I stumbled across a video of Dr. Philip Karber, a former U.S. Marine and founder of the Potomac Foundation, briefing West Point cadets in April 2018 on the war in the Donbas and Russian capabilities. It is remarkable and worth your time because it lays out in stark terms the delusion of the American military and the harsh reality of Russian military capabilities.
Andrei Raevsky (aka The Saker) provides a helpful summary of Karber’s key points:
- Russia has the most advanced and dense, data-linked air defense on earth.
- In a war against Russia, U.S. army cannot expect much air assistance for at least the first several weeks. Even stealth aircraft will not be of much use because of the distance they must fly in order to reach targets in Ukraine and/or Russia.
- Russian EW (electronic warfare) is much more advanced and more ‘combat-ized’ than in the U.S. RF utilizes it in combat squads whereas U.S. barely has any and only at the divisional level
- Russian EW shuts down all communications in huge areas along the front, no cellphones, military radios etc. They break GPS links with drones, making them useless and can even fry the fuses on artillery shells midflight.
- U.S. army produces 10x the frequency emissions of a Ukrainian brigade, which would make it extremely visible to all sorts of Russian EW, drones, advanced weapons.
- Russia has far more artillery than U.S. and far greater variety of munition types.
Remember, these are the items Karber identifies as key. This is not Raevsky’s opinion. The video is unnerving in part because it is four years old yet predicts the kind of war Russia is now waging inside Ukraine.
Go to the 17:40 mark in the video and listen as Karber describes the Russian Operations Plan for Invading Ukraine. Even though this video is four years old it is still relevant. More so than ever. Here is the map of the proposed 2014 Russian invasion plan. Look familiar?
Important to note that Russia made some significant alterations to this plan. Their axis of attack from the north through Chernobyl was not on the 2014 plan.
Karber’s two most salient conclusions from his briefing should scare the hell out of U.S. military commanders.
First, from the last year of WW II until now the US has always fought with air superiority and never faced a comparable air force. Russia changes that calculus. Not only does it have a robust combat air capability that rivals anything the United States or NATO can put in the air, the Russians have the largest interconnected air defense system in the world. Five systems that are all data linked according to Karber. And this was the status quo from four years ago. Russian has made additional significant technological gains on this front.
One of the most important developments is Russia’s dramatic expanded use of drones/UAVs. Russian tanks have capability to operate a UAV from the tank to obtain intelligence and launch an aerial attack.
The second, and far more concerning Russian advantage is its formidable Electronic Warfare capabiltiy–i.e., they can listen, jam communications and hit targets emitting an electronic signature. The US Army, by contrast, does not have a competent, organized EW capability. Compounding the threat is the U.S. Army’s over reliance on computer systems to gather and disseminate intelligence and other essential military communications. This means that U.S. command posts and units will be easier to target and destroy.
Another ominous observation from Karber concerns use of thermobaric weapons. Karber describes them as “Napalm on steroids.” The Ukrainian soldiers dug in at fortified positions are discovering this horror first hand. These bombs give Russia the ability to devastate company and brigade sized units. It eliminates Russia’s need to send troops against a fortification and risk incurring thousands of casualties.
The war in the Donbas has been going on for eight years. Until now, Russia did not fully engage its full military capabilities. Whatever success Ukraine enjoyed prior to the launch of the special military operation is now a distant memory. If Dr. Karber is to be believed, the Ukrainian Army posed a more serious threat than any army that NATO could field. In other words, the last six weeks represent a proxy war between Russia and NATO and NATO is losing.
It seems that there is a different philosophy between American/Nato weapons systems and Russia’s.
The Russian systems appear to be designed to be useful on the battlefield, to fight and win wars.
The US systems seem to have a slightly different purpose – to enhance MIC CEOs stock options and to provide cushy jobs for retired generals, with a bonus of creating jobs in certain influential congressional districts. Fighting wars, not so much.
There needs to be a,law or time out period of several years before military can hop to weapons manufacturers or politics.
This is corrupting the army and making senior officers political yes men looking for Government jobs.
Tempting as it is to endorse a view you think is wise and farseeing – and it might even have been, probably many of the most wrong-headed people are right some of the time – I would put little to no faith in anything Karber says. He was co-author of the Clark-Karber Report, together with CNN Talking Head Wesley Clark, which argued right after the Maidan for east-European countries to send Ukraine their tanks and MiG’s and so forth, not only because they would already know how to operate them, but because they would be useful in creating attacks which could be blamed on Russia.
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-uzRFVkkzmphI4ees/Clark-Karber%20Report%20on%20Ukraine%20Military%20Needs_djvu.txt
Dr. Phillip Karber was also part of the Ukrainian ‘delegation’ which presented photos to the Senate Armed Services Committee, ostensibly pictures of Russian tank columns entering Ukraine, which were actually taken in Georgia in 2008.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-senator-inhofe-fake-photos/26849852.html
Finally, Karber’s ‘report’ on China’s ‘secret warheads’ which were supposedly secreted in subterranean tunnels was rightfully demolished as complete nonsense by actual knowledgeable people.
https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/204799/collected-thoughts-on-phil-karber/
He’s definitely a smooth talker, but assessing him as a perceptive academic who ‘gets it’ might be worth a rethink.
His analysis is credible for the reasons you identify as his shortcomings. He was wrong about Russia in the Ukraine circa 2014-2015. He is grudgingly conceding the significant advantages Russia has. Something which most Western analysts refuse to do.
Hi Larry,
Glad I was able to track you down. Please keep the sober analysis coming. It’s an extremely rare thing these days.
Regards,
Eric
Glad you found me. It is sad about Pat. TTG is a clown.
LJ , im happy people from SST found this site .. i too have to thank andrei matrynov for pointing to this site.. your site are the core and original heart of the old SST , thanks for fighting for the truth and facts against the insane tide of neocon MSM propaganda
btw who is this TTG who took over SST ? it seem the account was used by multiple person. Is this TTG account a minder / control for pat lang ? because he now took over posting on SST and he even posts mundate topics just like col lang (eg spacex topics etc)
i already suspected TTG as a government plant , after all he is one who insist on the stupid ‘russia hack USA by fancybear’ propaganda back then. Is this guy a real green beret veteran or just introduced as one to give him clout on SST ?
SST now is garbage , the comments are garbage , good people are bullied by the bullies in comment section , and TTG ran endless IO supporting ukraine fake news and advancing neocon warmongering agenda.. Only fools do not notice the shift.
Did Col Lang lost his courage and succumb to pressure by neocons to support the ukraine war propaganda ? or did he just a controlled opposition from the beginning and never really anti neocon ? i remember his boast when facing biden back when he was DIA , now it seem like a bad joke considering he lick biden and neocon boots like good pet..
really feel sad about SST , it used to be a great place when great people allowed to post their opinion without getting screamed or banned.
now it just TTG posts all the time..
disgusting
I remember Pat fondly for what he was. The current version is sad and pathetic. TTG is of Lithuanian heritage and just hates all things Russian.
It’s interesting to note though that most of the comments following this article disagree with TTG’s assessment of what is really going on!
https://turcopolier.com/the-cauldron-ttg/
Not only interesting. Damning. The commentators clearly are far smarter than TTG.
Some of comments sound like US propaganda, for example, Russian invasion of Crimea prior to the amalgamation. He also talks about Russians fighting in the Donbas when it should be Russian ethnic Ukrainians fighting against the Ukies in a civil war. Was he being politically correct?
L.
Hi Larry,
I’ve been reading your site since you started it. I was glad to find it after TTG gave a hint to it’s existence. I think I was banned from Col Lang’s site but no one ever told me. At first I couldn’t access the site so I went to another computer I have and was able to read the postings. I tried to post a few times but my posts were never published. Oh well. I still read it every day but am entirely perplexed by the direction it’s taken.
I’m wondering when Odessa will be the main topic.
Clint Ehrlich is tweeting about the escalation of the Russian war in the wake of the Moskva.
Interested in your analysis.
Really shows the desperation of NATO and the Zelensky crowd to seize on this ship as some big deal. Apart from minor symbolic importance, it is an old, outdated ship. That said, the loss of the ship (still not clear what caused it) coincides with Russia significantly escalating missile strikes, bombings, artillery barrages, and the destruction of all oil refineries/storage depots in Ukraine. Phase II is well underway.
It’s already yesterday’s news. Strange how that happens.
Larry, thank you for this site. SST became a bizarro world with no connection with reality. TTG is a passive-aggressive fool and his analysis is so foolish it is impossible to understand how he was ever in position of authority to make recommendations based off intelligence.
Congratulations Larry, looking forward to many years of reading your excellent analysis.