JonS

Tanks?
j/k

[editor’s note: I drafted this about 12 hours ago but because reasons I couldn’t post it till now. The conversation has moved on a bit in the meantime – apologies for being a bit tardy]
***
Some time ago in this thread I asked ‘what is tank?’ and it’s not so surprising that almost 2 years later we’re still circling that tree. Traditionally, tanks are considered to embody three qualities: mobility, protection, and firepower, with trade-offs between the three depending on what your doctrine thinks is more important (Israel, for example, prioritises protection at the expense of mobility), but still having elements of all three – if you just have mobility and firepower then what you’re driving is a technical, not a tank. Or perhaps a drone. If you have protection and firepower but no mobility; you’re in a bunker, not tank. If you have protection and mobility but no firepower; that’s a truck, not a tank.
The tank will be dead when that troika is no longer relevant on the battlefield. The last couple of pages have seen some weird intellectual gymnastics, such as: “tank dead because tank only has mobility, protection, and firepower – all else is drone!” to which; um, yes? And “tank dead because tank only do infantry support! Tank only SPG now!” as if infantry support were not the very thing tanks were created to provide. Tanks entered the battlefield to assist the break-in and breakthrough. The breakout was the domain of the cavalry. The horsed cavalry. Since then tanks have proven useful in other roles, and endured on the battlefield because that troika remains valid.
In the intervening century there have been any number of times when tanks have immolated themselves on whatever the anti-tank defence du jour was; August 1918 at Amiens, May 1940 just down the road at Arras, June to December 1941 in Cyrenaica, May to October 1942 in North Africa, July 1943 in Russia, July 1944 in Normandy, March 1945 in Hungary, June 1954 in Vietnam, October 1973 in the Sinai … and those are just off the top. I am certainly forgetting many many other examples. And yet, and yet, despite all those salutary and sanguinary examples the troika remained relevant.
Armour was useful in Falklands and Vietnam. Granted there wasn’t a lot of armour in the Falklands, but the ground commanders – on both sides – appreciated the ones they had and would certainly have liked more. That they didn’t was mostly a function of logistics (and employability in that particular landscape), rather than utility. Similarly, in Vietnam the Australians, at least, found their Centurions (and their Gavins if you care to include APCs in the generic ‘amour’ bucket) so useful that the RAAC was finally able to shake off their reputation as being Koalas. Armour wasn’t decisive in either conflict, but that’s a different question.
Usefulness aside, noting that tanks aren’t supreme – or decisive - in all contexts is a startling insight into the obvious. For example it is true, as I fully and happily acknowledge, that tanks were not decisive and indeed had practically no impact at all on the Sikkim conflict in 1967, or on the Sumdorong Chu standoff in 1987. By the same token, aircraft carriers were of exactly zero use during the Chaco War in the mid-1930’s or the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, yet surprisingly that didn’t spell the demise of carriers.
Iraq 1991 was a gross mismatch of technology, which led to some extraordinarily photogenic technology-porn moments, which were subsequently used to prove everything from the supremacy of airpower, the accuracy of Patriot (whoops, lol), the relevance of the A-10 (lol), the dominance of tanks, or the superiority of the “Western Way of War.” But those all come back to technological supremacy – lose tech supremacy and the rest doesn’t matter; at tech parity you’re going to be stuck in an attritional grind, while at tech-deficit you get a turn at being the whipping boy. Tech parity is what happened in Normandy 1944, and it’s what happened in Iran-Iraq in the 1980s, and tech parity led to operational deadlock. And this dynamic is what we are seeing repeated again in Ukraine.
ISR has become more pervasive and persistent, which definitely makes life harder, but once again we’ve been here before. The whole point of aerial combat in WWI was to retain or deny aerial recce ability, and it led directly to the formation of national airforces. In 1944 a few stupid little toy planes that could barely fly bought activity along whole sections of the fronts in Normandy and Italy to a halt because those toys could see everything and were directly linked to overwhelming fires systems. And yet, the German army was able to adapt and overcome … for a while, at least defensively. They weren’t able to go on an general offensive despite having loads of shiny tanks, but that had more to do with loss of any ability to operate in the aerial domain, and more generally the yawning chasm of overall materiel inferiority, than it was to do with the Austers and the Cubs.
Neither side in Ukraine is at the point of having either air supremacy, or absurd materiel overmatch, or a significant technological advantage and so parity has led to a broad stalemate.
Tanks … and armour generally … and land vehicles even more generally … are taking a lot of hits in Ukraine, in part because they are facing a weapon system that has some novel characteristics. But then, so is infantry. And artillery. And navy. And air force.
But I don’t believe we will give up on infantry.
I don’t believe we will give up on ships, or airpower, or artillery.
And I don’t believe we will give up on armour or tanks, at least not while the troika remains relevant.
All of those systems will change over time though. Of course they will. They have to, to survive! But that’s normal – force densities, for example, have plummeted since the days of Waterloo, going from being measured by the number of men per metre then to the number of metres per man now, in response to increased range and lethality of weapons, as well as the ability to perform distributed and dispersed command, plus having highly trained and professional standing armies.^ Aircraft too have evolved over the last hundred years, finding new roles while at the same time inventing new ways to accomplish old roles. And so have tanks.
Will there be a next generation of tanks? I think yes. Will the next generation of tanks be broadly similar to the current generation in terms of the balance of the troika between mobility, protection, and firepower? Again, I think yes. Broadly.
What about the generation after that? I think there will be one, not least because yes; militaries are conservative beasts. They are conservative beasts because they're paid to be. Betting the farm on an unproven nascent technology is probably not a great idea, especially when 'the farm' happens to be liberty and independence for the nation and all its citizens.^^ Bet wrong and you get to say hello to Johnny Foreigner as your new head of state. See, for example, France 1940-1944 after they went all-in on shiny new high-tech heavy fixed fortifications, which no one else was doing.
But I also think that gen+2 tanks will be about as different to current tanks as the Centurion was to the Mark I “Male.”^^^ Still a tank that combines firepower, protection and mobility in a single package, but differently.
 
Wars tend to do that to equipment.
 
***
^ as an aside, to my eye modern professional standing armies seem almost akin to the ~16th Century mercenary armies in Italy in terms of their separation from the societies they nominally serve
^^ Yes; Unproven. The information we are getting from Ukraine is partial, highly biased, and selective. That is not a good foundation to make fundamental or existential decisions on.
^^^ fun fact: the British sent a Centurion south to participate in the Falklands War.

[editor’s note: I drafted this about 12 hours ago but because reasons I couldn’t post it till now. The conversation has moved on a bit in the meantime – apologies for being a bit tardy]
***
Some time ago in this thread I asked ‘what is tank?’ and it’s not so surprising that almost 2 years later we’re still circling that tree. Traditionally, tanks are considered to embody three qualities: mobility, protection, and firepower, with trade-offs between the three depending on what your doctrine thinks is more important (Israel, for example, prioritises protection at the expense of mobility), but still having elements of all three – if you just have mobility and firepower then what you’re driving is a technical, not a tank. Or perhaps a drone. If you have protection and firepower but no mobility; you’re in a bunker, not tank. If you have protection and mobility but no firepower; that’s a truck, not a tank.
The tank will be dead when that troika is no longer relevant on the battlefield. The last couple of pages have seen some weird intellectual gymnastics, such as: “tank dead because tank only has mobility, protection, and firepower – all else is drone!” to which; um, yes? And “tank dead because tank only do infantry support! Tank only SPG now!” as if infantry support were not the very thing tanks were created to provide. Tanks entered the battlefield to assist the break-in and breakthrough. The breakout was the domain of the cavalry. The horsed cavalry. Since then tanks have proven useful in other roles, and endured on the battlefield because that troika remains valid.
In the intervening century there have been any number of times when tanks have immolated themselves on whatever the anti-tank defence du jour was; August 1918 at Amiens, May 1940 just down the road at Arras, June to December 1941 in Cyrenaica, May to October 1942 in North Africa, July 1943 in Russia, July 1944 in Normandy, March 1945 in Hungary, June 1954 in Vietnam, October 1973 in the Sinai … and those are just off the top. I am certainly forgetting many many other examples. And yet, and yet, despite all those salutary and sanguinary examples the troika remained relevant.
Armour was useful in Falklands and Vietnam. Granted there wasn’t a lot of armour in the Falklands, but the ground commanders – on both sides – appreciated the ones they had and would certainly have liked more. That they didn’t was mostly a function of logistics (and employability in that particular landscape), rather than utility. Similarly, in Vietnam the Australians, at least, found their Centurions (and their Gavins if you care to include APCs in the generic ‘amour’ bucket) so useful that the RAAC was finally able to shake off their reputation as being Koalas. Armour wasn’t decisive in either conflict, but that’s a different question.
Usefulness aside, noting that tanks aren’t supreme – or decisive - in all contexts is a startling insight into the obvious. For example it is true, as I fully and happily acknowledge, that tanks were not decisive and indeed had practically no impact at all on the Sikkim conflict in 1967, or on the Sumdorong Chu standoff in 1987. By the same token, aircraft carriers were of exactly zero use during the Chaco War in the mid-1930’s or the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, yet surprisingly that didn’t spell the demise of carriers.
Iraq 1991 was a gross mismatch of technology, which led to some extraordinarily photogenic technology-porn moments, which were subsequently used to prove everything from the supremacy of airpower, the accuracy of Patriot (whoops, lol), the relevance of the A-10 (lol), the dominance of tanks, or the superiority of the “Western Way of War.” But those all come back to technological supremacy – lose tech supremacy and the rest doesn’t matter; at tech parity you’re going to be stuck in an attritional grind, while at tech-deficit you get a turn at being the whipping boy. Tech parity is what happened in Normandy 1944, and it’s what happened in Iran-Iraq in the 1980s, and tech parity led to operational deadlock. And this dynamic is what we are seeing repeated again in Ukraine.
ISR has become more pervasive and persistent, which definitely makes life harder, but once again we’ve been here before. The whole point of aerial combat in WWI was to retain or deny aerial recce ability, and it led directly to the formation of national airforces. In 1944 a few stupid little toy planes that could barely fly bought activity along whole sections of the fronts in Normandy and Italy to a halt because those toys could see everything and were directly linked to overwhelming fires systems. And yet, the German army was able to adapt and overcome … for a while, at least defensively. They weren’t able to go on an general offensive despite having loads of shiny tanks, but that had more to do with loss of any ability to operate in the aerial domain, and more generally the yawning chasm of overall materiel inferiority, than it was to do with the Austers and the Cubs.
Neither side in Ukraine is at the point of having either air supremacy, or absurd materiel overmatch, or a significant technological advantage and so parity has led to a broad stalemate.
Tanks … and armour generally … and land vehicles even more generally … are taking a lot of hits in Ukraine, in part because they are facing a weapon system that has some novel characteristics. But then, so is infantry. And artillery. And navy. And air force.
But I don’t believe we will give up on infantry.
I don’t believe we will give up on ships, or airpower, or artillery.
And I don’t believe we will give up on armour or tanks, at least not while the troika remains relevant.
All of those systems will change over time though. Of course they will. They have to, to survive! But that’s normal – force densities, for example, have plummeted since the days of Waterloo, going from being measured by the number of men per metre then to the number of metres per man now, in response to increased range and lethality of weapons, as well as the ability to perform distributed and dispersed command, plus having highly trained and professional standing armies.^ Aircraft too have evolved over the last hundred years, finding new roles while at the same time inventing new ways to accomplish old roles. And so have tanks.
Will there be a next generation of tanks? I think yes. Will the next generation of tanks be broadly similar to the current generation in terms of the balance of the troika between mobility, protection, and firepower? Again, I think yes. Broadly.
What about the generation after that? I think there will be one, not least because yes; militaries are conservative beasts. They are conservative beasts because they're paid to be. Betting the farm on an unproven nascent technology is probably not a great idea, especially when 'the farm' happens to be liberty and independence for the nation and all its citizens.^^ Bet wrong and you get to say hello to Johnny Foreigner as your new head of state. See, for example, France 1940-1944 after they went all-in on shiny new high-tech heavy fixed fortifications, which no one else was doing.
But I also think that gen+2 tanks will be about as different to current tanks as the Centurion was to the Mark I “Male.”^^^ Still a tank that combines firepower, protection and mobility in a single package, but differently.
 
Wars tend to do that to equipment.
 
***
^ as an aside, to my eye modern professional standing armies seem almost akin to the ~16th Century mercenary armies in Italy in terms of their separation from the societies they nominally serve
^^ Yes; Unproven. The information we are getting from Ukraine is partial, highly biased, and selective. That is not a good foundation to make fundamental or existential decisions on.
^^^ fun fact: the British sent a Centurion south to participate in the Falklands War.

[editor’s note: I drafted this about 12 hours ago but because reasons I couldn’t post it till now. The conversation has moved on a bit in the meantime – apologies for being a bit tardy]
***
Some time ago in this thread I asked ‘what is tank?’ and it’s not so surprising that almost 2 years later we’re still circling that tree. Traditionally, tanks are considered to embody three qualities: mobility, protection, and firepower, with trade-offs between the three depending on what your doctrine thinks is more important (Israel, for example, prioritises protection at the expense of mobility), but still having elements of all three – if you just have mobility and firepower then what you’re driving is a technical, not a tank. Or perhaps a drone. If you have protection and firepower but no mobility; you’re in a bunker, not tank. If you have protection and mobility but no firepower; that’s a truck, not a tank.
The tank will be dead when that troika is no longer relevant on the battlefield. The last couple of pages have seen some weird intellectual gymnastics, such as: “tank dead because tank only has mobility, protection, and firepower – all else is drone!” to which; um, yes? And “tank dead because tank only do infantry support! Tank only SPG now!” as if infantry support were not the very thing tanks were created to provide. Tanks entered the battlefield to assist the break-in and breakthrough. The breakout was the domain of the cavalry. The horsed cavalry. Since then tanks have proven useful in other roles, and endured on the battlefield because that troika remains valid.
In the intervening century there have been any number of times when tanks have immolated themselves on whatever the anti-tank defence du jour was; August 1918 at Amiens, May 1940 just down the road at Arras, June to December 1941 in Cyrenaica, May to October 1942 in North Africa, July 1943 in Russia, July 1944 in Normandy, March 1945 in Hungary, June 1954 in Vietnam, October 1973 in the Sinai … and those are just off the top. I am certainly forgetting many many other examples. And yet, and yet, despite all those salutary and sanguinary examples the troika remained relevant.
Armour was useful in Falklands and Vietnam. Granted there wasn’t a lot of armour in the Falklands, but the ground commanders – on both sides – appreciated the ones they had and would certainly have liked more. That they didn’t was mostly a function of logistics (and employability in that particular landscape), rather than utility. Similarly, in Vietnam the Australians, at least, found their Centurions (and their Gavins if you care to include APCs in the generic ‘amour’ bucket) so useful that the RAAC was finally able to shake off their reputation as being Koalas. Armour wasn’t decisive in either conflict, but that’s a different question.
Usefulness aside, noting that tanks aren’t supreme – or decisive - in all contexts is a startling insight into the obvious. For example it is true, as I fully and happily acknowledge, that tanks were not decisive and indeed had practically no impact at all on the Sikkim conflict in 1967, or on the Sumdorong Chu standoff in 1987. By the same token, aircraft carriers were of exactly zero use during the Chaco War in the mid-1930’s or the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, yet surprisingly that didn’t spell the demise of carriers.
Iraq 1991 was a gross mismatch of technology, which led to some extraordinarily photogenic technology-porn moments, which were subsequently used to prove everything from the supremacy of airpower, the accuracy of Patriot (whoops, lol), the relevance of the A-10 (lol), the dominance of tanks, or the superiority of the “Western Way of War.” But those all come back to technological supremacy – lose tech supremacy and the rest doesn’t matter; at tech parity you’re going to be stuck in an attritional grind, while at tech-deficit you get a turn at being the whipping boy. Tech parity is what happened in Normandy 1944, and it’s what happened in Iran-Iraq in the 1980s, and tech parity led to operational deadlock. And this dynamic is what we are seeing repeated again in Ukraine.
ISR has become more pervasive and persistent, which definitely makes life harder, but once again we’ve been here before. The whole point of aerial combat in WWI was to retain or deny aerial recce ability, and it led directly to the formation of national airforces. In 1944 a few stupid little toy planes that could barely fly bought activity along whole sections of the fronts in Normandy and Italy to a halt because those toys could see everything and were directly linked to overwhelming fires systems. And yet, the German army was able to adapt and overcome … for a while, at least defensively. They weren’t able to go on an general offensive despite having loads of shiny tanks, but that had more to do with loss of any ability to operate in the aerial domain, and more generally the yawning chasm of overall materiel inferiority, than it was to do with the Austers and the Cubs.
Neither side in Ukraine is at the point of having either air supremacy, or absurd materiel overmatch, or a significant technological advantage and so parity has led to a broad stalemate.
Tanks … and armour generally … and land vehicles even more generally … are taking a lot of hits in Ukraine, in part because they are facing a weapon system that has some novel characteristics. But then, so is infantry. And artillery. And navy. And air force.
But I don’t believe we will give up on infantry.
I don’t believe we will give up on ships, or airpower, or artillery.
And I don’t believe we will give up on armour or tanks, at least not while the troika remains relevant.
All of those systems will change over time though. Of course they will. They have to, to survive! But that’s normal – force densities, for example, have plummeted since the days of Waterloo, going from being measured by the number of men per metre then to the number of metres per man now, in response to increased range and lethality of weapons, as well as the ability to perform distributed and dispersed command, plus having highly trained and professional standing armies.^ Aircraft too have evolved over the last hundred years, finding new roles while at the same time inventing new ways to accomplish old roles. And so have tanks.
Will there be a next generation of tanks? I think yes. Will the next generation of tanks be broadly similar to the current generation in terms of the balance of the troika between mobility, protection, and firepower? Again, I think yes. Broadly.
What about the generation after that? I think there will be one, not least because yes; militaries are conservative beasts. They are conservative beasts because they're paid to be. Betting the farm on an unproven nascent technology is probably not a great idea, especially when 'the farm' happens to be liberty and independence for the nation and all its citizens.^^ Bet wrong and you get to say hello to Johnny Foreigner as your new head of state. See, for example, France 1940-1944 after they went all-in on shiny new high-tech heavy fixed fortifications, which no one else was doing.
But I also think that gen+2 tanks will be about as different to current tanks as the Centurion was to the Mark I “Male.”^^^ Still a tank that combines firepower, protection and mobility in a single package, but differently.
 
Wars tend to do that to equipment.
 
***
^ as an aside, to my eye modern professional standing armies seem almost akin to the ~16th Century mercenary armies in Italy in terms of their separation from the societies they nominally serve
^^ Yes; Unproven. The information we are getting from Ukraine is partial, highly biased, and selective. That is not a good foundation to make fundamental or existential decisions on.
^^^ fun fact: the British sent a Centurion south to participate in the Falklands War.

[editor’s note: I drafted this about 12 hours ago but because reasons I couldn’t post it till now. The conversation has moved on a bit in the meantime – apologies for being a bit tardy]
***
Some time ago in this thread I asked ‘what is tank?’ and it’s not so surprising that almost 2 years later we’re still circling that tree. Traditionally, tanks are considered to embody three qualities: mobility, protection, and firepower, with trade-offs between the three depending on what your doctrine thinks is more important (Israel, for example, prioritises protection at the expense of mobility), but still having elements of all three – if you just have mobility and firepower then what you’re driving is a technical, not a tank. Or perhaps a drone. If you have protection and firepower but no mobility; you’re in a bunker, not tank. If you have protection and mobility but no firepower; that’s a truck, not a tank.
The tank will be dead when that troika is no longer relevant on the battlefield. The last couple of pages have seen some weird intellectual gymnastics, such as: “tank dead because tank only has mobility, protection, and firepower – all else is drone!” to which; um, yes? And “tank dead because tank only do infantry support! Tank only SPG now!” as if infantry support were not the very thing tanks were created to provide. Tanks entered the battlefield to assist the break-in and breakthrough. The breakout was the domain of the cavalry. The horsed cavalry. Since then tanks have proven useful in other roles, and endured on the battlefield because that troika remains valid.
In the intervening century there have been any number of times when tanks have immolated themselves on whatever the anti-tank defence du jour was; August 1918 at Amiens, May 1940 just down the road at Arras, June to December 1941 in Cyrenaica, May to October 1942 in North Africa, July 1943 in Russia, July 1944 in Normandy, March 1945 in Hungary, June 1954 in Vietnam, October 1973 in the Sinai … and those are just off the top. I am certainly forgetting many many other examples. And yet, and yet, despite all those salutary and sanguinary examples the troika remained relevant.
Armour was useful in Falklands and Vietnam. Granted there wasn’t a lot of armour in the Falklands, but the ground commanders – on both sides – appreciated the ones they had and would certainly have liked more. That they didn’t was mostly a function of logistics (and employability in that particular landscape), rather than utility. Similarly, in Vietnam the Australians, at least, found their Centurions (and their Gavins if you care to include APCs in the generic ‘amour’ bucket) so useful that the RAAC was finally able to shake off their reputation as being Koalas. Armour wasn’t decisive in either conflict, but that’s a different question.
Usefulness aside, noting that tanks aren’t supreme – or decisive - in all contexts is a startling insight into the obvious. For example it is true, as I fully and happily acknowledge, that tanks were not decisive and indeed had practically no impact at all on the Sikkim conflict in 1967, or on the Sumdorong Chu standoff in 1987. By the same token, aircraft carriers were of exactly zero use during the Chaco War in the mid-1930’s or the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, yet surprisingly that didn’t spell the demise of carriers.
Iraq 1991 was a gross mismatch of technology, which led to some extraordinarily photogenic technology-porn moments, which were subsequently used to prove everything from the supremacy of airpower, the accuracy of Patriot (whoops, lol), the relevance of the A-10 (lol), the dominance of tanks, or the superiority of the “Western Way of War.” But those all come back to technological supremacy – lose tech supremacy and the rest doesn’t matter; at tech parity you’re going to be stuck in an attritional grind, while at tech-deficit you get a turn at being the whipping boy. Tech parity is what happened in Normandy 1944, and it’s what happened in Iran-Iraq in the 1980s, and tech parity led to operational deadlock. And this dynamic is what we are seeing repeated again in Ukraine.
ISR has become more pervasive and persistent, which definitely makes life harder, but once again we’ve been here before. The whole point of aerial combat in WWI was to retain or deny aerial recce ability, and it led directly to the formation of national airforces. In 1944 a few stupid little toy planes that could barely fly bought activity along whole sections of the fronts in Normandy and Italy to a halt because those toys could see everything and were directly linked to overwhelming fires systems. And yet, the German army was able to adapt and overcome … for a while, at least defensively. They weren’t able to go on an general offensive despite having loads of shiny tanks, but that had more to do with loss of any ability to operate in the aerial domain, and more generally the yawning chasm of overall materiel inferiority, than it was to do with the Austers and the Cubs.
Neither side in Ukraine is at the point of having either air supremacy, or absurd materiel overmatch, or a significant technological advantage and so parity has led to a broad stalemate.
Tanks … and armour generally … and land vehicles even more generally … are taking a lot of hits in Ukraine, in part because they are facing a weapon system that has some novel characteristics. But then, so is infantry. And artillery. And navy. And air force.
But I don’t believe we will give up on infantry.
I don’t believe we will give up on ships, or airpower, or artillery.
And I don’t believe we will give up on armour or tanks, at least not while the troika remains relevant.
All of those systems will change over time though. Of course they will. They have to, to survive! But that’s normal – force densities, for example, have plummeted since the days of Waterloo, going from being measured by the number of men per metre then to the number of metres per man now, in response to increased range and lethality of weapons, as well as the ability to perform distributed and dispersed command, plus having highly trained and professional standing armies.^ Aircraft too have evolved over the last hundred years, finding new roles while at the same time inventing new ways to accomplish old roles. And so have tanks.
Will there be a next generation of tanks? I think yes. Will the next generation of tanks be broadly similar to the current generation in terms of the balance of the troika between mobility, protection, and firepower? Again, I think yes. Broadly.
What about the generation after that? I think there will be one, not least because yes; militaries are conservative beasts. They are conservative beasts because they're paid to be. Betting the farm on an unproven nascent technology is probably not a great idea, especially when 'the farm' happens to be liberty and independence for the nation and all its citizens.^^ Bet wrong and you get to say hello to Johnny Foreigner as your new head of state. See, for example, France 1940-1944 after they went all-in on shiny new high-tech heavy fixed fortifications, which no one else was doing.
But I also think that gen+2 tanks will be about as different to current tanks as the Centurion was to the Mark I “Male.”^^^ Still a tank that combines firepower, protection and mobility in a single package, but differently.
 
Wars tend to do that to equipment.
 
***
^ as an aside, to my eye modern professional standing armies seem almost akin to the ~16th Century mercenary armies in Italy in terms of their separation from the societies they nominally serve
^^ Yes; Unproven. The information we are getting from Ukraine is partial, highly biased, and selective. That is not a good foundation to make fundamental or existential decisions on.
^^^ fun fact: the British sent a Centurion south to participate in the Falklands War.

[editor’s note: I drafted this about 12 hours ago but because reasons I couldn’t post it till now. The conversation has moved on a bit in the meantime – apologies for being a bit tardy]
***
Some time ago in this thread I asked ‘what is tank?’ and it’s not so surprising that almost 2 years later we’re still circling that tree. Traditionally, tanks are considered to embody three qualities: mobility, protection, and firepower, with trade-offs between the three depending on what your doctrine thinks is more important (Israel, for example, prioritises protection at the expense of mobility), but still having elements of all three – if you just have mobility and firepower then what you’re driving is a technical, not a tank. Or perhaps a drone. If you have protection and firepower but no mobility; you’re in a bunker, not tank. If you have protection and mobility but no firepower; that’s a truck, not a tank.
The tank will be dead when that troika is no longer relevant on the battlefield. The last couple of pages have seen some weird intellectual gymnastics, such as: “tank dead because tank only has mobility, protection, and firepower – all else is drone!” to which; um, yes? And “tank dead because tank only do infantry support! Tank only SPG now!” as if infantry support were not the very thing tanks were created to provide. Tanks entered the battlefield to assist the break-in and breakthrough. The breakout was the domain of the cavalry. The horsed cavalry. Since then tanks have proven useful in other roles, and endured on the battlefield because that troika remains valid.
In the intervening century there have been any number of times when tanks have immolated themselves on whatever the anti-tank defence du jour was; August 1918 at Amiens, May 1940 just down the road at Arras, June to December 1941 in Cyrenaica, May to October 1942 in North Africa, July 1943 in Russia, July 1944 in Normandy, March 1945 in Hungary, June 1954 in Vietnam, October 1973 in the Sinai … and those are just off the top. I am certainly forgetting many many other examples. And yet, and yet, despite all those salutary and sanguinary examples the troika remained relevant.
Armour was useful in Falklands and Vietnam. Granted there wasn’t a lot of armour in the Falklands, but the ground commanders – on both sides – appreciated the ones they had and would certainly have liked more. That they didn’t was mostly a function of logistics (and employability in that particular landscape), rather than utility. Similarly, in Vietnam the Australians, at least, found their Centurions (and their Gavins if you care to include APCs in the generic ‘amour’ bucket) so useful that the RAAC was finally able to shake off their reputation as being Koalas. Armour wasn’t decisive in either conflict, but that’s a different question.
Usefulness aside, noting that tanks aren’t supreme – or decisive - in all contexts is a startling insight into the obvious. For example it is true, as I fully and happily acknowledge, that tanks were not decisive and indeed had practically no impact at all on the Sikkim conflict in 1967, or on the Sumdorong Chu standoff in 1987. By the same token, aircraft carriers were of exactly zero use during the Chaco War in the mid-1930’s or the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, yet surprisingly that didn’t spell the demise of carriers.
Iraq 1991 was a gross mismatch of technology, which led to some extraordinarily photogenic technology-porn moments, which were subsequently used to prove everything from the supremacy of airpower, the accuracy of Patriot (whoops, lol), the relevance of the A-10 (lol), the dominance of tanks, or the superiority of the “Western Way of War.” But those all come back to technological supremacy – lose tech supremacy and the rest doesn’t matter; at tech parity you’re going to be stuck in an attritional grind, while at tech-deficit you get a turn at being the whipping boy. Tech parity is what happened in Normandy 1944, and it’s what happened in Iran-Iraq in the 1980s, and tech parity led to operational deadlock. And this dynamic is what we are seeing repeated again in Ukraine.
ISR has become more pervasive and persistent, which definitely makes life harder, but once again we’ve been here before. The whole point of aerial combat in WWI was to retain or deny aerial recce ability, and it led directly to the formation of national airforces. In 1944 a few stupid little toy planes that could barely fly bought activity along whole sections of the fronts in Normandy and Italy to a halt because those toys could see everything and were directly linked to overwhelming fires systems. And yet, the German army was able to adapt and overcome … for a while, at least defensively. They weren’t able to go on an general offensive despite having loads of shiny tanks, but that had more to do with loss of any ability to operate in the aerial domain, and more generally the yawning chasm of overall materiel inferiority, than it was to do with the Austers and the Cubs.
Neither side in Ukraine is at the point of having either air supremacy, or absurd materiel overmatch, or a significant technological advantage and so parity has led to a broad stalemate.
Tanks … and armour generally … and land vehicles even more generally … are taking a lot of hits in Ukraine, in part because they are facing a weapon system that has some novel characteristics. But then, so is infantry. And artillery. And navy. And air force.
But I don’t believe we will give up on infantry.
I don’t believe we will give up on ships, or airpower, or artillery.
And I don’t believe we will give up on armour or tanks, at least not while the troika remains relevant.
All of those systems will change over time though. Of course they will. They have to, to survive! But that’s normal – force densities, for example, have plummeted since the days of Waterloo, going from being measured by the number of men per metre then to the number of metres per man now, in response to increased range and lethality of weapons, as well as the ability to perform distributed and dispersed command, plus having highly trained and professional standing armies.^ Aircraft too have evolved over the last hundred years, finding new roles while at the same time inventing new ways to accomplish old roles. And so have tanks.
Will there be a next generation of tanks? I think yes. Will the next generation of tanks be broadly similar to the current generation in terms of the balance of the troika between mobility, protection, and firepower? Again, I think yes. Broadly.
What about the generation after that? I think there will be one, not least because yes; militaries are conservative beasts. They are conservative beasts because they're paid to be. Betting the farm on an unproven nascent technology is probably not a great idea, especially when 'the farm' happens to be liberty and independence for the nation and all its citizens.^^ Bet wrong and you get to say hello to Johnny Foreigner as your new head of state. See, for example, France 1940-1944 after they went all-in on shiny new high-tech heavy fixed fortifications, which no one else was doing.
But I also think that gen+2 tanks will be about as different to current tanks as the Centurion was to the Mark I “Male.”^^^ Still a tank that combines firepower, protection and mobility in a single package, but differently.
 
Wars tend to do that to equipment.
 
***
^ as an aside, to my eye modern professional standing armies seem almost akin to the ~16th Century mercenary armies in Italy in terms of their separation from the societies they nominally serve
^^ Yes; Unproven. The information we are getting from Ukraine is partial, highly biased, and selective. That is not a good foundation to make fundamental or existential decisions on.
^^^ fun fact: the British sent a Centurion south to participate in the Falklands War.

[editor’s note: I drafted this about 12 hours ago but because reasons I couldn’t post it till now. The conversation has moved on a bit in the meantime – apologies for being a bit tardy]
***
Some time ago in this thread I asked ‘what is tank?’ and it’s not so surprising that almost 2 years later we’re still circling that tree. Traditionally, tanks are considered to embody three qualities: mobility, protection, and firepower, with trade-offs between the three depending on what your doctrine thinks is more important (Israel, for example, prioritises protection at the expense of mobility), but still having elements of all three – if you just have mobility and firepower then what you’re driving is a technical, not a tank. Or perhaps a drone. If you have protection and firepower but no mobility; you’re in a bunker, not tank. If you have protection and mobility but no firepower; that’s a truck, not a tank.
The tank will be dead when that troika is no longer relevant on the battlefield. The last couple of pages have seen some weird intellectual gymnastics, such as: “tank dead because tank only has mobility, protection, and firepower – all else is drone!” to which; um, yes? And “tank dead because tank only do infantry support! Tank only SPG now!” as if infantry support were not the very thing tanks were created to provide. Tanks entered the battlefield to assist the break-in and breakthrough. The breakout was the domain of the cavalry. The horsed cavalry. Since then tanks have proven useful in other roles, and endured on the battlefield because that troika remains valid.
In the intervening century there have been any number of times when tanks have immolated themselves on whatever the anti-tank defence du jour was; August 1918 at Amiens, May 1940 just down the road at Arras, June to December 1941 in Cyrenaica, May to October 1942 in North Africa, July 1943 in Russia, July 1944 in Normandy, March 1945 in Hungary, June 1954 in Vietnam, October 1973 in the Sinai … and those are just off the top. I am certainly forgetting many many other examples. And yet, and yet, despite all those salutary and sanguinary examples the troika remained relevant.
Armour was useful in Falklands and Vietnam. Granted there wasn’t a lot of armour in the Falklands, but the ground commanders – on both sides – appreciated the ones they had and would certainly have liked more. That they didn’t was mostly a function of logistics (and employability in that particular landscape), rather than utility. Similarly, in Vietnam the Australians, at least, found their Centurions (and their Gavins if you care to include APCs in the generic ‘amour’ bucket) so useful that the RAAC was finally able to shake off their reputation as being Koalas. Armour wasn’t decisive in either conflict, but that’s a different question.
Usefulness aside, noting that tanks aren’t supreme – or decisive - in all contexts is a startling insight into the obvious. For example it is true, as I fully and happily acknowledge, that tanks were not decisive and indeed had practically no impact at all on the Sikkim conflict in 1967, or on the Sumdorong Chu standoff in 1987. By the same token, aircraft carriers were of exactly zero use during the Chaco War in the mid-1930’s or the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, yet surprisingly that didn’t spell the demise of carriers.
Iraq 1991 was a gross mismatch of technology, which led to some extraordinarily photogenic technology-porn moments, which were subsequently used to prove everything from the supremacy of airpower, the accuracy of Patriot (whoops, lol), the relevance of the A-10 (lol), the dominance of tanks, or the superiority of the “Western Way of War.” But those all come back to technological supremacy – lose tech supremacy and the rest doesn’t matter; at tech parity you’re going to be stuck in an attritional grind, while at tech-deficit you get a turn at being the whipping boy. Tech parity is what happened in Normandy 1944, and it’s what happened in Iran-Iraq in the 1980s, and tech parity led to operational deadlock. And this dynamic is what we are seeing repeated again in Ukraine.
ISR has become more pervasive and persistent, which definitely makes life harder, but once again we’ve been here before. The whole point of aerial combat in WWI was to retain or deny aerial recce ability, and it led directly to the formation of national airforces. In 1944 a few stupid little toy planes that could barely fly bought activity along whole sections of the fronts in Normandy and Italy to a halt because those toys could see everything and were directly linked to overwhelming fires systems. And yet, the German army was able to adapt and overcome … for a while, at least defensively. They weren’t able to go on an general offensive despite having loads of shiny tanks, but that had more to do with loss of any ability to operate in the aerial domain, and more generally the yawning chasm of overall materiel inferiority, than it was to do with the Austers and the Cubs.
Neither side in Ukraine is at the point of having either air supremacy, or absurd materiel overmatch, or a significant technological advantage and so parity has led to a broad stalemate.
Tanks … and armour generally … and land vehicles even more generally … are taking a lot of hits in Ukraine, in part because they are facing a weapon system that has some novel characteristics. But then, so is infantry. And artillery. And navy. And air force.
But I don’t believe we will give up on infantry.
I don’t believe we will give up on ships, or airpower, or artillery.
And I don’t believe we will give up on armour or tanks, at least not while the troika remains relevant.
All of those systems will change over time though. Of course they will. They have to, to survive! But that’s normal – force densities, for example, have plummeted since the days of Waterloo, going from being measured by the number of men per metre then to the number of metres per man now, in response to increased range and lethality of weapons, as well as the ability to perform distributed and dispersed command, plus having highly trained and professional standing armies.^ Aircraft too have evolved over the last hundred years, finding new roles while at the same time inventing new ways to accomplish old roles. And so have tanks.
Will there be a next generation of tanks? I think yes. Will the next generation of tanks be broadly similar to the current generation in terms of the balance of the troika between mobility, protection, and firepower? Again, I think yes. Broadly.
What about the generation after that? I think there will be one, not least because yes; militaries are conservative beasts. They are conservative beasts because they're paid to be. Betting the farm on an unproven nascent technology is probably not a great idea, especially when 'the farm' happens to be liberty and independence for the nation and all its citizens.^^ Bet wrong and you get to say hello to Johnny Foreigner as your new head of state. See, for example, France 1940-1944 after they went all-in on shiny new high-tech heavy fixed fortifications, which no one else was doing.
But I also think that gen+2 tanks will be about as different to current tanks as the Centurion was to the Mark I “Male.”^^^ Still a tank that combines firepower, protection and mobility in a single package, but differently.
 
Wars tend to do that to equipment.
 
***
^ as an aside, to my eye modern professional standing armies seem almost akin to the ~16th Century mercenary armies in Italy in terms of their separation from the societies they nominally serve
^^ Yes; Unproven. The information we are getting from Ukraine is partial, highly biased, and selective. That is not a good foundation to make fundamental or existential decisions on.
^^^ fun fact: the British sent a Centurion south to participate in the Falklands War.

Excellent video I must say.

Some of my own thoughts and responses.

Kreminna is probably close to some of of the roughest terrain for tank usage around, not to say they cant be used but yeah, very close quarters so this outcome is not exactly a surprise. To me even with the loss of a tank, they are still performing exactly what their intended role is: to spearhead a push and provide supporting fire to blast the infantry onto target. Outside of major mechanised movements this is the quintessential purpose of a tank in its form. Given the infantry make it into the Russian trenches and succeed in their assault, I view that as a success, especially as the crew of the tank reportedly survive.

If they did not have tanks at all in the assault its fair to argue that more men are liable to become casualties. As a rule of thumb, steel always saves on blood and sweat. You can even hear the Ukrainian soldiers seem pretty happy / confident that they have two tanks supporting them on this assault. Having that level of firepower for a small assault is pretty damn good to have and its clearly good for their morale!

The RU infantry in the meantime clearly have the opposite issue and are focussing their attentions on the tanks, which gives the  UA infantry the opportunity to act out their own mission. Is it not possible the defending Russian infantry might have been a bit more active and able if they were not suffering the significant emotional event of having tank fire directed at near point blank range at them?

The other big observation is, what would you use instead of the tank in this situation? Any other vehicle is going to be lighter and even more vulnerable to anti tank fire. To have nothing in support means your infantry are assaulting a trench position without any vehicular support. That is always an even bloodier outcome in most cases. To me, the issue here if there is one is that the poor bastards are having to use pretty old tanks. One wonders how much better the tanks would fare with thermals made in the last generation at least for instance. Not to mention that this seems more the perfect reason why something like a functioning APS system on a tank is so important. 

At the end of the day, the Ukrainians (and people in general for war really) are using what they have. 

In their defense, they don't actually have many washing machines.  In fact it is rumored that Putin began this war due to a shortage of washing machines and toilets in Russia.

As a side note, I hope I am articulating myself reasonably well here. I am still somewhat new here despite having lurked for an ungodly amount of time on the forum. Its certainly lovely to discuss / talk to you all!


 

Mmm. Good point, and good relevant examples.
Still, interventuon/separation forces *have* been shown to be successful in various contexts. This would be different in that it'd be a half-and-half (ie, "this area is peaceful so leave us alone or we'll kick you in the balls. Go be dicks to each other over there, where we aren't"), which definitely adds complexity, but not necessarily impossibility.
The big kicker, I suppose, is that intervention forces are particularly successful when *both* sides want them to be. When only one side wants them there then shenanigans tend to ensue.

Heh. Imagine if the internet had existed, and cellphones with cameras had been ubiquitous, in 1973.
We would be inundated with videos from AT-3 operators as somewhere north of 1,000 Centurions, Pattons, and what else not were destroyed or damaged in less than 3 weeks, leading, obviously, to Israel's defeat and the end of tanks as a weapon system.

Huh. I suppose spending 30 ... no, nearly 40 years designing and optimising kit for the sandbox will do that to your procurement system.
When was the last time a div-sized M1-equipped unit was based in Germany?

Never forget that one of the constraints on adoption of new equipment is the Ukrainian military itself.
It is undeniably true that deploying the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries, from soup to nuts, logistics to BDA, would make the Ukrainian armed forces incomparably more fearsome than they already are.
It is ALSO undeniably true that wholesale adoption of the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries etc etc in one fell swoop would utterly break the force, indeed any force, that tried it. It would break them if they tried it in peacetime, let alone attempting it in the middle of an existential war. It is mildly implausible that Putin would step back, saying "oh, fair play, we won't do anything for the next 18-24 months while you figure out how to use, employ, and maintain all this new stuff. Give us a call when you're ready to go again?"
Keep in mind that every time you argue for comprehensive and sudden re-equipping. Either you're arguing for a fantasy, or you're arguing for a Russian victory along the lines of Arthur C. Clarke's short story Superiority.
There is, of course, a middle path - upgrading as fast as practical whilst maintaining a credible and capable force. And there always is, and always will be, debate about whether the process is proceeding too quickly or to slowly. However the answer is never at either end of the spectrum.
 

Never forget that one of the constraints on adoption of new equipment is the Ukrainian military itself.
It is undeniably true that deploying the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries, from soup to nuts, logistics to BDA, would make the Ukrainian armed forces incomparably more fearsome than they already are.
It is ALSO undeniably true that wholesale adoption of the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries etc etc in one fell swoop would utterly break the force, indeed any force, that tried it. It would break them if they tried it in peacetime, let alone attempting it in the middle of an existential war. It is mildly implausible that Putin would step back, saying "oh, fair play, we won't do anything for the next 18-24 months while you figure out how to use, employ, and maintain all this new stuff. Give us a call when you're ready to go again?"
Keep in mind that every time you argue for comprehensive and sudden re-equipping. Either you're arguing for a fantasy, or you're arguing for a Russian victory along the lines of Arthur C. Clarke's short story Superiority.
There is, of course, a middle path - upgrading as fast as practical whilst maintaining a credible and capable force. And there always is, and always will be, debate about whether the process is proceeding too quickly or to slowly. However the answer is never at either end of the spectrum.
 

Never forget that one of the constraints on adoption of new equipment is the Ukrainian military itself.
It is undeniably true that deploying the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries, from soup to nuts, logistics to BDA, would make the Ukrainian armed forces incomparably more fearsome than they already are.
It is ALSO undeniably true that wholesale adoption of the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries etc etc in one fell swoop would utterly break the force, indeed any force, that tried it. It would break them if they tried it in peacetime, let alone attempting it in the middle of an existential war. It is mildly implausible that Putin would step back, saying "oh, fair play, we won't do anything for the next 18-24 months while you figure out how to use, employ, and maintain all this new stuff. Give us a call when you're ready to go again?"
Keep in mind that every time you argue for comprehensive and sudden re-equipping. Either you're arguing for a fantasy, or you're arguing for a Russian victory along the lines of Arthur C. Clarke's short story Superiority.
There is, of course, a middle path - upgrading as fast as practical whilst maintaining a credible and capable force. And there always is, and always will be, debate about whether the process is proceeding too quickly or to slowly. However the answer is never at either end of the spectrum.
 

I don’t think this is really a thing anymore either.  Conventional aircraft are all standoff air interdiction or ground strike.  What will be important is how well these F16 can be integrated and what why will/can carry.  I am thinking more flying HIMARs and AD to reinforce denial. I have no idea what air superiority even looks like anymore.

I've wondered several times how viable I would be fr the UN or the EU (/not/ NATO) to introduce a separation force (similar to the ones around Israel) along the uncontested pre-2014 borders, like the one along Belarus and - until a few weeks ago - round the corner and down past Kharkiv, and then down the river.
Putin would likely lose his rag, since he likely views, officially at least, the whole country as 'contested' regardless of whether there's currently fighting there or not.
From the non-Russian perspective, though, it would make it clear that smaller and smaller bits of Ukraine are still up for discussion. It would also extend the West's air and AD umbrella over most of Ukraine, preventing most missile activity.
Lot's of practical issues though - the seam between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian forces would be /very/ fragile and delicate. Some of the non-Ukrainian forces /would/ die, even if 'only' from UXO. Putin would have a total **** about it, and Xi probably wouldn't be best pleased either. It would allow Ukraine to focus all it's forces on a smaller area, but so too would Russia. Etc.
Otoh, the areas inside the cordon sanitare could safely start to rebuild, and it'd be a super duper clear message from the West that, no; we are not going to let you 'renegotiate' this bit that you already tried and lost.
Edit: UN would be a non-starter due to Russia's (and probably China's) veto.

I've wondered several times how viable I would be fr the UN or the EU (/not/ NATO) to introduce a separation force (similar to the ones around Israel) along the uncontested pre-2014 borders, like the one along Belarus and - until a few weeks ago - round the corner and down past Kharkiv, and then down the river.
Putin would likely lose his rag, since he likely views, officially at least, the whole country as 'contested' regardless of whether there's currently fighting there or not.
From the non-Russian perspective, though, it would make it clear that smaller and smaller bits of Ukraine are still up for discussion. It would also extend the West's air and AD umbrella over most of Ukraine, preventing most missile activity.
Lot's of practical issues though - the seam between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian forces would be /very/ fragile and delicate. Some of the non-Ukrainian forces /would/ die, even if 'only' from UXO. Putin would have a total **** about it, and Xi probably wouldn't be best pleased either. It would allow Ukraine to focus all it's forces on a smaller area, but so too would Russia. Etc.
Otoh, the areas inside the cordon sanitare could safely start to rebuild, and it'd be a super duper clear message from the West that, no; we are not going to let you 'renegotiate' this bit that you already tried and lost.
Edit: UN would be a non-starter due to Russia's (and probably China's) veto.

I've wondered several times how viable I would be fr the UN or the EU (/not/ NATO) to introduce a separation force (similar to the ones around Israel) along the uncontested pre-2014 borders, like the one along Belarus and - until a few weeks ago - round the corner and down past Kharkiv, and then down the river.
Putin would likely lose his rag, since he likely views, officially at least, the whole country as 'contested' regardless of whether there's currently fighting there or not.
From the non-Russian perspective, though, it would make it clear that smaller and smaller bits of Ukraine are still up for discussion. It would also extend the West's air and AD umbrella over most of Ukraine, preventing most missile activity.
Lot's of practical issues though - the seam between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian forces would be /very/ fragile and delicate. Some of the non-Ukrainian forces /would/ die, even if 'only' from UXO. Putin would have a total **** about it, and Xi probably wouldn't be best pleased either. It would allow Ukraine to focus all it's forces on a smaller area, but so too would Russia. Etc.
Otoh, the areas inside the cordon sanitare could safely start to rebuild, and it'd be a super duper clear message from the West that, no; we are not going to let you 'renegotiate' this bit that you already tried and lost.
Edit: UN would be a non-starter due to Russia's (and probably China's) veto.

I've wondered several times how viable I would be fr the UN or the EU (/not/ NATO) to introduce a separation force (similar to the ones around Israel) along the uncontested pre-2014 borders, like the one along Belarus and - until a few weeks ago - round the corner and down past Kharkiv, and then down the river.
Putin would likely lose his rag, since he likely views, officially at least, the whole country as 'contested' regardless of whether there's currently fighting there or not.
From the non-Russian perspective, though, it would make it clear that smaller and smaller bits of Ukraine are still up for discussion. It would also extend the West's air and AD umbrella over most of Ukraine, preventing most missile activity.
Lot's of practical issues though - the seam between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian forces would be /very/ fragile and delicate. Some of the non-Ukrainian forces /would/ die, even if 'only' from UXO. Putin would have a total **** about it, and Xi probably wouldn't be best pleased either. It would allow Ukraine to focus all it's forces on a smaller area, but so too would Russia. Etc.
Otoh, the areas inside the cordon sanitare could safely start to rebuild, and it'd be a super duper clear message from the West that, no; we are not going to let you 'renegotiate' this bit that you already tried and lost.
Edit: UN would be a non-starter due to Russia's (and probably China's) veto.

This is true, but those blows and that defeat are survivable and recoverable in ways that a strategic nuclear exchange is not.
See WWII for example - the UK did survive and ultimately recover from the loss of Poland, France, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma even though it wasn't all happiness and roses, and the UK was permanently altered after the war.

Yeah, that caught my eye too. I *think* what he means is that while Orban might /want/ to leave the EU for WarPac 2.0 - or whatevs - politically he can't do that because ... reasons.^ So he's being an obnoxious dick in the hope and expectation that that rest of the EU will get fed up and show him the door.
Or sumfink.
 
^ strongman dictator wannabe isn't so strong after all? Or so dictatory?

No, sorry, there’s no convincing argument here:
Granted, for the sake of this discussion. 
Assertion/speculation.  Needs support.
On the contrary to what?  Also, this is baseless assertion again (feel free to add a base for it though).  Also, you don’t get to introduce what turns out to be an assertion as an “argument” and then immediately leap to calling it a “fact”.
Overall, given that you’re the one who identified “logical thinking” as the basis for your argument, your grasp of how rational inductive reasoning works seems to be lacking.
 
tl;dr - You don’t have a rational argument here.  You have a stream of thought which ends in a conclusion that you find meaningful but you cannot expect anyone else to find it convincing.

And this is when I stop listening.  If this were remotely true then what is stopping Russia from conducting strikes into Poland right now? This is the complete BS line of thinking that Russia is somehow some unstoppable juggernaut that only Ukraine can possibly stand up to, while the weak kneed western powers are too scared to do anything other than support Ukraine.  This sort of nonsense is the mirror of the pro-Russian crap that we get drive bys on every month or so.  It has no basis in facts and is basically propaganda lines.
I am about as enthusiastic to being a target of Ukraine IO campaigns as I am being a target of Russian ones.