Desperate Times, Desperate Measures, Eh? Again.

Daniel Goure has Ph.D. in some BS "science". He is also a neocon's neocon, with roots in Russia, which automatically translates into military incompetence. As most neocons he makes money by masturbating to American military porn (a normal practice for his type--he "served" in Pentagon as a consulting guy for something) and concocting a precisely the type of BS on Russia which helped to bankrupt the United States and expose it militarily as a power stuck in early 2000s with no prospects "to fight and win of "multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" as PNAC warmongers (and war-criminals) suggested and to which Goure belonged. How's this worked out for you, morons? 

But never mind, there is a new media outlet--a collection of "experts"--where they continue to masturbate to largely obsolete American arsenal and CONOPS and this Goure Ph.D. dude finally found the solution to restrain those nasty Russkies--he came up with a wonderful idea only US "International Relations" degree dumbed-down operationally and especially technologically ignorant person can come up with. Get a load of that:

How To Ensure Russia Can’t Beat NATO in a War: Forward Deploy the US Army.

You see, folks, this is the guy who taught at the US Naval War College and at some other US higher military learning outlets, so don't ask then why Afghanistans and Vietnams happen all the time. Apart from sheer geopolitical imbecility of such a plan, it is this plan's military dimension which is absolutely hilarious. Here is Goure's rationale. 

There are several reasons why forward deploying U.S. forces in Eastern Europe makes sense. First, they are the only forces that will be relevant. Russia has designed its conventional force posture, backed up by large numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles and integrated air and missile defense, to achieve a massive superiority at the beginning of a conflict and to deny the U.S. and its allies the ability to deploy reinforcements forward. They hope that this will produce a swift victory and reduce the chance of a larger conflict. 

Behold, this is the level of the US "military expert".  Actually, what Russia builds is to achieve a massive superiority throughout a whole duration of the conflict (how, Goure is not aware) and yes, moving U.S. forces closer to Russia is a perfect way to ensure that the United States Army sustains catastrophic losses in the first 48 to 72 hours. Not to mention this teeny-weeny fact that unlike Taliban (which still manged to defeat the U.S. forces) Russia can "turn off" pretty much most of key US (and NATO) C4ISR infrastructure and can make first week a bloodiest one in the US military history. But Goure doesn't stop here:

Third, many of the new capabilities the Army is pursuing as part of its modernization initiatives would be most effective if they are forward-deployed when a conflict opens. Long-range fire systems such as the Precision Strike Missile, Medium-Range Missile, and Extended Range Cannon Artillery, can threaten high-value targets deep in Russian territory from the opening movements of a conflict. The same is true for the Future Vertical Lift platforms, the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), and Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA).  

Is this guy for real? He is, his is the type primarily finding employment in D.C. and making sure that Vietnams and Afghanistans continue to pile up in US military records, which, frankly, is not that great. I'll give some hint--the best "Extended Range Cannon Artillery" is a cruise or tactical ballistic missiles which also happen to have highly selective multi-channel active seekers which are capable of self correcting and operating in a highly dense EW environment. They also carry between 300 and 700 kilograms of high explosives which render everything inoperable  in a huge radius. Not so with this "extended range" artillery, which will require constant flow of targeting info which is doubtful in the theater of operations saturated with such things as S-300V4, S-400 and S-500 (among many others) and RuAf operating such technology as R-77M. Good luck providing reliable data under such conditions for 155-mm rocket augmented shell. And here is a purely military-strategic issue. Forget about all this general pep-talk BS, like this: 

The best strategic deterrent the United States can deploy is a robust, forward deployed Army. By forward deploying active-duty units, particularly heavy formations with their associated enablers, the U.S. will be sending an unambiguous message to Moscow. In the event hostilities do occur, these forces will increase the ability of the U.S. to mount an effective defense and engage in early operations to penetrate, degrade, and destroy high-value targets and formations from the outset of conflict. The effectiveness of many of the new capabilities being pursued by the U.S. under its current modernization effort will be enhanced by their forward deployment. 

Can Mr. Goure give us at least a sensible number of U.S. forces required to be "forward-deployed" to "ensure Russia can't beat NATO in a war". I am just curious. I know for sure that Russia is not going to attack unless attacked and her red lines are crossed. So, the question--how many? What REAL, not PR BS, "capabilities" will NATO deploy? I remember Mr. Ochamnek calculated 28 fighter and 7 bomber squadrons to beat those pesky Russians to bloody pulp in 2017. He then abruptly changed his tune in 2019 and admitted that most of this NATO force will not even get off the ground in case of real war with Russia. But at least Ochmanek had the guts, which is surprising for the guy with the background in political pseudo-science and tenure in RAND. But I do have a question if Goure even has an understanding of the process of targeting, what it is and how it is done. Does he understand that for all intents and purpose US infantry has no viable air defense. I doubt he does.

But that is not the end of it, Goure fails to identify one key operational factor in all his "strategic" sophomoric writing--no matter where the U.S. forces are deployed in case the first shots fired--Mr. Goure will have first hand experience of trying to take a shelter in Washington D.C. which is absolutely not defended against not perspective but already deployed Russian weapons. This is the fact which most neocons and warmongers in the US miss and cannot wrap their brains around it. But there is no denial, there is a whiff of desperation in Goure's writing, which is done also in an attempt to self-assure that this time the U.S. forces can win.... something. 

The United States, starting from 1990s had its military "doctrines" written by military ignoramuses who wouldn't know the difference between shit and shinola, and who led the United States on the primrose path of mythical US "military dominance" which was never there on the ground after WW II and is now evaporating on the surface of the sea. This corrupt blob of sycophants of American greatness and Israel-firsters ensured that the US blows its treasure and blood onto unwinnable military adventures against third rate opponents who the US still didn't manage to win anyway. I am on record--it is impossible to teach US "think-tankdom" anything, they lack the learning ability, they are there not for learning anyway, and we see it today with the NATO establishment going bananas. They have a reason, they have been issued an ultimatum for the first time and 404 and its NATO membership is a red line no matter how many forces NATO decides to move "closer" to Russia's border. 

Evidently not everyone is Goure-alike in NATO. 

The new government of Norway, a NATO member state, has said that it won't allow movement of the US-led military bloc’s forces near its borders with neighboring Russia. “It’s very important for Norway to have a military presence in nearby regions,” Anniken Huitfeldt, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, told local outlet VG on Friday. “But in our opinion, directly next to the Russian border it’s better for us to handle it ourselves – with the help of Norwegian planes and ships.”

But in the end, does Washington even have required forces? I can tell you upfront--it does not, and that pretty much spells the doom for Goure's wet dreams.