Ukraine: if NATO intervenes, the Unexpected will Happen.

[Music] a few days ago talking about the Ukrainian x16 I was warning about the risk of having them based in NATO territory because those bases would be attacked by the Russians I said that was an abyss I didn't want to stare into well I changed my mind in this video we are staring into the abys [Music] I have been mulling over this subject for quite a long time for someone who is deeply interested in the interaction among opposing forces this is almost unavoidable the bone chilling element of this subject is that it is not entirely theoretical on average the United States and NATO countries have been pretty careful trying to avoid a confrontation with Russia but there was for example the French proposal to send troops to Ukraine to relieve Ukrainian forces from logistic tasks to Destin them to combat trolls there was the request to Nato to establish a nly Zone in the west of the country uh to shoot down Russian missiles or the recent promise that Ukraine will join NATO Al bate only at the end of the war like everyone else I rely on new outlets for this kind of political analysis which always comes with a risk bias actually when it comes to politics bias is an avoid voidable so the best thing you can do is finding a way to manage it and here is where ground news which is sponsoring this video becomes really useful ground news is a website and an app that gathers related articles from more than 50,000 sources around the world in one place so you can compare how different Outlets cover the same subject every story comes with a clear breakdown of the political bias credibility ownership and then headlines of the sources reporting all back by ratings from three Independent News monitoring organizations you can learn more by clicking my link ground. news/ Millennium or scanning the QR code here for example take this piece of news about Hungary and NATO it has been reported by 33 sources eight leaning left three leaning right and nine leaning Center the first title that we see reads NATO Hungary agree Orban will not block greater Ukraine support but if we scroll down a bit we have the right leaning source and says Hungary want veto NATO support Ukraine but it won't participate and you can see how the bias of these two titles is clearly different in the first one it seems that Hungary is sort of agreeing but in the second one it clarifies that he's not vetoing only because probably doesn't want to break the unity of the alliance these are patterns that you won't be able to spot without a tool like ground news moreover if you're interested to the conflict in general ground news also has specific subject pages to stay up to date not only for Ukraine but for many different subjects ground news is very important for my research since I try to be as factual and unbiased as I can about something that is often neither black nor white ground news helps me understand the bigger picture by providing comprehensive reporting from diverse sources now go to ground. news/ Millennium or scan my QR code to subscribe today if you sign up through my link you'll get 40% off the Vantage plan which is what I use to get unlimited access to all the features I think ground news is doing a great job and I hope you'll check them out please support the people who support me so if we want to have a meaningful discussion about NATO intervention we must establish a scenario first it will obviously be highly speculative most of this video will be highly speculative because the only ones who have a clear picture are the actual planners in the military headquarters I don't have any pretense to present a factual scenario nor a war game at the end of the day this is just a YouTube video the purpose is to stimulate the discussion and you're all invited to tell your opinion in the comments below an allout war between NATO and Russia is out of question it is a war that can be won you can't conquer Moscow and as for surrender nuclear warheads will start raining before that and symmetrically should the Russians reach the outskirts of Berlin again uh then the same will happen despite what some American analysts say this is a word that is just not worth fighting hence it's not interesting for our thought experiment and I think we should also assume that no nukes or chemical weapons are used in this scenario Ario these remain weapons of Last Resort if they're used we fall back to the case we just discussed for the purpose of this video we just pretend they do not exist a more manageable assumption would be that NATO will intervene to avoid the collapse of the Ukrainian forces and reverse the course of the war so let's imagine that the Russians opened the bridge in the middle of the front where the aif calient is now they managed to take poov and a number of other positions become untenable so the ukrainians start slowly retreating the Russians commit part of their strategic reserve and start quickly progressing toward the Neer on a large front let's assume that they are threatening Neo this is the spearhead of the offensive and the area where they need to be urgently stopped I will assume that there are four Russian mechanized divisions rotating into the spearhead this area may be 60 to 70 kilomet wide and about 130 km deep the long-ter NATO objective might be reestablishing the Ukrainian borders of 1991 including Crimea potentially the secondary but Undeclared objective will be to force a regime change in Russia and a fragmentation of the country but there is a short-term objective too that is stoling the Russian advance and stopping the spearhead this is the priority now because the Russians seem to have the intention of of Crossing theer mind I'm not saying that this is going to happen this is not a prediction this is just an assumption a scenario to study how a full NATO intervention may happen conceptually we may be in an analogue of the 1991 Gulf War there is a territory to be freed from an occupier the occupi territory and armed forces are fair game in theater if the occupi government Falls well it is a bonus what is different from 1991 is that the US and NATO engagements in the rest of the world do remain so not all the force can be focused on one single task and since NATO is intervening to avoid a collapse it can't build forces for a year it must act within few days since this could be a scenario that happens this winter next year the weapon systems involved in the operation are the current ones I am not considering hypothetical news science fiction like systems another important assumption that I'm going to do uh which is not at all given is that NATO is Compact and every country contributes assuming a divided NATO would bring us too much into geopolitics considerations that I simply don't want to make for sake of Simplicity the only country I will exclude from NATO for this purpose is turkey but this is not particularly relevant at least for this video so now let's see what may happen if all this becomes [Music] true the N to Doctrine in cases like this is is simple acquire air superiority use it to degrade your opponent's forces to the breaking point mop them up there's no reason to think that this time would be any different if there was time to prepare for months the beginning of the campaign would be the classic shock and hole in this case we may still expect a small scale initial operation against priority targets I am assuming about one week of preparation before the first combat missions happen I imagine two operational stages like in the 1991 Gulf War The Shield stage where the focus is on stopping the Russian Advance the storm stage which would be an offensive to recover the Ukrainian territory within NATO there are several different commands some are Deployable others are not these are headquarters that include support and they're capable of traveling somewhere and provide the command and control of NATO forces being part of NATO means that a lot of command procedures are standardized everyone speaks the same language with the same terminology produces the same documents in a share format and uses the same communication networks this means that it is relatively easy to mix and match the forces on the ground even if entirely National units still tend to be more efficient the units that should be the first to arrive will likely be part of the NATO response Force National units are assigned to the NRF on rotation these are forces with a high level of Readiness that went through a cycle of 12 to 18 months training before being assigned currently the NRF includes about 40,000 soldiers but there has been a recent decision to increase the force up to 300,000 since the composition is variable it is difficult to say which units will be included one week of preparation would not be enough to bring almost any ground troops to the front save few few airmobile light units two or three weeks of preparation though should be enough to deploy in Ukraine a heavy Brigade reinforced with ancillary units and Aviation elements coming from mixed European NATO countries this may not seem much but redeploying heavy units over long distances is a complex task that requires either Railway transport or specialized Vehicles moreover in this case you must not forget that similarly sized highr NATO units should also hurry to Poland Finland and most of all to the Baltic states to keep a defensive posture the probability that the Russians would want to launch an offensive outside Ukraine is very low but politically the presence of NATO forces in the countries bordering Russia will be indispensable in Ukraine before the NRF arrives we can probably add the two or three heavy American brigades already in Europe and another Brigade equivalent of air mobile units like from the 8C Airborne Division which can be transferred quite quickly from the continental United States there is also the possibility that two heavy brigades will be quickly formed from the preposition equipment in the aps2 depot this should not be delayed much longer than two or three weeks it is very likely that the command of this forces will be assumed by the fifth American Army Corps whose headquarter is now in Poland as as we have seen it is reasonable that a large percentage of the initial Ground Forces will be American hence the command will be American anyway these units will take time and they won't be doing anything major without her support and this is the part we are the most interested into [Music] NATO Air Forces planners will want to wipe out the Russian Air Force first arguing that with the vks out of the picture everything would be easier ground planners and ukrainians will want to hit the Russian advancing spearhead because the emergency is there on the ground so in this case NATO will likely go for a bit of both under political pressure therefore which are the targets that need hitting with urgency well this is a hypothetical scenario and we don't have orders of battle detailed enough to be sure of what would happen however it is possible to make some educated guesses to block the Russian spearhead the best way is to attack the logistics which in this case means the railway Russian logistic is designed to operate up to 150 km from a rail head if the operations move further then the rail head is moved too and this causes an operational pause moreover hitting a rail head increases the probability of hitting the trains of the material being unloaded Railways generally are easy to repair so they are not an excessively pain Target but this is an emergency so yes it will happen the initial targets are Railway nodes of pavlograd and sinelnikov and the key bottleneck of poov after the initial attack these will need to be repeatedly attacked to be kept out of service the area between poov and pavad is agricultural land mostly flat it is crossed by few minor Rivers well minors if compared with the Ukrainian and Russian Standard but destroying the bridges May severely impair the Russian ability in this case a Defender may want to cut the bridges in an area larger than the spearhead which may add 20 to 30 important targets to the count after the adoption of the highas launches in Ukraine the Russians moved to a distributed logistic model each individual Depot is too small to justify a volley of missiles and they tend to be located at the maximum effective High Mar range and Beyond however with the Russian advance and ukrainians in retreat we can assume that this threat is reduced so to improve the logistic efficiency in the spearhead there are fewer but larger Depot potentially hidden in civilian warehouses and before the usual noisy minority start squealing about war crimes hiding in buildings and Industrial constructions is common practice on both sides so warehouses may require several hits to be destroyed I am assuming the presence of three big logistic areas distributed around the rail heads each one with 30 40 individual targets to hit with four mechanized divisions in the spearhead there will be well plenty of potential targets we may assume that the units have been already attracted in the fight and they are operating at about 70 80% of their nominal Force this leads between 300 and 400 main pieces of equipment for each division these include Tanks i vs tube artillery and rocket launchers we can also safely assume that there will be additional artillery additional Aviation and additional units not embedded in the divisional structure in fact during the war the Russian army has created several autonomous units the Battalion level most I am assuming that this create from 100 to 200 additional Targets this would make the area a Target Rich environment and part of the mission is to inflict enough losses to make these four forces is inoperable for the Russian army this means reducing the force to 50 to 60% as opposed to Nato forces which should not absorb more than 10 to 20% losses before being retired from the front line and reorganized there is obviously a reason for this different and it is not that the Russians are ruthless like the usual noisy minority will say but the discussion of the Russian Doctrine would take us too far however but there is another class of very high pain targets that is old engineering vehicles that are essential for mobility and the repair of damage combat units Russian units are usually well equipped with these Force multipliers and we may add another 100 to 150 targets to the tally a better way than attacking the teeth though would be attacking the head each division will have at least five commands of regiment level and above each one will at least one Backup Plus there will be commands for the supporting units communication centers and so on this leaves us with 60 to 80 command centers worth attacking these are usually very difficult Targets in Ukraine they're well hidden and located under heavy passive protection however they are very high paining targets so they are worthy effort the modern Russian army is not the Soviet Army where incapacitating a commander could potentially mobilize entire units for days however the command function is essential for any Armed Force and hitting a command post always causes issues to the opponent and the Russians are no exception but to do all of this and degrade the units it is important that aircraft capable of precision attacks on single Vehicles could freely access the airspace above the Russian forces we might expect that the high-end systems like the S400 and the s 300 V4 will have moved to follow the attack but their density probably won't be high in the area between pavad and poov we may assume the presence of three battalions for a total of 20 to 30 launchers with three or four command posts and the relative Raiders with four divisions in the spearhead we may expect to have around 30 to 40 tour systems with four command post for the medium altitude defense moreover there will be more than aund of low altitude systems which won't be specifically targeted because they're mobile and can be avoided by flying at medium altitude the Russians also have a large quantity of electronic warfare systems of various types often very mobile and difficult to find at least when they're not emitting reports from Ukraine have specified that the Russians have an electronic warfare unit every 10 kilometers of front so in the spad area there may be 12 to 20 units operational these are obviously priority targets that should be hit as soon as possible because they have the capability of degrading the effectiveness of various types of guided weapons so while The Shield part of the operation will be focused on stopping the spearhead and reducing it it is reasonable to assume that some other targets may receive immediate attention in particular holders connected with Logistics and air defenses the logistic areas near belgorod in the north and rostov in the South are the most obvious candidates other targets may be the railroad that connects rostov to Crimea the catch bridge and the fairies in the ad of sea there may also be fortifications or area targets where units are concentrated but these can be reasonably estimated in this context these will be more closer support targets or Battlefield inition classic targets than targets for the initial campaign however there is one last category of targets that we haven't covered which is probably the most important of all year basis in the context of The Shield segment of the operation the challenge is to defeat the Russian combat air patrols let's leave aside the air to a element we will get back to it what we want now is defeating them on the ground the Russians maintain or try to maintain eight two ship caps along the front line I say try because it is quite a large commitment to keep 16 Fighters up in the air 24 hours a day so the defensive system is not always complete since when ukrainians started to use some long range weapons the Russians tend to keep the bulk of their aircraft quite deep into Russia rotating the operational aircraft on the basis close to the line of contact protections have been built on some bases and dispersal on the base itself is now common place even if in more situation than it is wise the Russians still par their aircraft in a neat orderly line well not particularly clever there are at least 10 air bases close to the border that could be used as a staging point for the Russian cups including potentially one in bellarus these bases should be hit to put their infrastructure out of use the Targets in this case would be Fuel and amodel the latter are particularly difficult targets because they're often distributed around the base and hardened cring the runway is often not worth it because it is another easy repair like the railway however in the first 24 hours of the operation it may be worth doing it anyway to make sure that the bases are inoperable the bases themselves now have air defensive and surveillance raders are often associated with the base including those low frequency raders that can see St aircraft these Raiders are high pain targets and their loss would significantly degree the Russian air defenses I am assuming that there are about 10 Raiders covering Ukraine some collocated with the bases others in semi mobile installations so thank you for getting this far into the video I know it was Heavy we did not list all these targets for pedantry in fact the NATO planners will work on actual lists containing these categories the targets will be prioritized and it will be assessed the type of weapon necessary to hit them and how many not all the targets will be required to be completely oblit rating setting a Target level of damage then from this requirement a task in order will be developed and the missions will be assigned to the units so our next step is to calculate this requirement [Music] [Music] to make this calculation I am using the average of the estimates that I've done in the first part of this video just to simplify the calculation but the actual planners will use the actual list for this purpose we split the shield stage in two further stages Shield one will be the destruction of air defenses and the very high paying ground targets these since we are in an emergency will need to happen almost at the same time sh to will happen at a later time and it will be the reduction of the ground forces for shield one we have estimated 142 targets for shield two we have an estimated 1780 targets obviously not all the targets require a single weapon or a single aircraft Mission many targets require several weapons and several missions to identify the best weapon for a Target there are well- defined criteria and manuals that guide the planners we are obviously going to simplify and guess the requirement because most of the information is obviously classified we are also assuming that all the weapons use will be guided weapons because that's basically the standard for Nat now for our purpose we split the weapons in the following categories anti-radiation fixed Target light Warhead fixed Target heavy Warhead moving Target capable this is very crude but it classifies the weapons from the point of view of the targets they can engage the two key features we are considering the weight of the Warhead where less than 100 kilos is is considered light and the capability of hitting moving targets to give some examples the typical anti-radiation weapon is the AG G m88 arm a fixed Target capable but lightweight Warhead could be a GBU 39 sdb while the derivative GBU 53 storm breaker is a moving Target capable weapon the lightest J dams those based on the mark 82 are fixed Target light Warhead but the heavier are fixed Target heavy Warhead but there are also jdam derivatives that can be laser guided and these are moving Target capable I know this is very crude but we need to make simplification to reach a conclusion that is how many of each category we [Music] need s300 or S400 launch require a single ftlw unit to be damaged or destroyed these launches can move but they are deployed in a static position to operate so while we consider them fixed rathers and commands are composed by three or four different Vehicles so they may require two anti-radiation missiles and three lightweight weapons Tor launchers are equivalent may require a single anti-radiation missile to be put out of service they won't be destroyed but that will do for the moment their commands which are the size of a large platoon may require four fixed Target light weapons to be damaged enough to go out of service these are all mobile system but they operate when they are fixed generally so yeah we don't need moving Target capable weapons the electronic warfare systems depending on their type may require one or two anti-radiation missiles so let's say two for good measure the same is not true for relatively large groundbased Raiders they come in different shape and sizes let's say that they require two fix Target heavyweight weapons to be destroyed Beyond repair bridges are very difficult targets and their size varies quite a lot let's say that they require two fixed Target heavyweight as well some bridges may require more some even a lot more to be fully destroyed but let's keep this simple air bases are tricky they're very tricky they are large Targets dispers on a vast area that may require dozens and dozens of fixed Target heavyweight weapons to be seriously damaged for example in 2017 the US used 59 tomahawk missiles to neutralize the air base of shyat in Syria while this cause large destruction of the airbase infrastructures air operation resumed on the same day in this stage the full destruction of the bases is probably less important than impa in their capability to operate the targets should be Fuel and ammo depo and Airport facilities to undermine the long-term operation while at the same time runways will need to be cratered they will be soon repaired we need to keep them out of order hitting the aircraft depends heavily on their presence and their protection that is changing all the time some lucky hits leading to some aircraft losses are actually probable but they cannot be systematically hit at least not at this stage another consideration is that Russian air bases do have air defenses which may reduce the size of the attacking force and the number of hits finally the attacks on the base need to be regularly repeated on a daily schedule to hinder the repairs for sake of Simplicity we consider that each Air Base should undergo an initial attack with 50 fixed Target heavy Warhead weapons and subsequent daily attacks with 10 of the same weapons rail heads are another very tricky Target while they are less dispersed than air basis they are still rather large area targets moreover it is reasonable to assume that supplies are stored nearby waiting to be shipped to the combat units or simply as reserves and these are additional targets the trains carrying the supplies are another high paying targets hitting a train full of supplies may actually have a direct relation with a force operating pose of the units dependent from that specific rail head if a superiority is established they may be relatively easy targets otherwise they are quite difficult to hit rail heads may have air defenses on their own and since they are relatively easy to repair they need continuous attacks to be kept out of service again for sake of simpli itely we presume an initial attack of 12 fix Target heavy Warhead weapons and 20 fix Target lightweight weapons followed by an attack with four heavy Warhead weapons every six hours individual warehouses may be difficult to find because they are usually civilian structures with with or without some level of passive protection currently their size should be quite small and a few hits May destroy supplies and force a relocation with our usual broad simplification we consider an average of two fixed Target heavyweight and six fixed Target lightweight Warheads for each Depo common centers may come in different shapes and sizes some may be heavily protected others may be constantly on the Move being composed by a group of vehicles they may also have air defenses assigned which further complicate the problem here I'm doing a judgment cool and I'm using an average across different types of facilities I'm assuming two fix Target heavyweight weapons four fix Target lightweight weapons and one moving Target capable weapon for each command but this is just an average each one will require a different mix finally vehicles are easy they require a single moving Target capable weapon it may be a laser gued bomb rather than a missile like the brimstone and so on so finally we can calculate the weapon requirement for shield one and shield two stages we simply multiply the number of targets for the number of weapons splitting for shield one Shield two and sustainment to have the number of weapons that we need to attack all the targets but this is not enough yet taking this number at face value is the same as assuming that everything will go well and it or it hardly happens so we can apply some coefficients that repres present the fog of War and the inevitable issues that happen during combat operations I admit I only have some anecdotal evidence for these percentages so these are even more questionable than the average requirement for each Target anyway all considered my assessment is that the weapons expense will be 34% higher than the optimal case I am making the Excel file I used for the calculations available to pattern and channel members and if you want to play around with it it could be a good opportunity to start supporting the channel so the numbers we have arrived at are as follows 127 harm missiles and this is not that many to be honest this number of missiles is probably easily available in NATO warehouses 862 fix Target lightweight Warheads this may be a DBS or jdams it is not a large number for the American Standards but it could create a large dent in European reserves 1,85 fixed Target heavy Warheads again if these are jdams or pay ways there are not that many but at least 600 of these will be either jasm storm Shadows or Tomah hooks particularly to attack their bases this is not a small number that may become relevant further down the line moreover the targets that require repeated attacks will consume about 148 weapons a day for many days this is a number that could absorb considerable reserves of long range weapons because most of these targets are the air bases 2,137 moving Target capable weapons this number is exaggerated because it assumes that all the relevant grown Vehicles will be attacked the purpose of Shield is only to stop the spearhead so the number will be much much lower I guess about a quarter this is little more than 500 weapons this could be laser guarded Payway brim stones or French hammers again a small number for US standards but not negligible for Europeans you must also consider that there will be additional targets outside of the spearhead that we did not cover in detail so all these numbers could increase a bit particularly regarding Long Range weapons anyway we can safely say that for this first stage there will be no General shortage of weapons but some categories may receive [Music] attent so did we finally reach a conclusion no no we are actually just starting because once we have the requirement we need to find a way to deliver it do we have enough aircraft how do we generate the forces for the operation do we have enough intelligence what do we do against the Russian combat a Patrols in the air domain and so far we did not consider the main factor that could crush and burn the entire operation that is the Russian reaction well we are going to cover all of this in a follow-up video if and only if you would like this type of content which is quite different from usual this is a complex and timeconsuming format and it is only possible if it is well received by the viewers so if you want to see the second part please share it on your socials tell your friends and interact by liking or leaving a comment one final note if there is anyone out there who did this kind of calculation professionally and can talk about it please contact me either by the email in the about section or by joining the Discord server all the links are in the description it would be great to revise the calculation and correct the numbers to reach a more realistic tally my general impression is that with this methodology I am underestimating the requirement but I don't have a way to confirm or refute this thank you so much for getting this far into the video I understand it was quite long it was a honor it was a privilege to have had your attention an enormous thank you to all those who are supporting the channel on patreon or by being a member you're absolute Stars you have all my gratitude today is also possible to support the channel on gofund me this is actually connected with my first book which is in preparation please scan the QR code or go to the link in the description if you are interested if you can support the channel financially which is perfectly fine subscribe if you are not about 66% of the viewers are not subscribed hit like hit the Bell so you'll be notified when there is a new video so I believe this is everything thank you very much for watching and see you next time hopefully with the followup of this video but also the other stuff that I do is quite interesting you