Centurian52

I just wanted to take a moment to back up to the Challenger 2 discussion from Saturday, since there were a couple points I wanted to make.
The rifled gun does not make it more accurate. Modern tank rounds are fin stabilized, so they don't need to be spin stabilized. In fact, for wonky physics reasons that I don't fully understand, spinning apparently has a destabilizing effect on long rod projectiles (well, some spin still helps to stabilize it, but more than a tiny amount of spin will start destabilizing it again), which is why APFDSD rounds fired from rifled guns are actually designed to counteract the spinning. So the Challenger 2 isn't more accurate than any other modern western tank (in fact I believe it's actually less accurate than other western MBTs, though with a modern digital fire control system it's still pin-point accurate by Cold War standards). But it's easy enough to believe that it's more accurate than the T-64BVs, T-72Ms, and T-80BVs that most Ukrainian tankers would have had experience with before it arrived. The rifling also reduces the performance of kinetic energy rounds in penetrating armor relative to a smoothbore gun of the same size, though the Challenger 2 can still probably punch hard enough to deal with most Russian tanks easily enough.
The real advantage of the rifled gun is that it makes it possible to fire HESH effectively. Which is why it's puzzling that the Ukrainians apparently aren't receiving HESH ammunition. A Challenger 2 without HESH seems to be missing the point. Retaining a rifled gun into the modern day was a serious design compromise that the British army made specifically because they believed HESH was worth it. HESH (while not effective against modern MBTs) is a fantastic anti-personnel, anti-bunker, and anti-light vehicle round.

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

Bingo. 

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

I think the advantage of computer wargaming is that it can have way more rules. It's just that the human player doesn't need to learn any of them, because the rules are being read and executed by a cpu instead. It takes a lot of very complex rules to properly model reality. I think one of the biggest limitations of any tabletop game is that you are very limited in how many rules you can have before you start to overwhelm the human players with the complexity.

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

I have to believe that our collective militaries are smart enough to have started down this road months and months ago.  It’s surely that obvious.
As mentioned this was discussed on the thread months ago and I seem to remember The_Capt and others making it quite clear that the major benefit to Ukraine would be the simple fact of free, safe basic training for a larger number of recruits than they could train on their own (and maybe some cultural advantages in terms of low-level initiative and flexibility being encouraged).  Otherwise there was absolutely no reason to think NATO training would somehow be better suited to this war than Ukrainian training. 

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

I don't think the T-55s were for making up tank numbers. Based on Covert Cabal's counts they never had very many T-55s to begin with, and they still have thousands of T-72s in storage (based on the last count). The most plausible theory I've heard is that the T-55s were the most suitable platform the Russians had for firing the 100mm artillery ammunition they got from North Korea. Apparently they don't have any 100mm artillery pieces of their own (lots of 122s and 152s, but no 100mm guns), making the T-55 their only platform capable of firing 100mm ammunition.

A good day for destroying Russian artillery:
 
 

I don't think it's really a pay issue - contractors can pay whatever they want and throw around equity and if the gov't needs the service and that's the price, it's not that hard to write the contract.  Especially for creative development where you're going to hire a roomful (or even a small building full) of mechatronics people to build transformers.  They each might cost a lot, but even a decent sized small company isn't going to be that expensive.  Way back at the start of my career I watched someone who was only a couple years ahead of me leave a semi-gov't job (FFRDC) to take a job at a small company developing UAVs at ~3x the salary, plus they'd pay to get a helicopter license.
The harder part about attracting engineers to that is the working environment - going into the classified world tends to be a one way trip, or at least a deep rabbit hole that people take a long time to pop out of, and then they can't even show off their cool stuff.  And the whole working on the classified side of things makes it more complicated to find and pull in outside stuff that's supposed to be air gapped, but that might be useful to incorporate.
The big cost comes in paying for the production run and all the costs wrapped around that.  

M26 for MLRS/HIMARS when?
I cannot see any reason not to, now that 155mm DPICM and depleted uranium APFSDS-T are already being sent... I guess it is just only a matter of time and critical need.
newest number I found was from 2006

https://www.hrw.org/news/2006/08/18/cluster-munition-questions-and-answers-m26-rocket#:~:text=The U.S. stockpiles 369%2C576 M26 rockets in its active inventory.

Something good to hear said and reported on as far as the US political front goes.
 

That could be said about literally any statement that anyone has ever made. That doesn't make every statement that anyone has ever made acceptable.
I'm not saying it's what you were going for, but it would be very easy for someone to interpret your words as advocating eugenics.

T-34 turned into Leopard 1, used as an OPFOR by Polish army during Cold War. In the background another T-34 turned Chieftain.

That could be said about literally any statement that anyone has ever made. That doesn't make every statement that anyone has ever made acceptable.
I'm not saying it's what you were going for, but it would be very easy for someone to interpret your words as advocating eugenics.

I have huge massive of info (albeit very fragmented), but I havn't enough time to translate it. In own time sevaral years ago I've been writing small artilcles for VK branch of MIL.IN.UA resource about this. I had a time to write from Crimea 2014 to beginning of August 2014. If you interest some special I will try to answer. Write me PM

To your credit, you did not say anything about forcing anyone to do anything. But, it definitely seemed like you were implying that the world would be a better place with fewer people of certain demographics (people from the 3rd world). That is a very unsettling implication.

A BTR-70 is still better than an M113.
I'm playing Combat Mission: Cold War right now, and I think I've built out something of a hierarchy for infantry carriers. Any other IFV is better than a BMP-1. Any IFV, BMP-1 included, is better than any APC. Anything with an enclosed turret, BTRs included, is better than an M113. Anything with armor and room for dismounts, M113 included, is better than nothing.