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Saudi M1 vs Kornet


Euri

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With all of that said, the key difference between the Iraqi and Saudi military is effectively nil.  The Saudi Air Force is the one military arm worth a damn, the Army is comprised of people not smart enough or rich enough to be pilots in the officer class, and the average enlisted struggles to read (or simply doesn't).  One of the endemic things about Middle Eastern military forces seems to be a focus on equipment=performance. 

dictatorships and an educated populace isn't really a very good combo. Kind of like a tuna fish/liver wurst sandwich on a cinnamon raisin bagel.  Eventually a violent reaction is bound to happen. 

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dictatorships and an educated populace isn't really a very good combo. Kind of like a tuna fish/liver wurst sandwich on a cinnamon raisin bagel.  Eventually a violent reaction is bound to happen. 

Yeah but it all depends on your ability to keep the uneducated people happy.  One of the issues I feel with an uneducated populace is all it takes is someone promising them a better more awesome way that's perfect to cause all sorts of sadface (See Putin, Trump, Hitler, ISIS etc).  It removes any sort of critical worldview and supplants it with a population that's based its reality on whoever is in charge is lying, and some strong guy who says things that sound good (and often are "good" for a time) becomes very reasonable.

Saudi Arabia traditionally had enough money to just fling at it's native Arab population to keep it fat and happy, while importing laborers to do the gross stuff from Pakistan/the Philippines*/Bangladesh or importing educated people to do the stuff they weren't able to have "smart" blue collar workers for (the back of the Army Times always includes an advert from whatever company the Saudi military uses for its vehicle maintenance offering good bucks to M1 or helicopter maintainers to come work in Saudi Arabia).  It is however approaching a point where it faces a decreasing ability to pay for either of those courses of action which I am sure will end splendidly.  

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panzersaurkrautwerfer,

There used to be a big difference between the Saudi Abrams and the US models, a difference which had zero to do with understandably sensitive armor packages. The Saudi tanks were required to be provided with air conditioning as part of the procurement contract. I must say I find it fascinating we have such a wealth of material on Russian composite armor arrays, yet not even one decent drawing that I've seen of the composition and layout of the armor array on the original M1 Abrams. Yet this Chobham armor scheme was thoroughly compromised by the Guillame Affair during the Cold War, practically right after the British got it going and were sharing it with their NATO allies. 

Here is very terrific book which looks in depth at Arab-Israeli warfare going back to 1947. There is considerable discussion of Arabs at war.

Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947-1974 Hardcover – 1978

by Col. Trevor N. Dupuy (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Elusive-Victory-Arab-Israeli-Wars-1947-1974/dp/0060111127

(Goes away and digs after dinner)

Found it, at least in summary. This talks about some shocking disclosures made in the papers of Russian Ambassador to Egypt Vinogradov. It explicitly talks about how good the Russian arms were which Egypt got before and during the Yom Kippur War. Even so, the fix was in, and the plan all along was to blame defeat on Russian equipment.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/22/what-really-happened-in-the-yom-kippur-war/

Amizaur,

Though I've never been inside a battle damaged or destroyed tank in which the fighting compartment has been penetrated, I have seen quite a bit of imagery of such, including the official Battle Damage Survey done after the 1967 War for JMEM. That tank hasn't been hit and penetrated. Rather, it is filthy, a problem I've seen reported many times regarding Arab soldiery. I concur with panzersaurkrautwerfer's statement regarding the chronic unwillingness of the Arabs to own their defeats, rather than the usual blaming the equipment. In the run-up to the Yom Kippur War, the Russians stripped their own martial cupboard bare to give their allies the best equipment available, at the direct and particular expense of high readiness combat formations. There is a quote I saw some time back and can't find now in which Brezhnev sounds off about this crazy and foredoomed Arab desire for war. Initially, he demurs, only later to issue practically a blank check so there'd be no Arab excuses in the event of a fully expected loss . Lack of Russian support as an ally and equipment still got blamed!

Regards,

John Kettler 

Edited by John Kettler
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you know just because- "filthy arabs" sounds not too far off the British Imperial attitude towards the nations they and the French occupied and impoverished.  I am all for people taking responsibility for their own lives and what not, but we in the west seem to frequently have this particular disdain for the effects of abject poverty.  Hey I'll admit I share it.  I did one trip to India and I scream and carry on whenever they talk of sending me again.  Bad enough I have a trip coming to Nigeria, Cameroon and Angola. The company puts me up in great hotels- I still don't want to go.  I don't however disparage the folks who's lives are confined to those conditions or expect that somehow after living in a dirt floor hovel, they are suddenly gonna keep the dang tank they are expected to die in spic and span.  Just sayin...

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Yeah but it all depends on your ability to keep the uneducated people happy.  One of the issues I feel with an uneducated populace is all it takes is someone promising them a better more awesome way that's perfect to cause all sorts of sadface (See Putin, Trump, Hitler, ISIS etc).  It removes any sort of critical worldview and supplants it with a population that's based its reality on whoever is in charge is lying, and some strong guy who says things that sound good (and often are "good" for a time) becomes very reasonable.

Saudi Arabia traditionally had enough money to just fling at it's native Arab population to keep it fat and happy, while importing laborers to do the gross stuff from Pakistan/the Philippines*/Bangladesh or importing educated people to do the stuff they weren't able to have "smart" blue collar workers for (the back of the Army Times always includes an advert from whatever company the Saudi military uses for its vehicle maintenance offering good bucks to M1 or helicopter maintainers to come work in Saudi Arabia).  It is however approaching a point where it faces a decreasing ability to pay for either of those courses of action which I am sure will end splendidly.  

I don't disagree.  I think the combination of the state of the Saudi populace and the gov't sponsored fanatically conservative religion will eventually bring down the House of Saud.  The Middle East is well and truly f**ked.When the moment comes, and it will, that we find a cheap alternative energy source......

but that's politics. We now return you to your previous program already in progress - back to the differences between export and non export variations of the M1

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Re: Air conditioning

Again worth keeping in mind the M1s through the M1A1HA were intended for Central Europe or Central Europe.  The SEP if I recall got a cooling unit for the electronics, and there was a bolt on AC unit for Iraq, although it's now standard on all SEP v2s.  On the downside it does take up a goodly portion of the old bustle rack, although the expanded bustle that comes with v2s makes up for it.  Still sort of an odd thing to pack around.

Re: Saudi M1s 

Having looked at it a bit further, there's a lot of squirrelly stuff on what exactly they do, or don't have. There's an M1A2S out there that's supposed to incorporate some of the  widgets from the original SEP.  

However, it certainly remains the US armor package remains off the table.  Even straight up NATO allies were not offered the normal US armor package, seems doubtful the export licenses to Saudi Arabia would be forthcoming (especially now with their tendency to leave Abrams sitting around).  Optically I would be interested to see what they wound up with, gen 2 FLIR isn't as much of a close hold, although there might still be a downgrade in the system somewhere again, given the Saudi tendency to leave things laying about and residual bad feelings towards them outside of the contractor end of things.  Either even the commander's station in all of the examples I've seen is distinctly older generation.

I'm virtually certain about the armor, and the various C3 systems are definitely not included.  Fairly certain the late model M829 rounds are also off the table.  Optics I'm dubious about, or at the least what I've seen doesn't look like what a v2 has.  

Of course it's got (had) Saudis in it so it might as well been an M4 Sherman with "Abrams" chalked on the side of it.  

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The way SACLOS works in a nutshell is the guidance end tracks the missile via some sort of emitter on the back of the rocket, usually some sort of flare.  What Shtora tries to do is con the guidance system into thinking that the Shtora IS the flare so instead of trying to correct the flare on the missile onto where the crosshairs are, it's trying to guide the Shtora's emitters which quite obviously are neither missiles or listening.

Late 90's vintage TOWs on would not likely be confused by Shtora given some tweaks to the system.  Should still work against Soviet legacy systems and some other less modern SACLOS systems.  

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sburke,

What I said was no colonial sweeping generalization regarding Arabs in general, nor any shade of meaning relating to same directly or indirectly, though I can see how there might be some potential for misunderstanding my meaning. Rather, I was trying to point out there are known major issues with Arab armies and preventive maintenance, maintenance and repair of their weaponry, which they insist must be the best, then kvetch and blame when it fails because they don't take care of it. This brilliant and incisive article from MEQ (Middle East Quarterly), Why Arabs Lose Wars, lays it all out. The author's (retired Army LT COL) credentials are impeccable.

(Fair Use)

"It is a truism of military life that an army fights as it trains, and so I draw on my many years of firsthand observation of Arabs in training to draw conclusions about the ways in which they go into combat. The following impressions derive from personal experience with Arab military establishments in the capacity of U.S. military attaché and security assistance officer, observer officer with the British-officer Trucial Oman Scouts (the security force in the emirates prior to the establishment of the United Arab Emirates), as well as some thirty year's study of the Middle East."

If he doesn't know, who does?

I haven't read the huge (1200 page) Arabs at War, by ex-CIA analyst Andrew Wright, but this in-depth review, which is long, speaks to many of the same issues.

And in a post regarding BVR combat during the Gulf Wars and whether or not it is broadly applicable now, we again see the same core issues raised for the very well-heeled Royal Saudi Air Force and the not so well off Iraqi Air Force. 

My argument is simple: Arab military forces generally don't take care of their major weaponry. Consequently, and given the horrifying way enlisted soldiers are treated and supported at the most basic levels (in one case, Egyptians who were detailed to guard American tents--because they couldn't produce large enough bribes to avoid the task-- went four days without food or drink from their own army: they would've died were it not for the kindness and generosity of the Americans there), keeping the inside of an AFV clean is a nonissue for the crew. I urge you to read the articles and see for yourself what I'm describing.

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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Anyone interested in how screwed up the RSA seems to be may find a search of "Houthis walk up to Saudi/GCC forces" of real interest. I didn't include a link because occupants of the RSA FOB didn't look too pretty after being overrun for want of any guards at all That post has a bunch of related videos on combat in Yemen vs the Houthis, together with vid showing the terror of every ISIS type--a T-72 crewed by Kurdish female warriors!  Since there's no gore, the tank is cool looking and it's great to see and hear the ladies walloping ISIS in style, that one I will provide a link for. Remember. The jihadis believe that to die at the hands of a woman is instant damnation. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av1nDHQZoPY

Regards,

John Kettler

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My argument is simple: Arab military forces generally don't take care of their major weaponry. Consequently, and given the horrifying way enlisted soldiers are treated and supported at the most basic levels (in one case, Egyptians who were detailed to guard American tents--because they couldn't produce large enough bribes to avoid the task-- went four days without food or drink from their own army: they would've died were it not for the kindness and generosity of the Americans there), keeping the inside of an AFV clean is a nonissue for the crew. I urge you to read the articles and see for yourself what I'm describing.

I'm trying to go for more brevity in my responses, so here's an honest go at it:

It's not "generally don't take care of it" it's "has no investment in the equipment, is ruled over by a cultural and social elite with no investment in soldier care, and lacks a middle level of management provided by NCOs."  There's just this very frustrating lack of understanding that wars are readily lost by poor leadership, but they never won by good leadership alone.  If you read Arabs at War there's a very interesting trend that often, the military performance of the higher level officers is acceptable at least, they're making good choices given their understanding of the conflict, have intelligent plans etc, etc, etc.  However once you get to the lower level, junior officers are rarely afforded much training, and troops are treated quite literally as numbers, in as far as if your platoon has 16 soldiers it is good and ready for war, while if you only have 12, then we must draft four more folks on the way to the front.  


This is a wider cultural issue in that there simply is no middle ground between "dirt poor" and "elite ruling class."  There's not that pool of high school graduate level, patriotically aligned mid to lower middle class that signs up for the Army because they want to kick doors down and run over cars in a tank.  Because it's that pool that generates your Sergeants and up.  And frankly in modern, highly technical fighting without that professional "blue collar" element, you're well and truly **** out of luck (profanity included and obviously censored for emphasis).  You need those Sergeants to be the systems experts and keep the tank crew on task and help it make low level choices internal to the tank instead of needing to mother may I to the platoon leader.  You need that "smartest man in the room" in the mechanics pool to problem solve and triage bent tanks.  You need that "follow me" kind of guy to be an example to the junior enlisted of who they could be if only they cleaned the goddamned tank and did their jobs.

Of course, a middle class would threaten the social and societal norms of these places, or worse, there's a middle class but it consists largely of folks emulating the ruling class so they can no longer be considered one of the poors vs being a distinct group of its own.

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Panzer is running over a car with a tank as fun as I imagine?

Tragically, I never had the chance.  Running over things while in the tank is oddly anti-climactic, the suspension and lack of near visability makes it just feel like another bump in the road.  Watching it however is always cool as seen in this classic example of COIN gone terribly wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJC1unnuwds

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It's the end result of when you abdicate planning for contingencies and instead attempt to simply order results into existence.  

You order someone to mow your lawn, but the only tool they have is a shovel, it's going to look ugly.  However it's not his fault for using the tool and training he has to try to mow the lawn, it's your own damn fault for not planning for the eventuality that you will have to mow the lawn and that will take specialized equipment and training.  

You order a tank company to police a neighborhood, it's going to look ugly.  They only have a small number of people (compared to normal infantry units) but a massive amount of capabilities to break things.  Which gets into my major critique about "big Army" and the American government writ large.  We rarely realistically plan for things, and instead simply believe by virtue of being Americans we will accomplish it because we're Americans, and then place the burden on making ends meet on lower echelons who are now improvising to be successful.  Luckily enough for the larger body, they are well served by their subordinates and the sheer amount of resources we can wield as a country.  It does however lend to a vicious cycle in which the top makes stupid choices, the bottom makes stupid choices work anyway (or scams the system effectively*) which then the top pats itself on the back for being so damned smart and then finds new idiot choices to make.


*Case in point, imagine how much actual time for meaningful work your average unit would have if it did all the various sexual assault prevention/drug abuse awareness/excess drinking deterrence/cultural awareness/etc etc crap to the literal letter of the book.  The intent is hours of training on how to be the new socially aware wonderperson, the end result is usually some irate E-7 grumbling something about "there is only one color here and it is green, and any of you $%#^s piss hot or get a DUI and I'm going to gut you" before the unit is dismissed back to real army stuff.  The training is reported as completed to spec however to avoid invoking the wrath of the higher echelon demons, and whatever nosemining rocket scientist who decided all these classes was a good idea gets a high five, a promotion, and gets to continue their vacation from reality.

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The original TOW and later ITOW had an aft facing xenon beacon in the back end, which wasn't obscured by rocket exhaust because the nozzles were ports in the sides of the fuselage. The guidance wire was also dispensed from the missile's rear. TOW 2 had both the xenon beacon (for backwards compatibility with all TOW launchers and a heated grid plate (want to say it looked like honeycomb, but could be wrong), which we at Hughes Missile Systems Group (now Raytheon), which designed and built the TOW, called the waffle iron. Unlike the xenon beacon, this one could work through visual band smoke, regardless of source, and battlefield dust and the like. This capability was only available to platforms which had the thermals. As for TOW 2A and TOW 2B, I don't know offhand whether the xenon beacon is still fitted.

Shtora and similar have high power (outshout the beacon) and can readily induce crashes by causing the tracker to lock onto the Shtora, leaving the missile with ongoing wrong spatial coordinates. The tracker sends steering commands to what it thinks is the ATGM, but it is really steering the missile in response to whatever outputs Shtora is generating.

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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It's the end result of when you abdicate planning for contingencies and instead attempt to simply order results into existence.  

You order someone to mow your lawn, but the only tool they have is a shovel, it's going to look ugly.  However it's not his fault for using the tool and training he has to try to mow the lawn, it's your own damn fault for not planning for the eventuality that you will have to mow the lawn and that will take specialized equipment and training.  

You order a tank company to police a neighborhood, it's going to look ugly.  They only have a small number of people (compared to normal infantry units) but a massive amount of capabilities to break things.  Which gets into my major critique about "big Army" and the American government writ large.  We rarely realistically plan for things, and instead simply believe by virtue of being Americans we will accomplish it because we're Americans, and then place the burden on making ends meet on lower echelons who are now improvising to be successful.  Luckily enough for the larger body, they are well served by their subordinates and the sheer amount of resources we can wield as a country.  It does however lend to a vicious cycle in which the top makes stupid choices, the bottom makes stupid choices work anyway (or scams the system effectively*) which then the top pats itself on the back for being so damned smart and then finds new idiot choices to make.


*Case in point, imagine how much actual time for meaningful work your average unit would have if it did all the various sexual assault prevention/drug abuse awareness/excess drinking deterrence/cultural awareness/etc etc crap to the literal letter of the book.  The intent is hours of training on how to be the new socially aware wonderperson, the end result is usually some irate E-7 grumbling something about "there is only one color here and it is green, and any of you $%#^s piss hot or get a DUI and I'm going to gut you" before the unit is dismissed back to real army stuff.  The training is reported as completed to spec however to avoid invoking the wrath of the higher echelon demons, and whatever nosemining rocket scientist who decided all these classes was a good idea gets a high five, a promotion, and gets to continue their vacation from reality.

rotflmao.  Gawd civilian life isn't so far off from the military after all.  Today's comment- bosses are like diapers.  They are always on your a** and full of s**t.

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