Pentagon Expert Says Russians Would ‘Annihilate’ US Army on Battlefield

Saturday, 7 November 2015

Pentagon Expert Says Russians Would ‘Annihilate’ US Army on Battlefield

16:20 05.11.2015

Despite the size of its military budget, the US Army isn’t as strong as one might think it is and it would certainly lose to the Russian Army in a direct confrontation on a battlefield, retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor said, according to Politico Magazine.

The deployment of the US Army 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Germany to Hungary that was intended to scare Russia was a joke and it wouldn't help in a real-life fighting scenario, said Macgregor, who also holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the US Military Academy at West Point.

"This Stryker parade [the line of US military vehicles that drove from Germany to Hungary] won't fool anyone in Moscow," Macgregor said, adding that perhaps the Russians may not know how to do certain things well, but when it comes to fighting wars they're second to none.

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Macgregor is a famous US war hero whose squadron destroyed an entire Iraqi Armored Brigade in 23 minutes, while suffering only one casualty, at the Battle of 73 Easting, a decisive tank fight during the Gulf War.

Later, reflecting on his famous victory, Macgregor said that if his military unit came to a face-to-face confrontation not with poorly-trained Iraqi soldiers, but with the Russians, his army would have been defeated.

"Defeated isn't the right word, the right word is annihilated," Macgregor told US military expert Mark Perry, according to Politico.

During his presentation at the US Congress in November of 2013, Macgregor compared the state of the US Army to a nine-passenger rowboat, in which "four would steer, three would call cadence and two would man the oars," according to Politico.

In other words, Macgregor said that the US Army is poorly organized or not well-trained, and if it had to face another army, equal in numbers and as technologically advanced, such the Russian or Chinese forces, on a conventional battlefield there is a high chance that US forces would be destroyed.

"Even if you increased the Army to 600,000 in its current form… it would still fail. That's the problem and, by the way, the Army knows it," the US military expert said, as cited by Politico.