and sometimes slightly beyond) notwithstanding their alliance commitments. Photo Credit: Andrey Kronberg/AFP/Getty Images. Before covering the military, he worked as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Texas, the Albany Times Union in New York and The Associated Press in Milwaukee. But over time I think we would be able to degrade it. Tamara Patton, Moritz Ktt, Alex Glaser, Alex Wellerstein, Bruce Blair, Sharon Weiner, Zia Mian, Jeff Snyder, SCOTUS Now Just Another Congressional Committee, Secret Chinese Police Stations in Europe Are 'Tip of the Iceberg', Trump's Attorney Just Blew Carroll Rape Case, King Charles Says Royals Require 'Acting Ability', Ukraine Will Regain 'Significant Territory' From Russia, Florida GOP Paves the Way to Help Ron DeSantis Challenge Trump.
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