I was read this article the other day about ship repair in Siberia. *That *is the kind of place Russian armies would have to travel through to get to Canada.
Anybody that watched Superman 2 knows that if he could lose his powers and hitchhike to the North Pole through Canada, then Canada can’t be as big as everyone makes it out to be. Man, what a ridiculous scene. Of course he and Lois had to make their way from the North Pole back to civilization after he had his powers removed but they didn’t try to show that.
Going back to my earlier question about stockpiles of missiles and smart bombs. Unlike previous wars, modern warfare would quickly deplete stocks of missiles and then slow way down because of the lack of manufacturing capacity, without the ability to quickly build large numbers of aircraft and munitions. Russia would have an advantage as they have their own manufacturing, but I have idea how much that would help.
wasn’t there an old US war college theoretical plan from the 40s twas how to invade Canada if the Nazis then the soviets in the 50s took over and then just evolved to “how to invade Canada” and when someone discovered it it caused a bit of a stink ?
I know it summarized a lot of stuff discussed here but the varying factory was the bases we had in alaska would help cause a multifront invasion … the really funny thing about it was the plans for a Quebec based resistance ala france …
War Plan Red, devised in the 1930’s though mainly as a thought exercise. It was supposed to be for war against the UK but obviously the easiest way to attack the UK was via Canada. There were no actual plans to attack targets outside of Canada in the event of a war with Great Britain thus if Canada declared neutrality or even sided with the United States the US had no actual plans of attacking Great Britain besides attempting a blockade.
Similarly both Great Britain and Canada themselves made their own plans in case of a war with the United States at the same time.
Well, as far as I know, Russia have thousands of conventional cruise missiles and probably millions of dumb bombs in their stockpiles, so it wouldn’t be that much of an issue. My guess is their real issue would be keeping their birds in the air, and things like attrition (both combat and environmental, pilot error and the like). There is definitely an elite group of Russian pilots, but the bulk of them aren’t getting the training and air time the elite groups gets. That goes for ground crews as well. I’d guess that only a fraction of their total air force is completely combat ready and can be used in operations lasting a year in such conditions. Their navy is much the same…they have some very modern ships and some very good crews, but the bulk of their forces…aren’t. So, I think they would be hitting Canada hard early, and then ramping up to be able to maintain a slower pace down the road. Looking at with just the numbers, Russia should have an overwhelming conventional advantage, but I don’t think it’s nearly that large when you look at the capabilities, crews and support crews, air frame status and logistics. But I don’t think missile stocks will be there bottleneck. JMHO, YMMV.
I agree inability to quickly manufacture munitions let alone a/c, though that would be a big potential weakness of major air forces in quantitative peer combat now, would not really apply here. The initial Russian numerical superiority is too large. The limitation as partly correctly pointed out in a lot of posts is how much of their large combat force they could deploy and sustain in the difficult conditions of the Arctic. For the same reason I don’t think the problem would be so much the non-uniform quality and readiness of the Russian forces. Even the relatively high quality parts are large to deploy across the Arctic.
However where I don’t agree with a lot of the posts is that the difficulty in projecting and supporting the force means the invasion could not work. Again, even extreme distance and weather issues in ground campaigns are a function of the opposition, and time. If you have enough time and weak enough opposition, you simply overcome the obstacles over time. The only show stoppers to such a plan are for example if you can’t provide adequate air cover/defense over landing sites and the enemy can defeat the landing there, or subsequently make resupply impossible. A brief investigation of the basic facts there seems to indicate Canada does not have the capability to do that v Russia. Therefore ‘it’s a long way in a cold place’ is not a really good argument why once the bridgehead was established it could not eventually drive to a suitable west coast port, establish an air component there, and allow easier entry to an overwhelmingly larger land force.
If the idea ‘this couldn’t be done’ really means ‘not as a lightning coup de main’ then sure, it would take a significant amount of time. It would not be anything like invading Crimea, or even Manchuria in 1945*. But if it means ‘no country would slog this out’ then that’s just saying the hypothetical is unrealistic, which it is, though for another more basic reason: the existence of the US and its military forces.
*the Soviet spearheads in the west coming from Mongolia traversed 100’s of miles of roadless terrain and through a major mountain range in a matter of days, but of course were able to build up a big logistical base right on the border before starting off, it took months before to do that.