[SergeAx]

The EU currently has about 450 Typhoons, 230 Rafales, and 140 Gripens. It also has about 160 F-35s; let's assume that the orange clown will not shut them down remotely. They also have some older Tornadoes, Mirages, and F-16 and F/A-18. All those aircraft are fighters, not strategic bombers. Their impact is limited; their range is about 700km.

The EU doesn't have a plan for how to fight without the US. Today's airstrikes should be carefully planned: planes, pilots, munitions, targets, engagement trajectories, and return trajectories. They will need time to figure out those plans. In their shoes, I would have started drafting those plans four years ago, but they still didn't.

The EU will not attack nuclear siloes, for fear of nuclear retaliation. Even if they try, most of those siloes are much farther than 700 km from Russia's borders. Those siloes were built by the USSR, and the USSR knew better.

The EU will use Storm Shadows/SCALPs/Tauruses. There aren't many of those in arsenals. Trying to use smart planning bombs with sub-100 km range will only make casualties 10-20 fold.

The EU strikes may reach Baltic and Black Sea naval bases, some energy infrastructure (port Primorsk being the first), and some airfields. They will not get the North Sea and Pacific bases, airfields near Murmansk, Saratov, and Irkutsk, which are used now to attack Ukraine.

Russia has integrated air defence, anв the shit is real, it is fight-proven, it works day and night for the last 3 years. Ask Ukrainians.

EU strikes will not be very effective and will not last. I estimate it in 1500-2000 sorties, and about half of those will reach the targets. The EU will lose about 100 planes and 50 pilots. Russia will receive a blow, but will not be devastated.

Russia will retaliate with new conventional MRBM strikes on the military and double-use airfields, and also factories of Gripen, Rafale, Airbus, etc. With those strikes, the EU will lose another 200 planes and most of its capacity to produce and repair them. Russia will also strike one large natural gas storage, one LPG from the Gulf comes into. Russian diversants will deliver several hits to the EU energy system, probably to large distribution hubs.

The EU stocks will drop to 70%-50% of their current value. The euro will fall by 20%-30% against global currencies. Electricity, gas, and heat prices will rise 2-3 times; gasoline and diesel prices will increase 1.5-2 times.

Your move.

[pavlus]

That sounds a lot as gloating mid-febraury 2022. We all know how it turned out.

> Russia has integrated air defence, anв the shit is real, it is fight-proven, it works day and night for the last 3 years. Ask Ukrainians.

Yep. There are videos of oil infrastructure destroyed every single day. Russia is big, so it's hard to defend, and most of its air defense systems are either destroyed, or try to cope with 91 imaginary drones in Valday.

> The EU will lose about 100 planes and 50 pilots

Wishful thinking. You assume EU planes flying just above Moskow, or something like that. Won't happen and Russian planes won't be able to send air missiles to intercept them, as Russia runs out of A-50s.

> will retaliate with new conventional MRBM strikes

Oreshnik does not exist. It's an experiment, that failed to launch into [mass] production. Wishful thinking again.

> Russia will also strike one large natural gas storage, one LPG from the Gulf comes into. Russian diversants will deliver several hits to the EU energy system, probably to large distribution hubs.

This is realistic and very likely, those tactics were already tested in the past few years.

> The EU stocks will drop to 70%-50% of their current value. The euro will fall by 20%-30% against global currencies. Electricity, gas, and heat prices will rise 2-3 times; gasoline and diesel prices will increase 1.5-2 times.

Not realistic. There is oil in the world, there is a lot of oil processing in Europe. US would love to send LNG and earn a lot of money, but it won't be 2-3 times. Ukraine has shown, that Russia can't keep enough pressure to stop the economy completely, so 70-50% numbers are too high.

You are not playing a war game, you are mostly fantasizing about world dominance, as many Russians did mid-feb 2022. Yes, Russia can spoil your day. No, it can't fight and defend successfully on two fronts. Yes, it has more soldiers now and experience. No, it can't protect them on marches, it's forced to fight with FPVs and will be. Armored vehicles are lost. Air defenses are lost. Many strategic aviation, including bombers and A-50s are down. Bombers didn't even knew what hit them, no ballistic missiles needed. Few A-50s were hit by ground-based air defense systems, which is kinda ironic. EU has stockpiled air defenses which, as we know, work well against Kinzhals, Onyxes, etc. EU has Saab 340s to defend against low-flying Kalibres and drones. EU doesn't have enough interceptor drones yet, but it has enough AAGs. And you should expect the same drone swarming as done in Ukraine, to penetrate the air defense with ballistics.

So, I would expect 1) Diversions 2) PsyOps 3) Combined strikes (not as devastating as you paint them) 4) CyberOps (can count as diversions)

I would not expect 1) Air superiority 2) Destruction of Europe's industrial and military infrastructure by missiles (maybe some by GBUs, but seems risky) 3) big drop in EU stocks, or increase in pricing (unless CyberOps and PsyOps succeed)

[SergeAx]

My point is not that Russia can win the war with Europe, it definitely can not. My point is that Europe can't even start the war with Russia. It is economically and politically unsustainable for the EU locomotives: Germany, France, Netherland. It will be devastating for the entire EU political canvas when Russia's marionettes Hungary and Slovakia, backed by right-wing EU and US actors will start peddling pro-Russian (masked as anti-war) rhetoric at scale 10x from now.

My point is that the EU has a unique opportunity to outsource that war to Ukraine, but seems like blowing that opportunity.

Update: I hope you are right about RS-26/Oreshnik, but you can't spread hope on your sandwich, as an old Russian proverb goes.