Russia counterattacks with missiles launched from silos, submarines, and road-mobile vehicles. 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. Key Points. 30 Apr 2023 13:25:28 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. With much of Europe destroyed, NATO launches around 600 warheads from U.S.-land and submarine-based missiles at Russian nuclear forces. "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. Any fight between Turkey and Greece would immediately involve NATO, and would almost certainly result in some degree of opportunistic intervention by Russia. While it is not clear if Russian President Vladimir Putin would ever go so far as to use nuclear weapons, the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine has led to a spike in discussions about the potential outbreak of nuclear war. At first, the war is between Western European countries and Russia but once all major cities have been bombed, the war turns between the US and Russia. Such an attack would likely kill no more than 20 million Americans and leave much of the country intact. Were that to happen, Russia would have to expand the defensive force to 40,000-55,000 troops . Attempting a side-by-side comparisons of the U.S. and Russian militaries is a bit like comparing apples to oranges, many experts say; the Russians have distinctly different strategic goals, and their military structure reflects that. 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. More broadly, Moscow is signaling a long-term interest in extending its umbrella of anti-access area denial capabilities into the Middle East. Its not a situation where more nuclear weapons will make either side safer. Kyles articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. There'd be attempts to "blind" the other by knocking out communications, including satellites, or even cutting the vital undersea cables that carry data. Still, a nuclear war is not impossible. "While we were focused on the broader Middle East," she says, "these countries went to school on the Western way of war. Moscow would then open a dialogue with Washington, stating that the bulk of American nuclear weaponsland-based missiles and bombershave been destroyed, but Americas infrastructure and cities are still intact. What Victory Will Look Like in Ukraine. We can hope that the leaders of the world's great powers will take care over the coming year with the vast stockpiles of weapons that they control. Even prior to this year, Russia and the United States had been abandoning long-standing nuclear arms control treaties, commenced the development of new kinds of nuclear weapons, and expanded the range of circumstances in which these weapons might be used. The war game is notable because of the . Because of the dire consequences of a nuclear conflict, it is incumbent on nuclear states to seek diplomatic solutions, Drozdenko says. Today, the U.S. spends nearly 10 times more than Russia on national defense. The first is gone and the second is fraying, to the extent that Pyongyang may feel like it has a moment and Seoul may struggle to find the patience to tolerate the antics of its neighbor. What would that look like? First, a sustained war of conquest is unlikely. Russia's electronic warfare capability is also daunting to Pentagon military planners; left unclear is the extent to which Russia could jam the radars and signals intelligence that forms the foundation of the U.S.'s advanced air power. The Kremlin blames the U.S. and NATO for causing the current crisis. The aggression in the Baltics, especially Estonia, which has a large Russian-speaking minority, has been more ambiguous than Moscow's overt operations in Ukraine and Syria. ", FILE - This Thursday July 2, 2009 file photo, shows a new Russian nuclear submarine, Yuri Dolgoruky, near the Sevmash factory in the northern city of Arkhangelsk, Russia. They've also asked for anti-aircraft guns and more equipment to neutralize enemy snipers, he told Military Times. Putin and his military have menaced the Baltic countries, who are among the newest and weakest NATO partners. Analysts say Russia has a menu of options to attack at any moment it chooses, from shock-and-awe style air strikes to a ground invasion along a broad front. Other estimates are much higher, but in general there is a high degree of uncertainty about how much of those forces exist only on paper, and how many are truly prepared for combat. The United Nations is accustomed to oddity, absurdity and a certain amount of hypocrisy. The scenario shown in the piece is a plausible one based on the available evidence. Russia still insists it has no plans to invade Ukraine. Fires generating soot could block sunlight, possibly for decades, causing global cooling and shortening growing seasons, causing worldwide food insecurity.. "I think this would play out in a very fast-paced environment that's heavily reliant on the information domain,"says Meia Nouwens, a senior research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) focusing on China's use of data for military advantage. She is referring, of course, to Russia and China, described respectively in the UK government's Integrated Review as "the acute threat" and the long-term "strategic rival" to the West. Ukrainian troops face threats from insurgents and conventionally trained forces. Photo Credit: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP. AFP PHOTO / ANDREY KRONBERG (Photo credit should read ANDREY KRONBERG/AFP/Getty Images). With modern technology and nuclear weapons, some wonder what a new World War would look like. 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. The nuclear exchange quickly escalates in Europe with Russia sending 300 warheads via aircraft and short-range missiles to hit NATO bases and advancing troops. And they started investing massively in a whole host of new technologies.". Russia has a very diverse atomic arsenal, which allows it to launch attacks using land, sea and air delivery platforms: this is the so-called. "The military balance can only be ensured by Russia's nuclear might, which isn't as expensive to maintain as many people think. and Russian leaders understand that a full-scale nuclear war would be a civilization-ending event, Drozdenko explains. Russia's Victory Day parade is an annual extravagance in Red Square. Between Russia and the US alone, scientists concluded a nuclear war would kill 3.1 million people within 45 minutes. Their targets are tanks,. 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. Would a nuclear counterattack achieve anything? The second possibility is the eastern war approach. Not according to Michele Flournoy, who spent years right at the heart of US defence policy. Yet the Obama administration has been reluctant to provide more robust support, determined, it seems, to avoid the potential for a proxy war with the Russians. The simulation assumes that Russia would target major US cities and there are no bomb threat warnings in those major cities. Kalashnikov, who died on December 23, 2013 at the age of 94, was to receive a funeral with full state honours and be buried at the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery (FVMK) in Mytishchi outside Moscow, the defence ministry said. MOSCOW -- We winced in our filthy trench as each rocket-propelled grenade whistled overhead and exploded behind us. It's unclear who will take her place as the Pentagon's key policy maker for Russia-related issues. Instead she's set to lead the U.S., NATO, and Europe down a path of ruin, warns Scott Ritter. "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. 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. 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. Having said that, accidents can happen and disagreements between two seemingly rational parties can and do quickly spiral out of control. What war with Iran could look like Military Times interviewed more than a dozen military experts, including current and former U.S. military officials, about how a conflict might begin and. China's Dong Feng 17, first revealed in 2019, carries a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) that can manoeuvre through the atmosphere with an almost unpredictable trajectory, making it hard to intercept. On 16 November, Russia carried out a missile test in space, destroying one of its own satellites. In 2022, the world came closer to Great Power War than at any point since the end of the Cold War. However, Barmin said, "it is doubtful that Russia has the capacity to emerge as a leading power in [the Middle East] in the near future because its presence in the region is limited if you compare it to that of the United States. The consequences of a nuclear war for life on Earth would be "unimaginable", Glaser said. What would war between Russia and NATO look like? Toe to toe, a conventional war between the U.S. and Russia would be no contest. While this might result in a conventional victory, things could rapidly take a sinister turn. VideoThe secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, LGBT troops take love for Eurovision to front line, Why an Indian comedian is challenging fake news rules, What Europe's royals could teach King Charles. NATO then retaliates with a single, tactical, nuclear air strike. So not just the military but societies overall will be a prime target in future conflict.". Many of the aspects of a major conflict between the West and say, Russia or China, have already been developed, rehearsed and deployed. Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland in 1939, and after the war the Soviet Union annexed most of the Polish territory it grabbed in 1939, with . Such a scenario would result in the deaths of millions of people around the world within hours. Imprecise language used to describe the tensions that have been building at the border - the prospect of a "Russian invasion of Ukraine" - has not helped. Putins Russia, seeing Ukraine as alone and vulnerable, decided to attack. Ukraine's anticipated counter-offensive will be like a "big bang," a military expert told The Sun. Andrew Tilghman is the executive editor for Military Times. B-52H Stratofortress conducts a flight test of hypersonic missile the AGM-183A, California, 2020, US Air Force personnel conduct cyber operations at Warfield Air National Guard Base, Maryland, 2017, A SpaceX rocket carrying satellites for the US Air Force launches from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, 2019, Dong Feng 17 missiles equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle, Beijing, 2019, US Air Force flight test of hypersonic missile the AGM-183A, California, 2020, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. 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. 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. Russian troops deployed close to the Ukrainian border will return to base after completing their exercises, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday. There will be no return to normalcy or status quo ante. Defense News' Russia correspondent, Matthew Bodner, contributed to this report from Moscow. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Ukrainian servicemen patrol near the chemical plant in Avdeevka, a town just north of the city of Donetsk, on June 20. 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,. President Biden speaks during the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting in D.C. on Jan. 21. "The embarrassment is just going to keep growing over this," Laura Harth, the campaign director at Safeguard Defenders, told Newsweek. In this image made from video provided by Homs Media Centre, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, smoke rises after airstrikes by military jets in Talbiseh of the Homs province, western Syria, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015. But the eye-rolling is hitting epic levels this month as Russia has taken over the . But it is encouraging that the U.S. has not responded to Putins threats by raising its own alert status. Russia itself would certainly suffer deaths in the tens of millions, but in this scenario, a death count seems like a futile means of keeping score. Russia has one of the biggest nuclear arsenals in the world, and is estimated to have thousands of nuclear warheads in its stockpile, assigned for both long-range strategic launchers and shorter-range tactical nuclear forces. Dmytro Smoliyenko / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images, Kostas Pikoulas/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images, Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, NOW WATCH: The true cost of America's war machines. For defensive purposes, Russian planners would have to recognize the risk of NATO coming to Kiev's assistance. How badly would Russia suffer? But the gap has narrowed in recent years. 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. It's denial." It's logistically complex. The Russians don't have much in the way of long-range power projection capability," said Mark Galeotti, a Russian security expert at New York University.Moscow's military campaign in Syria is relying on supply lines that require air corridors through both Iranian and Iraqi air space. Photo Credit: Andrey Kronberg/AFP/Getty Images. Staff officers often seethe quietly at an absence of precise political objectives for a war. It's about "working out at what point a military response is the correct response," said Nick de Larrinaga, a London-based analyst for IHS Jane's Defense and Security Group. According to a recent report by international think tank Chatham House, Russia's military strength in its Western Military District stands at 65,000 ground troops, 850 pieces of artillery, 750 tanks, and 320 combat aircraft. A 19FortyFive tradition we look at where World War III could start as we prepare for 2023. 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. "I would not want to speculate how long it would take for humanity to recover," Glaser said. ", Yet some see Putin's maneuvers in Syria as some broader geopolitical gambit that aims to secure a deal on Ukraine. ', 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. Mad men, unbound by reality and a survival instinct, might also choose nuclear war. Patchy control Close watchers of the Russia-Ukraine war say the fluid and rapidly changing. 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. How much are the Russians truly capable of? Since its annexation of Crimea in early 2014, Russia has steadily expanded its military presence in the region. These five areas pose the greatest risk for the eruption of what we might be tempted to call "World War III.". Russia's invasion of Ukraine has set off a new wave of concern about cyber attacks. This is well below the threshold of warfare and much of it deniable. And it's a huge gamble for Moscow, experts say. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. "I think we're going to have a very dangerous period within the next five to 10 years when a lot of the downsizing is going to happen. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda). Is climate change killing Australian wine? 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. Over the past several months tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang have grown steadily, with North Korean provocations (often themselves driven by the Kim regime's idiosyncratic and cryptic assessments of the international environment) incurring aggressive rhetorical responses from the South. There's nothing ordinary about Cold Response 2020. On Wednesday, Russian officials expressed openness to a peace agreement that would allow an independent Ukraine to maintain its own military as long as it committed to a "neutral status" akin to. "Our team used independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets," Glaser said. Meanwhile, the Russian army, still predominantly a conscripted force, is being transitioned to an American-style professional force. Russia's inability to make progress may threaten the stability of the Putin government, inclining Moscow to contemplate dangerous escalation. U.S. It is not clear . Sporadic fighting between China and India continues on the Roof of the World. Where precisely might a conflict with Russia occur? The United States launches a counterstrike, but it is seriously hobbled by a lack of forces, with most of the U.S. Strategic Commands Minuteman III ICBMs and B-2 and B-52 bombers destroyed in the first strike. Have your say in our news democracy. By early spring, the United States and its allies were pursuing policies that would result in the death of Russian soldiers, the destruction of Russian military equipment, and the long-term degradation of the Russian economy. The U.S. operates 10 aircraft carriers; Russia has just one. Kiev says it's desperate for more weaponry, but so far Washington has shown willingness to provide only nonlethal equipment. 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 . 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. Ukraine War / War With Russia: It's almost like NO ONE thought it through first before they launched this proxy war in Ukraine? But in a way, that doesn't matter, because Russia does not plan to send its forces all across the world's oceans. Maintaining peace requires careful statesmanship; managing escalation during war requires extraordinary skill. However if every nuclear weapon was detonated at the same time, this is what it'd look like. A nuclear war is extremely unlikely. The costs to Russia would be too high, the benefits too limited. For months, there has been . Read about our approach to external linking. The result would be near-total devastation with global consequences. Each location would likely receive a minimum of two nukes in case the first weapon fails to detonate. The Plan A simulation was originally prepared for an exhibition at Princeton's Bernstein Gallery in 2017 and was later made available to the public as a YouTube video in 2019. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The instinct for survival in all rational human beings causes them to make decisions that steer them away from really horrific outcomes like nuclear war. . Russia's invasion of Ukraine has, if nothing else, demonstrated that major wars can still happen despite the best efforts of the international community. The Biden administration and its allies in Europe have taken extraordinary care with the risks of escalation, but Washington does not hold all of the cards and either Kyiv or Moscow might become willing to accept the risk of a wider conflict, a conflict that could develop into World War III. But what if the current tensions between the West and Russia over Ukraine, say, or between the US and China over Taiwan broke out into hostilities? The year 2021 has seen a fundamental shift in British defence and security policy. On February 24, Russian forces began advancing into Ukrainian territory across several fronts, marking a major escalation in a conflict that started in 2014. Assured destruction is a powerful disincentive to using even just one nuclear weapon, let alone using hundreds in an apocalyptic attack. taken extraordinary care with the risks of escalation, domestic vulnerability of the Erdogan regime, Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages. Since March 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine, the U.S. has contributed $244 million in nonlethal security assistance and training. As . 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. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin). Did they Show more. One country decides it has exhausted all other options and must destroy enemy nuclear forces before it can use them. The Russian President made it clear that the western model of democracy and its way of dealing with conflicts in the region is not working," said Yury Barmin, a Moscow-based Russian expert on Mideast politics and Russian foreign policy. "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. However, there is little doubt that cross-strait tensions remain significant. A ceasefire in eastern Ukraine also appears to be holding, although each side remains wary, and local parliamentary elections set to take place Oct. 25 may be upended by pro-Russian separatists, who aim to hold their own elections. Most importantly, the strike would preserve Washingtons ability to communicate with its nuclear forces. Cities like Seattle, uncomfortably close to Joint Base Kitsap, the home of the Pacific Fleets ballistic missile submarines, would likely take some damage. The quality of Russia's stealth aircraft is far weaker than those of the U.S., but Russia has cutting-edge anti-stealth systems, and also has invested heavily in robust surface-to-air missile systems and arrayed its forces domestically to protect its border regions.
what would war with russia look like