• luciferofastora@feddit.org
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    3 days ago

    Defensive wars don’t work quite the same way as offensive ones, and history has extensively shown that air control isn’t the only factor. It certainly can make a difference, but reducing the complexity of war into a simple comparison of two arbitrary measures is ignorant at best, deceptive at worst.

    I’m a layperson that has read a few articles, but it doesn’t take an expert to understand that you wouldn’t need War Colleges if primary school math was all it takes to win.

      • luciferofastora@feddit.org
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        3 days ago

        The underlying mechanic is always the same: You might be able to deny ground from the air to some extent, but you can’t hold it without boots on the ground. Morale bombing has been tried aplenty and has yet to show convincing effect. And both aircraft and grunts are vulnerable to all kinds of unpleasantness from the ground.

        For a defender, the primary objective is making it so costly to sustain the attack that the attacker either can’t afford to or decides it’s not worth it. Asymmetric warfare has shown potential to be quite efficient at that task. The Taliban are one example, the Vietcong another and I really hope we don’t have to find out if Denmark belongs on that list.

        • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.social
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          2 days ago

          I’m 100% confident that Greenland could repel a U.S. invasion based on nothing more than the fact that the U.S.A. has never fought a war in arctic conditions. It’d be like trying to invade Russia in wintertime.

          • luciferofastora@feddit.org
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            2 days ago

            I don’t think anything in war is ever 100% sure. But familiarity with terrain and conditions does go a long way.

            I also wonder about the US troops’ morale and conviction in that fight. I’d be wary of making any definitive statements here either way. I know we like to paint the US as fundamentally morally corrupt, but I’m not sure how far following orders and justifying them to themselves will actually go. It’s far easier to tell yourself you’re doing the right thing when abducting a corrupt dictator than when seizing previously allied territory.

            I hope we never have to find out.

  • tomiant@piefed.social
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    3 days ago

    It makes me fucking sick to my stomach that these dumb fucking nazis think the issue is that Denmark would fight back.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      If the United States had to be summed up in one word that would would be “overconfident”.

      The level of arrogance that the US government has about its military simply based on its size is profound. Military size would be a highly relevant factor if your enemy was expected to engage on your terms. However for some reason this tends not to be the case and you end up spending the entire war defending your flank.

      Look at Iraq, the US government sent thousands and thousands of troops in only for them to huddle in fortifications afraid to go out because of homemade explosives. Why didn’t the massively superior US military simply shoot the enemy combatants. Oh yeah that’s right because they couldn’t find them because the insurgents decided not to engage the US in direct combat. End result, essentially complete defeat.

  • DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    Funny how many US bases are on foreign soil and exist almost entirely at the pleasure of their host countries. Would be a real shame if all that airforce base infrastructure suddenly disappeared and shortened the tactical operating range of the us airforce.

  • Insekticus@aussie.zone
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    5 days ago

    Of course they won’t.

    The pussy bitch ass dumb fucks who votes for that orange shit stain will slink back to the shadows they crawled from and pretend like they were never a part of it.

    • Daftydux@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      5 days ago

      Its Bush II all over again. The collective sigh of relief after he was gone. Obama getting elected. All forgotten in the matter of one election cycle.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I miss the days of Keebler elves for President, when at least we weren’t threatening allies or tearing up our constitution and every commitment we made

  • phneutral@feddit.org
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    4 days ago

    I saw this take (on YT) just yesterday. The gist: the US has by far the greater military, but NATO without US has much more troops and equipment that are trained and working in harsh cold weather conditions. The US may take some ports and airfields, but small European and Canadian troops can defend the land and make it infeasible for the US to take any meaningful hold.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      My cousin works as a geologist for a mining company and I’ve seen the conditions that they have to work in. Often in highly unstable areas with active militia trying to kill them. They have metre thick concrete walls around the perimeter and armed guards. Inside it’s like a small city, and every single person there needs to be there there is no one who’s playing tourist.

      Trying to do that in the Arctic is an insane proposition. Concrete doesn’t set well in the cold, the roads are clogged for much of the year, and most industrial mining equipment is extremely sensitive and doesn’t work if it’s out of temperature range, or if it’s too windy, or if you sneeze on it.

      Obviously America attacking Greenland would be devastating to global stability but it would almost be worth it to watch the absolute disaster that would be the attempts at resource extraction. It’s just like with Venezuela, no one is actually interested in attempting resource extraction other than Trump. The amount of upfront investment and technical hurdles to overcome are enormous and any profits (assuming there are literally any) are a decade or more away. Unless Greenland is harbouring a otherwise undisclosed vain of diamonds wrapped in 24 carat gold then I can’t imagine it’s going to happen.

      • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 days ago

        I think Trump thinks that when the ice sheets melt it’ll be worth it. That America will suffer in the short term, but have access to a giant archipelago in the long term that’ll secure his legacy as an American hero. Unfortunately for him, his very actions might make it impossible for the US to capitalize on Greenland in any meaningful way.

        I genuinely think it’s in the interests of all other powerful countries to stoke regional tensions over the next few decades and break up the union, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how things go. As much as I hate this country and think the empire needs to be knocked down a few pegs, civil war would not be a good thing. Such a heavily armed country descending into instability would be violent on a never before seen scale, and that violence will not stay in its borders.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I can’t speak to the other issues, but you solve the concrete problem by making concrete shapes off site and shipping them in.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          4 days ago

          I’ve never been to Greenland but I have been to Iceland quite a few times and trust me the northern ice sheets are not a place for vehicles. Greenland is pretty much all ice sheet and is actually quite a bit further north than Iceland.

    • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Nato has 2 other nuclear powers. One of them has a nuclear first strike warning shot policy.

      • vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 days ago

        And the other is the 51st state, running American nukes and subs that will only keep working if the U.S. keeps the support contract going.

        NGL here, if the U.S. turns hostile, we’re in deep shit.

        • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          That’s the thing, if the US takes Greenland, they’ve gone hostile. You may as well kamikaze any US equipment you can’t maintain because all that equipment is doing is picking your place in line at the chopping block. For two reasons, if the US takes Greenland, we’ve given up on international law, and no other country can stop us. And second if we take Greenland, we’ve gone full totalitarian, and no one here is going to stop us.

          It’s a point of no return that means the only response had better be the most powerful thing you can manage, because you’re only going to get one shot before you’ll never have one again.

    • Clot@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      US has countless military bases in EU. EU is practically colony of USA, if they want to bei ndependent first thing they should do is wipe all US military bases from EU and kick USA out from NATO.

  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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    4 days ago

    The real reason that the US hasn’t legally declared a war since the 40s is because we haven’t been able to win a war since then. If all of our wars were officially declared as our constitution says they should we’d be like 12 losses under at this point.

  • FauxPseudo @lemmy.worldM
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    4 days ago

    But would we just be fighting Denmark or would we end up fighting NATO. Not including former USA NATO member aircraft that’s something more than 10,000 combat aircraft. Which changes things a bit.

    • sulgoth@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yes you can pull yourself out of the fool pool, but all your friends are there and no one wants to get out first.