HerrTom

Why not? It's a great place to work in engineering! I'm still happy where I am though My contention to the first part of this is that no one has really perfected regime change. Unless it comes from absolutely overwhelming internal support both from above and below, it seems almost destined to be messy, bloody, and/or ineffective. This confuses me a bit, since you agreed on my argument before, yet my argument was about how none of that mattered anyway! Though... Phrasing like this puts people on the defensive, makes them dig their heels in, and usually doesn't help the discussion. I don't mean to single you out Steve, since you're the best contributor to this thread alongside Vlad and armoured cabbage thrower. It's endemic to this thread in everyone. I'm sure I'm guilty of it sometimes. I understand it's frustrating talking about the same stuff over and over again usw. but isn't it better to attack the point and not the person?

Thank you Steve for your clarification and patience. I think I was mostly confused on what you were saying. Strange and mysterious indeed, but don't get too trusting! Some of the reporting may come from the sentiment of "Russians can't be all that bad" and overall anti-conflict in their sector. Plus, the article was from more than five years ago, when many were still thinking that the Russians had turned over a new leaf. I guess there's the rift between what's morally justifiable and practically justifiable, and whether there is a significant difference between the two. Call me cynical, but I hold the opinion that all people are selfish to the very core. Even altruism is selfish, since one wouldn't do anything if there wasn't any kind of reward, whether it be the feel good or what have you. And it is because of this that this argument exists in the first place. The West is in a wonderful position in that in most cases, furthering the "Western Agenda" tends to take the guise of "Good Things" for the world, which also happen to be "Good Things" for the US, for the UK, for Germany, etc. Russia, on the other hand, is pushing its own agenda, which should ostensibly be good for Russians (a whole new debate), but in pushing the things good for Russia, as she sees it, ends up on the "Bad Things" results. In a nutshell, these rote excuses and justifications are only there since they're expected, to maintain the illusion that "just" and "right" is being done in the face of practicality. I know people sometimes say Realpolitik is dead, but I see it just better hidden.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that the whole point of Soviet war doctrine? That nuclear and conventional weapons were one and the same? While NATO was busy contemplating the fantasy of "limited nuclear war" the theorists on the other side of the Mauer just considered nuclear weapons just another tool. It doesn't seem so "out there" that relics of this doctrine still exist.

Haha, it's an old Ossi joke. I often trade jokes with my Russian girlfriend, and it's remarkable how similar they are. Maybe the unifying force of socialism comes in self-deprecating jokes?

Are you seriously trying to tell me that Der Spiegel is just equivalent Russia Today or a failing communist newspaper? Have you even read my post or the article I linked? They're talking about somewhat different events and situations surrounding the same Unification. Sometimes I feel people on this forum read what they want to see. The core of the USSR and the WarPac was certainly Russia, however. Governed from its high castle of Moscow. I think you can see two forces at work here, stemming from very polar European opinions of communism and the leftovers of the World Revolution. The Soviet government (rightfully) didn't trust local governments to behave the way they wanted under the Soviet banner, and so dominated them from the top, essentially treating the satellite states more as states in the USSR compared to independent fraternal socialist comrades. (There's a joke: "Fritzchen, why do you refer to our Soviet Friends as our Soviet Brothers? | Well, you can choose your friends..." that pretty accurately describes the situation.) And this doesn't and didn't work due to the plurality of national identities under the Iron Curtain. Add to that unrest and the traditional Soviet approach of using hammers on everything, and you get those situations.

Ah, thank you for the clarification. I was not aware of Brookings before. Perhaps I should stop speaking since my knowledge of history gets fuzzier past the building of the Mauer. I don't think the contention was that there was any official treaty or statement coming from Mr. Baker, but a promise from Genscher which Baker supposedly agreed with. I guess he was acting outside of the purview of NATO, and there was certainly never anything legally binding. I guess the situation may be akin to your neighbour telling you he has no intention of planting ugly bushes on your property line, but doing it anyway, or perhaps "Niemand hat der Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten." Promises are never binding, and I guess that's why treaties are important in international politics! All I was trying to say at the beginning is that the Russians may be placing too much emphasis on a single sentence in a speech made by the BRD's Vice Chancellor, hence their behaviour in the international field being that of a cornered cat. Though part of your argument I think hits the nail on the head, despite our disagreement on the fine details. The strongest argument I think you can make against any and all treaties and promises was that they were made to a now-defunct country. Try as I might on a map there is no USSR to be found! And you're right, Gorbachev has no reason to lie, already being one of the most hated people in Russian history! I doubt aping Putin would change that. As an aside, while I enjoy dry sarcasm on subsequent reads, the first pass always comes off as dismissive and aggressive. Perhaps that could be attributing to flared tempers sometimes?

If you looked at the article I posted, it points to slightly different circumstances as well as, I believe. Perhaps Germans aren't to be trusted! I didn't mean to be so vague as to let you make that huge assumption. I did very much mean the Russian sponsored uprising in the Donbass. I had no intention of implying that. What did I said anything about the evil west? I like the reference! So you're saying that absolutely everything about the situation is entirely manufactured by the Kremlin? I mean, I've heard they're good at that sort of thing, but I think to that level is giving them a bit too much credit. All I was saying is that that area of Ukraine was on its way to being powder keg already. There was a lot of friction in that region before Russia agitated it. I'm not saying the war is a good thing. On the contrary, it's very very bad. Even I prefer the weapons systems I work on to be bought and not used. I have indeed read it, but I don't think even your story involves a several year long "civil war" causing tens of thousands of casualties and undue suffering on both sides, especially in the Donbass. Steve, I don't know why you have me pegged as an apologist or whatever you think of me. Perhaps spending too much time around Russian immigrants has corrupted me into seeing everything wrong! At any rate, thank you Steve and PzSaKrWfr for correcting me, even though I did post a link to NATO's statement on it which says exactly what you said. I am wondering why this Brookings blog is more authoritative than Spiegel or NATO, though.

I think there's also some historical mistrust and confusion arising from an agreement that may or may not have happened after the dissolution of the USSR. Supposedly, NATO promised that further expansion Eastwards was not on the table, in order to placate Russian concerns at the time. NATO of course officially denies that this happened. Who really knows? We all agree that Russia is acting in her own self interest, but in the view of the Kremlin, the situation is just the latest in the string of alignments and stepping stones to surrounding Russia with an alliance specifically orientated against it. In the world of Realpolitik, Russia's actions make total sense. Now, I'm not condoning anything, but it's not like this was wholly unexpected. Perhaps in all this whataboutism, a closer parallel to what happened in Ukraine is the Suez Crisis, except that Russia actually succeeded in its immediate goals and nuclear war wasn't threatened. In the grand scheme of things, I think that pointing a finger at the Kremlin and saying that they're solely responsible for all the hardship is extreme. Everyone has their fingers in the pie. In broad strokes, it's hard to pretend that the EU doesn't see Ukraine as a big new market only to sell to as they struggle to retool their factories and farms to EU standards. The Ukrainian ATO was heavyhanded at best to start, and the oligarchs forming the new government are hardly better than the old ones. Add in a foreign sponsored uprising, and you've got quite the muddy cocktail. In the end, Russia may have lit the match, but everyone else had already dumped the benzin everywhere. And it certainly is clear that no one, least of all the Kremlin, expected the fire to be as big as it is.

There has been a lot of talk about Crimea's referendum, and it's worth pointing out that it has been supported by independent polling. From the Pew Research Centre: Which is somewhat at odds with the slightly different question about allowing regions to secede: This is all from Despite Concerns about Governance, Ukrainians Want to Remain One Country Sorry if I'm too off topic, I haven't had too much time to read the discussion in detail today.

Steve, you earlier talked about possible Russian solutions to their lot in the Donbass, What do you think about the economic route? Russia is surely capable of outspending Ukraine on the ATO, especially with the chaos on the Ukrainian economy by one of their major industrial centers suddenly being in a warzone. Furthermore, maintaining the ATO surely is expensive. Is it possible in your mind that Russia can maintain their position to the point where Ukraine simply cannot afford to keep going?

I am loath to get involved in this, but I agree with hattori here that Vladimir doesn't deserve such a hateful response. I don't always agree with what he says, but he always has interesting things to say, especially when debating with the prescient Steve! He's completely right that the truth perhaps lies somewhere in the middle. But that's also off topic... @John, that is interesting news indeed. Regardless of what the Russian media is saying, an attack on Crimea is Ukrainian suicide both politically and militarily. We know from Manstein's recount that the terrain in Crimea is absolute hell to attack, and it's just a further escalation of the conflict that no one wants. Steve may be right that the Russian army may have trouble in full-scale offensive operations in Ukraine, but there is no doubt in my mind that the Russian forces in place can defend what they have. My bet is on one of two things: an exercise, or the much less likely preparation to put pressure on the DNR/LNR.

There's always JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler (JSGME) Here is a thread from the DCS forums that explains how to use it (in the context of DCS, but it's fairly straightforward to work with CM) http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=98607

No, panzersauerkrautwerfer, you're completely right. I'm honestly not that experienced with explicit dynamics simulations like above, my area of expertise is only rocket science! My work involves fluid dynamics, combustion and heat transfer, a far cry from this. There are a number of things here that are probably affecting the result: 1) I don't really know what steel the tip is made of, so I took an assumption it was a form of tool steel. This may not be right. 2) The exact geometry is only an approximation from the picture. The tip roundness may be wrong, as well as the ogive shape of the tip, which I imagine also greatly affect the results. 3) From the above, the deflection of that steel tip causes the uranium rod to fail as it passes through the first layer, causing it to essentially shatter on the next layer. 4) The size of the finite element mesh also is a big factor here. It's relatively big and coarse for those animations since I'm impatient and don't want my computer's resources hogged for 300+ hours! If I get a more realistic looking result though, I'll post it.

So I ran it with friction, and the result is pretty much the same. It did a slightly better job penetrating, but the steel tip still just doesn't dig in. Though, admittedly, the rod is pretty oblique, and at these ranges would likely be coming in at a larger angle than straight on, as I have it. This is all for me, for now, since these take quite a while to do, and I have other (probably better) things to do with my time. I hope at least some of the information was useful! John Kettler, nice find on the papers there. They're quite the interesting read.

Ah, I thought it didn't look quite right. Probably because I set all body interactions to frictionless, which in retrospect is probably not the case in this high angle situation. I'll run it again with that change and then stop spamming this thread with my dumb animations. Anyway, the takeaway I'm getting from what I've seen is that these penetrators get really messed up when they go through things. I don't think it's very likely you'll be KO'ing multiple T-90s with a single round. Thin APC armour on the other hand is a different story. The rods (and even the steel tip, to an extent) cut through thin armour like that as if it were paper, which I hope is no surprise to anyone!

Unfortunately, I don't know how to model explosives very well in the software yet. I agree, it would be pretty interesting. I redid it with 68 degree slopes, and increased the range to around 2 km (using -10% energy per km). The shot failed to penetrate, though. I may have an incorrect steel as the M829's tip, which I'm using S-7 tool steel. I also got rid of the antiradiation liner, since I honestly don't really know what it's made of. Not that it mattered here. I also realise that the colouring in the last video may be a little confusing, so I changed it to just the body colours. An interesting thing you don't really think about is that at these energies, metals start to behave like viscous liquids. It's very cool.

Sorry about the big image. I can't seem to make it smaller. Thank you for the fantastic information, BTR! Being an engineer, I naturally wanted to see what was going on, so I took an M829A3 penetrator and put it against the T-90's armour. I wouldn't call this 100% gospel by any means, especially due to a couple of errors I made in the model and simplifications I made so it took less than 24 hours to run, but I think the from gist of it you can see that the penetrator at relatively close range against unangled armour pretty much cuts through it like butter. The DU as a whole doesn't lose all that much energy as it passes through the armour. So, given the following situation, I think it may be reasonable for a penetrator to go through and through, and possibly KO another tank: M1A2 is within ~800 m of the target, and up against a 90 degree angle of armour. It's a tanker's dream, I'm sure. The only stipulation is that the rod may shatter upon reaching another tank since the steel tip is toast by now. (Please ignore the radiation lining ruining everything at the end, I screwed up the material properties on it and broke the simulation at the end, exploding a lot of elements!)

So, in terms of pure kinetic energy, a monstrous 200kg shell travelling at 1.2 km/s has an energy of 144 megajoules. That's just (1/2 m u²). According to Wikipedia, the M829 shell weighs 18.64 kilograms, and has a muzle velocity of 1,670 m/s. That gives a muzzle energy of 25.74 megajoules. If all of that energy is released from the impact, being hit by an M829 at point blank is like having 5 kilograms of TNT go off on the outside of your tank. That may be hard to miss. I read that Chobham armour is typically about 5cm thick, which means that the reaction force from the shell decelerating in that thickness is 5.1 giganewtons, which would give a nice jolt, even if it's only applied for a tiny fraction of a second. Anyway, I'm not sure what this all means in terms of a chunk of metal hitting another big chunk of metal/ceramics/composites or whatever. But those are the numbers. I do know for sure that I'd rather not be in a tank that's shot by one of these in really any circumstances!