UKC

IF, and its a big IF, Russia does invade Ukraine, this could lead to a long and protracted war in Europe - does the UK army have enough personnel or will conscription be once again required?

Or would there be a surge in people joining the armed forces?

How long/big a war can our military cope with - whilst maintaining "peace" elsewhere?

Just some idle musing

I can't see the UK or US getting involved, because of the risk of provoking nuclear war.  The most that will be done is to defend the borders of NATO countries against any decision by Putin to try to go further e.g. to Poland.

I'd say chance of that is so close to zero its not worth even considering.

On reflection I think Putins plan is to sow division with western allies while also looking strong on domestic front, which he has done a very good job of recently by continued sabre rattling.

I thought previously chance of invasion fairly high, but what would he actually gain from an invasion? I don't think he really wants a war (dead soldiers/coffins are a poor look, even for him) or the expense and loss of reputation. Want he wants is the west to dance to his tune, which we are.

Even if there is an incursion/invasion, cant imagine Russians want to occupy Ukraine. And given they arent member of Nato, no sane western power will commit forces on the ground, beyond weapons supply, training, intelligence etc.

The Chinese have an extremely large army and have a similar agreement to the Budapest Memorandom.

I don't have any worthwhile predictions about what is going to happen, but I do recognise that 'what Putin will do' is hugely influenced on how it will play with the Russian people. Deep in their collective psyche is the venerability they have historically felt about their western border. All their invasions (Napoleon, Hitler, et al) have come across the wide open plains to the west. Making the people feel secure from this 'threat' from Europe is the primary requirement of any Russian leader. The way they've always sought to do this is by having more land under their influence that physically moves the threat away from Moscow.

Secondly don't under estimate the 'pain' the Russians will tolerate 'defending' the homeland.  This is one cause where on at least two occasions they have proved they are prepared to accept millions of coffins.

The west's behaviour with regards to the expansion of NATO after they 'won' the cold war was naive in the extreme.  

Bit of an early start on the grog?

You mean allowing countries in who wanted to join NATO ..like Poland or Estonia for example.

What are you saying that those countries should not have been allowed to join after suffering the consequences of what was a Soviet occupation post WW2?

I would suggest your comments are naive in the extreme.

This, in particula your last para, even though my colleagues in Moscow say that the conflict with Ukraine is not THAT prominent in Russian media, suggesting that possibly the entire charade is meant for an external rather than internal audience.

Hard to say, but Lawrov being summoned today to tell Putin to keep negotiating seems like the first signs of a climb down. Plausible, as it does not seem clear to me in what way an actual  invasion of Ukraine would be more effctive in keeping the West busy than just the threat of it.

Let's hope the thing passes without actual shooting.

As for the OP, it is something I was worrying about in my bed, wondering whether, if worst came to worst there would be a way where I could go rather than my 18yo son. After all, I have been there, done that, driving live tactical nukes to howitzer positions near the Czech border at the arse end of the cold war....

Not at all, but some thought should have been given to the consequences and early steps taken to mitigate them.  The Middle East has dominated our 'security' focus for the last couple of decades and our lack of attention to both Russia and China will come back to bite us.

Apparently the army has 82k troops. For comparison, Manchester utd can seat 74k people. So we have nearly as many people turn up for a football match,as we have defending the country. Which may explain why we've withdrawn troops from Ukraine in the last week.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/579773/number-of-personnel-in-uk-armed-...

Ukraine has a lot of food production and metals export like titanium, they are quite resource rich. 

1. Cereals: US$9.4 billion (19.1% of total exports)
2. Iron, steel: $7.7 billion (15.6%)
3. Animal/vegetable fats, oils, waxes: $5.8 billion (11.7%)
4. Ores, slag, ash: $4.4 billion (9%)
5. Electrical machinery, equipment: $2.5 billion (5.2%)
6. Machinery including computers: $1.9 billion (3.9%)
7. Oil seeds: $1.8 billion (3.7%)
8. Food industry waste, animal fodder: $1.6 billion (3.2%)
9. Wood: $1.4 billion (2.9%)
10. Articles of iron or steel: $877.8 million (1.8%)

Russia can't afford another cold war. They were ruined by the last one once the west borrowed it's way too financial dominance. To regain military equivalence to nato they  would have to turn their economy over to a war economy. None of Putins kleptocrats will take that risk . I guess he hopes that or reliance on Russian gas will allow him to play this game but it's the last roll of the dice. Every day more alternative energy micro power stations get built and his last lever to influence western politics gets shorter. 

You will have to explain why the Wests's behaviour was naive then when those countries by their own choice wanted to join.I bet Ukrainie would jump at the chance if it was given

I do agree with you that the lack of focus on Russia and China will come back to haunt us.Although I think the attitude to Russia changed dramatically in the UK following the Salisbury incident, which was chemical warfare on UK soil.( let us not beat about the bush on that point).

Russia's economy is about the size of Spain, it should not really be a threat.

Currently $650 billion in the Russian war chest....and it is not spending money on its economy. Money is being pumped into upgrading the military.That is why they have all those shiny new toys.

it has been said recently that at most the British Army could field about 5-6000 combat ready troops for active operations as it stands at the moment

That might be more comparable to a large outdoor market?

We spent an awful lot of money over the last 20 years running town our warfighting abilities against potential peer armies in favour of spending on anti insurgency equipment.

War in Europe would go nuclear. Physically, not metaphorically.

should I turn up too, with a bit of artillery experience in the mid 70s with WW2 era 25 pounders?

The world wouldn't notice if Ukraine titanium exports stopped, probably the rest of their exports either.

I think it would go Cyber before Nuclear

When every geopolitical text book describes Russia's ingrained paranoia about its insecure western border, you would have to be very naive to see the collapse of their buffer zone in Eastern Europe and not think "oh, I wonder how that's going to affect things?" 

You seem to be be suggesting that I would have prevented Poland and the Baltic states joining NATO, but not so. But you can't see a massive shift in the political dynamics of an area and simply say 'suck it up Russia you losers'. We could have spent the last 30 years actively trying to forge a new relationship with Russia instead of standing idly by watching the old relationship re-establish itself.

We could and should have been much more up front then, rather than making promises to the Russians that were not ours to make with no intention of sticking to them: No accession of former Warsaw pact countries and in particular former Soviet republics to NATO or the EU, no stationing of NATO troops east of the old iron curtains, etc. were all promised to the CIS and then Russian by NATO and the US and broken just as easily as guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for handing back the nukes they inherited.

I understand both why Russia asked for such promises, and that it was not in our remit to give such promises. We should simply have said that you cannot have such guarantees. The sense of betrayal afterwards makes the current, attempted rollback of EU/NATO influence in what Russia sees (rightly or wrongly) as their buffer zone/ sphere of influence even more understandable.

Much harder to tell them forty years too late that "spheres of influence" is something only the US is allowed to have.

Western foreign policy f*cked up badly in managing the collapse of the USSR for mutual benefit, and by that I mean not only influx of dirty Russian money to Londongrad.

CB

The "always preparing to fight the last war" has a lot of truth to it with the amendment that if the current war lasts for a few years then they do catch up and start preparing for it.

There is a full on cyber war right now.

Agreed they have alot of resources, but Russia cant invade and co-opt that for their own ends without massive financial and diplomatic penalties on their own economy.

I assume Russia mainly wants a Ukraine it can bend to its will politically and stop it from joining NATO - it can do that effectively by continuing to fund/back the separatist in east Ukraine while sitting a load of troops on the border. It doesn't need to suffer the negative consequences of an actual invasion to meet its ends....

it's the same money that left European private and public accounts buying oil or gas from oligarchs, who then push it back west for safe keeping. 

Wasn't putins yacht in Germany until a few days ago? 

I think it already has - Trump, Brexit, Johnson. 

:> Currently $650 billion in the Russian war chest

Which is half of Natos budget for 2019

..and it is not spending money on its economy. Money is being pumped into upgrading the military.That is why they have all those shiny new toys.

And that is how the USSR list the cold war. By destroying the economy by trying to keep up with American military spending. 

I’ve got to ask… if The West borrowed it’s way to financial dominance, who exactly were they borrowing from?

That's not a Cyber war. A cyber war would be taking down key infrastructure in a country e.g. power grid, phone/internet, banking

EG like this but more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia

Magic pictsies, as is always the way government borrows money that only exists on a balance sheet somewhere then they take our money for decades to "pay it back" 

That is basic economics. The US has over a trillion dollars debt. That money is created within the banks on wall street in exchange for a promise to make interest payments. 

The USSR had no such recourse and had to mine metal and sell óil before it could pay for a tank. Capitalism is more efficient as it is funded by invented money. Even now they (Russia)can't invent money as they don't have an honest government with  legal systems in place  to enforce repayment , or  even the GDP to make interest payments. 

By buffer zone I think you mean ‘sovereign countries that were subsumed into the post war soviet empire and kept their at the barrels of an awful lot of guns.

If the Russian government didn’t want to push their neighbours into the arms of NATO, they could have fostered good relations and undertaken the kind of post Cold War demilitarisation that happened across most of Western Europe.

For comparison, the U.K. has 200,000 in the armed forces (regular and reserves). The equivalent figure for Russia is 3 million. Russia has just over double the population of the U.K. 

You still have not answered the question that countries like Poland etc wanted to join NATO and that those countries wanted to escape Soviet Empire clutches.They  are ever so keen at the moment to stay in NATO, EU etc....I wonder why?

Those countries do not see the collapse of the Soviet Unition as a bad thing..far from it.

This view that its Ok for Russia to have these spheres of influence- like Belarus for example( excellent country..let us all rush to immigrate there)- strikes me as just plain weird.

Yeah, but they were The West’s magic pixies, The Western economy vastly outperformed the Soviet economy, full stop.  Borrowing is an intrinsic part of that economic system. 

We did try and until Putin decided to make a grab for power it worked well( making him President until 2035). Ever since then its been a downhill slope.

I use to do plenty of business in Russia and saw the changes from 2012 onwards. Very open and pro European, dynamic economy.Great place then.I find it all very sad.

Not really.

There are full on cyber attacks. Some of these are nation states, some criminal. There is a lot of espionage, again some criminal and some nation state. In most of these the bad guys want information or money. They are not actively trying to harm people.

What we have not see is really big coordinated attacks, such as NotPetya (directed against Ukraine) Or highly targeted attacks, such as Stuxnet, targeted against Irans nuclear infrastructure.

What scares a lot of people is 'prepositioning'. Where an adversary has access to lots of networks but they just sit there, under the radar. When required, these accounts become active and coordinated, preplanned damage is done to lots of systems at the same time. The resulting damage is amplified by the other attacks that have been carried out. For example, you cant restore system A, because there is no power. There are backup generators at the data centers or hospitals, but there are fuel shortages. Fuel disruption affects food distribution. Water and sewage treatment doesn't work so staff don't come in, as they are trying to provide food and water for their families etc.

You may think that this is far fetched. Try searching for 'ransomware' and the industry of your choice, to see how vulnerable chunks of infrastructure are to criminal attacks.

Sure but covid showed us that core services are more resilient than that. You can disable industry in many ways but taking out 50percent of the staff didn't stop did being produced or heating out hospitals. In the final analysis there majority off important infrastructure isn't reliant on a lan connection. 

Replying to myself....

If one wanted to see the brilliance of some of the Russian sneakiness, then have a read of the links below. I think this is one of the first recorded examples of malware on the battlefield,

TL;DR

Artillery bod in Ukraine, develops targeting app, to help them fight the Russians. Russians add malware, that shows the locations of the users of the app. The Russians now have the locations of the Ukrainian artillery positions.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-ukraine-idUSKBN14B0CU

More detailed view.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/wp-content/brochures/FancyBearTracksUkrainianAr...

Nah! No point, because it'll all be over by Christmas........

Now, where have I hear that before.......?

Colonial Pipeline attack was the one I was gong to link.  Imagine if they'd been trying to cause damage and not to extort money.

Want to bet all the safety interlocks live in the SCADA logic and not hard wired physical circuits these days?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_attack

I'm not sure anyone suggested they enjoyed being the Russian buffer zone!

It's logical for them to want a different patron (in this case US/NATO), just as for the Russians it is logical to want them within their sphere of interest (such that their effective western border is somewhere in Poland, where the wide plains at their western border are narrowest).

Their new patron just has to be sure they care enough about the new countries they're bringing into their orbit for it to be worth the faff, because the Russians care a lot and aren't going to stop caring, so it's got to be a long term investment in them.

And the Russians clearly care more about some bits of their buffer than others, which is why NATO decided not to accept Georgia and Ukraine - the "faff" so to speak would be a lot higher - it seems apparent that we weren't prepared to fight and die for either, whereas it also seems apparent that the Russians are...

I can't see the US not getting involved, unfortunately.

Where there is conscription in richer countries with advanced economies, it is rarely there to man armies, or only indirectly. I have a chapter of my doctoral thesis on the Finnish conscription system, I think the only EU country now with full male conscription? Anyway, wartime size across the whole FDF is meant to be about a quarter of a million, 180,000 for the Army alone. But as a number of senior officers and MoD officials told me (happily and on the record) they doubt they've got boots for all them, let alone guns. The army has about 4,000 salaried staff and is normally rotating through about 19000 conscripts. Most conscripts do their 6 months, keep their mums happy learning how to cook a bit and make their beds, go home or off to uni and never hear from the army again, besides the warm glow of feeling like they've done their patriotic duty for the fatherland like their great granddads did in -40 winter of 1939-40. The few who do a year actually get trained to use modern weapon systems and called back for refresher training each year afterwards until their mid-20s normally. These more trained and generally younger reservists would make up the "operational forces" in wartime - giving the army an actual strength of about 60,000 men. They also pull out of those more highly trained reservists volunteers to staff up the 500 or so troops who Finland commits to peace keeping/peace enforcement ops internationally.

The British military just simply isn't designed to deal with conscription in any useful way. I suspect the most obvious way that the UK military could increase its numbers and get a better quality of soldiers and officers is introduce an equivalent of GI Bill which would basically mean your university is paid for if you've done your 3 or 5 years. 

Its a bit of an odd one since it doesnt look like they got to the operational kit but instead the pipeline owners shut everything down as a precaution.

The attack on Bowman Avenue dam looked intended to cause damage especially if they had got the right Bowman dam.

https://www.industrialcybersecuritypulse.com/throwback-attack-how-the-modes...

We haven't been paying a lack of attention to Russia - we've been fighting proxy wars against them in the middle East more or less continuously! 

Only over the last few years.

Try 30x that...

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Isn't at least part of the theory behind conscription in cases like Finland or Switzerland that, if needed, almost all of the male population has some familiarity with weapons and tactics, which makes an occupation of the a country a more unpleasant prospect. 

Sorry for not being clear. Of course the countries of the former USSR and Warszaw pact should be free to join NATO and EU (whether we want Poland and the other Visegrad traitors is another issue). It was not in our remit to promise Russia / CIS that these countries should stay in a Russian / post Soviet sphere of influence.

This is what we should have communicated to the Russians in the early 90s, combined with an offer of proper cooperation, rather than making promises to the Russians about NATO/EU non-membership of 3rd countries and troop placements that we would then immediately break while the Russians were still too weak to do anything about it.

This really was the worst available option! Also, why did the US even dare to spout off about EU membership, first one way and then the other?

CB

Should have askedRussia to join NATO.  Then we'd all be on the same side. 

300 isn't normally considered a few...

Our children... 

Yep, fair shout.

ooo goody! Are the Spartans coming?

Hard to see how we get from expanding border skirmish past the apocalyptic precautionary first strike to the entrenched mechanical slaughter phase of a superpower war for home turf (as opposed to the asian proxy wars of the soviet era). On the upside, conscription seems an unlikely solution. 

Jk

Don't know much about Switzerland, but in the case of Finland that's a nice idea and often referred to, but you speak to people both in the military and in academia who study these things very closely (those often overlap a great deal!) and people are sceptical. Advanced economies don't necessarily produce people who are either ready or willing to resist in that way. I mean who actually knows - at the end of the WWII large amounts of weapons were dispersed and buried all around Finland ready for a resistance fight against Soviet Occupation in a way that happened to a considerable degree in the Baltics (nicknamed the Forest Brothers, the nationalist guerillas continued fighting well into the 50s). In Finland it was never needed, the Soviets were surprisingly "light touch", they only really occupied the third of Finland that they annexed and that remains Russian to this day. The Finnish governments cooperated with the Soviets to the minimum needed degree to maintain control domestically, including trying and imprisoning some wartime leaders for crimes of aggression (it was famously a very civilised imprisonment - most seemed to take the opportunity to write their memoirs and study).

The Finnish military officers and soldiers who were most keen on fighting on, were either arrested, persuaded not to do anything, and in number of cases (particularly those who had gone through the SS volunteer forces and fought on the Eastern Front) left the country, normally for the US or South America. One of Finland's great war heroes (he was also probably a bit of a Nazi and fought for the SS, but best to gloss over that!) did this. He joined the US military and ultimately died fighting in Vietnam in 1965. It's quite a life story and would make a great movie, if it just wasn't for the Nazi bit.

Conscription in Finland was established for Finland to fight their parts of WWII again. In the 50s and 60s this might have made some sense, but doesn't really anymore. The Finns have just ordered (under an SDP-led govt. no less!), many billions of dollars worth of F35s to replace their now aging F18s. The technicality of modern military operations needs just much more highly trained soldiers than you get in 6 months or even 12 month rotations of conscripts. But conscription became a massive social institution. People mention their reserve rank in job interviews, there are networks formed by people you've served with, it's seen as a "family thing" to do your bit (women can now volunteer but don't have to). In recent decades people even talk about it as a route of social integration - how true it don't really know, but seeing Somali Finns or Kurdish Finns in FDF uniforms doing their service probably does help a bit. So lots of good things come from universal conscription, it's just that having a modern functioning army isn't really one of them!

That was quite seriously considered in the mid-90s, definitely a lot among lots of security studies academics, but even among some policy makers.

Most people have probably forgotten NATO's Partnership for Peace, but Russia was a founder member of PfP. It's almost funny to think about it now, but back in the early/mid 90s being mates with Russia was all the rage. 

I'd agree. 

Modern war fighting requires lots of training and people with expertise within specialisms.  Huge quantities of barely trained bodies is not what war needs now. 

I hope I'm right. 

That's very interesting - thanks for sharing your insights. Do Finnish national service members retain their weapons after their time in the military? I believe that is the case in Switzerland, and I wonder if that goes some way to bridging the 'boots gap' that you described above (not to mention helping the swiss arms industry). When I think about it, the Swiss and Finns seem to have quite a few similarities here, what with mandatory bomb shelters and national service. I can't help feeling that the Swiss system is based on more paranoia though - I'm not sure which one of their neighbours they are worried about invading them in 2022!

No, they definitely don't. I'm trying to remember but I don't think you keep anything after leaving - well not without nicking it! 

I know in Switzerland that keeping your gun was a thing, but I remember there being a number of murders where those weapons were used, and I thought there was at least discussion on whether to keep doing that.

I agree that Switzerland's security environment is very different to Finland's! Besides anything else, who is going to attack a country where you've stashed your ill-gotten billions in numbered bank accounts!?  

Maybe that's the UKs cunning plan. Vlads not going to nuke his own property portfolio.

My guess:

a. if they invade and try and control the Ukraine they'll find themselves in a quagmire worse than Afghanistan.  Look what IEDs did to the US in Iraq and think about what mines designed by people with PhDs in Lockheed Martin could do to Russian armour.   They could easily make robotic explosive devices which can be concealed at a distance from the target and at some point in the future semi-autonomously attack vehicles and buildings. That's as well as normal anti-tank and anti-helicopter missiles.   It will cost them a fortune in materiel and personnel and bleed them out over a decade.

b. The west isn't going to do conscription.  But they are going to buy more military equipment and different military equipment to counter a new threat.  It's going to be a good time to be in R&D in defence companies.

c. The most scary aspect of this is possible co-ordination between the Russians and the Chinese.  The Chinese want to take Taiwan back at least as much as the Russians want Ukraine.  The Ukraine thing will serve the Chinese by forcing the US to commit resource to Europe rather than Asia-Pacific.  The quid-pro-quo could be China buying Russia's gas so Russia doesn't need to worry about losing customers in Europe.

Yes this is what I was wondering: Will the Chinese attack Taiwan next week, without us hearing the same level of warnings beforehand?

CB

in this day and age yes.

If you consider the grabs for power by Putin then that is the relevant context .

In a historical context U.K. and Russia have long been allies.

Erm. No. Before 1917 there was a link between the royal families. Thereafter Britain was an enemy of the communists. If you are talking about opposing Hitler then, Stalin traded peace with Hitler in return for Poland. Hitler made an enemy of Stalin and the Russian people by invading them. But having a common enemy does not make them an ally..

10/10

not returning to the thread, all down votes, best trolling in a while

When I was at university back in the 70s there were quite a few people with degrees being paid for by the military in return for Short Service Commissions.  Some of  them used to flock around Richard Dannatt

but of course that was officers only

This stuff about semi autonomous IEDs is bollocks Tom. 

Manufacturing sophisticated devices tends to require more specialist equipment and expertise. UK forces were able to identify individual bomb makers and build up an idea of their education level and where they were based via building up a picture of where devices were found in Iraq and Afghanistan, also I believe NI. This helped them to identify the bomb makers so that soldiers could go and knock on their front doors.

The Russians aren't stupid and would be readily able to use the same kind of information to quickly find anyone making sophisticated devices like the ones you describe. 

Or they’d hack them.  What’s that coming over the hill?  Is it a swarm of autonomous IEDs turning on their masters?  Not the best idea.  I assume this is why it never went anywhere despite a bunch of bright sparks bigging up the idea a couple of decades back…

Not really. Its been on/off for pretty much the entire time.

Early on there was reasonable relations mostly based on no real opportunity to come into conflict.

Things got closer with Peter 1st and his interest in modernising Russia and liking for Britain but for the next century or so sometimes we found ourselves on the same side but sometimes not.

There was the strong alliance against Napoleon but not long after that the UK developed Russophobia as our increasing interest in exploiting Asia butted up against theirs as did the Russian exploiting of the weakness of the Ottoman empire vs Britains desire to keep it somewhat in place.

Things only really improved when Germany got seen as the real threat and hence the triple entente was put in place but obviously that didnt last long.

Tricky one since most of the responses are people arguing with each other about the OP but various digressions in interesting directions.

They can keep the weapons but arent allowed ammo for it outside of some specialist units. Their approach was an interesting one with the mining of lots of strategic resources. They wouldnt be able to win but they would be able to make it insanely expensive and not worth it in terms of return to defeat them.

That said until recently their airforce really was a 9-5pm one. They had at least one incident when the French had to help out with a potential hijacked plane since it was out of hours.

I think the most far-fetched thing about this scenario is the youth willingly putting their lives on the line to defend a country that has actively been shitting on them for the past decade.

Even Putin wouldn't risk dealing with 100,000 western teens who've just had their data turned off by parents.

Says you. If you think the military are funding all this robot research and haven't considered fitting explosives to them and driving them up to somebody's house or out of cover at the side of a road when a tank comes past then you're crazy.

Sure.  Like they identified who made the Stinger missiles that were shooting down their helicopters in Afghanistan.  Lot of good it did them.   The US will make the stuff and supply it either directly or via a third country to the Ukrainians.  Just like they did with the Stingers in Afghanistan.

Even then, interests within the entente differed - to some extents Britain was interested in "arrangements" with France and Russia not because of Germany but because hugging then close prevented them from causing problems around an imperial periphery that we were keen to pay less to defend. France was definitely keen on using it as a bulwark against Germany, us far less so. 

The Sleepwalkers, one of the rash of "how/why" books that came out about 2014, talks a lot about these dynamics. I'm not well read enough to have seen the full breadth of views on that particular subject, bit it is an interesting read. One of the points it makes is that the Anglo Russian treaty might not have survived it's 1915 renewal had war not broken out, because the tensions it was signed to defuse weren't wholly being defused...

Even more importantly, from most of their military airports they can only fly seconds before hitting a border.

Amazing to watch from near my brother's place how F18s take off from the military part of Sion, gaining speed and elevation, and then have to turn sharply to avoid entering French or Italian airspace.

Armchair watching the European air traffic this week, I've been amused watching the Belgian F-16s training.  The pilots spend almost their entire time turning to stay within their airspace.

China wants to take back Taiwan?

Not sure I see it as being that way round... When the CCP took over mainland China the ousted govt. (which was internationally recognised at the time) of China retreated to Taiwan, which was then never taken by the CCP.

In effect if Taiwan took over China it would be taking it back, if China takes over Taiwan it'll be taking something it never owned, or more to the point finishing what it started in the Chinese civil war!

A nation state fighting outside its borders, or being supplied with weapons from beyond its borders is very different to an insurgency against an occupying force capable of controlling supply lines, there is nothing Russia can do if they find the devices are American made (other than shut down supply lines). If the devices are being manufactured in Ukraine it won't be long before a bomb maker wakes up to an angry Russian man storming into his house. 

You specifically cited the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq which predominantly involved locally constructed IEDs. 

They can do something. In the 2016 election they pitched in to support Trump by releasing Hilary's email because of her previous support for democracy and dissent in Russia. In the UK they formed links with the Brexit campaign. It might be a disincentive to criticise Putin for a western politician who wants to be elected.

The aim is to undermine faith in democracy and weaken western alliances to make successful democracies (particularly on his borders) less attractive and a strongman dictatorship more attractive to the Russian population.

It already has.

It seems 74% of money "acquired" by hackers has made its' way to Russia - coincidence ??

That "border" was historically made up of countries that were invaded, and whose populations were treated in such a poor way - virtual slavery and mass killings - that many of them decided to fight on the Nazi side in WW2.

A good example of their attitude to other countries and their sovereignty is that of Finland - part of which that they invaded in WW2 is still under Russian control. I look forward to the day when a decent Russian President actually returns that land to the Fins.

I think it is a bit messier than that.

Whilst there do seem to be connections between most of the hackers and the state it is reported to be an occasional thing rather than as state employees. So whilst they do get some protection/encouragement its more down to the fact the country does have some good technical education available but also a really crap economy and hence going into cybercrime is an appealing option. Especially since if you keep to attack those countries Russia doesnt like then you are mostly safe from the law even if you do have slightly restricted holidaying options.

Probably the closest match is the privateers of the Elizabethan reign where the government encouraged them and gave some protection in return for some of the spoils from the Spanish ships.

North Korea on the other hand is one where the government does have the hackers as government employees raising cash.

As I said before, hacking is not cyber war. Cyber war would be taking critical infrastructure out of action

The Finnish government makes no claims to Karelia, it was part of the peace treaty so, from memory, it is now seen as constitutionally settled. 

I disagree, hacking is one of the tactics/tools used in a cyber war, it's aim is to disrupt critical infrastructure. Examples of this kind of thing include https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_power_grid_hack

When Russia invaded Afghanistan the Americans supplied the Taliban with Stingers.   The UK is already flying plane loads of man portable anti tank weapons to Ukraine.  The type of weapons that would be useful for guerilla warfare against an occupying army with lots of armoured vehicles.  

The west's best strategy is to keep the Ukrainians well supplied with small but effective weapons and let the Russians bleed out like they did in Afghanistan.

That as may be.

It's still an example of how the Russians/Soviets go about extending their boundaries. Germany once regarded such tactics as "Liebensraum" - and I regard the Russians/Soviets as absolutely no different, either in tactics, ideology, or their treatment of other peoples (or should that be "untermenschen" ?).

Edit: How sure are the Fins that Russia won't decide to "claim" more of Finland if/when they go further into Ukraine ?

The British Armed Forces need volunteers, not conscripts.

Is that some kind of far-right brothel?

There's an urban myth / not too far fetched joke about the British army staff teaching local soldiers in the ME or Africa to shoot and fight incorrectly, when challenged, he joked in 20 years we might be back fighting them! 

Looking at the current version of the Taliban's trigger discipline, they've been taught well by us.

Finns. Fins are what dolphins have!  

The UK declared war on Finland in 1941 when the Finns had recovered the territory they had lost in Karelia in 1940, and then advanced, in coordination with the Nazis, over the pre- 39 border to seize what the ultra nationalists in Finland called Greater Finland, but had never been part of Finland or the Swedish Empire. This was understood after the war by the Allies as an act of aggression, and weakened the Finnish position in the Paris Peace talks, although Mannerheim who was a smart cookie, always dodged Hitler's requests to join the siege of Leningrad. This helped Finland in its negotiations with the Soviets after the war and helped them persuade Stalin that he didn't need to worry about his border with them. 

I'm not sure what you think we or anyone else gain out of demonising "the Russians" by saying they're the same as the Nazis. It's not true in many ways, is actually quite insulting when you look at what the USSR lost in WWII, and it certainly doesn't help my anti-Putin, liberal and pro-democracy Russian friends.

If you have the relevant experience, can you tell me when did trigger discipline become a thing? When I was lad I'm sure everyone, from my Action Man with his SLR, to everyone in Apocalypse Now, to gangsters in Mob movies, to Serb militia above Sarajevo, to the SAS bouncing down the Iranian embassy and the squaddies on the news in bandit country, South Armagh had their finger in the trigger guard, not outside it? I could be totally wrong - maybe I'm just getting old and can't remember, but it feels like no one with a gun used to do this, and now everyone does!

My experience with guns doesn't go beyond shooting targets with .22 air rifles that my dad borrowed for the weekend from the pest control department at Bristol City Council! The 80s, things were different then.

Certainly was back to the mid 90s.

and the mid eighties.

I will need to re-watch some old war movies or documentaries and see if I just missed it when I was younger!

Early 90s here. Never really thought about it before. A quick Google image search shows it was popular in 1980, and there's an authentic looking photo captioned as being in Greece in WW2 showing a couple of pointy fingered lads with Brens.

I'm wondering if it became a thing when rifles started getting pistol grips? Before that it seems to have been all 4 fingers below the trigger guard due to the shape of the stock.

It probably became really, really popular when Glocks arrived with a trigger safety that disengaged when pressure was applied to the trigger, and US gun enthusiasts started accidentally shooting themselves and each other in greater numbers.

Just make sure that none of them star Alec Baldwin... 

I did some google image searching as well and found some pics from Vietnam where fingers were in trigger guards, but it might well have been because they were actually shooting at the time!

No.

And frankly I think it's more likely that we would embark on establishing a moonbase than that a UK government would try to re-introduce conscription.

My apologies to all in Finland. Mea Culpa.

My problem with the Soviet Union/Russia with regard to WW2 is that they continually go on as if they were only a victim and indeed the only victim.

They were in league (Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) with the Nazis to start with, and also had a non-aggression pact with Japan - which they broke once the USA had bombed the hell out of Japan and then tried to invade/colonise the northern islands of Japan until the USA stopped them.

Don't forget that the Soviet Union, as part of the M-R pact, invaded Poland and committed atrocities that even shocked the Nazis when they turned east and found the evidence.

Stalin kept complaining about wanting a "second front" - but we (GB/Empire/etc.) were fighting in Africa long before the first Russian was killed by the Germans, and then this force went on into Italy. That also ignores the bombing that was going on - the percentage of casualties that Bomber Command endured was completely ignored by Stalin complaining that, in effect, Britain was sitting back enjoying life on our island.

They did have many casualties - but how many of them were down to the atrocious attitude to their troops, many of which weren't armed. In fact far more Russians/Soviets were murdered by Stalin than by the Germans.

Note - In all these cases, it isn't the "poor bloody infantry" who made the decisions, indeed they suffered from them. The people who were guilty are the leaders, Stalin and his cohort. Something which has echoed throughout their history. The citizens of the Soviet Union/Russia have been extremely poorly served by their leaders, who I regard as far worse than anything that any Tsar could have been in the modern world.

You can call them Suomalainen/Suomalaiset (Finnish/Finns) if you really want to impress them.

On Russia/USSR, I do know all that. Lots of bad stuff happened well before WWII - if you haven't, I'm sure you'd enjoy (not quite the right word) reading Bloodlands, by Tim Snyder. It's an immensely impressive work, a history of the lands between Berlin and Moscow from the start of WWI and the end of WWII. It's title is well chosen.

The Finns have a word perivihollinen. I've seen it translated online as "arch enemy" but Finns always told me it mean "hereditary enemy". From their point of view you can understand it, geography is destiny and all that. But as a lapsed security studies academic it seems a dangerous idea. Maybe I'm also influenced by the fact that I'm the dad of three boys, the first of which will become old enough to do his service in the Finnish military in about 8 weeks (the rules around dual nationals and non-residents are complicated so we will wait and see if he gets some papers). I agree about the Russian people being poorly served by their leaders, although Gorbachev suggests this doesn't have to be true. But the Cold War "evil empire" style rhetoric, more prominent in the US than in Europe, just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy it seems. Meanwhile the UK looks hypocritical as we only too happily take Russian money.  

Just about every country tades with Russia in some shape of form, whether its Germany and industrail equipment or France selling helicopeter carriers to them or the Dutch doing up fancy yachts for their billionaires. I met a US guy in Moscow who even went round buying in effect slag heaps to ship in vast quantities to the USA for recycling...could never figure that one out.Thats is the nature of a globalised world....its hardly hypocritical......

Finland has an interesting history with Russia but from all I have read recently they are now wondering whether this historical tie up is worth it with Putin.

Personnally I no longer buy this view that Russia is seeking sphere of influence to protect its borders as a result of WWII. You speak to younger Russians - what do they want - ties  with Europe ( not China).  The trials of WW11 are not relevant to the younger generation.

What you have is Putin - a 70 plus year old- who wants the Soviet Empire back and has the levers on power It is not good.

They need to drag Merkel out of retirement and get her as a special diplomat. I reckon she is about the only person in the West Putin may respect.

The German word "Erbfeind" means exactly that and was historically used for France. The fact that this episode of history (if you can call it that, as it started right with the split of the Frankish Empire...) is now exactly that, history, really is one of the things that gives me hope.

CB

And the EU as the original, and by far the best and most successful, security community - a region where we haven't just stopped wars from happening but actually made it that war has become pretty much inconceivable within that region. 

I think the EU's success in this has been so total, that it actually allowed Brexit to happen. There is just no suggestion we should leave NATO because it compromises UK sovereignty, because war with Russia seems a distinct possibility. Whilst on the other hand we can leave the EU for, to my mind, utterly spurious reason exactly because war with Germany has become a ridiculous idea that we just don't need to even consider.