panzersaurkrautwerfer

Weather is going to be pretty socked in. Should be a quiet Christmas.

I'd put him on the splatter list. If someone helps the Taliban kill ISAF personnel, then books it and is calling folks from the hinterlands about how great it is to be free of Kabul's whatever, that's going to have an effect. It's going to make some folks waver a bit if the Taliban narrative of "you'll be totally safe bro!" is undermined by the fact CPL Rumble never calls any more. And it's worth debating. It's a lot like the point in which less than lethal weapons have pervaded the police agencies, it's made it easier to exert force, which in turn has caused a lowering of when using force to achieve ends is acceptable. It used to be striking someone for not obeying a police instruction was possibly risky, and took some doing, but now with pepper spray and tasers? It's much easier to resort to force as a choice. Same deal with drones, when I was in Baghdad we targeted people much the same way the drone program does, only without the drone strikes. We'd simply go out in the dead of night, yank the target out of bed in front of his family and stuff him in the trunk of the HMMWV (sometimes. More often than not we'd just restrain him and stick him in a seat, but the trunk was good in a pinch and is more evocative of what the raid involved). And more often than not it was bad dudes we were putting away. The cell phone stuff especially tended to be very high fidelity, as it simply was not "he has a terrorist number!" but he's called this known terrorist, and this known terrorist, and his number is on this phone we found in a raid last week, and he's on the phone now talking about dropping "babies" that "explode" and "kill American infidels" off at the "pool that is an American base." The really bad intel is all the HUMMIT stuff as they'll tell you all sorts of lies to get paid/get revenge/off rivals etc. But the phone stuff is usually pretty solid and more than just "this number is pure evil" Co-incidentally if any of you plan on doing something terrible, regardless of how much your country pretends to be offended at American spying, do throw away your cell phone (in all serious don't. Make it easier for law enforcement/the military to deal with you). Re: Collateral damage. That's also my beef. We don't ask the question of if this drug dealer is worth the lives of the families around him. If it was Shiek Omar? Splash him. Sadface for the families but he's a high value target. But I fear we've gotten too far down the road where any target becomes a legitimate target regardless of collateral damage. Also: This is sort of where you're missing the forest for the trees. Drug dealers, and drug producers, are a key source of income for the Taliban, and often have their fingers in attacking ISAF (as ISAF is the one that burns down their drug fields, and honestly is the only police agency in the country they cannot buy). It's not really a separate problem from the Taliban any more than Ploesti by virtue of not being literally filled with Nazis wasn't part of the Nazi war machine. Same deal with couriers. Pretty much like knocking over a telephone exchange (although when it comes to snatching people, couriers are often the ones that are least invested in keeping their lips sealed, and most invested in cooperating as much as possible so you can keep them from getting killed when you release them). I think you're missing the point, it's somewhere between the "terror" raids, and the claimed precision. The point of the terror raid was to: 1. Destroy the will of the enemy to fight 2. Destroy wide area targets that contribute to the war effort (worker housing). The Drone program makes very little intent to destroy the will of the enemy for fight. It's closer to the point of what the USAAF attempts at precision bombing were supposed to achieve, knocking over key infrastructure to disrupt, degrade, and inshallah destroy the enemy's war machine. Of course the question is, and remains the same, is the lack of precision and inevitable casualties a worthy trade off for the target in question (granted there's a lot more precision now, but collateral damage is more or less a line crossed, in effect killing one innocent person carries much the same reaction as killing a baker's dozen)? And to that end I feel the answer CAN be yes, but we've become too comfortable with the simple ability to splat insurgents out of existence, whereas the program should instead be focusing on our higher tier targets we cannot safely arrest, or splatting folks who offer no reasonable risk of collateral damage (such as knocking them off when they're traveling in a car, or in an isolated camp). As far as making enemies, they've already been made. Drones or no, OIF/OEF or no. The historical legacy of the west, paired with opportunistic local leadership that blames everything broken on infidels already made that pool. If it wasn't drones, it'd be invading Afghanistan. If it wasn't that, it'd be historical support of non-Islamic governments. If it was not that, it'd be the destruction of the Ottoman empire and it's perfect caliphate (we're not dealing with history majors here If it wasn't that, it'd be western support of the Greek independence movement from the Ottoman empire etc etc. It's the same cultural narrative that leads to the popularity of wahhabist Islam. Again arrogance to think merely a few years of drones somehow makes enemies where there were not before. Re: Past and present I know the feeling. I was talking with one of my dad's friends after I finally came back CONUS from everything, and he'd been a USMC tanker in the late 60's. Odd how little changes. I think our problem as Americans is we view ourselves as a city on the hill, that we're something good and great. And I think we are (with some historical low points and things we ought to own up to). But we expect our enthusiasm for what we offer to be contagious, and much of what we offer is some bright future down the road with much labor involved, vs the gold paved roads and never ending riches the Iraqis and I imagine Vietnamese expected us to deliver upon arrival. Once the gold doesn't show up it becomes easiest to chase the idiot promising them communism/allah/whatever will deliver that amazing future. And of course given the totalitarian nature of those systems, rather unlike the American system, you cannot opt out once it fails to deliver. Anyway man. Awkward as it can be, thanks for your service. Sorry to hear about the rice paddies, they're certainly something I'm glad Iraq skipped out on.

Dunno. Would we have batted an eye at killing some of the various Allied nationals that did work on behalf of the Axis? There's plenty of German-American or Japanese-American folks who either found themselves stuck, or willingly answered the motherland's call, and were cut down without significant hesitation. Where it gets fuzzy is the question of how legitimate some of these targets are at all in the modern spectrum of non-conventional warfare. Most of the very dead American targets unambiguous aided and abetted, or were in the active employ of organizations engaged in military conflict with the US government. It's a far cry from making craters out of folks who simply disagree with US policy in the abstract. The real debate should be a matter of targeting in terms of collateral damage (value of target vs damage inflicted to the populace) or national sovereignty in the cases of nations that at least above table, give no special permission for drones to operate in their air space (of course, finding a government in some of these places would be difficult). But in terms of the intended targets? They're folks who'd declared an intent to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can with fairly little discrimination. That's pretty much hostile intent enough for me to sleep easily when that individual is made into meatpaste (but have some moral reservations when he's meatpasted with the family next door, if the intended target is just some low level dude). The western system works for the west because it evolved and grew as western ideals and the like evolved. It's a system designed for our way of thinking and our way of life. Thusly it's good for Yankee imperialists, sneering British colonialists, and the French (no prefix required, name is sufficient to imply what I was getting at), but a poor fit for sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and somesuch. They need a culturally well adapted system of government, and through colonialism, they lost some of that growth, and our continued attempts to make them more like us, we're doing them a disservice. In terms of the chaos of Iraq, I've said it before but it was coming regardless of who started it. Centuries of Sunni-Shia conflict, and decades of Sunni minority rule were going to boil over someday (see Syria for a reversal of roles in terms of Shia minority rule over a Sunni majority, with a very similar history of oppression and mass killings). If it was not the US invasion, it'd have been the fighting between Saddam's sons in 2024 after the old man kicked the bucket, the Arab Spring, or any number of crises. It's arrogance to assume that the west is powerful enough to change the 3rd World for the good because it's the west, just as much as it is to assign blame for all the problems of the present to western whatever. I simply advocate we keep our meddling limited to our own interests in a low threat sense (if we do not like your way of doing things, we do not have to do business, vs invasions), the military involvement to breaches of the peace/international law (invading neighbors, or for reals actual genocide sort of beaches of the peace) and a broad support of human rights (we don't care HOW you rule, just as long as you don't fill your jails or ditches with your opponents). I'm there too. It just happens the russian government is well supported on the internet/military forums which tends to cast me in a more hostile light. I wouldn't care what it did though so long as it did it within its own borders, and laid off on the nuclear bullying of poor Denmark though. That doesn't mean I wouldn't make fun of Putin on ponies, just I'd recognize it's someone else's country, and if they dig that well, then it's sort of hilarious but whatever man.

As problematic as invading a neighboring country, carving off a piece of land, starting and fueling a rebellion to ensure said land has access to your country, while still doing the assassinations in a more conventional way problematic though? Again, goes back to my earlier statement. It's a game of accusing a man of murder, and then he points out you're a thief. Bad acts by the accuser (or even at that, simply the accuser being of a nationality that's done some bad historical stuff) do not negate bad acts by the accused.

If we're going by the reputation I've acquired, all Russians are worse than Hitler, and even an ounce of Russian blood should condemn you to being eaten by a starved and enraged Micheal Moore. If I'm done being sarcastic: It's really two different flavors of annoyed. Here's the quick rundown: 1. Collectively the west is stupid for believing in "nation building." I hold nations/nation-states are things that must grow organically. When we go in and try to impose what works for the west on a society, it almost always will fail simply because it's a foreign influence. When we go into a country and try to restore order the parties we usually work with are not the proverbial founding fathers we think we're working with, it's the folks who see us as a means to an end. Sometimes that's an okay end, we've really found someone who wants to make crapistan a better place, and we've got the money to do that, but a lot of time it's marginal powers who see us as a way to bypass the major players, or folks just looking to scam as many millions as they can in reconstruction projects. If Iraq 2003 really was a problem, I'd have simply done an Army level raid. We announce we're going in, we're going to break everything worth breaking, destroy sites we view as a threat, blow up the crossed sabers monument in Baghdad to show we can do whatever we want, and we're going to leave and let Saddam deal with the mess. And we're leaving crates of AKs and RPG-7s in select locations as parting gifts. We firmly establish why we're going in, why we'll come back to burn the village down again, and then leave the country alone. This open ended commitment to make a country work better because somehow by being 'merica just does not work. The post World War Two occupations succeeded not because of us, but because we were able to enable the folks who were willing to comply with our standards (no more Hitler, no more big military, no more goosestepping!) with resources, but effectively the Germans and the Japanese rebuilt their countries because they wanted to rebuild them, and recognized they if they did not play nicely they'd get bombed all over again. It's not the most polite way to go about it, but looking at the "progress" the billions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan it bears questioning if we're just better off focusing on stopping folks from doing things they shouldn't do, and letting nations build themselves (and offering voluntary incentives, if you're willing to turn over Saddam's head on a platter, we'll chip in a few billion to refurb that oil refinery you really need working again). My frustration with Iraqis came from the fact they kept indulging in very self destructive choices for short term gain. In the wider view it makes sense as given Iraq from the 1980's on, anything long term rarely panned out, but grabbing the money and running was highly successful in the short term. But in terms of rebuilding, it meant you'd at risk and expense install a generator to provide power for the local community, and then six hours later it's been stripped down to pieces and is being sent up to Turkey to be sold as scrap as the pennies on the hundreds of dollars of investment in the generator is worth more to someone than having reliable electricity. And then the local community basically just sitting and watching it happen because maybe they can steal the wires the guy didn't take and sell those! George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" is strongly illustrative of the feelings of being in Iraq, in terms of having all the power to murder the heck out of everything, but being ultimately unable to change the behavior of the locals, or address the underlying problems in their community. And onto shooting Russians: 2. Prior to the Ukrainian mess, I did not especially have positive impressions of Russia, but I held them on par with the French in many ways. Fiercely proud, very capable of doing things I found silly, and easily offended when I made fun of said silly things. On the other hand while I found things like their treatment of homosexuals offensive, or their belligerent posturing to be bothersome, it was still done well within their own space, and it did not strongly intersect with the rest of the world at large. I even referred to them as "ultra-Ukraine" on a few occasions as a way of explaining how the US viewed Russia on a whole, something marginally related to our foreign policy, with fairly minimal trade or cultural links. Basically something to be occasionally mocked for hating gay people, while at the same time, their president acted in a way that'd be considered flamboyant in some parts of San Francisco, but not much else. The crossing into the Ukraine was a line for me, because its very much your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins. Russia can do whatever it wants to itself, but by god invading the Ukraine because it decides it isn't especially in favor of a government that increasingly is not representative of the national will (which then shoots down a bunch of folks in the street) is well beyond what is within the "right" of Russia to do. Then toss in the unambiguous lies and denials, and the whole polite men pile of feces, and it's enough to turn "lol Russia" to "please go find a spike to sit and spin on" levels of distaste. And it's a shameful pattern of behavior reaching back through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yalta, Poland, Latvia, Finland, etc, etc, etc. If Russia was content to play by civilized rules, and use economic/diplomatic channels to express its distaste, that's fine. That's its right to not do business with folks it disagrees with. That's its right to not engage with a new government. And even if the Ukraine had been oppressing Russians, going before the UN and making the case for it would be a logical next step. But nope! It's time for polite men, invasions, and then trying to provoke a war with the Ukraine. All of which gets to the point where needless to say, I have a very low opinion of the Russian government, its supporters, and its policies. re: Kettler Look, yeah pointing out that some of his stuff is nuts is a bit of stating the barn is red. But what does it accomplish? We all know he's a bit off his rocker, but occasionally he posts something interesting, or at least on topic. You don't have to read or respond to him, I don't read everything he writes obviously, but generally he's politely a bit nuts. If you don't like what he writes, ignore it, if you're like me and at least skim it, respond to the stuff that's more or less on topic if you'd like, but you're no worse the wear for him chugging along and Kettlering it up. Posting that he's a bit nutter doesn't make him less nutter, and we've all agreed tanks in space and the USN-Alien-Vampire war is loony. Do we need to talk about it more than that.? Addendum: I think everyone at age 19 is a little dumb. It's one reason now than I'm older I'm glad the younger population does not vote (or throws the vote effectively away). Looking back on college I can see a lot of head against wall level stupid beliefs in both my peers of the day, and myself from all ends of the political spectrum.

Pretty much. I can accept you wrote an article about tanks on mar/moon/whatever or believe the USN got in a fight with aliens. That's something I think is loco but that's your bag. Most of your posts on here are a bit out there but they're at least somewhat grounded in what's discussed on the board. I can accept the out there though because I'm either not forced to read it, or it might be topical and worth talking about. Either way though reacting to folks bringing in the more Art Bell parts of your beliefs is not going to help anything because it'll just encourage them to do it more. So please do calm down and stick to the more interesting stuff discussed here. It'll be best for all parties. Re: 105 MM Again it was not optimal, but the lack of efficiency at long range is often cited by Soviet Power Supreme fanboys as an example of how NATO would have sat weeping powerless before STRONG MEN OF SOVIET MIGHT RODE ASTRIDE COMRADE TANK while ignoring historically, on the offensive especially given similar sensor capability the defender still tended to inflict heavier losses regardless of armor/weapon imbalance (see the fairly strong performance of Allied armor in the west against German armor when on the defense for a pretty good historical example). Longer engagement ranges would be preferred as that best leverages the sensor gap between west and east, and gives the western unit more time to shift battle positions to receive the next wave. But I still feel it is incorrect to simply state the 105 MM was useless against Russian armor without a very big * and some footnotes to clarify it wasn't good where we wanted it to be good, but would still murder comrade tankist at closer ranges. The 105 was not perfect, or even really good at all post 1972 or so, but it was suboptimal vs totally useless. Re: "Just War" Afghanistan is pretty cut and dry, UN approved high fives all around, following some pretty unambiguous casus belli. Here's where Stagler consumes so many hats from his high horse after my textual resounding body blows of great strength he becomes known as "The defeated pig dog horse rider hat eater" I do not support the fact we went to war in Iraqi in the first place. I did support it when it kicked off because I was an idiot 19 year old and I believed the case that got pitched to the UN. I was already in ROTC when it kicked off, but darn it didn't I believe there was a world that needed bombing sometime. I think many of the posters on here were equally dumb, jingoistic and willing to believe war fixed things when they were that age, or they're dishonest enough about it now to pretend they wouldn't have lept on the warwagon willingly themselves had roles been reversed. As I continued in my college education it became apparent that a lot of the reasons to go to war were wrong (for a variety of reasons outside this discussion). At that point I believed we had a need to do whatever we could do to restore Iraq to some level of normalcy, and counter the people who were sawing heads off because allah told them it was a swell thing to do to murder his creations for an imperfect understanding of him. So I came to believe going to war was wrong, but finishing it was right. Having gone to Iraq twice, and leaving just a few steps above Kurtz in my feelings towards the locals, my opinions are somewhat interestingly colored. At the same time it's noteworthy that the Iraq war 2004-2010 was fought at great expense to give the Iraqis the government they voted for, the infrastructure they needed, and the security they wanted. And on departing in 2010 broadly speaking that had occurred, although the fact the Shia leadership decided Iran knew best in running a country rather dismantled it in short order. Kosovo's objection has more to do with who's friends with who. The behavior of the Serbian military pretty much 1993-1999 is on the road to terrible, and we're ready to remember the agony of sad that the Serbs went through during the bombing, but not the well filled ditches the Serbs left from Croatia, through Bosnia, and beyond. All the Serbs had to do is stop shooting civilians, and there wouldn't have been much of a leg to stand on. As the case is the region is a lot more stable today, and there's a marked downtick in violence. And Kosovo isn't a US territory so there you go. This runs a pretty good contrast where Russia's current military acts have been to carve off choice parts of its neighbors, or trying to kill its way out of an insurgency in Chechnya. Granted Chechnya is nominally Russian and honestly while I can object to the methods, whatever get your hands all bloody life goes on elsewhere but where I object is when we start finding Russian troops where they do not belong, and there's a long history of that in the last hundred years resulting in significant swaths of Eastern Europe getting a one way ticket to rapey-steal anything worth stealing-install the resident pet stalinist as leader town. While there's a history of western military adventurism, in the last few decades its been the White Man's Burden madness, or the silliness with pretending somehow putting Americans/Brits/French people on the ground will return the region to stability (with some imperfect success). Russians show up, it's generally to take anything that isn't nailed down, and failing that, take what the things are nailed to. It's pretty standard Russologic. Your country did a bad thing/something we did not like, which means our thing of equal or often more dubious morality is okay! Rather than addressing the topic at hand it's pretty classic misdirection because bluntly if we're going to talk about Russian/Soviet actions, it's going to be a pretty lopsided fight in favor of anyone who doesn't find red especially fabulous. Effectively he wants the discussion to migrate to a medium in which he can talk a lot about Iraq, or the like, while avoiding talking about the fact the Russians are currently facilitating an entirely illegal war in the hopes of carving off parts of a country they already more or less stole land from, or the fact that when the west shows up, hungry people come looking for food and comfort, but when Russia shows up, they send their daughters, and more attractive livestock as far away as they can.

One of the things that always struck me as odd was the insistence on using 2000 meters as a baseline for tank engagement. The average tank vs tank fight in World War Two over literally the same terrain was something like 800 meters. And the sightlines had not changed, although better optics and sensors allowed for an increased ability to acquire within that window, but speaking outside of the desert, your 2 KM ranges are limited. And at closer ranges a lot of those 105 MM rounds were if not highly lethal, at least stood a decent chance at doing some damage. Also given the reality that mover vs not mover engagements usually favor the not mover in terms of detection, it was likely you could have mitigated some of the armor with simply opening fire at closer ranges, or doing other nastiness to funnel the enemy (as Soviet optical/sensor systems of the day, and Russian systems of today are pretty far behind western systems). 115 mm is terribad though. T-62 remains of all the Soviet era tanks, the consummate lemon by most accounts. They're either not better enough to justify ditching T-55s, or were quickly surpassed anyway.

Again, it depends on the era. The gap between M48/60, Centurion and T-55/62 was either non-existent, or narrow enough that it was mostly a crew delineation between victor and 'esploded. The T-64 was a fair bit better than the M60 (although again the gap narrowed with the A3 and such), and Leo 1 variants, and we can start a long argument with British people how the Chieftain stacked up. There really should have been a better, newer West German/US tank circa 1970 or so, but from 1970-1980 there was a bit of a capabilities gap in varying degrees.

Dunno man. The Israelis also blew through Jordanian M48s and the like with equal ease using Shermans and such. The Israeli-Arab wars were a good conduit for Soviet equipment for technical exploitation, but not always the best source for how the piece of equipment might actually be employed. T-64 would have been problems, T-80 maybe too when it comes tank to tank (of course, they'd only made up a small portion of the Soviet tank fleet anyway). Of course it's game over by the time the Challenger, Leo 2, and M1A1 (even perhaps the M1 and M1IP with some of the very late 105 MM DU rounds) roll out.

I think the problem was more assuming whatever they were building was as good, as advanced, and as well funded as whatever we were doing. So the MI-25 had a lot of things it did quite well, but we assumed it did so with a similar level of technology vs being brute force, low efficiency built to lawndart through the sky as fast as possible and little else. Of course, the real tragedy is we could have skipped the cold war entirely if it wasn't for the USSR's post Yalta behavior. One of the greatest missed opportunities of history is a real peace vs Soviet aggression and repression of Eastern Europe after 1945. The US pre-Korea was on the verge of more or less going back into isolation mode, other western Allies hardly had the resources to do much of anything, we really were on the cusp of being able to sit back and just let the world rebuild. But instead the wearer of the boot resting on Poland's neck changed and little else. Political enemies went into the same concentration camps the Soviets had liberated, and then others too shipped deeper into the hinterlands of Russia for the crime of being something as imaginary as a member of the international Jewery conspiracy. So to that end it's hardly something worth celebrating when you get down to it. Cute. Please point to the countries forced into NATO at gunpoint, or annexed into a western county post 1900 or so? Or the fact that generally historical malfeasance is something the West looks down on (see Germany) while it's something that Russia still holds up as national epic heroism. I mean it's worse than Japan in terms of being unapologetic for historical crimes and ills. And that's saying something/likely indicative of why Russia has no friends that are not totalitarian crapholes.

It works best against unprotected eyeballs. There's already various laser resistant glasses issued or available. They became pretty important given the amount of lasers whipping around Baghdad at a time, while most of those were lower powered they could still cause temporary blindness or at least discomfort. While the Chinese type units are more powerful, they're still defeatable by wearing the proper shades, or some of the clear anti-laser type lenses (they're not really clear, they have an odd almost like beer bottle green made much more transparent hue to them). Dunno. Seems the feces already rolled down the street, and the gutters appear clogged. The Soviet and then Russian military has a distressing tendency to find itself on the wrong side of the border with its neighbors. Either it's a fairly consistent historical malicious intent or a total inability to land-navigate, either of which are highly unacceptable. Then it tends to hold military capability and "strength" up as virtues while still slipping further and further behind the rest of the world at large in things that matter. It'd be nice if Russians stayed on the right side of the internationally recognized borders (and were honest about doing so), or stopped pretending their military was relevant, or appropriately sized and funded vs their GDP and role in the modern world.

So are authoritarian militaristic states that have significant problems with geography. I do not find either of those to be really acceptable. Think the allied hardware parades were more appropriate. More topical, less chest thumping stronktard. Also universal carriers are always a bit comically awesome. There's a local museum around here that's supposed to have a "tankfest" of sorts in a few weeks. I know they've got a M4A1, Hetzer, and T-34/85 as part of their museum holdings, but I believe they're having some privately owned vehicles show up for a driveby and display. Needless to say I'm pumped. The wife, less so.

Re: Topic Try playing "Horst Wessel Lied" while watching the footage, the resemblance is uncanny. I think I'd be less annoyed if this was just every T-34 shaken loose from storage for an actual "commemorate and pretend we learned something from 1939-1945" parade, but it's just another example of small men playing with their toys now. The feeble grasps at legitimacy also ring pretty hollow. I think it's quite on topic to question the parade in general, and also interesting that specially picked units to show off Russian might supreme caught fire. It's just additionally poetic considering the employment of that particular brand of weapons system too. Re: Type 99 By most estimates it's another semi-paper panzer. There's plenty of "estimates" based on Chinese claims, but we know even less about it than the Armata in terms of what's really on/in it. There' some really big claims about it, but many of them are: 1. Patently absurd. Like 1000 RHA equivalent over the entire frontal arc absurd. 2. Really hard to quantify. Like earlier models (Type 98/99 baseline) boasted "2.5 generation thermal optics!" when looking at the performance of same was pretty close to the finest in 1995 equipment. The listing of features included often is not a good guide to how capable those systems are. China does have the advantage of having more money to blow on a new tank design than the Russians, but on the other hand it is more concerned with Naval/Aviation problems these days, with the PLA remaining largely used for internal security and limited expeditionary missions to protect Chinese investments overseas. They're worse off than the Russians when it comes to tank fleet obsolescence, but this has been the case since the T-55 derived platforms stopped being competitive. There's no sign that tank procurement has gotten any more serious. The quite limited given fleet scale adoption of later model Chinese armor, something like 700 total "new" tanks vs 7000+ of the abjectly obsolete ones is somewhat telling.

Still on fire. Still funny.

Perhaps comrade Buk is feeling some regret over some business with the Dutch.

M136 is the successor to the LAW. One shot and she's done, there's no alternate varieties of rockets to load. The more AT4 type rockets you put in a unit, the more launchers you're giving to your dudes vs more ammunition. Re: Carl G It hasn't come to much as far as I can tell. The M136 remains the "bear mace" weapon for dealing with tanks and armor, and its about as good as any other rocket for that purpose. As far as busting bunkers and the like, the pressing need just sort of went away. Between aviation, other ground systems (truck mounted TOWs, Javelins, MK-19s, tanks etc) and the shifting nature of both the war on terror conflicts (away from going block to block, cave to cave) the role is more or less filled "well enough."

For the US Army: Armored Formations: 1 CAV (1st, 2nd, 3rd ABCTs) Based out of Texas, but it has represented a large number of the US rotational deployments to Europe. Note: Uses Cavalry designations vs standard (Regiments, Squadrons, Troops vs Brigades, Battalions, Companies) 3 ID (1st, 3rd ABCT) Based out of Georgia. Troops have made Baltic deployments before 1 ID (1st, 2nd ABCTs) Based out of Kansas. Less likely but historically linked to European deployments. Other ABCTs include 1st Armored (2nd and 4th ABCT), and 4th ID (3rd ABCT). SBCTs: 2 CR: Based out of Germany. Is separate brigade, uses Cav designations 3 CR: Based out of Texas. Also separate brigade using Cav designations.- Other SBCTs are in 2 ID, and 25 ID, however they're located on the US pacific coast or Hawaii/Alaska. Doubtful for a Ukrainian conflict. IBCTs: 173rd IBCT Based out of Italy. Independant Airborne Brigade. You can toss in some of the other IBCTs from 82nd, 101st, and 10th Mountain, but given the armored high intensity conflict nature of CMBS, dismounted infantry formations are not as likely to be as high of a priority for deployment minus the 173rd which is practically next door.

Well yeah, because it's schadenfreude, the best kind of freude*! Tractor comments aside, this is exactly what I believe, all sniping aside: On having many Armatas: Russia is not in the best economic shape, and this economic situation has strongly influenced historical weapons procurement. Additionally the "newer" (i.e., the M1 Abrams vs M60, rather than the M1A1 vs M1A2) the platform, the more dramatic the friction in getting it fully operational. Russia/the USSR's historical performance in fielding new equipment also indicates it is not at all immune to this sort of friction. From this I feel it is likely we will see one or both of the following: 1. New vehicle production will never reach full allocation. Some units will receive some or all of their allocation, but the Armata and friends will remain a sort of land MI-28, behind schedule and vastly outnumbered by the platforms it "replaced" in service. 2. Technical issues will result in vehicles that are different than what has been promised. Afganit attacks gingers and needs to be replaced with Arena-M. The forces exerted by the new weapon on the unmanned turret cause breakdowns and a smaller propellant charge is required. Turret automation is so brilliantly successful that the gunner's position is simply omitted in production model vehicles. In terms of the vehicle: I am so amazingly unsold on the unmanned turret. I can see the "why," I just don't think its worth the trade-offs it offers. In all honestly we have to really: 1. Wait until closer to 2017 to definitively say if it's going to be on-time. The Russians did do a lot of the R&D in the dark, so progress out of sight and mind is possible.. This doesn't mean we have to believe all the super tank supreme rumors that come out, it simply means it's hard to measure progress beyond what is claimed, which is usually bloated propaganda (danke Russia Today) which presents a skewed perspective of the "progress." On the other hand, it looks like there's a few pretty big glitches to work out, and some of the components are unfinished/very immature. And the Russian economic situation is not getting much better. There's about equal reasons to doubt, as to believe. 2. Have Armatas in service somewhere for a while. If the internet is full of Russian professional soldiers screaming about how bad the new platforms are, how they're junk, and have been replaced by BMP-1s assembled from scrap, then we can for sure say they're terribad. If they perform fairly well, then we can say they are something worth paying attention to. The issues during the parade to me, simply are a reality check to anyone who mistakes "going to the parade!" for being close to ready for prime time military service. All new systems have issues, both technical and integration. This is to be expected. Just some of the assertions of how ready it is, and how we're on the verge of armatasm needed to come back to earth. *As voted in 2011's "Best of Big German Words" magazine

ARMATA PLOW MUCH EFFICIENT WITH TURNIP! PRODUCTION UP 400% WITHIN 5 YEAR PLAN!

If I was Russia today, you'd realize this would turn into "French Canadian Nazis admit desire to kill all Anglo-Canadians, desire for alliance with Russians: Intent to murder only stifled by distance and "Polite Men/Airsofters/Canadian Defense League M1A2 SEP v2s manned by Texas-Canadans"

Yeah but weight might not be seen as a true deliminator, looking at some of the bigger German examples of 1945, or just the fact that a lot of AFV titles may have lapsed into archaic enough as to need redefining. Which makes it even weirder. You build AFVs to be operated by someone with something like 8th grade education. If someone can disable it that handily through operator error on flat ground, then it raises some questions about the system.

It took me about five minutes to learn how to drive the Abrams in the mechanical sense. I could drive through a training area that didn't have things I could break, down roads etc. I'm not sure if I'd trusted my skills driving down a single lane road with cars on both sides, but driving a tank is not hard, and you have to proactively find ways to turn off the engine to really kill the tank*. It might be there's ways to really bone the tank and cause it to mobility kill itself, but I'm hard pressed to think of "oh of course he hit the itnerociter and now the flux capacitor is out of alignment!" sort of moments. Driving a tank in a straight line is easy, and from that here's some fairly reasonable scenarios: 1. The Armata has some serious user interface issues that can cause the operator to shut down the tank during strictly basic maneuvering operations. 2. The Armata has a fault that can cause engine shutdown during normal operations. 3. Russian Army drivers are not trained well enough to drive more or less in a straight line without breaking the tank. Either way a 15 minute reset is interesting in that if it is just a matter of a driver error, it means it takes significant time to accomplish a restart, which is no good at all. *About the only "Do not do ever" thing we had to discuss was turning on the engine without the hull power on, as that could end badly.

Nah. I think if it'd going down that route, it's still intended to be used as a tank in tank roles. The thing that sets tank destroyers apart for me (or at least the M10/M18/M36 etc types) is the doctrinal use as a separate dedicated anti-tank system in tank destroyer units. There's been plenty of tanks differently balanced in terms of armor, mobility etc, it just happens the Russians have chosen to possibly underarmor parts of their tanks in exchange for whatever reasons they're doing it for. If Armatas instead show up in "303rd Tank Destroyer Battalion" or something, then I think it'd be worth calling them something separate though. There's not much we can tell from it unless we see more Armatas chug to a stop because the laws of physics break down when trying to contain the massive power russia supreme, but this is a moment of schadenfreude, and after a few pages of hearing how ready the Armata is to rule the world, it's worth bringing up a few times. In terms of the Olympics stuff though, that's a very complicated set of equipment that can only be exercised completely a few times. A tank going down a road at parade speed is something that can be done many times over. If this was under more interesting circumstances, it might be worth questioning if the thing might just be immature (or a set of variables not yet tested, hot day+high altitude+low grade fuel or something, basically outside what basic testing would do), but it broke down going forward on flat terrain. Again, it's too early to tell, but if your first impression of a car is the door falling off when the salesperson opens it for you, it might just be that the door pins were stolen in the night by hobos etc, and the rest of the car is great....but it opens a whole lot of questions if a tank has problems going forward on flat ground.

ALL IS WELL AND THE ARMATA LOOKS GOOD. IT IS PERFECTLY FINE HERE. HERE IS IT WORKING FINE. PLEASE TRUST ME WHEN I SAY THAT WE DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING FOR CERTAIN, BUT IT IS FULLY FUNCTIONAL AND WITHIN STANDARDS OF PRIME FUNCTIONALITY AND SURELY IS GOING TO ENTER SERVICE ON TIME. Or basically....yeah. Makes you wonder. I can't think of many ways to kill a tank like that via operator error that wouldn't be easily done with the tank in motion. Clearly there's something wrong enough to make it go down in the middle of a parade, now if that's a system problem, or a individual vehicle problem, we don't know, but it certainly begs some questions. The turret shell thing is interesting. It really offers about zero protection. And given the stuff attached to it, a lot of capability will be lost if a sabot or even a HEAT round strikes it. Worst case: The turret isn't ready. Really, really isn't ready. It's basically a gun which works, but the rest of it? Whoa boy no. The shell is there to make it more presentable or as a stand-in until something more solid pans out. Actually makes sense in terms of the current layout, it's much easier to get and and access if something in the turret goes massively sideways if you don't have to dismantle the entire turret to get at systems...but again offers no realistic protection (and the "pass through" thing is stupid, only way it doesn't end with sabots going into the gun/autoloader is a direct head on hit, but towards the sides of the turret, please not the front or the optics, which isn't much of a protection plan). Best case: It's pretty much the tank destroyer thing. The heavier APC/IFV type vehicles close with the enemy, but the tanks are to stay back out of easy direct fire of anything with sabots, and rely on the APS to deal with RPGs and ATGMs. It's likely somewhere in the middle. It is however a very good illustration of how certain you can be about anything from the whole program.

One round per gun. So a precision mission with six guns will fire all six guns at the same target. Usually three is enough, although a full six is fun if you just really hate something.