Turkish Leo2 tanks struggle in the Syria

[Kinophile]

Yah exactly. 

Very odd. 

Its as if the driver charged forward,  then orders came through to return to the MRAPS. 

Edited July 27, 2017 by kinophile

[Sublime]

ISTR exceptionally heavy rpg 7 US in 2003 and Im also certain that At5s were used in Nasiriyah and the Thunder Run into Baghdad.  I also really strongly seem to remember Kornets were used against US tanks as well.

one incident i particularly remember reading about was an m1 that was mission killed in Baghdad and other m1s in its platoon were ordered to destroy it with their cannons, to destroy anything for the enemy etc. apparently the m1s had trouble penetrating the other m1.  i also remember explicitly hearing about Bradleys KOing T72Ms with their 25mm cannons using DU rounds. of course all of this is aneceotal, im not going to bother looking for citations. 

p.s. i also remember in the early insurgency a Sarin (? or vx ?) shell was used as an IED on a US convoy. no one was killed by nerve agents however due to shell degradation and the facttbat as a safety measure the shells rotationin flight mixed chemicald to make the said chemical weapon. the soldietd gas warning tabs on their unfirorms along with a smell did lead to several soldiers receiving atrophine (sp?) shots.

Edited July 28, 2017 by Sublime

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Most of those stories are familiar to me too, but the tanks the Bradleys trashed very likely weren't even T-72M(onkeys), they were probably locally manufactured examples using the local armour plate. 

But hey, it makes 'Blue' look great in the game! 

[Sublime]

oh they definitely werent T72Bs or any sort of Russian domestic version.

plus one could say that GW1 and the years of sanctions and no military aid to OIF equalled a drasticallly reduced in strength and morale terms Iraqi army.

This isnt of course to take anything away from what the BluFor did in OIF in military terms it was a blitzkrieg campaign of the truest sort, but I wonder if it would have been possible to just invade after a couple days of heavy airstrikes a ala GW1 instead of month long air campaign. I think it would have been a much bloodier affair on both sides with an Iraqi army that didnt yet know what the US could do to it. Plus when you get down to it besides some small acquisitions the Iraqi army used much the same equipment in 03 as 91 whereas the US had gained upgrades to its m1s, b2s, javelins, jdams, and a huge advantage in morale that was the victory over Iraq before at a seemingly innocous cost for the Coaliation ( of course unless you were one of the ' light ' casualties )

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I do sometimes wonder if the wrong message wasn't taken from encounters like those.....It would be a bit like basing your assumptions on the Abrams' capabilities on the basis of their performance with the Saudis. 

PS - If you are interested I can probably re-find the discussion of the Iraqi T-72s, I've a vague inkling of where I found it. 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Sublime]

sure. pzsaurkrautwerfer had some good anecdotes from his time in country and also relating a cav scouts experiences in GW1.

Im also interested in the sarin ied incident. did it really happen, why didmt the dubya regime jump all over it as some sort of proof about WMDs (lol) and if one shell was used... why not more? what there was one chemical shell in all of Iraq left? I would say if the rest were captured it could be classified but that would have been at least half assed justification for the invasion.  if not and if Iraq gave theirs away to Syria and or Iran like I think where the f!$# did that one shell come from? 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

What if the shell had US or other NATO markings on it?   

The evidence surrounding the various alleged chemical attacks is very tenuous and inconsistent, especially the most recent one.....Have you read Seymour Hersh's piece on that:

https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s-Red-Line.html

https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905618/We-got-a-****in-problem.html

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

1. Seymour Hersh's relevance is about zero.  I remember when he had "serious high placed unnamed sources" that put US combat forces already in Iran, ready to kick off the invasion circa 2007 or something.  I think he's pretty much the consummate Texas sharpshooter.  

2. Iraqi T-72s

The Iraqi T-72 fleet was:

Soviet provided T-72As
Polish built T-72M, T-72M1s

They were as standard for their place of manufacture, the T-72Ms and M1s especially were as good as anything fielded by the non-Soviet Warsaw pact forces in a technical sense, Which is why the Soviets still dropped a brick, the T-72s of the Poles and Czechs were supposed to be adequate tanks that literally were annihilated with little effort, AND much of the category B and C Soviet units were equipped with equal to worse hardware.   

The various "Iraqi" T-72s increasingly appear to have been an urban legend and some propaganda.  Simply put Iraq did not have the industrial capabilities to crank out complete tanks from roadwheels to turrets.  What the Iraqis did have was a major depot in Taji that could do some work, but mostly it assembled T-72Ms provided in knock-down kits (basically 1:1 scale models, all components provided, most of it plug and play) by the Poles.  It served as a FOB actually, and again, it had a lot of cranes, repair equipment, but it was a place to assemble kits, and conduct overhauls (largely with foreign contractors).  

The Iraqis claimed to have made the tanks themselves, but simply put no one has ever found the factory in Iraq that could have made them, and it's believed to have been an expression of Saddam's ego vs Iraqi capabilities.  

There were some indigenous upgrades, or non-standard equipment (Chinese provided EO jammers, exhaust diverters etc), but the idea there was some vastly inferior Iraqi built T-72 was pure fiction.  They were earlier Soviet T-72s, or then-"modern" Polish T-72s. 

3. Chemical weapons during OIF:  Some were found used as IEDs.  The problem is they were only in small amounts, and of uncertain providence.  They were largely smaller mortar type rounds, and they were stupid levels of old.  The unclass consensus is they were weapons that were not properly accounted for vs deliberate omissions, and their employment was more someone mistook them for conventional HE mortar rounds and wired them accordingly.  

[Apocal]

On 7/26/2017 at 2:28 AM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Brave but still a bad idea IMHO.....I've seen a few images of VBIEDs with large tanks of chlorine aboard (something that appears to have escaped the media's attention completely). 

It hasn't escaped the media's notice, it's just chlorine is literally worse in every way (as in causing fewer casualties or damage) than simply loading up more explosives. It'd be like concerns ISIS were using teddy bears for fragmentation and wondering if the button eyes flying off were going to be good casualty-producing agents. Well, sure... but nowhere near as bad as jar full of nails, so who cares?

20 minutes ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

3. Chemical weapons during OIF:  Some were found used as IEDs.  The problem is they were only in small amounts, and of uncertain providence.  They were largely smaller mortar type rounds, and they were stupid levels of old.  The unclass consensus is they were weapons that were not properly accounted for vs deliberate omissions, and their employment was more someone mistook them for conventional HE mortar rounds and wired them accordingly.  

There were real (deliberate) attacks with chlorine bombs though. 

 

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

9 hours ago, Apocal said:

 

There were real (deliberate) attacks with chlorine bombs though. 

 

Totally.  We went with full JLIST kits because we were coming in on the tail end of that tactic.  It just works out that blowing up a truck filled with chlorine isn't much more effective than just blowing up the truck. 

[sburke]

11 hours ago, Apocal said:

It hasn't escaped the media's notice, it's just chlorine is literally worse in every way (as in causing fewer casualties or damage) than simply loading up more explosives. It'd be like concerns ISIS were using teddy bears for fragmentation and wondering if the button eyes flying off were going to be good casualty-producing agents. Well, sure... but nowhere near as bad as jar full of nails, so who cares? 

 

It is as the sheer wanton brutality of blowing up teddy bears that was supposed to induce fear in western minds.  I mean where does it stop? The Paddingtons, Bernsteins, Wiinine the pooh?!  The horror!

[Sgt.Squarehead]

[Sgt.Squarehead]

14 hours ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

1. Seymour Hersh's relevance is about zero.  I remember when he had "serious high placed unnamed sources" that put US combat forces already in Iran, ready to kick off the invasion circa 2007 or something.  I think he's pretty much the consummate Texas sharpshooter.

Hey, we all get it wrong once in a while:

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

On 7/31/2017 at 0:50 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Hey, we all get it wrong once in a while:

Sigh.  Yes.  I think it is more accurate to say Hersh got it right once though and has ridden that event the rest of his career.  

[Sgt.Squarehead]

On balance I'd say that the 'mistakes' of Powell/Bush et al. have had rather bigger consequences.....The entire middle east didn't wind up in this appalling state by accident, it all had a source and that source is readily attributable. 

[sburke]

3 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

On balance I'd say that the 'mistakes' of Powell/Bush et al. have had rather bigger consequences.....The entire middle east didn't wind up in this appalling state by accident, it all had a source and that source is readily attributable. 

warning Will Robinson warning

watch how far you go with this as it may end up with a thread lock

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I know and I'm not trying to cause trouble, but there's this massive elephant in the room and it's very hard not to notice it sometimes.....Indeed I'm not sure that attempting to ignore it is entirely healthy for a person. 

A lot of innocent people of all colours and creeds have died since 2001, not least among them Americans, but for what?  How much progress has been made in the 'War On Terror'?  Has Afghanistan become a western style democracy, is it free of the Taliban's oppression and cleared of Al Qaeda/ISIS?  Are Iraq or Libya better off without their 'dictators'?  Is there even an end in sight? 

So we're stuck with it.....But we can at least use CM:SF to attempt to model it and thereby get some understanding of the consequences.  Perhaps politicians should be obliged to play one of LLF's Ramadi scenarios (on a special PC, rigged up to run a current through their testicles every time they take a casualty) before they are allowed to expend their nation's youth in foreign conflict (I'd have suggested my Mosul stuff, but that would just be too cruel and we'd wind up a planet full of pansies). 

PS:  I should probably add that you need to go back to CM:A to see how the elephant squeezed into the room in the first place.....It really is a 'Great-Game'. 

Edited August 5, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Apocal]

20 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Perhaps politicians should be obliged to play one of LLF's Ramadi scenarios (on a special PC, rigged up to run a current through their testicles every time they take a casualty) before they are allowed to expend their nation's youth in foreign conflict (I'd have suggested my Mosul stuff, but that would just be too cruel and we'd wind up a planet full of pansies). 

Or we could just learn to "elect good men," as they say...

[Kinophile]

Wasn't it Douglas Adams who suggested that presidents (galactic, in his book)  etc should be automatically jailed upon inauguration, so that they rule from their jail cell? The point being that they *Will* be corrupt, that even wanting to become (galactic) President means you're corrupt and to actually succeed you would *have* to break the law? So  just serve the sentence  concurrently with your term. 

Tbc, I'm. Not taking a dig at any one nation - it's a comment on politicians in general. Ireland has its fair share of greasy handed, thieving little bastards, 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Pretty sure Douglas Adams' philosophy was that anyone megalomaniacal enough to actually want the job of (Galactic) President should automatically be disqualified from achieving it.....Instead the presidency was foisted on an unsuspecting member of the public (Zaphod Beeblebrox) by popular vote.

By way of connecting all this waffling to the original subject of the thread:

 

Edited August 9, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Thomm]

On the weekend I had the possibility to climb onto and into a Leopard 2A4.

I was absolutely awed by the size of the tank, which I would not put on the order of "vehicle" but rather of "medium boat". I wonder if VR could give the size of this thing justice.

It is also remarkable how crammed with equipment the inside is (even though this was expected). At the same time, one can stand upright easily inside the turret basket.

It was also the first time I did not just see the tank standing on display, but moving into position, which is also very impressive. And intimidating.

Best regards,
Thomm

[Kinophile]

On 8/9/2017 at 1:15 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Pretty sure Douglas Adams' philosophy was that anyone megalomaniacal enough to actually want the job of (Galactic) President should automatically be disqualified from achieving it.....Instead the presidency was foisted on an unsuspecting member of the public (Zaphod Beeblebrox) by popular vote.

By way of connecting all this waffling to the original subject of the thread:

 

Same difference

But you are correct in correcting my incorrect description.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I saw the Leopard opening there and just went for it TBH. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

ISIS footage of fighting against the Turks:

http://jihadology.net/2016/12/23/new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-shield-of-the-cross-wilayat-ḥalab/

The BMP suicide attack at 8:45 shows a horrible lack of awareness by the Turkish forces! 

Edited September 1, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[John Kettler]

Andy,

Am not sure what the dispensing limits are for happy pills, but after that video, I may be eating them like candy!  Only minutes before I'd finished eating, you see. That has some pretty grim stuff, especially the last segment. Those prisoners seemed pretty complacent and didn't look beaten up. Drugs perhaps? Doubt I'd be as composed (not screaming) as that one guy was while being burned alive. Great footage of technicals, including the closest range combat with one I've ever seen. Noticed reuse of the Leopards on the ridge footage. The BMP VBIED segement was great and showed conclusively the Turks have no understanding of just how dire the threat is. 

Anyone interested in learning more about BMPs (and many others) as ISIS VBIEDS, please be sure to see my OP here.
 

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited September 1, 2017 by John Kettler