Ukraine

Thaluikhain

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Wake up babe, the New Russian model tank just dropped. Taking this shit back to the 1890's
That looks like it should have a belt feed. Though, not such a terrible idea for the 1890s, they legitimately had bicycle troops back then to improve mobility, though you'd be better off just transporting the gun by bike and dismounting it. Increase mobility for a machine gun isn't a bad idea.

Ukrainian scrap metal dealers are gonna be living large I swear.
Er, in places like Cambodia and Vietnam, poverty, value of scrap metal and unexploded bombs makes for a bad combination. I could see similar problems for Ukraine.

And, if (if) the Russian military was a bit more competent, all that abandoned material the Ukrainians have picked up and are using...you'd not want to be the person sent to collect that.
 

Dalisclock

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Er, in places like Cambodia and Vietnam, poverty, value of scrap metal and unexploded bombs makes for a bad combination. I could see similar problems for Ukraine.

And, if (if) the Russian military was a bit more competent, all that abandoned material the Ukrainians have picked up and are using...you'd not want to be the person sent to collect that.
Pretty much. Arguably any competent army would either blow up or booby trap their vehicles before abandoning them.

That being said, we're talking about Russia here and there's been some shockingly poor discipline in abandoning their equipment. I think it's been estimated that Russia is currently the #1 contributor to Ukraine as far as tanks go through capture/abandonment.


Like this beauty, a electronic warfare module that was captured intact because Russia abandoned it during the retreat from Kyiv. I mean, Holy shit, that's the exact kind of thing you want to rig with explosives and blow it to the moon before you let the enemy get their hands on it. I can only imagine half the Western Intel community creamed their collective pants the moment that thing was captured.

Maybe they've improved on this front. It certainty couldn't get much worse then it was.
 
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Thaluikhain

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Pretty much. Arguably any competent army would either blow up or booby trap their vehicles before abandoning them.

That being said, we're talking about Russia here and there's been some shockingly poor discipline in abandoning their equipment. I think it's been estimated that Russia is currently the #1 contributor to Ukraine as far as tanks go through capture/abandonment.
Yup, though perhaps I should have said "motivated" instead of "competent". If you don't want to be fighting, I can see why you might not want to bother, excepting that that stuff is likely to be used by people who have good reasons for not wanting you breathing in their country.

But it's still seems bizarre.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Holy shit, that's the exact kind of thing you want to rig with explosives and blow it to the moon before you let the enemy get their hands on it.
When you're filling your ranks with poorly-trained criminals and other "undesirables" just to make your army look big, sometimes things are going to slip through the cracks.

War doesn't have to be uncivilised.
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite." - Winston Churchill
 
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Dalisclock

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Russia continues to go old skool.


For those who are wandering what this means, These were developed in the 1950's and retired in the 1970's.

To be fair, if you want to use it to move dudes or as a tractor, it's fine. It'll do the job. It's functionally a truck or a tractor with some armor plating and some guns. It'll probably protect from Small arms fire and after that the warranty is void.

But man it looks like Russia is continuing to dig through the deep storage. I'm not one of those people who keep insisting T-34's are gonna show up in Ukraine but if they do people are gonna fucking lose it and man it's gonna be brought up to counter "Russia Stronk" propaganda for the rest of time.
 
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Dalisclock

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Ex-Russian armour is going to become the #1 piece of farming equipment in the Ukraine for years to come.
Ukrainian farmers have the 2nd strongest Army in Ukraine.

Russia has the 3rd.

I'm not even sure if that's legitimately a joke at this point.
 

Ag3ma

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Russia really wants to accelerate the brain drain,. Huh?
Sort of.

This is actually a genius political tactic: firstly, it increases the size of the armed forces. Secondly, it gets a lot of those dangerous intellectuals who can think for themselves killed.
 
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Thaluikhain

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Sort of.

This is actually a genius political tactic: firstly, it increases the size of the armed forces. Secondly, it gets a lot of those dangerous intellectuals who can think for themselves killed.
That thought did occur, but it depends what the universities are teaching. If it's subjects like engineering, the regime does need those people, and without wanting to sound harsh to engineers, dangerous critical thinking isn't always a requirement.
 

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Come on, what everyone* really wants is the US to take all those A-10s out of mothballs and send them to the Ukraine.


*Me and other psychos
I think the only reason they haven't yet is because the airspace is still contested and A-10's probably wouldn't last long. Russian Air defense systems are apparently pretty decent.

Don't get me wrong, they have their uses but they can't just soak up bullets/missiles like some crazy Ace Combat plane.
 

Thaluikhain

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Don't get me wrong, they have their uses but they can't just soak up bullets/missiles like some crazy Ace Combat plane.
Uh-oh, A-10 fans are going to swarm the thread saying how good it was in the third world fighting people with no air defence, and ignore the fact that might not be a description of future battlefields.
 
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