The war in Ukraine
Re: The war in Ukraine
While I am no expect I assume it is easier to make shells than missiles and after they get the guns others can also now help with the ammo. I do wonder how long 2000 shells per gun will last in all out warfare.
Re: The war in Ukraine
Makes absolute zero sense with the poles buying Abrams, surely a couple of spare Abrams from the yanks stock pile would be better than sacrificing any of our challengers.
Maybe its like when ever ship is a battleship in the papers.
Maybe its like when ever ship is a battleship in the papers.
Re: The war in Ukraine
Didn't we move loads of hardware (including tanks) to Germany when Ashchurch was sold off? Or did they get moved back again?
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
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Re: The war in Ukraine
Could be bad reporting - and more like the British Army Tank force presence in Poland will be temporarily increased until the Poles get their Abrahams.
To be honest - I am suprised we have enough tanks to do a parade show let alone actual military operations given how depleted the tank force has become..
To be honest - I am suprised we have enough tanks to do a parade show let alone actual military operations given how depleted the tank force has become..
Re: The war in Ukraine
By scraping the Barrel we might be able to get a full Regiment to Poland or possibly a reduced strength one.
Re: The war in Ukraine
Don't worry there isn't going to be any more major tank battles in Europe anymore, take it from the top authority at number 10 , Ukraine and Poland doesn't really need tanks ,that's a relief then eh folks;-)
Re: The war in Ukraine
Well if you want to be strictly true we haven’t seen any major tank battles in Europe or Ukraine. Seen plenty of tanks being ambushed in city’s and built up areas, stuck in the mud or picked off in the open with precision drones or artillery but haven’t seen any massed charges of scores of tanks at each other.
Re: The war in Ukraine
You haven’t seen any, but that doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been any.SW1 wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 12:57
Well if you want to be strictly true we haven’t seen any major tank battles in Europe or Ukraine. Seen plenty of tanks being ambushed in city’s and built up areas, stuck in the mud or picked off in the open with precision drones or artillery but haven’t seen any massed charges of scores of tanks at each other.
Plus the Russians didn’t walk to where they were on the receiving end of drones, ATGW and artillery. Nor did the Ukrainians walk to recover the territory the Russians had been holding.
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Re: The war in Ukraine
Tanks increasingly look like targets and deathtraps. Even with the limited weapons at Ukraine's disposal. What would they be like with NATO aircraft and stand-off weapons? And 10x as many infantry operated anti-tank missiles?
Russian troops may have got to near the front in Ukraine using vehicles, but if Ukraine had had longer range weapons few would have got that far (and even as it was a large number suffered a long way from the front).
That has been the trend for decades.
I realise that Russia have been particularly dumb in how they have used their tanks, but even so they look very vulnerable to modern weapons
Russian troops may have got to near the front in Ukraine using vehicles, but if Ukraine had had longer range weapons few would have got that far (and even as it was a large number suffered a long way from the front).
That has been the trend for decades.
I realise that Russia have been particularly dumb in how they have used their tanks, but even so they look very vulnerable to modern weapons
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Re: The war in Ukraine
Didn’t suggest they had walked there. Simply saying the classic idea of major tank battles don’t appear to have happened, might well of done but I suspect we may have seen something by now had it happened but it doesn’t seems to be the style Ukraine is using large massed confrontational engagements.mr.fred wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 14:30You haven’t seen any, but that doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been any.SW1 wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 12:57
Well if you want to be strictly true we haven’t seen any major tank battles in Europe or Ukraine. Seen plenty of tanks being ambushed in city’s and built up areas, stuck in the mud or picked off in the open with precision drones or artillery but haven’t seen any massed charges of scores of tanks at each other.
Plus the Russians didn’t walk to where they were on the receiving end of drones, ATGW and artillery. Nor did the Ukrainians walk to recover the territory the Russians had been holding.
And had this Russian army moved against a well equipped NATO force we would of seen a repeat of the highway of death Out if Kuwait only on a much larger scale
Re: The war in Ukraine
Another thing that has been a trend for about the last century is people claiming the death of the tank. Once we'd got a couple of decades and iterations in, we started to get "this time it's different" being added.
There are a couple of good videos on the subject recently up on YouTube, the one from "The Chieftain" is good, but they're all a good half-hour watches so I'll summarise some of the key points here:
Comparisons have been made with horse cavalry but these miss that it wasn't a weapon that made the horse obsolete, it was the availability of the motor vehicle that could do what horse cavalry could do (mobility) but better. The development of armoured motor vehicles was icing on the cake. With tanks there is no such alternative; How else can you provide mobility, protection and firepower?
The vulnerability of tanks to contemporary weapons is not a new thing. Tanks have always been vulnerable to the latest systems. NLAW is over a decade old, Javelin is pushing three decades old. If you blunder into defences equipped with the latest anti-tank equipment and then stop there you're bound to get hammered.
Re: The war in Ukraine
There are very few tank-on-tank engagements in war. You try to avoid them as they are very expensive in terms of men and machines. There's a claim that the best way to kill a tank is with another tank, but this is not true. The best way to kill a tank is in a way that it cannot fight back against. It's why NATO developed such good ATGW, artillery, cluster and precision munitions rather than trying to meet the Warsaw pact tank-for-tank.SW1 wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 17:32 Didn’t suggest they had walked there. Simply saying the classic idea of major tank battles don’t appear to have happened, might well of done but I suspect we may have seen something by now had it happened but it doesn’t seems to be the style Ukraine is using large massed confrontational engagements.
However, if you try to advance against a dug in enemy without tanks things will get bloody very quickly.
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Re: The war in Ukraine
If we see scores of tanks charging at each other we will know both sides are doing it wrong!SW1 wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 12:57 Well if you want to be strictly true we haven’t seen any major tank battles in Europe or Ukraine. Seen plenty of tanks being ambushed in city’s and built up areas, stuck in the mud or picked off in the open with precision drones or artillery but haven’t seen any massed charges of scores of tanks at each other.
If we go back to the Soviet era the Red Army had, to my eyes at least, a coherent structure aligned with their tactics and operational art. Todays Russian Army seems to lack this.
If we look at the Battalion Tactical Group (BTG), although their will be some variations the reported basic structure is 1 tank company, 3 infantry companies, 3 artillery battery's (gun and mlrs) plus air defence, EW, engineers plus logistic elements. How a Battalion Commander is meant to effectively control all this is beyond me, even with an expanded Battalion HQ. Now it does have a lot of firepower, but it mostly rests with the artillery battery's rather than in direct fire zone. In consequence the Battalion has plenty of suppressive and destructive capability but relatively few forces to exploit any advantages thus gained. Any progress is therefore likely to be slow.
Even when the BTG has the opportunity to manoeuvre it doesn't get much better. Overburdened with all the combat support elements Command and Control will be a problem not to mention providing security for all those elements. Then their is logistics. Traditionally Soviet forces tended to be light on logistics compared to western armies, however the BTG given its composition will need considerable logistic capability, particular in terms of artillery ammunition. Their is no point in having lots of artillery if you haven't got enough ammunition for it! This is going to be drag on the ability of the BTG to manoeuvre.
To sum up the BTG commander needs to concentrate on close combat with responsibility for only what is essential, everything else should be the responsibility of a higher commander, but available to the BTG when required.
Finally the performance of all the Russian forces have been notable poor, their only answer seems to be fire, fire and more fire whether that proves enough in the long run we will have to see. But its clear the Russian armed forces need a complete overhaul if their performance is to improve.
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Re: The war in Ukraine
One key word I think you are missing is "yet".SW1 wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 12:57Well if you want to be strictly true we haven’t seen any major tank battles in Europe or Ukraine. Seen plenty of tanks being ambushed in city’s and built up areas, stuck in the mud or picked off in the open with precision drones or artillery but haven’t seen any massed charges of scores of tanks at each other.
In the first phase of the war we saw Russians advancing down major roads, advancing quickly without proper combined arms support, because Russian High Command thought would be a very quick "special operation". The Ukranian mud in the north meant they had to stick to major roads, the expectation of quick victory meant that the Russians did nt oay enough pre War attanetion to logistics. So the Ukranians expertly used hit and run tactics stopping long Russian armoured columns by using Javelin and NLAW with drones for recon to take out Russian tanks. When the Russian got close to Kiev, e.g. the suburbs around Bucha, the Ukranians used local terrain such as marshes to even further funnel Russian attacks.
We are now in a different second stage of the war. The initial front lines in the East have had eight years for the Ukranians to build up their defences. But once the Russians breach those initial defence lines, the terrain is very flat and the ground will increasingly harden. At that point Russian tanks can attack across a wider front rather tha having to attack just 1 or 2 vehicles abreast on the northern roads. When this happens, even though Ukrainian ATGW will still enact a cost on Russian armour, I suspect that balance of the fighting will swing more towards the tanks.
So currently you may be right, but may yet change in future.
Re: The war in Ukraine
(The Sun) 25th April 2022
Will Russia spin(!) this as "the plane wasn’t shot down, a fire started and rough seas sunk it." ?!This remarkable footage appears to show a Russian plane spinning in circles as it descends from the sky after it is struck by a Ukrainian missile. Newsflash obtained the video from Ukraine's Centre for Strategic Communications (Stratcom), headquartered in Kyiv, earlier today (Monday, 25th April).
Stratcom said: "Ukrainian defenders shot down an enemy plane in the Kharkiv region. According to preliminary data, it was an all-weather two-seater fighter-bomber Su-34, according to the Air Command East."
It was not reported if the pilots ejected safely.
Re: The war in Ukraine
I like how the Sun saw it was a twin tailed fighter and used a picture of a Mig-31 with an air launched ballistic missile for the headline photo!
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Re: The war in Ukraine
A good answer and I agree. But you ask how else can you provide mobility, protection and firepower. 1 and 3 of those are provided far more effectively by UAVs (especially when backed up by artillery etc) nowadays. Protection? I don't see a hell of a lot of protection by anything, but I'd choose a trench over a tank with the way things aremr.fred wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 17:51Another thing that has been a trend for about the last century is people claiming the death of the tank. Once we'd got a couple of decades and iterations in, we started to get "this time it's different" being added.
There are a couple of good videos on the subject recently up on YouTube, the one from "The Chieftain" is good, but they're all a good half-hour watches so I'll summarise some of the key points here:
Comparisons have been made with horse cavalry but these miss that it wasn't a weapon that made the horse obsolete, it was the availability of the motor vehicle that could do what horse cavalry could do (mobility) but better. The development of armoured motor vehicles was icing on the cake. With tanks there is no such alternative; How else can you provide mobility, protection and firepower?
The vulnerability of tanks to contemporary weapons is not a new thing. Tanks have always been vulnerable to the latest systems. NLAW is over a decade old, Javelin is pushing three decades old. If you blunder into defences equipped with the latest anti-tank equipment and then stop there you're bound to get hammered.
Re: The war in Ukraine
I don't know about that. UAVs get kind of expensive kind of quickly - the high end ones are as costly to buy and run as a modern fighter jet.Enigmatically wrote: ↑26 Apr 2022, 19:57 But you ask how else can you provide mobility, protection and firepower. 1 and 3 of those are provided far more effectively by UAVs
The cheaper ones need a way of getting the vehicle and/or the operator somewhere near the target.
Performance-wise, most UAVs are on a par with a Cessna.
I'm sure that would suit an adversary just fine. Stay in your trench where you have no logistics and no way of bothering anyone. You'd cease to be a problem soon enough.Enigmatically wrote: ↑26 Apr 2022, 19:57 Protection? I don't see a hell of a lot of protection by anything, but I'd choose a trench over a tank with the way things are
Re: The war in Ukraine
According to the news media, now we have the Foreign Secretary saying the UK will send Fast Jets to Ukraine! Someone must have gotten their wires crossed as what could we send and it takes a significant amount of time not just to train Pilots how to fly and they fight with a new aircraft but youalso need ground crew training and logistics.
Re: The war in Ukraine
I wonder if its like when it was fist reported we were "giving" our tanks to Poland.
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Re: The war in Ukraine
What they actually said was that the west should send jetsLord Jim wrote: ↑27 Apr 2022, 12:54 According to the news media, now we have the Foreign Secretary saying the UK will send Fast Jets to Ukraine! Someone must have gotten their wires crossed as what could we send and it takes a significant amount of time not just to train Pilots how to fly and they fight with a new aircraft but youalso need ground crew training and logistics.
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Re: The war in Ukraine
I think we need to remember a lot of time and money has gone into ATGW's over the last 30 + years drones have been under estimated but this will change now and drones will not have the freedom they have now meaning that there ability to spot for artillery and drop weapons will will also drop in performance as weapons to combat them come on line this in turn will free up the tank to carry onEnigmatically wrote: ↑26 Apr 2022, 19:57A good answer and I agree. But you ask how else can you provide mobility, protection and firepower. 1 and 3 of those are provided far more effectively by UAVs (especially when backed up by artillery etc) nowadays. Protection? I don't see a hell of a lot of protection by anything, but I'd choose a trench over a tank with the way things aremr.fred wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 17:51Another thing that has been a trend for about the last century is people claiming the death of the tank. Once we'd got a couple of decades and iterations in, we started to get "this time it's different" being added.
There are a couple of good videos on the subject recently up on YouTube, the one from "The Chieftain" is good, but they're all a good half-hour watches so I'll summarise some of the key points here:
Comparisons have been made with horse cavalry but these miss that it wasn't a weapon that made the horse obsolete, it was the availability of the motor vehicle that could do what horse cavalry could do (mobility) but better. The development of armoured motor vehicles was icing on the cake. With tanks there is no such alternative; How else can you provide mobility, protection and firepower?
The vulnerability of tanks to contemporary weapons is not a new thing. Tanks have always been vulnerable to the latest systems. NLAW is over a decade old, Javelin is pushing three decades old. If you blunder into defences equipped with the latest anti-tank equipment and then stop there you're bound to get hammered.
Re: The war in Ukraine
AS I said, we ended up with a game of Chinese Whispers in the Media, and on TV Dan Snow talking about sending F-35s and then someone else saying that UK pilots would fly them, a sort of Ex RAF Flying Tigers outfit. I get the impression much of the media would actually like the war to escalate to gain more headlines. They are already grasping at straws by taking Putin's threats of Nuclear war seriously. He would have to be mad to destroy Russia and even if he wanted to he doesn't have any launch codes and the Military wouldn't do it either.
There is going to have to be a major step change in support if countries want to start giving the Ukraine western hardware though. Training centres will have to be set up in countries for a start as well as logistical chains of some sort being put in place. One weapon that would really aid Ukraine would be the M270 GMLRS with both guided unitary warheads and unguided submunition dispensing rockets. Together with Artillery finding Radar, these could start to whitle away Russia's artillery and important rear area sites like depots and HQs.
I am surprised there are no western "Little Green Men" working in Ukraine, or at least nobody has spotted any yet.
There is going to have to be a major step change in support if countries want to start giving the Ukraine western hardware though. Training centres will have to be set up in countries for a start as well as logistical chains of some sort being put in place. One weapon that would really aid Ukraine would be the M270 GMLRS with both guided unitary warheads and unguided submunition dispensing rockets. Together with Artillery finding Radar, these could start to whitle away Russia's artillery and important rear area sites like depots and HQs.
I am surprised there are no western "Little Green Men" working in Ukraine, or at least nobody has spotted any yet.