IMHO

7.62 AP penetration is 5, 7, 10mm depending on the type of the round. BTR-70 has 6mm side armor so BTR-70 story is plausible. BMP-1 has 16-18mm side armor - It's hard to believe there might be direct penetrations through side armor. But I found references that there were rare penetrations at hatchways or back doors with 7.62 APs from very short distances.The more realistic case is 7.62 AP penetrations at the roof and upper glacis from high above. Like top stories of the buildings and gun nests at mountain crests. Upper glacis and the roof are no more than BTR-70 armor. BMP-1D - an uparmored variant of BMP-1 - was made to protect specifically from non-AP rounds 12.7 from long distances. No more than that. 12.7 is still able to penetrate the sides - infantry losses were decreased but not eliminated altogether.

Not small arms. Ambushes with Chinese DShK in Afghanistan. Neither BMP-1 nor BMP-2 will withstand 12.7mm at the hull side.

Can you provide proofs? BMP-1 save for BMP-2 withstands Russian 23mm and Western 20mm from front at 500m and 7.62 AP at the sides at zero distance. It has 16-18mm armor at sides.

JK, don't you see they are kids? Some low-level apparatchiki dream of living in North Korea.

Remarkable fantasy! Major Jordan mentions that the military airstrip he served at was secured by patrols. I just see this happening times and times again and no one asking any questions. I wonder was this major ever had a chance to see a shrink.

What a helo dive has to do with the missile trajectory? Is "the ground" in your scenario is covered in retroreflectors and/or signal boosters?

Am I wrong or the highest authority in the US enlightened us that America possessed air power 250+ years ago?

Guided mortar round. You need a forward observer with laser designator to paint the target.

@Haiduk, we're of the same opinion. That was the peculiar wording of mine. It's illogical to say thermal sight can see through the smoke yet IR laser cannot go through.

Amusing So you see no problem with IR light going through smoke yet you find it impossible for a laser light to do the same trick?

I'm sure the actual hands-on work can be squeezed in the time frame you put here. My comment was about the feasibility of using FY2018 budget to pay for the increase the actual production numbers in 2018 by 2-3 times YoY. To upgrade a tank one needs to push the upgrade contract through the red tape AFTER one has the approved state budget, pay the costs to actually transport the tank to the plant, then the prime contractor advances the subsystem producers and ONLY AFTER that subsystem producers would start the work on their components save delivering them to the prime contractor. So 2018 numbers seem more like Poroshenko's upbeat pre-election propaganda about how good the guy was about growing the might of Ukrainian Armed Forces. Like they counted all the tanks that were CONTRACTED to be upgraded rather than actually delivered to MoD. Or alternatively they counted all the tanks they "upgraded" by simply doing the simplest job of taking them out of stock and making them battle-ready as of 60s-70s standards. Ukrainian plants absolutely have no spare money in their pockets to pay for expensive stuff like tank's thermal sights before Ukrainian MoD provides the funds to do so. Were it 10-20% increase YoY I'd believe it but 2-3 times increase...

Agree with your opinion on repairs. I meant "upgrade" but somehow wrote "repairs". I counted nine months between advance payments from MoD and actual delivery of the vehicle. For modernization MoD would need to make this advance payment to the prime contractor then prime contractor transfers advances to subsystems suppliers and only after this payment subsystems suppliers would start producing their respective parts. And that's only if subsystems suppliers do not need to upgrade their tooling.

My guess is FY2018 budget can't explain that. Even for repairs production lifecycle for a piece of heavy equipment (like armored vehicles) would be about 9 months give or take. So if one considers monthly production capacity limitations most of the advance payments from the MoD should have happened in FY2017. What do you think?

@ctcharger, you don't need to keep (all) your guys through the shelling. You can get them to a safe place in the very beginning and keep approaches to the compound under fire from afar. Then it becomes a cake walk.

@Haiduk, thanks for the interesting info first of all! Don't the numbers for 2018 look too optimistic? Isn't it a pre-election effect? 2014 numbers at least for small arms look too low for me. 2014 should be the year of mass replenishment of weapons lost, shouldn't it?

1. If I'm not mistaken analysts' best guess is minus 1-1.5% off GDP growth. Now we're 0 to 0.5% of "real" GDP growth for the coming decade and the "old normal" was 1.5-2%. That's a lot even for the currently kleptocratical and inefficient structure of the Russian economy. By "real" I mean if one takes blatant economic propaganda that comes out of the Russian Ministry of Economy with a healthy dose of scepticism. They don't care any more about glaring inconsistencies in their "optimistic" reporting. Or rather they have run out of means on how to plausibly fake detailed economic statistics. 2. What's even more important are sometimes open and in many cases behind-the-doors restrictions on technology transfer. Russian budget is very deoendent on oil and gas revenues. To fill in budget obligations we pump oil like crazy - having inconcievably lower deposits than Saudi Arabia we're exporting more oil than them. So we're very depending on efficient extraction technologies for hard-to-use oil fields. Restrictions on Arctic and sea bed explotations will limit oil production and budget revenues in the coming years. No, share of military spending in GDP is falling. Real military spending with inflation factored in is falling for the past 2-3 years. Nominal military spending is falling starting from the last year and the plan is to cut them further. R&D and purchases have been cut as well. There will be no hordes of Armatas and Su-57 anymore - we're left with a bunch of very expensive half-baked projects.

Is there a language on limiting data exchange in some cases? Hardly will I. These days when no one on the other side of negotiation table takes pain to factor in Russia interests...

Chine does not need Russian technology much. They'll catch up all by themselves sooner rather than than later in those few areas where they're behind Russia. Sanctions hit Russian economy pretty hard. However much state propaganda may put a brave face on a sorry business the reality is the economic impact was very significant. And it'll have a lasting effect for many years to come even if sanctions are lifted miraculously. Nothing has changed on the ground. Russian elite still belong more to Monaco, Switzerland and London. They're fervent patriots in words but not in deeds. The most anecdotal story was with the former head of Russian Railroad monopoly - biggest employer, biggest recipient of state subsidies and one of the... errr... least transparent companies in Russia. So this former head is an ex-KGB, Putin's personal friend of decades etc. When he was finally pushed off his seat for gross incompetence he transferred his personal wealth into a "charity" fund called "The Center for the Protection of Russian Heritage". Suffice to say the fund is Swiss-based and incorporated in the canton of Zug - least taxes, as much confidentiality as possible for bank operations and shareholder privacy. Nope, sanctions did really worked, they severely limited budget allocations to the military. Actually the Russian affair in Syria was initially thought of as an attempt to connect with US not to defy them. The idea was that Russia can be helpful to fundamental US interests in combating Islamic extremism.

Moreover before the current state of Iraq Iran was the only democracy among Gulf States. With considerable caveats yet having competitive elections, real opposition etc. Plus Iran is multi-ethnic state with respect for other religions and nationalities. Compare this to Israel where one does not even have the basic right to marry if one's not Jewish, Muslim or does not belong to a locally recognized branch of Christianity.

Hezbollah came to rule in Lebanon through a solid win in democratic parliamentary elections though it looks like I'm arguing with "Stars and Stripes" editorial

In case you missed the last few years all of the organizations you listed are official governments in their respective regions. You may as well call a bomb wearer a US Air Force pilot executing his combat orders.

Name them. Seems you may fell prey to US propaganda. Most (if not all) bomb wearers of Middle East origin are fighters for the Sunni cause and mortal enemies of Shia Iran. Bomb wearers are financed by the "best friends" of America in this region - Saudi Arabia et al.

There were agreed milestones on LWR activities. Partners to the Agreement Framework started to miss them pretty much right after the start. The issue is not what the oil was meant for but rather that there was an iron cast number of tons of oil that US agreed to supply to NK. And US simply didn't keep its obligation in many cases. Again there was considerable suspicion that NK cheats on uranium enrichment yet the real life is far far from a black-and-white picture of "bad NK" and "good US".

I believe if one looks closely at the history of Middle East then Iran will come out as the most peace loving nation in the region. Never started a war in 20th century, never bombed someone else's nuclear reactor, never funded a bunch of head choppers.

Hat trick! If my memory does not fail me it was US who broke up its side of the bargain well before the nuclear test. US failed to keep the oil shipment to the agreed volume, US didn't lift sanctions as was set in the agreement and KEDO LWR was not built within the agreed deadlines. To be balanced NK was always suspected of cheating on enrichment ban as well but surely US was a far cry from an honest executor of the agreement. PS It's now an eternal problem with trying to make any kind of agreement with the US. Another guy comes into the White House, Congress changes hands and any kind of agreement with the US is not worth the paper it's printed on.