AZrailwhale
Diamond Member
Based upon the logistics abilities of Russian forces unveiled during the invasion of Ukraine, the only way Russian forces could reach Paris or Berlin would be on stolen horses or on foot. That's assuming they could loot enough food to not starve on the wayIf you are alive and your enemy is dead - it is usually considered as 'victory'. The price of the victory may be high, of course, but it may worth it. In the previous war Russia had lost thirty, may be even forty millions citizens but German suggested "alternative" (genocide) was much worse.
Anyway, its not enough even to take Voronezh.
To use strategic nukes to achieve tactical objectives? Funny. The Russians will take Berlin and Paris while you are nuking railroad stations in Zalupinsk and Zajopinsk.
Yes, but it will be insufficient too.
You need thousands of low-yield nukes to fight a Limited Nuclear War.
They won't be able even to came close to the most of those 'strategic targets'. They are slow, big, and pretty visible by a proper air defense.
How many F-16 will successfully enter in Russia-controlled airspace? And how many of them will be able really attack the Russian army? May be, they will eliminate few Russian brigades (may be not), but other will literally smash European armies, because the Russians have more than 5000 of tactical nukes (and proper delivery systems for them).
Actually, Trident missiles with W76-2 8 kt REs found be such a 'tactical' weapon, but there are only 25 of them totally - few on each Ohio.
Of course they are. They are big, slow and pretty visible (at least in the situation of a first days of war).
Attacking strategic targets inside Russia itself is not a limited nuclear war in Europe scanario, too.
What if all ICBMs and some Ohio subs are already destroyed by the Russian counter-force strike?
Are you sure they will remain? It will take hours or even days to make them able attack cities in the European part of Russia, and the Russians will a) try to kill them before they are ready to attack important targets b) evacuate and shelter their cities.
Very unlikely.
There was a great flood in Irkutsk region back in 2019. The half of the region population was evacuated by EMERCOM in hours, and the number of casualties was really insignificant.
They are able to destroy Russian targest only under very specific circumstances.
No. Launch on warning take at least 7-10 minutes. Russian TOF (supressed ballistic trajectory, launch from Canadian sector of Arctic) will take less than 7 minutes.
IMEWS is almost degraded, SBIRS-high wasn't completed, SBIRS-low became STSS and deactivated at March, 8 this year. So, all what the US have to detect launch of the Russian missiles now are few SBIRS-High sats, which don't control the whole globe and, sometimes, give false-positive alerts.
There will be no 'massive counterforce strike from the US' if most of the US nuclear arsenal is already destroyed. What is even more important - if the Russians are well prepared, their mobile complexes are already in forests on their routes. You just don't know their positions to attack them all.
Do you really want to scary the Russians with a winter? The winter doesn't kill by itself. Unpreparedness does.
May be. May be not. May be if Russia nukes NATO the USA will face a simple choice between losing the face and losing the life (may be with the terrible, but still acceptable loses for the Russians).