Help with Background: Why does Russian invades Finland in 2015?

[Johnno]

Another option is that Russia has a toilet paper shortage and is trying to harvest all of Finlands trees to solve it.

This could be it. Finland does have quite the forestry industry and do export loads of stuff to Russia among other countries.

[pocoloco]

I think we wouldn't seize Russian corvette... if it ventured into the Finnish territorial waters it would be notified about its presence in our waters without authorization, then advised to leave the said waters and then made to leave. But I see no seizing of happening on any nations navy vessels. But a cargo freighter would be a completely different story... in this scenario the freighter could be sailing even under a Finnish flag but carrying undeclared military class items (has happened, Patriot missiles marked as fireworks bound for Korea and undeclared tank parts from Russia to Syria).

Our forests, by the way, would not be a reason for Russia to invade, they have lots more trees on that side of the border and Finnish forest industries use quite a lot of Russian trees.

And just to nitpick on a technicalities, back in the 1941 the first offensive was done by Russia (air attack by several hunded planes) after which Finnish army started the offensive.

[Arrigo]

Wow...that's brilliant! that is even better than I had hoped for. Once again I am awed by the speed and level on insight and imagination to be found on LAF.

If it's all right with you I think I will cut and paste that whole scenario as the background for my campaign.  Well done!

I am a bit worried you might have give but too much thought as to how to start a war. 

Ehy, I am hailing from the War Studies Department... I know some of my colleagues are just happy to show themselves around telling people they are from WS... but I am doing real war studies, and those things are like contingency plans, as absurd they are you never know when you will need one... or two... and I think that if Andrew got in prime time speaking of the Russian Navy as he does in class there would be at least a diplomatic incident. Ok once he told us the story of when he was arrested by the KGB... just after the collapse of the Iron Courtain he had been invited to a big conference in Leningrad, got completely drunk (at least he told us so, I have almost never seen him drinking anything more than juice) with a professor from US (Hattendorf or Love forgot whom) and the police took them under custody... because they were westerner the KGB showed up. Ok maybe he made it up but it was fun. Anyway coming up with wars is both a challenging intellectual  exercise and fun.  And it is also a pre-requisite to use our contemporary collection for anything except the headlines that could be not so funny to game. 

[Hobbit]

Sample figure is very nice BTW.

Russia falls out with Norway over resource exploitation in Spitzbergen...Russian Special Forces en route to Norway overland stray across the Finnish border (by accident or design) and trigger border clashes.

or...as part of a classic NATO vs Russia scenario Russian forces bypass Norwegian forward defences by crossing the "Finish Wedge"...

There is some info on Rapid Reaction Forces and Finish relations with NATO in order to give timescales and background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Headline_Goal

http://www.arrc.nato.int/alliedrapidreactioncorps.aspx

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49594.htm

[Centaur_Seducer]

(not to mention direct or indirect Swedish support – surely a certainty?).

Dear Answer, the Swedish army is nowadays so small that we could get invaded by Greenland and look forward to a decade of more fish eating.

[Hobbit]

In fairness MOST modern armies are very small now compared to the days of the Cold War - I doubt the Russians can put all thet much stuff into the field at short notice in this region; two brigades maybe?

The Swedes, whilst small, have some very nice kit - I love the look of the CV90 (have absolutely no idea what they're like in real life) and I'd bet that they're at a higher state of readiness than the Russians.

You could probably represent the whole of most European armies in a system like CWC without too much trouble  

[Arrigo]

Fully agree,

The German army is reduced to more or less two maneuver divisions that have been earmarked to different NATO and EU reaction forces (they reduced the overall force level but not the overall commitment, so you have the same unit assigned to different commands). Russia has killed divisions but replaced with oversized brigades. But also modern brigades pack more punch and organic support than older ones and this is a general trend. Smaller leaner armies do not mean you cannot do thing, just that you do it with less both on the grounds. Current brigades hare high on firepower and maneuver, but lack the staying power of old divisions. A contemporary Russian brigade is able to deliver almost the same 'weight' of firepower than an old MRD but not to deliver the same 3 echelon assault.


Still I reckon that short wars are possible. Anyway even at the eight of the Cold war high intensity ops were limited by replacements and logistic stockpile. I am still holding the view that the Soviet Army would not have reached the Atlantic shores in two months or less has the 'red steamrollers' still maintain because after one month supplies would have gone down. According to US Army estimates based on Desert Storm/Sabre expenditure Central Front stockpiles would have evaporated in 2-3 weeks of war. Then everyone would have slowed down to resupply. In a reduced scale is what you can do today. A short initial burst of high tempo ops and then operational pause. How much you can go forward due to international pressure/internal public opinion/operational results is a guess. To a certain extent this can even create an 'exit clause'. If your initial push is successful you can exploit the operational pause to negotiate from strength, if unsuccessful try to get out. Of course you can also end upping the ante. Nothing is granted.

[former user]

Impressive scenarios

I for my part prefer the bizarre ones:

on a PR tour close to the Finnish border when Putin tries to catch an Elk with his bare hands, the hunt incidentally pulls him over to
Finland and he loses contact to his entourage. The Spetnats search escalates into an international conflict that nobody wanted, when Nato involvement later triggers the meddling in of Finnish nationalists, anti-Putin Russian insurgents, Chechen rebels and an ominous spam factory from Sweden. The incident is only solved in 2015, when Putin is found cryogenically preserved in a Finnish lake together with the elk after both fell in.

[Centaur_Seducer]

Impressive scenarios

I for my part prefer the bizarre ones:

on a PR tour close to the Finnish border when Putin tries to catch an Elk with his bare hands, the hunt incidentally pulls him over to
Finland and he loses contact to his entourage. The Spetnats search escalates into an international conflict that nobody wanted, when Nato involvement later triggers the meddling in of Finnish nationalists, anti-Putin Russian insurgents, Chechen rebels and an ominous spam factory from Sweden. The incident is only solved in 2015, when Putin is found cryogenically preserved in a Finnish lake together with the elk after both fell in.

Don't forget that they take the frozen head of Putin and put it on an old Stalin-robot, thus starting the Laser Russo-Finnish War!

[former user]

no, I rather thought of an alternate timeline when during the attempted defreezing he is transported back to the end of the 19th century and he kills Trotzky in order to take his place and change history.
But the moment he kills Stalin the resulting temporal disturbance field cracks up the time space continuum transferring the Japanese fleet from the 1941 Pacific to the 1917 Baltic where they sink the Tsarist fleet in Kronstadt.
or so....

[Hobbit]

I think Mark Copplestone makes a figure that could easily be converted for that!

http://www.copplestonecastings.co.uk/images/kkbb107col.jpg

Arrigo, have you seen this write-up of the "Global War Game" CPXs done during the 80s?:

http://www.usnwc.edu/Publications/Naval-War-College-Press/Newport-Papers/Documents/20-pdf.aspx

[itchy]

very interesting and I like the test figure , most likely start of a war would be outrage over vote riggng in the eurovision song contest 

[JediNinja]

I would like to take a more sci-fi approach.  Something fell from the sky and landed in Finland, 80 meters from the Russian border.  The Russians want it.  The EU want it.  Sweden deploys some troops, Russia deploys some troops.  Someone fires a shot.  Troops are dead on both sides.  Each side points starts pointing fingers and things spiral out of control quickly.  And suddenly grandma in Finland has Russian tanks rolling through her back yard and grandma in Russia has Swedish F-18's flying overhead dropping bombs.

[The Gray Ghost]

I don't see why there needs to be a plausible reason for a game but perhaps
territorial dispute going back to the break up of the Russian Empire or ethnic Russians forming a break away from Finland

[Hobbit]

And maybe reinforcements could come from the Nordic Battle Group:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Battle_Group