The tanks most people are using were designed to fight other tanks on battlefields of the 80s or 90s, which is not what they tend to get used for today, so possibly, barring some big tank clash in the future which seems unlikely.
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
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Despite the large amount of noise you want to make about Ukrainian neo-Nazis, let's please note that the far right party of Ukraine gained just 2% of the vote in the last election (considerably less than most Western European nations), the president of Ukraine is Jewish, and that Ukraine is under an invasion by a country that readily embraces extremist nationalism.
This is not to deny that Ukraine has a far right and it's got involved in recent events, just that we could take a more nuanced view than the Kremlin propaganda you're repeating.
The president of Ukraine has a pretty amazing bio. From joke to national hero.
www.bbc.com
It is my sincere hope that the NATO and EU countries are streaming not just weapons and materiel to Ukraine (not the Ukraine, just Ukraine) but the full spectrum of intelligence as well. Russia needs to lose badly.
Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky: The comedian president who is rising to the moment
Ukraine's president had no experience of politics when when elected in 2019, but has emerged as a convincing war leader.
www.bbc.com
It is my sincere hope that the NATO and EU countries are streaming not just weapons and materiel to Ukraine (not the Ukraine, just Ukraine) but the full spectrum of intelligence as well. Russia needs to lose badly.
Ukraine 'holds peace talks with Russia' amid scramble for second largest city | ITV News
Anton Geraschenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs, told ITV News that the two sides begun discussions late on Sunday afternoon. | ITV National News
www.itv.com
I hope to God this can end the war.
Honestly if both men were smart Putin would only ask for the recognition of Crimea to them in exchange for them backing out of every other territory and Zele would take it mainly because it already belongs to Russia. Although I expect Putin to not be smart about this and demand also the to Breakaway States and them not joining NATO.
I've also heard the Russian economy is going to collapse when the Stock Market opens on Monday so it could explain why Putin wants this meeting so badly.
Yes and no.
Specific to that hit, it looks like the engine deck took it. That's not a location where spaced or reactive armor can be easily fit, due to that turrets need 360 degrees of traversal and up-armoring the engine deck necessarily has a negative impact on that. Note the improvised anti-HEAT grill is over the turret, not the engine deck; that's not uncommon, due to the next point.
Specific to contemporary Russian tanks, they're derivatives and incremental upgrades to the T-72 which has a notoriously...problematic...autoloader. Long story short, rounds are stowed in a ring around the turret and that makes them incredibly prone to cook-off. If you've seen Syrian war videos or even other videos/photos from this ongoing conflict, Chechnya, or even Desert Storm, and saw Russian tanks with the turret blown clean off, you've seen the design flaw in action.
Hence, extreme up-armoring on the turret; when a severe but non-penetrating hit can lead to a K-kill because it sets off a chain reaction that causes the tank's entire ordnance to explode, designers have to protect accordingly...and when Russian doctrine is still "quantity has a quality of its own", protection doesn't tend to be a priority. That is, until active protection systems enter the picture.
Which brings me to the last point, specific to tanks in general. Frankly, the heyday of the main battle tank is at its end; they no longer bring utility to a fighting force commensurate to their (logistic or financial) cost, or associated risk. AFV's are here to stay, but MBT's as we know them are on their way out.
"The Ukrainian far right isn't that popular" doesn't engage the point that the United States supported it.
Okay I feel like Im going crazy here. Ukraine has a standing army of 6,000, and they've called up citizen militias armed with Soviet era weapons. Their airforce is chronically underfunded and supplied with MiG29s, a 1970s era obsolete fighter. And yet they're holding off a full Russian invasion. Sounds far fetched, yes?
Jan 1st, 2022, Ukrainian special forces quietly and overnight increased its Operators by over 1,000. One thousand fully trained and equipped special forces popped out of the ground, forming one seventh of their standing army? Seriously?
Or did several companies of Delta Force, SiS, German Kommandos and probably a few teams of Isreali commandos come in through the Poland corridor and go off-grid and they're the ones secretly holding off the Russians. Millions of dollars in aid and weapons don't mean shit if you not only don't have the training, which requires trainers, but also just don't have the man power to carry weapons.
Are we 100,000% sure there isn't some off the books NATO detachment in Ukraine quietly making the Russians pay for every foot they take? I mean as much as I'm heartened and spirited by the footage of the enlistment lines, a bunch of school teachers and retirees with wooden prop guns didn't blow up several fully armed convoys of Russian armor. Are we sure the pilot known as the Ghost of Kiev is a Ukrainian national, and not one of the graduates from the Top Gun school? The dog that doesn't bark as it were. Or, since we're all nerds, the Bird of Prey that fires while cloaked.
Jan 1st, 2022, Ukrainian special forces quietly and overnight increased its Operators by over 1,000. One thousand fully trained and equipped special forces popped out of the ground, forming one seventh of their standing army? Seriously?
Or did several companies of Delta Force, SiS, German Kommandos and probably a few teams of Isreali commandos come in through the Poland corridor and go off-grid and they're the ones secretly holding off the Russians. Millions of dollars in aid and weapons don't mean shit if you not only don't have the training, which requires trainers, but also just don't have the man power to carry weapons.
Are we 100,000% sure there isn't some off the books NATO detachment in Ukraine quietly making the Russians pay for every foot they take? I mean as much as I'm heartened and spirited by the footage of the enlistment lines, a bunch of school teachers and retirees with wooden prop guns didn't blow up several fully armed convoys of Russian armor. Are we sure the pilot known as the Ghost of Kiev is a Ukrainian national, and not one of the graduates from the Top Gun school? The dog that doesn't bark as it were. Or, since we're all nerds, the Bird of Prey that fires while cloaked.
Where the hell did you get that absurd number? RT?
I'm ok with that.
Well, maybe with Javelins, why not? So long as they could move and shoot.
The Ghost of Kyiv (not Kiev) is already acknowledged as a false, albeit inspiring, legend. But hey, long as Ukrainians keep shooting down Russians, it's all good.
That they are neither popular nor influential means they don't work well as pretext for the invasion. There is no nazi gouvernment to topple nor any population needing denazification. Mind you, even if there was an elected neonazi gouvernment, that would still not make the invasion justified.
That both the US and Russia never have been picky choosing groups to support elsewhere for stirring up trouble is true. Both have supported nazis. But that has nothing to to with the current invasion.
Who says the new special forces are fully trained and equipped? Could they not have simply taken troops and redesignated them as special forces, maybe given them extra training and equipment, but not up to what we'd think of special forces? "Special forces" is a broad term as it is.
And for holding off invasion, homeground advantage counts for a lot, logistics is much easier for one. And "holding off an invasion" is also a broad term, it seems more like they've kept the enemy away from some places and made them pay for what they've taken.
As EvilNeko pointed out, your 6000 number is extremely incorrect. The Ukrainian Ground Forces are cited as numbering 169,000 members as of 2016 with the entire Armed Forces of Ukraine cited as numbering 245,000 active-duty members as of this year.
Armed Forces of Ukraine - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Ukrainian Ground Forces - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I mean compared to what it should have been? A full Russian invasion? It should be a massacre. Russian's military is a nearpeer to the United States.
I'm just saying, if there were NATO forces on the ground, it'd look pretty much like it is now.
Javelins are nasty, its true. But you still need training and support. Its not something you can just pick up and be familiar with by the afternoon.
As for foreign secial forces : i am very sceptical about that. Most Western nations never expected that Putin really would invade. And in most democracies it is kinda very difficult and scandalous to let your army fight in a way without the parliament even being informed.
The only thing i have read was about the French foreign legion giving all Ukrainian members leave to fight at home and even allowing to take their personal equippment. But that only works because its the foreign legion and not really French army.
Of course that not be mixed up with the Ukrainian foeign legion that they are now forming from volunteers from abroad.
The only thing i have read was about the French foreign legion giving all Ukrainian members leave to fight at home and even allowing to take their personal equippment. But that only works because its the foreign legion and not really French army.
Of course that not be mixed up with the Ukrainian foeign legion that they are now forming from volunteers from abroad.
You know I would consider this less Ukrainian military genius and more of Russia dropping the ball. From what all I've heard this invasion is pretty incompetent like the winter War, unfortunately like the winter war there is a good chance that the Russian forces will become more competent as they get their shit together. The question is does Putin and Russia have that time
Not really, no.
Russian forces are, by all accounts, underfunded, undersupplied, under-trained, poorly supported, and low-morale staging a ground offensive against a well-prepared opponent, largely in terrain that favors defense. And despite all these systematic risk factors any one of which could and would prove fatal to an attempt at rapid dominance, the Russians' play was apparently an attempt at rapid dominance.
Also, do bear in mind we're talking about Ukraine, here. The country used to be part of the USSR, and it's only been thirty years since its dissolution. Without knowing names and service records, I don't think it's out of the boundaries of reason most of Ukraine's senior command were Soviet-trained and well-versed in Russian doctrine, strategy, tactics, and therefore had reasonable expectation of what the Russians would do -- and how to counter it.
The thing you have to remember about Ukrainian "citizen militias" is, that what you hear about Ukrainian "citizen militias" is what Ukrainian and Western media tell you. In reality, a substantial chunk of them -- if not most -- are CIA-funded, trained, and supplied paramilitaries who have been under the agency's wing since the Euromaidan protests.
How US intelligence got it right on Ukraine | CNN Politics
President Joe Biden and US officials got the intelligence right: They said Russia would invade Ukraine, despite Russia's assurances to the contrary. After a supreme miscalculation on how the pullout from Afghanistan would go, misguided intelligence on the run-up to the war in Iraq and many other...
www.cnn.com
Now, I'm sure the US has boots on the ground, whether that's special forces or CIA. But, asking whether that's a large-scale operation or not isn't really what you need to ask; what is, is whether large-scale US operations are even necessary in the first place.
Popular, no. Influential... they're still influential:
But I highlight United States support of neo-Nazis in Ukraine not to justify the invasion but to show how US actions contributed to producing the environment that made it something anyone was even considering. Ukraine is a pawn to the United States against an enemy that needn't have even been an enemy in the first place.
What might be more relevant is that the Ukraine has 220000 reservists who certainly can fight when they get access to weapons and also has a national guard which is somehow counted under militia because it is not part of the army.
On average, yes. However, it is reputed to have a number of high quality regular army units - how many I don't know, albeit surely not enough to invade Ukraine without a lot of additional cannon-fodder padding.
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"Whataboutery" tends to refer to situations in which you're not being presented with a binary choice between those two things. When you say the Ukrainians are arming right-wing militias, which is bad, and therefore they should instead capitulate to a force which arms more right-wing militias, pointing out the contradiction isn't "whataboutery". It quite helpfully illustrates that your real interest isn't reducing right-wing militia funding, and that that's just a convenient window-dressing for something else.
Indeed, they did not. They've acted like arrogant dicks at various times. Such is the nature of global sabre-rattling politics, and they didn't engage in anything particularly worse than the worldwide norm. Certainly nowhere near as provocatively as Russia itself, the President of which is currently threatening nuclear war, which you're fine with.
A democratic, sovereign country choosing to join a defensive alliance, of its own free will, and being allowed to do so, is not such a thing.
But you don't actually care about whether a democratically elected government is in place. Because they have one now, and you don't want it there.
You cannot claim to stand for principles which you have, at every step of the road, advocated solidly against. You only appeal to them for the duration of a post, and then in the next, will come out with something so utterly at odds with that very principle that it gives me whiplash.
I'm happy that Ukraine is holding.
I'm happy that Sanctions are affecting Putin's sway.
My heart aches that Ukrainians and Russians are dying. One people are defending their homes tooth and nail, and no one should have to do that. Another group are young kids who were lied to most likely and have to die for... what, a few dozen egos? To slip off to the ether with the shame of feeling you failed in your duties to protect Russian interest when there was no greater interest in Putin's grab for power.
I just need to be in a patch of earth were politics don't tread. It's never worth it.
I'm happy that Sanctions are affecting Putin's sway.
My heart aches that Ukrainians and Russians are dying. One people are defending their homes tooth and nail, and no one should have to do that. Another group are young kids who were lied to most likely and have to die for... what, a few dozen egos? To slip off to the ether with the shame of feeling you failed in your duties to protect Russian interest when there was no greater interest in Putin's grab for power.
I just need to be in a patch of earth were politics don't tread. It's never worth it.