Originally posted by Boroda
The only tactics to effectively fight insurgency is medieval - take hostages, slaughter entire settlements to terrorise others.
Not quite. Look at the Chechens. The effective way to fight an insurgency requires a few steps. You have to secure the moral victory, bringing more locals to your side than the insurgents. "Hearts & Minds" has its place. Since all wars are based on economic endurance, it is a step to undercutting their support and funding. Next, you have to have in place a specific number of garrisoned troops per square mile of occupied terrain. This formula is not an easy one, and based on economy of force. Then, you have to ensure you have operational targets (example: Fallujah) to let your forces go on the offensive. That not only has the potential to take a chunk out of an insurgency, but also builds the morale of your soldiers who are much happier with an objective in front them, than wondering what's going to blow up today.
Hm. Let me disagree. Biggest part of Soviet industry was under Germans by Oct. 1941. Moscow is a HUGE industrial and transportation center, it's importance can't be overestimated.
I'll concede that point. However the southern front had a greater strategic importance due to the oil fields. Factories & rail lines are all well in good, but they have to be fueled. Hitler authorized the attacks on it by forces that were really needed elsewhere, and by a general who was an inferior strategist. Then, later, by bogging down at Stalingrad, fighting over a name, and simply not leaving behind reserve forces using an elastic defense to check counter-offensives, he cost himself the Eastern Front.
Soviet plans were based on flank attacks and usage of motorised and tank units to cut off enemy lines and counterattack. But this tactics failed 
Static defence is usefull only in unimportant directions. It's a basic thing, please correct me if I am wrong.
Static defence was impossible for USSR, it's obvious, the density of defense was too thin, we simply didn't have enough troops for reliable defense.
You're correct in that. However many Soviet commanders failed to carry it out correctly. They probably read too much Clausewitz and believed that it took a "great battle" to determine the course of a war. That assumption has been proven to be false. Stalin, commissars, and political pressure didn't help them either.
Also, the density wasn't the issue. It works both ways. The failing was in defensive strategy. The Germans would begin their encirclement and close the trap before the Russain forces could get a rear guard into position and begin a general retreat. At the same time, all the way until the end of the war, German commanders were on all but a few notable occasions, able to keep their retreat corridor open and prevent encirclement. This allowed them to pull back, regroup, and grind down offensives with checks and counter-attacks while preserving most of their strength.
Also, static defense really only works against direct assaults. So while it can be effective, you always hear about a some greater leader (Alexander, Gudurian, Rommel, Patton, Chesty Puller) who obtained suprise by going through "impossible" terrain. That's them using the indirect approach to obtain suprise and a moral victory. More often than not, their battles were won before the first casualty.
"Russian swarm tactics"? What's that?
This isn't the perfect example of it, but one I know off the top of my head (I'm at work, no books handy). Look up and read about the "Tank Riders" in Stalingrad. They'd get a long column of T-34s up, and have hundreds of infantry climb on. The infantry were armed almost exclusively with ppsh submachineguns. They drove headlong into German positions and tried to overrun them with brute force. Their life expectancy was non-existant.
The main problem with Arabs is that they are not warriors. Worse then Romanian army. No training can turn cowards into soldiers.
Their insurgency kicked the crap out of the Turks.
Just imagine one Soviet motoinfantry division in Kuwait-City in 1991. They could turn a city into a small-scale Stalingrad instead of running away.
To an extent. Taking a city is the most brutal type of fighting imaginable, except for maybe a medieval siege (they'd catapult diseased animal corpses). However, there are steps you can take to demoralize and break the force. You leave reserves in place to check and movement out of the city, bomb out communications and infrastructure, and starve them out. They'll be more than happy to surrender eventually.
You disappoint me
Sorry, didn't know if you were trollin' or what
What I meant in my forst post in this thread is that US is unable to wage a full-scale war relying on "smart weapons" and other fancy stuff. You see, they ran out of cruise missiles in Yugoslavia and then in Iraq. In Russia they'll probably get as low as bayonet attacks (exaggerating). Fighting a country with full scale echeloned air-defence, rocket artillery and thousands of tanks, sattelite recon, ECM corps, submarine fleet and every male knowing how to assemble his Kalashnikov is quite different from beating third-world countries exausted by decades of sanctions.
The Iraqi army was supposed to be one of the biggest/best in the world prior to the first Gulf War, and they were demolished fairly quickly once the ground war started. BTW, there actually was a bayonet charge in Desert Storm, company level, done by Highlanders iirc. (No, I don't think they were shouting "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!" before the rest of y'all jump in).
I think in a head to head conflict, the US would probably beat Russia. Superior training, weapons, aircraft, electronics, the best ASW in the world, and NVG capabilities several generations ahead of everybody else. Plus NATO treaties.
However, I don't think the US army would ever be able to invade Russia though. There's simply too much terrain suitable to armed resistance and insurgency, and of course massive stockpiles of real Kalashnikovs (not the chinese crap).
