The NATO wargamed expectation for the Baltic’s is that Russia invades very quickly ( faster than the planned ukraine 3 day operation as they’re smaller), overthrowing the government before NATO can react in the expectation that NATO would struggle to invade a deafeated nation, and so fragmenting the alliance.
If this sounds insanely risky, well Putin never did it. But as a plan it’s not too bad.
I think you know better than me the state of Europe’s readiness to counter this, they are extremely aware of the possibility.
The other point is that for Ukraine support this isn’t just a generic issue with size of military in the abstract, Europe as a whole does not have enough factories producing specifically artillery shells to support the artillery dominated land war in Ukraine.
Ramping those up would take time, so even if Europe tries to help the forms it can take will differ to the USA and force different (worse? I can’t judge) choices on the ground.
The NATO strategy reacted by placing the ARF there + placing some Polish high readiness forces there.
Artillery shell production is an issue,but has been massively expanded during the last year, so has been the production of other ammo- the issue with Ukraine is more the fact that they do not use NATO standards and that there are a multitude of systems in use.
But art. ammo also is an issue for the Russian armed forces,so at least in that direction it basically equals out.
The NATO wargamed expectation for the Baltic’s is that Russia invades very quickly ( faster than the planned ukraine 3 day operation as they’re smaller), overthrowing the government before NATO can react in the expectation that NATO would struggle to invade a deafeated nation, and so fragmenting the alliance.
If this sounds insanely risky, well Putin never did it. But as a plan it’s not too bad. I think you know better than me the state of Europe’s readiness to counter this, they are extremely aware of the possibility.
The other point is that for Ukraine support this isn’t just a generic issue with size of military in the abstract, Europe as a whole does not have enough factories producing specifically artillery shells to support the artillery dominated land war in Ukraine. Ramping those up would take time, so even if Europe tries to help the forms it can take will differ to the USA and force different (worse? I can’t judge) choices on the ground.
The NATO strategy reacted by placing the ARF there + placing some Polish high readiness forces there. Artillery shell production is an issue,but has been massively expanded during the last year, so has been the production of other ammo- the issue with Ukraine is more the fact that they do not use NATO standards and that there are a multitude of systems in use.
But art. ammo also is an issue for the Russian armed forces,so at least in that direction it basically equals out.