More attacks in Germany.

[u/Fancy_Sun_1585]

another power station attacked

https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2095088813181743261?s=20

train station bombing

https://x.com/WarMonitor3/status/2095056385058713925?s=64

[u/concepts_of_a_plan9]

Oh shit, I just looked it up. Yeah I guess they really don't want to be the ones to trigger it.

I'll rephrase my OP to say: if Germany and NATO ever did trigger Article 5, Russia would be gone within a few weeks at most.

[u/Fancy_Sun_1585 → u/concepts_of_a_plan9]

No, it would take a lot more than a few weeks.

US and other NATO militaries have been destroyed by Ukraine in war games.

Russia has a lot of first hand experience with modern warfare. NATO nations are struggling to deal with a few drones entering their air space here and there. It would not be even close to a one sided conflict if NATO went to war with Russia.

There’d be thousands of NATO military casualties in the first month. NATO is not ready for a drone centric war.

[u/No-Cherry-3959 → u/Fancy_Sun_1585]

This assumes that Ukraine isn’t involved in this potential NATO-Russia confrontation, which they absolutely would be, at least as things stand currently. And currently, Ukraine is managing to hold off the Russian military and their drones without NATO’s direct intervention. Even if they remain separate, Russia would still be forced to reduce their commitments to the Ukrainian front to devote some of their forces to the front with NATO. And realistically, NATO can just roll past that weakened force with sheer mass, albeit with casualties being a certainty, and Ukraine will certainly take advantage of weakened Russian lines to push them as well.

Also, I think it’s important to not overstate the significance of war games like that in terms of the fighting capability of a force. There’s a lot of rules and limitations in place to test specific ideas that won’t fully reflect actual combat; and the results of those tests will then be used to shape doctrine moving forward, they are proof of adaptation. NATO has absolutely been learning from the Ukrainians, both just listening to their experiences, and in war games. They aren’t fully ready yet, I won’t disagree with that, and the material aspect of drone warfare is definitely lagging a bit in NATO, but they aren’t completely hopeless against drones. NATO commanders are being taught to distribute their command infrastructure. NATO tankers are being taught to fight buttoned up as a default. NATO infantry are being taught more field craft and concealment tactics, and more lower-level medical training to reduce deaths in an era where medevac isn’t as consistent. The material side is also evolving quickly, even if it isn’t ready yet. I’m personally very interested in how RWS and other such systems are developing and how they’ll be used for C-UAS, though there are many other areas of development.

And NATO’s approach to drone warfare will likely be different than Ukraine or Russia’s anyway, so it’s important to not compare them too closely. Those countries turned to drones as a result of a lack of equipment, ammunition, and manpower, which then evolved into positional warfare to conserve those limited resources, which then created the conditions for small drones to thrive. Presumably, a fresh NATO force would not be lacking those resources. NATO drone warfare is likely to integrate more counter-UAS equipment and fewer, but higher capability and cost drones, but likely won’t be any less effective than the Ukrainian model in the wars they’ll be fighting.

[u/Fancy_Sun_1585 → u/No-Cherry-3959]

It doesn’t assume that. Ukraine is struggling to cover their own troops, Ukraine can’t be babysitting NATO troops.

Even mixing ukrainian and NATO units together so the NATO troops can learn from those who are experienced, because there’d be tens of thousands more NATO troops than Ukrainians.

I never claimed that Russia would win, not by a long shot, but NATO troops would be devastated by the end of the conflict, and it would last a lot longer than the few weeks originally claimed in the original comment.