panzersaurkrautwerfer
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Posts posted by panzersaurkrautwerfer
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9 hours ago, Artemis258 said:
No serious state threats to Australia mate, hasn't been for a long time (though we do have a fetish for being invaded - we really want to matter. Makes us feel important on some cultural level). Last time we deployed tanks at all was Vietnam, and these days we certainly don't have enough for it to really matter.
Again take a gander at how Canada went from retiring their tanks to acquiring new ones, or how the USMC operates armor. You don't need a lot, but tanks can be very useful across the spectrum of conflict, rather than simply being ready to fight Chicoms in the Darwin Gap.
That and we all know you're going to invade New Zealand one of these days just out of spite and to lay claim to their one strategic resource, even more sheep.
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20 hours ago, Artemis258 said:
Oh, yeah the Leos were getting older but we could have gone for the Leo 2s imho.... Or a larger group of IFVs of some kind... We have a succession of governments that insist on buying american surplus, even of equipment we don't really need.
Mind you, we're wondering way off the garden path at this point!I think if you guys had been shopping in the 1990's it'd have been a Leo 2 for sure because you couldn't beat the post West German fire sale of AFVs. If you were looking for a Western style MBT after that all settled down though, M1 wasn't the worst deal, newer model Leo 2s are about as expensive if not more so, Leclerc/K2/Type 10 are all out for their own weirdo reasons (expense/expense/political). I think US ties were the kind that cemented the deal, but I don't think the Leo 2s would have exactly been much better performers, and in the event of a Pacific contingency, it does share a common parts pool with the most likely regional ally.
Of course if the Diesel Abrams ever comes out, I imagine Australia will be a launch customer for that all.
As to if Australia needed a tank, I'm biased, but I think if an IFV or something like the MGS had been selected, it'd have been a few years down the road before the same conclusions the Canadians had would kick in as far as tanks being a generally good idea.
7 hours ago, db_zero said:I'm curious as to what the military's take on tanks is these days. A few years ago they were saying they didn't need or want anymore and it seemed that interest in armored warfare was on the wane.
Now with segments in the West itching for a confrontation with Putin and Russia it seems like interest in tanks and armored warfare may be re-ignited?
There was a lack of serious belligerent state actor threats, we were in an era that 1991-2000ish seemed defined by small brushfire wars, best handled by light rapid response forces, then the 2003 interlude followed by COIN fought most ably by light fighters. What made not just tanks, but armored formations in general strong did not manifest itself in this dynamic. Now that we've got a Russia doing silly stuff, it's something not dissimilar to the sort of wake up the Korean War brought about, that the light forces of the savage wars of peace, nor the nuclear curtain dropper adequately answer the mail for defense purposes.
Looking at NATO there appears to be some serious rumblings about more tanks, and looking at the yankee side of the pond, you bet your bottom dollar there's a sea change back to armor/mechanized forces being both relevant and essential.
3 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:Britain is cutting it's armour force to (IIRC) 176 Challenger II total.
There's vague talks of upgrades, but nothing concrete that I've read yet.
Since time immemorial British politicians have looked to the military as a piggy bank for their pet projects, only to stare in horror when they let the malnourished thing finally out if it's cage to be beat upon by Germans, the French, Colonists, etc, etc,etc, and respond with shock how the military could let itself become so poorly prepared before appointing themselves to investigations and committees to decide what part of the military to blame, and how to tell it to do its job.
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9 hours ago, Artemis258 said:
*shrug* Not something I have direct experience with, so I can't comment from experience, simply the experience of those I talked with. The diesel is almost certainly a factor, and makes me wonder why we didn't upgrade our old Leopards... I do know a lot of the equipment we purchase is 'refurbished' and there are often changes that have to be made to fit with Australian requirements, though what exactly that entails I'm not sure.
Thanks for the thoughts PzSkW!It's just thoughts really, I could be totally wrong. Another possibility is if they're refurbed M1A1s (as in US tanks from the late 80's) it could just be bad overhauls in the first place, or profoundly high mileage engines (we did have more problems with our ABV's automotive systems because they were based on some of the oldest surplus Abrams hulls in the fleet, but also they were working against being maintained by engineers and the mechanics that support engineers who were not at all Abrams people).
Who knows.
As to upgrading the Leo 1s, Vanir is pretty spot on, they're older tanks using spare parts that are increasingly uncommon. Also while a Leo 1 upgrade would have to at best, be underwritten by the Australians, at worse, fully funded and developed in house ("worst" speaking strictly in terms of cost, not technical ability), there's going to be surplus US parts, and families of upgrades available likely for decades to come (the same could have been said for the Leo 2 of course).
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So like additional follow up because I'm at Fort Couch right now instead of my phone:
The "Pushing ours a little hard" thing is silly, just looking at how many miles, and under some really insane conditions (hello Shamal!) we put our Abrams through while deployed, and the NTC fleet likely wins some sort of record for least loved, most used Abrams in the world (as they're driven hard by the OPFOR, and then both those OPFOR crews and their mechanics also pull double duty as insurgents/civilians on the battlefield depending on the day meaning a pretty big impact in maintenance hours, and this all happens in the howling open desert or rocky mountain passes*), and then 29 Stumps is pretty brutal on Abrams too.
I'm also just curious about the "10 times as much" simply because looking at how often we rolled our tanks, you'd be hard pressed to do ten times as much without training on weekends or simply driving the Abrams in circles for some hours daily.
Finally, when I took over my company, I found we actually had a much lower operational readiness rate than advertised because the previous commander wasn't as aggressive about OR rates and there was some shifty paperwork in that stack too.
You know what my solution was?
Put even more mileage on the tanks. Armored vehicles are a lot like the human body, in that they are healthier the more often they are exercised (it keeps things from settling, building up, makes faults obvious when they're small things instead of going wrong over two weeks of sitting in the motorpool). Our OR rates as a Battalion actually went up when we where in the field simply because of this exercise effect.
If you were just driving the tanks raw and stupid, without good before, during, and after operations maintenance, then maybe more miles would be a problem, and more mileage does put you closer to periodic services (ours were twice annual, but it was generally a inspection followed with swapping out high wear, shorter life parts like seals and hoses), and if you ignored those, you'd be in a world of suck anyway (as with any piece of equipment), but on a whole, more mileage and dust just doesn't seem to wash because those are both things the US M1A1SA, M1A1FC, and the various marks of M1A2 all have extensive exposure to.
*Least loved, most used by people who aren't idiots and getting their tanks killed in Yemen that is -
3 hours ago, Artemis258 said:
Army Head of Modernisation and Strategic Planning Major General Gus McLachlan recently hosted personnel from the US Army’s Tank and Automotive Command (TACOM) in Michigan to investigate what he describes as ‘very significant and reliability issues’ with the Abrams fleet in Australia.
“At the end of it the Americans back-briefed me, saying we are using our tanks at 10 times the rate of a similar American unit and also, we use them on terrain that our soldiers would never contemplate crossing,” he told delegates at the SimTecT 2016 conference in Melbourne recently. A further difference between the two Abrams operators is that the Australian Army runs the AGT1500 engine on diesel, where US forces use Aviation Turbine (AVTUR) fuel.
source -http://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/tae-cuts-abrams-engine-overhaul-times
*shrug* we like to push ours a little hard p'raps?
Hahaha.
No. Having seen the optempo from Iraq and the literally howling sandstorm the Abrams handled there, I'm going to vote putting the literally dirtiest, least efficient fuel short of converting the tank to wood burning as a likely cause.
It's a jet engine in a tank. It'll burn most anything but the cleaner the burn the less you'll have to fix the engine.
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8 hours ago, Artemis258 said:
...And a hell of a lot of work getting them to function reliably in our conditions, btw. From a few chats I had at the air show a few weeks back, it seems Aussie dust is very different to the dust you folks considered it for...
Ours probably come with eskis too (cannot confirm however), and if so the beer inside is remarkably superior to anything you lot stash in them... @Ithikial_AUI'm not discounting what you're saying, but I'm looking at the places the Abrams is stationed (29 Palms, NTC, Forts Hood, Bliss, YTC, the USMC tanks that are in Australia), deployed (hello middle east, Afghanistan), and I haven't seen anything that indicated a higher rate of failure relative to other equipment. It's possible Australian dust is a unique breed that conquers all filters unless said filters are guarded by Marines, but I have to wonder if there's not other factors at work.
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Re: gas turbines
They perform worse at altitudes, but as already pointed out, so do all air breathing engines. Gas turbines get attention because gas turbines are sometimes attached to machines that fly. Tanks will not attain the kind of altitudes to cause major performance drop offs, and I don't know of any low power gripes from tankers at high altitude stations like Ft Carson.
Re Saudi M1A2s
They're much closer to M1A1s than the current US batch. While they do have the CITV they lack the last almost 20 years of armor upgrades (basically everything from the M1A1HA forward), and lack a lot of refinements that came with the SEP or various minor fleetwide upgrades made to US tanks.
The best export Abrams would be the Australian models in my assessments. No CITV but newer vehicles with some post Iraq refinements.
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Back when I was in Armor Officer Basic Course, we had a few exchange officers from other countries. Some where mostly forgettable outside of wearing a different uniform, others more memorable. The Saudis however were absolute pure and unmitigated garbage. They wouldn't show up up half the time, etc, etc.
We were doing a formation run one morning, and one of the Saudis must have accidentally shown up. One of the Saudis winds up behind me. We kick off and after a few minutes I hear what sounds like someone dying behind me, and I come to the conclusion that this one Saudi has decided to stick it out. This wasn't much of a run (like 3.5 miles or so), but the fact he's still there just fills my heart with pride, that this Saudi at least, is doing the right thing. The breathing gets heavier and heavier, and then we pull to a halt for cool down stretches.
I turn around to congratulate the Saudi for sticking it out, but before me is a absolutely beat the heck looking, rather rotund looking American. He asked me if we were with 3/16 CAV (or something like that, one of the units that supported training at Ft Knox), I told him no, he swore and waddled off at high velocity in the direction of 16 CAV's offices. I asked the other guy in the back of the formation when the Saudi dude bailed, and he said he didn't even start running, he just stood in place while the rest of us took off, before lighting up cig in the no smoking area.I could write more, but in so many words, the Saudis believe because they have M1 tanks they are capable vs actually spending time training their crews to be capable.
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You know what a better choice is?
Regionally appropriate pickup trucks.
Think about it. Howling fast mini tanks ripping up the desert sound cool, but what happens when the track breaks? Pretty much everyone will know for sure "Americans" if you've got one of those suckers zipping around.
Yet another beat up truck though? Fix it with spares from the nearest mechanic , it blends in with the locals and you can just abandon it when you're done.
The ripsaw is the worst kind of weapon, you don't build missions for weapons, you build weapons for missions, and the ripsaw has no mission.
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But what does it actually do tactically, and is this something an ATV/off the shelf solution does well enough for cheaper?
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3 hours ago, Codename Duchess said:
The
fanny wigglinghull rotation in front of the kids just felt inappropriate. That was still a pretty cool demo. I made the same argument when an LCS project head talked to my Midshipman unit about how fast it could go: "Can it outrun a Chinese ASCM?"
I didn't realize how quiet the tank is though. I mean I'd heard stories but it seemed like past like 200 meters it was damn hard to hear, even at full grunt.I had a Platoon leader who argued dashing through open space very fast was as good as a more deliberate approach around the side. I explained to him it took like 2-3 seconds for the round to get to max effective range using impolite language.
M1s are stupid levels of quiet. When they're getting set up on the range it's just all quiet "whirrrrrrs" somewhere out there before the thundering starts from the main guns. Bradleys, and M88s you can hear from space though. -
1. This is cool. As zoom.
2. Any tank going that fast is going to have a severe risk of rolling over if it tries to turn at that speed.
3. Do you think that's fast enough to outrun a sabot or anything more recent than an AT-3?
Going flat out only really matters if you're doing one of those stupid jumping tank demonstrations. -
Tank top speed not relevant in any meaningful way. "Combat speed" is somewhere between 15-20 MPH, you might kick up a bit higher for some uses, but basically unless your tank can outrun a sabot, it just doesn't matter. You don't road march fast because it's too hard on the tank/cohesion. You don't attack at top speed because you're basically running into someone's kill zone as fast as you can at that point.
I went flat out in the Abrams once, and it's because we had an open field in a training area, and I was bored. It was cool, but it'd have gotten me killed eight ways to sunday if someone had LOS on me.
I don't have the time or inclination for a longer refutation because I'm on my way to learn to scramble people's brains for a living, but you're using the wrong metrics for mobility. -
4 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:
Not sure, Russian procurement at this stage is very weird in what they are deciding. Upgrading BMPs to BMP-2Ms in some numbers, buying BMP-3 version when BMP-3M is out. But I'm pretty sure T-14s will be brought into production as declared, just I highly doubt it's going to reach the number goals anymore.
Well propaganda of tanks are done by all sides. I'd hype my tank up too if I made the M1A3 abrams. But in this context the T-14 is not only just a propaganda tool, the Russian military does actually want to field these tanks and replace alot of tanks with them.
These are all force multipliers to conventional warfare that happens. Of course Russia will use "hybrid" tactics as well as conventional tactics. War against NATO wouldn't be numerically fair at all for Russia at this current stage.
T-14 is a serious modernization effort, set backs doesn't make it unrealistic. Of course no one denies Russia still has to replace the aged up T-72B fleet it has. But keep in mind even with mediocre tanks like T-72Bs, locally Russia would for some time have superiority on the ground in terms of numbers. Since it is connected to Europe. Meanwhile the US needs to ship in all the armored vehicles and its logistics which I'm not sure how long would take, but would offer Russia advantages until the Abrams hordes arrive. If we're speaking of a Russian invasion of Baltics or Ukraine of course.
I agree with most of your points. Just I think you're belittling the T-14 program more than it should be. It's definitely not only going to be used as a propaganda tool. They're very serious about implementing the tanks into service in large scale. Sanctions took their toll of course.
I don't discount a future tank, or even a future model of the T-14, however I think given some of the friction that it has encountered (obsolete industrial practices, loss of many of the sources for high-tech components, teething issues etc), it opens the question if the T-14 as currently presented wouldn't have lost much of it's technological relevance by the time the problems holding it up are resolved, or worse, the strategic factors influencing its design will have changed.
So unless the issues are resolved quickly, there's reason to believe the ultimate version of whatever the future tank of the Russian Federation is, it won't be the T-14 as presented. Especially if the Armata program as a whole fails to meet production timelines, it reopens the possibility that the shared family of platforms might become defunct.
Basically the program appears far enough horizon that in terms of near-future analysis the Russian tank force will likely continue to be T-72Bs of varying makes, and the family of T-90A+ whatever T-90 upgrade actually makes it into the field.
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16 minutes ago, Codename Duchess said:
I like the logic of the only way US vehicles can get ERA is if we have enough tiles to equip every single vehicle in our inventory (literally thousands) but the Russians can totally justify bringing all <20 Armatas.
Simply because I hadn't got to it yet, there's been enough to equip several Brigades over with it, both BUSK and TUSK kits. Less sure about SRAT but it's a pretty small reach.
2 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:T-14s will be fielded but it wont replace the fleet for a while. I don't think the T-90 upgrades will happen, as the T-14 is way better. I think the T-90As are enough for current NATO tanks speaking comparison wise for the most part, but we lack the numbers the US tank fleet has (as in we lack advanced tanks) you guys have like 1.5-2K M1A2s upgraded to latest standards, not counting the M1A1s. Meanwhile our fleet is relatively older, and less advanced (speaking about the many T-72Bs we have... which lack any thermal and the cannon is mediocre) But considering Russia's wars for the most part will be regional, the current fleet is ehhh enough.
I mean seriously, Russia needs to upgrade the tank fleet. The T-72B3 upgrades are good and all but the commander still lacks a thermal imager, which is dumb as hell... Just the B3M upgrade would bring the Russian fleet's quality up. But nah they like the B3s more I;m assuming. LOL
My read is as follows:
Unless the T-90/T-72 upgrades dry up it stands to reason the Russian Army intends to keep those platforms as capable as possible for a time to come. This indicates that T-14 procurement is not going to be sufficient likely for some years to come.
My read is the T-14 as a program has managed to get away from reality. When oil was good, and sanctions were not a thing it was likely a more reasonable goal. However it faces more hurdles than are reasonable in the short term, thus the sudden interest in T-90Ms and other similar upgrades.
In this context, the T-14 might appear behind schedule, however I would not be surprised if it instead serves as a family of test vehicles for the actual future tanks to be launched once Russia's industrial capabilities are up to the task of producing such a vehicle
In the narrower context of right now, they serve the twofold mission. To the domestic audience they are a counter to the narrative that Russia is second best (or worse) in the tank business, and fits the wider narrative of Russia ascendant. To the foreign audience it is part of the mission to make Russian conventional forces appear unstoppable/able to meet and defeat NATO in open combat. The T-14's part in this is a key weak spot for that perception of capability has been the perception Russian tanks are inferior to NATO's (thanks in no small part to 1991).
Basically looking at where Russia is putting it's money/time has been in unconventional assets, information warfare, and things short of conventional conflict (cyber/electronic warfare or insurgency support). While it very visibly displays conventional weapons, they're ones that mean very little to Russia's strategic posture, or are often beyond the ability of Russia to procure in numbers relevant to change the current calculus.
Observing Russia's tactics in regards to the Ukraine and Baltics, the Russian strategy would actually appear to be:
1. Disrupt NATO as much as possible. Ultra nationalist, isolationist parties need as much power as possible, but ideally NATO would be put in a place that it'd be unable to effectively respond to rapid Russian military actions against former Soviet NATO members.
2. Enable Russian nationalists in border areas with the Russian federation with weapons, training, or direct support to build enclaves to support future operations.
3. Display military might and nuclear deterrence to give the impression of being militarily able to win any war it starts.
Ideally Russia would surge from already established enclaves in border countries, basically leap frogging from rehearsed "snap" drill positions, and rolling in before the attacked nations can mobilize. Ideally NATO's various governments would include as many Trumps as possible to prevent a concerted response, and hopefully the Armata-super carrier PAK-FA imagery of conventional Russian military arms would be enough to discourage anyone from doing independent action to retake the Baltics or similar targets.
Where this hasn't worked out is while Trump was elected vs Hillary, he hasn't lived up to expectations in regards to lifting sanctions, and oil has rebounded, but stabilized at still fairly low. Western Europe hasn't especially splintered and while there's still some nationalist-nativist issues floating around, Trump appears to have had more to do with rejection of a certain candidate than any change in American antipathy for Russia (as we can see by the way the "Russia" scandal has basically knocked the Trump presidency off axis). Same deal with anti-NATO elements in Western Europe, they haven't gained the sort of traction expected.
Regardless until there's more serious, more realistic modernization efforts in Russia's conventional forces, it stands to reason that their decisive element/main focus has little to do with waves of Armatas, and more to do with greenmen . -
I was once an Abrams tank company commander and pretty active in the armor community on a whole.
I'm not bored enough to go into the details of upgrades, but the 2025 and similar estimates for future US tanks are not based on our limitations, as much as when we expect an update to stay ahead of threat capability to be required, thus allowing us to do one mass upgrade to cutting edge standard vs constant small upgrades to meet largely fictional Russian procurement of AFVs.
The T-14, T-90M etc have more to do with information warfare than technical capability. I place very little faith in the ability to field something soon.
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4 minutes ago, Sorrow_Knight said:
Does US have that much ERA\LWR etc. to convince current rerity point in CMBS for M1\Bradley\Striker???
ERA has been around since 2008. LWR there's some legacy stuff in storage but there's bolt on units available from several sources.
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32 minutes ago, cool breeze said:
I'd love to see the 20 or whatever tester Armata end up in CMBS. Its a game, easy to justify it, and it doesn't seem far fetched to me.
They're not 20 early production tanks, they're preproduction vehicles. They include hand made components, the ammunition family for the main gun is much the same. There's zero trained crew or maintainers.
If it was another T-90 model it's a jump, but they're not service vehicles capable of combat deployment.
T-14 remains somewhat doubtful for serial production. I know of no mainline assessments I can talk about that indicate it's something ready for showtime soon.
T-90AM issued to troops is also a pipe dream, but it's a lesser pipe dream.
The M1A2 as represented in game is an odd hybrid of stuff being fielded in bulk now, stuff that was reasonable to imagine would be ready in 2017 back in 2014 that is still in the cards, or things that are a few million dollars and shipping time away from being on a tank.
I would 100% buy a DLC that brought the equipment and TOEs up to ground truth. Futuristic beyond 2014s vision of 2017 though I would likely skip. I hate the future war porn that passes for serious assessments of capabilities, regardless of nationality.
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As a person who worked as a tanker for some time, and now dangerously floats around the Intel world, I can tell you the T-14 in service in the near future is discussed in the same sort of verbiage reserved for a rapid return of Crimea to the Ukraine.
Russia is spending a lot of time and money on the T-90 and T-72 which is suspicious given that we are supposed to be up to 2300+ Armatas by 2020.
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1 hour ago, IMHO said:
@panzersaurkrautwerfer, ERA was basically unpenetrable by older APs used by potential Indian adversaries.
They'd have gotten similar results from several other tanks (even arguably simply better ERA for their existing T-72). The decisive element was that the Indians had a lot of experience and parts from the T-72, so making the transition to the T-90 was viewed as economically sound.
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18 hours ago, IMHO said:
@cool breeze, quick change barrel? Belt feeding?
Right now every fourth guy in a Marine rifle squad as a M249 LMG. The debate isn't so much "is the M27 a better machine gun than the M249?" because clearly, the M27 as not a machine gun is worse. The debate is if there isn't a better fit for a four man element than a fairly large, heavy, and difficult to use on the move weapons system.
My dismount-y time was with the Cavalry, and we did not have M249s by MTOE but we managed to get some anyway (we got them through flagrant sneakiness that while not illegal certainly was not how the supply system was intended to be used). Being able to choose to not take them with was actually really useful, because if we were doing a raid mission that was basically "leave HMMWV kick down door" it wasn't very useful at all, while if we were doing more conventional dismounted operations, they were a good base of fire.
This isn't as far as I can tell the USMC ditching machine guns, it's just setting the default weapon for the automatic rifleman in a fireteam to something better suited to how they envision "light" dismounted fighting, with the ability to bring LMGs if it seems like a reasonable choice. -
1 hour ago, IMHO said:
I'm trying to guide you to penetration test results of that tender
Everything I've read basically says "past T-72 customer and good price"
Do you have a point? I feel I've wasted enough time on google chasing phantom orders. -
6 hours ago, IMHO said:
@panzersaurkrautwerfer, could you please elaborate on how T-90 had ever had a chance of winning the Indian tender of old times?
There were many cmpetitors and Indian MoD was pretty open. There's enough open-source information. Like if you believe crew experience means a lot in battlefield performance then how an insurance adjuster, beverage truck driver and a college student - all once-a-month or a once-a-quarter reservists - win against so many full-time Army tankers with everyday weapons practice Because the T-90 occupied that critical ground of "working" (unlike the Arjun!), and as historical T-72 users, they had a stockpile of parts available and the commonality of systems made it easier to train crewmen for both platforms.
The T-90SM may totally be the next tank of the Indian Army, but the Jane's article from which all other claims of T-90SM spring from is clear that it's something happening over the next few years, not something available and in production time now.
7 hours ago, IMHO said:Can you compare it to UK/France numbers in today's capable tanks?
As to this, the UK/France operate within a NATO context. The British Army will never roll in alone and unafraid into a war with Russia, they'll be right there with all the Abrams, likely the Leclerc, a ton of Leo 2s from various operators and the Leclerc I suppose.
Russia will virtually certainly enter that war by itself, and it's producing tanks that still are well behind the west in the regards to the T-72B3, and will likely be on the offensive in most scenarios.
Real life doesn't work by RTS rules. -
6 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:
This is the Jane's article referenced, or a least the teaser they give out for free
Janes is a credible source in my book but if you want to remain skeptical that's your prerogative.
Agreed, but that has nothing to do with the price of tea in China. No one is asking for the near-future Abrams to be removed. I'm not sure how the T-90AM even got into the discussion except to satisfy the rule that all discussions on the Black Sea forum must turn into a political tug-of-war between the pro-NATO tribe and the pro-Russia tribe
Until we have eaten all the young of the Pro-Russian tribe's brains we at the NATO tribe will continue to wage warfare.
It entered the conversation because I brought up that all parties in the game benefited from high tech stuff that is some combination of hasnot happened, or in some cases, will never happen. The M1A2's issue in game is there was no "real life" model of it included so you're stuck with scifi or scifi, but the scifi is somewhat modest. The Russians and Ukrainians both got combat vehicles that do not exist in varying degrees (or Oplots are built at a aircraft carrier volume, T-90AMs/BMP-2Ms are not platforms that ever really were likely to enter Russian Army service), but are aided by the fact their lower tier real life stuff is still present in game to keep it "real."
Re: T-90SMAgain it's a Jane's article built on what an unnamed Indian defense official told them. Organizations don't always release factual information, and the lack of reporting on it outside of Janes (or rather, lack of articles that are not based on the Jane's article) is something that makes it a point of data vs a verified narrative.
This is not to exclude that possibility that it might yet happen, but instead to posit that this might be first indicators something will happen in the years to come, but it's doubtful that we will see Indian T-90SMs "soon."
T-90M
The Russian narrative of what they're making and when needs to be mistrustedbecause they have no souls and are not real people.because it is several mutually exclusive courses of action. The logic of the T-14 was to have one grand unified modernized AFV fleet that would cut down on cost by standardization. The presence of other tank programs seems to undercut this. The T-90M is a upgrade for a tank the Russians are trying to replace, and it's an extensive one if it's got the new gun/autoloader. The T-72B3 is a really marginal upgrade for a tank that should be being retired in many ways. There's also several different protection suites for existing Russian tanks floating around, with no real standardization as which is the system of record.
I would contend Russian tank design is intentionally somewhat difficult to verify, and serves a secondary purpose as a military deception program under the Russian concept of information warfare, basically presenting enough low detail programs all of which will "Make HATO fear!" for internal and external audiences as a way of appearing conventionally capable (again, the Russians very prominently display many of their low number, high capability programs, while glossing over they represent only a very small number of existing platforms in their overall fleet) while pursuing an actual defense policy of proxy wars augmented by information-cyber warfare, and protected by nuclear deterrence. Presenting several programs makes it more difficult to ascertain actual intentions while giving people visions of legions of T-90M/T-14s/T-22 Badgerfisters rolling around with their super-guns and AI controlled drivers.
I mean you're free to believe what you want here, as are we all, I'm just not going to put much faith in T-90Ms until there are 50 or so of them and more on the way.
There were many cmpetitors and Indian MoD was pretty open. There's enough open-source information. Like if you believe crew experience means a lot in battlefield performance then how an insurance adjuster, beverage truck driver and a college student - all once-a-month or a once-a-quarter reservists - win against so many full-time Army tankers with everyday weapons practice 
Russian army under equipped?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Ahahaha.
I have watched where 17 million can go in human assistance programs, or payouts for tips, and I will tell you dropping a MOAB on Kabul would do more for the humanitarian crises of that country than 17 million in aid.
Some hyperbole for humor sake, but there's a time for kinetic tools. The kind of target would be stupidly dangerous to do on foot, with a lot of ways for the ISIS dudes to rabbit once they'd done some damage, conventional bombing likely couldn't have gotten everyone at once.
I'm not saying we MOAB every cave complex, but assuming we just blasted a cell or two, it was a likely a net savings overall.