Poland losing simulated NATO War against Russia

By losing a simulated war of its own invention with Russia, the Polish military seeks to convince NATO of its vulnerability. This could lead to a build-up of military forces that triggers the very conflict the Poles just lost.

Late last month the Polish military reportedly conducted a war game simulating a general war between Poland and Russia. Dubbed ‘Winter-20’, the simulation involved several thousand Polish officers who oversaw the virtual war between the two nations.

The war game incorporated all of the Polish military’s newest weapons, including the F-35 fighter. When the simulation ended, after five days of “conflict,” the Polish Army had been totally defeated, its combat units suffering between 60 and 80% losses, and the Russian Army stood on the banks of the Vistula River, ready to occupy Warsaw.

According to an article in the National Interest, the simulated conflict serves as a reminder that NATO’s Eastern flank is weak and vulnerable to Russian aggression.

There would be no repeat of the August 1920 ‘Miracle on the Vistula’, where the beleaguered Polish troops commanded by Jozef Pilsudski rallied to decisively defeat the advancing Red Army commanded by Mikhail Tukachevsky.

Nor would a modern-day Russian attack on Poland replicate the events of September 1939, when Semyon Timoshenko’s Red Army troops occupied eastern Poland while the Polish Army was busy trying to defend against a Nazi German invasion, or January-August 1944, when Georgy Zhukov’s Soviet forces advanced to the outskirts of Poland.

While the last two represented Russian victories, they — like the Battle for Warsaw in 1920 — are a matter of historical record, representing events based on reality.

Winter-20 was, on the other hand, derived from delusional fantasy, a bit of self-defeatist theater designed to reinforce the dual perception of Polish-NATO weakness and Russian strength.

This is not to say that any large-scale conflict between NATO and Russia east of the Vistula would not end with a decisive NATO defeat and Russian forces ensconced opposite Warsaw within a period of less than a week. NATO’s military weakness is well documented, and the atrophied reality of its ground forces a known fact.

The US military can barely afford to maintain one heavy armored brigade in theater and is hard pressed to generate a second brigade capable of reinforcing the region by falling in on pre-positioned stocks of equipment.

Germany is incapable of generating a single armored brigade for service in the field, having had to cannibalize its garrison forces to make ready the single battalion-sized battle group it has deployed to the Baltics.

The British Army is in a similar sad state, significantly reduced in size and, like Germany, unable to mobilize an armored brigade for deployment to Poland or the Baltic’s in a timely fashion. The same holds true for the French Army.

As for the Polish Army, it lags in almost every category of combat power generation, despite expending billions of dollars in support of force modernization and enlargement.

The Global Firepower (GFP) annual defense review for 2021 evaluates the military forces of 139 countries around the world, based on a multitude of factors as they relate to a prolonged offensive or defensive military campaign.

Poland is ranked 23rd in the world, with a power index rating of 0.4187. By way of comparison, France is ranked 7th, with an index of 0.1691, the British 8th, with an index of 0.1997, and the Germans 15th, with an index rating of 0.2519.

Russia is ranked 2nd, with an index rating of 0.0791. Only the United States, with an index rating of 0.0718, has a higher power index. But the bulk of the US military is based out of the continental United States, and would take months to deploy to Europe.

Russia, on the other hand, is operating from interior lines of communication using forces that are trained and equipped to fight and sustain a large-scale ground conflict with minimal mobilization requirements.

The Russophobic postures of these new NATO members has resulted in the transformation of the trans-Atlantic alliance from a defensive posture to one where the armed forces of several European nations, along with the US, are deployed along the Russian border, with the sole mission of confronting the Russian military.

Complicating matters further is NATO’s dangerous posture regarding tactical nuclear weapons, and more precisely, a new low-yield nuclear warhead mounted on forward deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

These weapons were not only designed to be used in combat operations (i.e., they are not meant as a deterrent), but their use has actually been exercised in war games hypothesizing a NATO conflict with Russian forces in Poland and the Baltic’s.

The ‘Winter-20’ war game represents the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that history often records after the fact, when it is too late for nations to change events on the ground.

By portraying the Russian Army as little more than a modern-day version of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, ready to ravage a Poland helpless to stop it, the Poles are setting an artificial standard that serves to drive a NATO response.

Russia has carried out massive military maneuvers in its western military district in the past years. All are predicated on a response to NATO aggression, either against Kaliningrad or Belarus.

All involve the delivery of a massive counter strike designed to drive the NATO invaders out of Russian territory, or the territory of its allies. These counter-strikes involve deep attacks — the kind that will envelope enemy formations and seize large swaths of territory.

I think that some within US power circles have territorial designs on Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, formerly the Prussian-German Koenigsberg.

I have often heard various hotheads express publicly a factually baseless view that the Soviet Union took Kaliningrad without consent of the wartime allies in 1945.

This is of course nonsense, and it should be remembered that the USA was in no position to dictate to the Russians, whose Red Army did the majority of the winning against Germany [over 80% of all German losses of men and equipment].

RT. com / ABC Flash Point WW III News 2021.