G.I. Joe

Helmets! Don't forget the helmets! 😄

Oh hey look, I almost missed German bashing day.  Frankly this all looks and feels like internal Euro politics.  No countries are lining up to push hundreds of tanks into Ukraine with the notable exception of Poland, which kinda makes sense.  And these were all tanks that Ukraine was already set up to support.  Beyond that we have some sort of drug-deal between Germany Czech, Slovenia and the Netherlands again T72s, the French Light tanks and the very recent UK company's worth of Challengers. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#:~:text=124 million kn (€16.5,Croatia by 13 August 2022.
In fact the list of German aid is not small.  They are number 4 overall, and although their per GDP is a little bit tepid, you then get into internal politics resting on economic pressures.
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts?gclid=Cj0KCQiAlKmeBhCkARIsAHy7WVvJ-eE-irSZCq06UxjoLkqWvc1xQgIgZurr6Wc5jXKHYdoebsJl6s8aAr6fEALw_wcB
So "tanks" are the only metric of effective donations now?  Well neither the US or Canada have gone this way either but I am not seeing the fervor over that here.  Germany only has 350 Leo2s in its entire fleet, which does not point to a massive surplus.  Hell, Canada has over 100 Leo2s and our land threat consist of badly behaving American tourists and bears.  And yet everyone is yelling at Germany like they skipped out on the check?  Is there some sort of military alliance obligation I missed?
To me, a simple "colonial", this appears more an excuse for Europeans to yell at each other than actually fight and win the war, of which I have stressed at length that tanks are a secondary priority right now.  In fact if you dig into the actual list of German contribution there is 'minor' stuff; like spare parts, engineering equipment, radars, boatloads of ammunition and winter clothing...but hey if it isn't a freakin Leo 2...well "that just sux!!"
Oh and then there is the 12.5B Euros in humanitarian aid, the stuff that keeps people fed and some sort of medical system in motion.
Finally on escalation.  A tricky beast at the best of times but the standard thinking is to 1) be deliberate, 2) communicate effectively with your opponent, and 3) leave yourself somewhere to go.  If the west dumps a traffic jam of tanks onto Ukraine...and they don't work, well that limits the escalation room in the conventional sphere pretty dramatically.  So I can see why western powers are holding back some - they might need the threat later, cos' Russia.  Now the narrative is clearly getting lost in Germany's case but I am pretty sure these are not the first politicians to fart in church, and they wont be the last.
  
 

Well then we have to be missing something. Politicians do not normally voluntarily toe themselves into knots just for giggles.  I mean having German tanks killing Russians in Ukraine is already pretty loaded given those two nation’s history.  However, we know the “escalation excuse” is getting weaker, so what is the real issue?  Does this guy run a minority or coalition government right now?  Ultimately he is in a position where it is better to dither than commit, I mean based on the back and forth it looks like Germany hopes this war ends before they even need to send the things.  
The export agreements are upside down, but frankly that is also on the nations dumb enough to sign onto the agreement…like Canada.  We literally bought a replacement based on an old fleet we bought when we had a Bde in Europe, because cheaper and “Afghanistan” which was so incredibly dumb, and disingenuous it boggles the mind.  But here we are stuck with a European tank we cannot push on without permissions.  While our closest ally has parks literally filled with M1s (let’s not get into “we can’t look too much like the Americans” debate.
Regardless, I suspect that there is more going on here inside the German political house but it still does not explain why people are getting so hot and bothered.

Admittedly, I know next to nothing regarding turbine engines in ground vehicles, so I’m a bit confused about this. I’ve had an FAA Airman Certificate for Mechanic, with Airframe and Powerplant Certifications for almost 50 years (46 to be exact), and I believe that turbine engines are much more reliable and easier to maintain than reciprocating engines. A recip can have hundreds of parts that are subject to wear and failure, while a turbine engine has relatively few parts that can wear/fail.
If a recip has issues, one tends to troubleshoot the issue(s) and fix them in place, while with a turbine engine, unless it’s an igniter or the electronic control unit (ECU) or the full-authority, digital electronic control unit (FADEC, an air carrier will simply replace the engine “package.” They don’t send the whole aircraft back to a repair facility. Why is that done with an MBT engine package? A tank engine is similar to a helicopter engine, and in many cases derived from an existing helicopter engine design. Here’s where my armor practices “ignorance” really shines through, why remove an entire MBT, and possibly an experienced crew, from the operational area when all you need are some preconfigured engine packages, a hoisting device, and a support vehicle from the Support Company? Is it because the Army has used manufacturer field reps  for so long that it no longer has capable techs to change an engine?
Not trying to be caustic or trolling, but it’s been a looong time since I worked on F4-B/RF4, and F4-J fighters.

The guy brought the children to Moscow to re-unite them with their Ukrainian mothers.
There are 72.000 registered Ukrainian refugees currently provided for by Austria.
One of my bosses gave an empty appartment for an Ukrainian family to live in for free since the start of the war.
I personally set up a spare bed of mine there.
I do not think that your comparisons to Nazi treatment of jews are justified.

For most people not in the business the time, cost and effort on training is a bit of a mystery.  It would be a bald face lie to say that military training is the high point of human efficiency; however, the reality is that it always takes longer than you think.  Further, training is directly linked to quality of output.  If you want cannon fodder, well sure you can train them up in a few days.  If you want decent troops with a better chance to stay alive well denying that chance to an opponent, well no free lunch.
And then there is supporting systems.  So I had a very interesting offline side conversation with a German tanker and the German system is setup to minimize training time compared to the Canadian one.  They can do in weeks what it takes us months to do.  Why?  Well it is not because Germans are better or that they are taking risks, it has to do with the logistics systems supporting that tank.  In Germany tank crews do not do a lot of what we would consider first line repairs and maintenance.  They have built a plug and play logistical system designed to simply pull out a piece of the tank and rotate in a new one.  This means that all that crew training we do to fix/maintain a tank in situ is not required for the German Army because their logistical system is taking the load off.
And then there is collective training.  A lot of what we have been talking about is individual training, which is frankly the easy part. Getting a bunch of primates to fight as an organization takes a lot of effort and again it is linked to supporting systems.  If we give the UA a platform that is capable of new methods of info sharing, communication and targeting, it is going to take time for the UA to incorporate that into how a unit fights.  Otherwise, like the Apaches, you are going to see Challengers (or freakin Leo 2s) fought like T-72s, which defeats the entire point as any competitive advantage will quickly fly out the window and then all the Macgregors of the world can point out why it was a huge waste of money to send them in the first place.  
These are not magical chariots, these are complex weapon systems that need to be integrated into an extant system and then change that system without totally disrupting it.  Some stuff, the stuff we should be prioritizing, are low cost, high impact.  They can be incorporated quickly to effect without too much disruption to the rest of the UA system.
”But, but, the Pz2000s!”  Well yes, I would like an assessment of how those and the 777s actually performed and how bad of shape the fleet is in right now.  A lot of mud has been thrown at “delicate western systems” from guns to rifles, but these are not peacetime weapons, all of them saw about 20 years of warfare somewhere in the world. In Kandahar those M777s were firing every day for months/years. Now the warfare in Ukraine has been far more intense, however, how much damage to those western systems has been user error because we pressed them into service so quickly?  
The absolute gold are the systems that the UA already had, or nearly automated western systems that come in compete packages (ATGMs, AD and HIMARs).  And even those are likely going to show training issues when we fully unpack them, for example there was a video early on in the war of a guy using a Javelin at about 800 meters on a truck.  Well trucks need to die, and maybe that was all they had but a Javelin is designed to kill a tank at 2.5 kms, and there were few of them.  I personally would let the truck go, or find a better way to kill it…like a machine gun.
I just keep coming back to the point that CM is the last 60 minutes of effort that takes years to build, and this war is not a series of CM battles.

New twitter post from the U.S. House Republican's Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman:
 

Sure, although several of the primary defendants were acquitted, and half did not receive a death sentence. For the military tribunals 250 were found not guilty, and the vast majority of the rest were not executed.
Yes; it was important.
No: it wasn't a kangaroo court.
These two observations are not independent of each other. As I've said before - if you want to be the good guy, you have to do the good things. Kangaroo courts are not good things. By promoting them, Shady_Side is actively trying to undermine Ukraine's war effort.

Wow took a day off and missed all this.  Well this is basically the question we have been mulling since about 26 Feb last year.  To try and summarize my conclusions to date:
Russia has already “lost”, and Ukraine has already “won”.  This was largely decided last March-Apr, all the churn, suffering and sacrifice since has been negotiating the end-sates of those two conditions.  Without a major strategic shift the war could end right now and Russia would still be looking at a defeat and a Ukraine a victory.  Defeat and victory are not binary conditions. The definition of what those two conditions for all parties is largely what this has all been about. Russia has failed to achieve its political and strategic goals, in fact in many ways they have made things much worse. Ukraine has survived as a sovereign independent nation, now with the full attention and support of the western world (even as weird as it is to keep buying Russian gas…seriously, agree with you on that one, c’mon Europe who signed off on this?).  The west has demonstrated unity and resolve to actually stop bickering and unify in defence of the global order it created.  And that is as of today 14 Jan 23.
We often muddle political and military victory/defeat…you kind of did it with the original question.  The two concepts are interlinked but not intrinsically.  One can have military defeat but political victory (losing well), and vice versa.  The trick is understanding there alignment and interactions.  Russia has gotten its *** handed to it for about 11 months now, but if Putin can somehow hold onto some blasted land and survive…well in the low bar the Russians have set, that could be a political victory.  Ukraine, and the west by extension, by not retaking that lost ground, despite a string of military victory could be staring a level political defeat in the face.  But these do not change the actual outcomes of the war.  The realities of the end-state are coloured by these issues but not determined.
Ok, so what?  As I said many times before (and the guys must be sick of it by now): all war is certainty, communication, negotiation, and sacrifice.  Those are the four essential components that define its progress and outcomes.  So “how does Ukraine win this war”.  Well it negotiates with the concept of victory, while Russia negotiates with the concept of defeat.  This will mean altering their certainties; however, to what extent?  These components interact continually.  What was an acceptable negotiated certainty last Nov will be unacceptable in Jan because one side has invested sacrifice.  The violence we see is all communication and both sides are more than capable of continuing this, although Russian communication is straining.
But you asked “how”, which is jumping over a lot of the real questions of “why” and “what”.  I am not sure if that is because you think you already know the why and what, if so then you have also already kind of boxed in “how”.  Regardless, the “how to win…enough” for Ukraine is to continue to develop and exploit what looks like some new version of attritional warfare that has been dubbed “corrosive warfare”.  It essentially is rapid, precise attrition along the entire length of an opponents operational system in order to encourage it to collapse under its own weight.  We have seen this phenomenon three times now at the operational level.  A lot of unknowns going forward, such as, can the RA be eroded to the point that a good hard conventional manoeuvre approach work?  Has the RA dug in and devolved its operational system to the point it is becoming rust-proof.  All unknown at this point.
What we do know is that neither Ukraine or Russia are done yet. The UA still has offensive initiative, while the RA culminated last summer - this tactical noise over the winter is costly and useless leg humping in military terms.  Now where the needle lands in the next 6 months will be key,  At some point Ukraine may simply run out of gas.  Or, more likely, the entire RA may collapse - it is in pretty bad shape.  
The simple answer to your question is “to keep doing what it has been doing and incrementally chewing the RA to bits via corrosive warfare while regaining lost territory”.  But this only describes the military “how” while skipping a lot of the important bits. Russia, for example, needs a hard fall but soft landing.  It is not a Ukrainian nor western win if the state of Russia collapses entirely, quite the opposite.  You seem to think this is impossible, and I heartily hope so.  A collapsed Russia is very bad news.  Now Putin and his gang, they must go. There is no real way for anyone to win if he stays in power.  I mean he and his cronies will win but everyone else, including Russia will lose, which is kind of what this war is really about at this point.  A Western win is demonstrating the western global order still works; reconstruction and integration of Ukraine into our sphere, and a punished Russia back in line and on the road to renormalization…very tall order, we will likely have to live with less.
How do we avoid WW3? Well escalation control is important but Russia has never demonstrated an inclination to be a suicide state.  If this was North Korea, I would be very worried.  But Russia is still a rational - albeit relatively rational, actor at this point.  There are lines we need to worry about but frankly if Putin had the backing for tactical WMDs he would have used them by now.  Russia is clearly aware of and deterred by western response in these areas.  Within Russia this whole thing has taken on the look of flailing regime survival, and an order to start launching nukes is more likely to get Putin tossed out a window…who are we kidding “a sudden and tragic stroke”, than anything else.
Anyway, hope this helps with your question, you may want to revisit the answers to other ones that got you to it.  Finally, this is not a Reddit thread and you will never win an argument here and feel better about it.  The only way to “win” any debate in this thing is for events on the ground to unfold in support of your position.  We can - and have - yell at each other all day and fill pages of back and forth but the actual deciding factor has to unfold.  If say you position is “they cannot, the conflict will be frozen into a forever war bounded by nuclear deterrence”, ok we can go back and forth on that but until it actually happens on the ground no one is right or wrong.  We can have bad assumptions, poor logic and all sorts of stuff but it really doesn’t matter until the facts on the ground support them.  People thought we were nuts back in Feb-Mar pointing out that Russia was losing - and then it happened.  We were off mainstream when we said Donbas round 1 would go nowhere.  HIMARs were a game changer.  The Fall offensive would see Kherson fall through corrosive warfare - Kharkiv was a shock to me.  And now here we are winter 23, all sorts of futures floating out there…we will see.
 

Well thank you so much for tolerating us.
In fact, you ask 'simple' questions but don't really seem to give a rats about listening to answers or accepting feedback.  Every response is just to give yourself a springboard to post yet another wall of text, making very bold but highly debatable assertions.
...Plus, at last count, you've managed to ad hom about a dozen of us here already.
So let me ad hom you right back, you're coming across right now as a superbly intelligent, well read 18 year old. One of many who have graced this fine Forum over the years. (I have a 16 year old at home here).
...And while I think it's fine you are stirring the pot and challenging us, I predict a rage quit soon when we crusty groupthinkers fail to bow down before your high energy debating style.
TL:DR you are really going to need to give and take a little here, or this will get tiresome.
But of course, as Steve properly reminds me, it's his living room, he sets the rules for decorum. My views are my own alone.

Nice photoshop. But I keep my fingers crossed that this will become a reality pretty soon.

It's beautiful! 
 

They don’t have them yet, but I don’t think they are far off. A company in Vermont, U.S.A. contracted Austin Meyers, the creator of Laminar Research (LR), to design a fully electric dual-rotor aircraft to transport transplant organs from one hospital to another. It has to carry a pilot, a passenger, and the organ for transplant. Austin Meyers used the Plane Maker program of the LR flight simulator X-Plane to design and test the proof of concept and flight model for the copter. The company in Vermont built the prototype and performed actual flight testing. I understand the FAA might be flight testing it within the next few months. I’ve actually flown it a bit in X-Plane 12, and it’s pretty amazing.

This is a strong point for me personally - the collective West let the opportunity go in Syria and now everyone continues to pay for it. Leadership isn’t easy, and often I think these kind of things require action because someone else who you like even less (Russia) might take action in your absence. By giving up the initiative to act Russia gained control of much of the theatre. 

Perhaps it would have been a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but if you don’t take action and then the problem lands on your doorstep (Europe) you are affected regardless. The thought of what would have happened if the West didn’t act in 2022 is almost certainly a darker future that I really don’t even want to contemplate, yet must to help understand why acting is important in the first place. 
 

Good to see this,  to contrast or smooth over Zaluzhny celebrating Bandera,and other stuff like it. 
Friends forgive and move on. 

Bingo
Etc

This is a very good point.  So this is part of strategic planning.  What are the globally available stocks of Soviet made equipment?  What kind of shape is Ukrainian in-country arms production?  If we are indeed headed for the bottom of the barrel, then a hard jump to western equipment is absolutely going to need to happen.  But that is a very large undertaking and not 40 Marders here, 50 Bradleys there and those freakin Leo2.  This is an entire fleet replacement, top to bottom done in phases. 
I suspect this as well.  The UA has not been stupid in this war and the guys in charge know the score very well.  There is stop gap strategies and then long games, both are in play.  I strongly suspect that the current slow roll of western AFVs is not knocking knees of weak western politicians, it is likely coming from military advice both in the Ukraine and the West. 

And we are back to this.  The theory is that somehow if we had showered Ukraine in [Insert favored IFV, tank or whatever] that this war would be over by now.  This is gross oversimplification bordering on disinformation with an undertone of western biases that are frankly bordering on imperial prejudices.
1.  Ukraine has a large arms industry of its own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_industry_of_Ukraine.  It is no doubt under stress but we have no reports it is falling apart.  It needs all the help it can get, so lets start there.
2.  Ukraine had pretty healthy mechanized force before this war started armed, not surprisingly with its own equipment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Ground_Forces.  They have sustained losses, but do we have any reports of the UA being critically short of anything?  Any major losses due to those shortfalls?  Ok, so lets not freak out with the "Ukraine is collapsing because they do not have Marders" thing.
3.  Ukraine has captured an obscene amount of Russian equipment - https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html.  If half of those Russian vehicles have been made fit for battle Ukraine likely has more of some natures that it did at the start of the war.  Any support we can to make that happen smoother, better and faster is a very good idea.
4.  Heavy's overall value proposition is in doubt in this entire thing.  The Russians had mountains of it and it made no difference.  The UA is much smarter so I suspect they have already figured out the right conditions for heavy to work and are working to set it up.  We should be aiming at supporting the UA in creating those conditions as a priority, exploitation of that is something I am pretty sure they can cover.
5.  Every sexy peice of western equipment comes with a heavy logistics bill (we have discussed this), and in large numbers that bill could make the UAs life harder, not easier to sustain this potpourri of western hardware.
This whole line of thought, though well intentioned, also smacks of western superiority complex - "well if we had simply given those poor dirty Ukrainian rabble our superior western equipment they would have put Ivan on the run by now...oh dear, shame on us." 
Ukraine has thousands of APCs/IFVs - 40 Marders is not going to magically turn the tide anymore than 100 Leo 2s, or 50 Bradleys or freakin M1s.
Should we give Ukraine support? Absolutely. Should that include complete capability force packages that they can build units around? - again, yes. Should we give them versions of what they already have and can sustain? - definitely.  Should we prioritize things that do make an actual difference?  Like ISR, long range fires, AD and how about simple money so that soldiers get paid and their families can buy groceries?  How about shoring up the existing Ukrainian arms industry and military architecture so they can stop being so dependent on western support? Should we train and support their force generation - oh, most definitely.  
If someone said we had to decide between training 75k Ukraine troops or another 100 Marders, I already know what the right answer is.  You cannot flood a military built on an entirely different fleet system, in the middle of a a war, and magically make it all go away.  You can wring hands and cry "oh dear, think about all the good Ukrainain boys who may have survived if they were in Bradleys", well that assumes a Bradley is shell, mine and ATGM proof as well as invisible to begin with.  It also fails to fundamentally understand how militaries are built, sustained and employed.
Ukraine needs broad holistic and comprehensive support on many levels.  Niche, hi profile sexy equipment donations are nice but we cannot lose sight of the fundamentals - the stuff that really makes a difference.  And when this war is over, that is when the real support will be needed.  We had better see as much hand wringing and noise on donating farm equipment, reconstruction infrastructure and economic stimulus as we have seen on Marders/Bradleys or there was no point to this whole thing.

I keep coming back to the logistical and training headaches the huge assortment of donated and captured equipment in the Ukrainian forces must be causing too. I really am at a loss to think of a good historical parallel... honestly, the Rebel Alliance in the timeframe between the battles of Yavin and Endor (or Scarif and Jakku if we want to cast a slightly wider net and include the new continuity) almost feels like a better comparison than anything in real life.

Polish Army of the Polish - Bolshevik war vintage was also a rag-tag combination of leftovers from every major participant of the Great War. It took 2 decades to somehow sort it out after the war, but during the conflict we managed reasonably well.
It seems that Ukraine is happy with any equipment of which there's at least a battalion, keeping some uniformity of a given brigade's logistics. Now how they manage on the high level is very interesting - and there's zero information about it, though I hear rumors that there's A LOT of driving up to the PL border

I suspect the Chinese Nationalist Army circa 1937-40 had a fascinating collection of bits of everything built since 1895. That might be worth reading up on sometime after Ukraine wins. I don't the first thing about that army....

that is the best post I've seen in ages, well played 😂

I keep coming back to the logistical and training headaches the huge assortment of donated and captured equipment in the Ukrainian forces must be causing too. I really am at a loss to think of a good historical parallel... honestly, the Rebel Alliance in the timeframe between the battles of Yavin and Endor (or Scarif and Jakku if we want to cast a slightly wider net and include the new continuity) almost feels like a better comparison than anything in real life.

I keep coming back to the logistical and training headaches the huge assortment of donated and captured equipment in the Ukrainian forces must be causing too. I really am at a loss to think of a good historical parallel... honestly, the Rebel Alliance in the timeframe between the battles of Yavin and Endor (or Scarif and Jakku if we want to cast a slightly wider net and include the new continuity) almost feels like a better comparison than anything in real life.

I keep coming back to the logistical and training headaches the huge assortment of donated and captured equipment in the Ukrainian forces must be causing too. I really am at a loss to think of a good historical parallel... honestly, the Rebel Alliance in the timeframe between the battles of Yavin and Endor (or Scarif and Jakku if we want to cast a slightly wider net and include the new continuity) almost feels like a better comparison than anything in real life.