Butschi

Absolutely not.  We'll be calling him Dana Montana with an hour and I for one do not want to see him in a thong swinging on a wrecking ball anytime soon.

The same scrutiny is being placed upon every element. People here aren't denying tanks a fair trial under the sun 😉
It's basically a simple cost/benefits equation. 
How much do tank costs, what is the value they add, can I add that value in another way, at lesser cost? 
If the answer to the latter is yes, than tankShouldBeDead.

Fortunately for all tank nostalgists there will be CM3 which will feature tanks, im quite sure of that. Steve knows that adding them to CM will be a positive cost/benefit equation. Unless you manage to piss him off real good and he becomes the TankNazi, no tank for you! ;-). Although Slitherines recent acquiry of BFC might prevent such an event.

Ukraine nor Russia currently has a better or cheaper alternative available to the tanks they posses, so they continue to use/produce/receive m. 
The discussion here is about what lessons to learn from the current war. We can see that it's easy and cheap to make AT-UAV. It is not cheap to protect tanks against many cheap AT-UAV. 
So, the capability which used to be filled in by tanks might be better filled in by something else. That could be an unmanned-tank looking thing. It could also be something else.
Blindly saying, it must be tanks because it has been and they are sexy and unfairly treated, is not a form of wisdom.

FWIW I think the Dutch decision to buy a battalion of tanks is most of all financing an existing capability with money which needed to be spend on military budget (2% and such), in line with NATO needs. It is a 'safe' investment where we upfront the money otherwise spend over years as part of the lease from Germany. Although I'm not sure whether these will compliment the existing battalion we lease from Germany, I guess ultimately not.
This then allows the time to find out how to best spend the extra money allocated for defense. 
The first decisions which were made after the 22 war and extra money was ordering extra F-35 and extra weapons for those, weaponizing drones (we didn't do that until then), upgrading surface ships and submarines with Tomahawk capability. Extra Pz2000 and new MLRS. Upgrading existing Apaches to E variant (from D);
Renewing the entire navy. 

The tank battalion is more easy to communicate and speaks to the masses though. They are certainly not cheap, but given that in 79 we were able to finance and buy 450 Leo2s, complementing 450 Leo1s I guess a battalion's worth of Leo2A8 won't really hamstrung our financial capabilities for defense renewal.
Although I do agree the capability has a good chance to stay in reserve until it is retired somewhere in the future.  
 
Edit to add: I guess NL isn't ready yet to commit investments into the problem we are discussing here. There is vision forming, how to go ahead with lighter forces and UAVs, etc etc. But there is no clear path or doctrine yet, for which investments could be made to acquire the required capabilities in order to implement the doctrine. 
So instead of throwing money at vague studies, which we do enough over here, I guess this was a better alternative for the politicians / military top.

Yup, many of us have! I was thinking the same thing.

That one is actually fairly simple to answer: An EU military would be under European control, while a NATO army would basically be under US control. The French are particularly against the latter and also think they would dominate a EU army (which is why they push the idea). But also other nations (e.g. Germany) would be way more comfortable with a purely European solution.

That one is actually fairly simple to answer: An EU military would be under European control, while a NATO army would basically be under US control. The French are particularly against the latter and also think they would dominate a EU army (which is why they push the idea). But also other nations (e.g. Germany) would be way more comfortable with a purely European solution.

How long before someone discovers they are not playing a FPV drone game, but they are actually flying drones in combat and racking up kills
P

So true. Well, you could get those small plastic soldiers. But real war games? Board games were about playing with the family. At some point I managed to grab Axis&Allies in a shop in the Netherlands. We were a bunch of weirdos playing that every Friday. Those were the days. 🙂

I never played any of these games. At that time in the 80s those ‚war games‘ were shunned. Only crazy militarists would play that. If you didn’t live in a big city you would never have seen something like that. Even then it was unlikely. Access to porn was much easier.  

Heh, the hilarious part is that when I was an armored Engr troop commander we had those German vehicles. I am intimately aware of what the AEV and AVLB are capable of, having spent hours and days jumping in on maintenance and operation of them. 
The Boar nee Ogre is trying to replace the ploughs and rollers of the MBTs, as well as the line charge launching systems…along with what looks like some route clearing and detection tech. It stuffs it all on a very expensive chassis on a single platform that will likely remain dependent on other engineer support to do a job that likely cannot be done under the current conditions. It is capability designed for previous wars, not the ones we are likely to face. It was ordered years ago well before this war but is now potentially a large waste of money and effort. As well as a liability if it becomes a bottleneck in breaching operations.
 

Where was that proven?  The only thing that has been "proven" in Ukraine is that breaching a defended belt has been proven to be so difficult it hasn't been done successfully to allow any tempo to offensive operations.
and before you suggest it, I am not saying that it has no use.  What I am saying is that there isn't a successful breaching operation you can point to with the exception of Kursk and the primary reason for success there was a lack of covering forces by the RA.  I can't say I have even seen a video there where an explosive option was used.

Considering that I am likely the only one in this conversation that has commanded AEVs, AVLBs and sappers on mechanized minefield breaching training, I am pretty confident I understand the situation quite well. 
That "Boar" is a multi-million dollar highly specialized vehicle doing that mine plows and line charges on trailers did. It will still need AEV and Bridges, and likely sappers. Which kinda makes me wonder - what is the point? An overly expensive piece of equipment that is going to be challenged to do what was already being attempted, and still needs support for stuff it is missing.
This sounds like a big military "sexy" purchase that may be dead on arrival.
 

Can we just be done with all this preaching, virtue signaling, the whole holier than thou attitude, and this "if you are not for me you are against me" stuff? Your country has not declared war against Russia, yet? Put your face into the dirt and apologize on behalf your whole country!
Last time I looked, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the war and not ensuring everyone knows that we 105% support Ukraine and despise Russia.

A professional assassin who missed from ~150 meters?  Not very professional.  Fortunately for Trump the nutjob used an AR15 and not an actual hunting rifle.  
Back on subject, the TheCapt above discusses whether we'd be better off with more/cheaper than expensive high tech in the context of armored mine removers and armor in general.  Always an interesting tradeoff study -- better or more?  We all love WW2 panthers but having lots and lots of cheap T34s or shermans wasn't a bad way to go.  

Norm Augustine published a bunch of plots showing the extrapolation of things like this in "Augustine's Laws".  One of them is that by 2050 or so, the USAF will be one aircraft and it will cost the entire US GDP.  Tanks are a bit cheaper than aircraft, so the US army won't be reduced to a single tank until maybe 2080.

More sexy corporate sales videos. Well this one is in my wheelhouse at least.
This is the major problem. The military industrial complex and military force development have formed an unholy union. This has been decades in the making. First the political level reduces funding, which puts pressure on future procurement. Rather than being able to purchase capacity, we instead invest in increasingly capability-dense platforms. This keeps total costs down because we save on crews/human costs (which is a significant slice of military funding btw - for Canada "pay" is about 51% of our overall defence budget) and infrastructure. Per unit costs go through roof. In the end we do spend less and fit into political funding envelops, while keeping capability.  But something has to give...capacity.
We design and buy a tank that can theoretically kill 100 older tanks. It costs about as much as 100 older tanks but we are never going to get enough money to buy 100 newer ones. So we buy 10, put them in ever shrinking unit and formation sizes and tell ourselves "its ok, we can kill 1000 tanks with this unit."  Wait a decade or two and we are down to 5 super-tanks.
This beast is a classic example. So in last-gen mine breaching we spread these capabilities across no less than 4-5 platforms. But all those platforms come with crews and as budgets shrink or come under inflationary pressure we need to downsize. So we mash 4-5 capabilities onto a single platform and create "efficiencies". Super breachers that cost a freakin mint per unit but they can breach mines like no ones business. This is great for a peacetime military. We can roll these bad boys out on exercises, parades and the odd small war to show the politicians that they spent their money well. 
But is absolutely sucks for war. Beyond the capacity and manufacture issues, the problem tactically is that we create a single point of failure. An entire formation may have 4 of these monsters, needing at least two per breach. If you lose them the entire formation is screwed pretty quickly. No politician is going to shell out enough money to buy 100 of them, and industry could not make that many in a hurry anyway.
High cost, high capability but low capacity is exactly the wrong way to go...and this war is a shining example of why. Cheap, easy and fast is great. Smart cheap, easy and fast is freakin lethal.

Interesting.  This is being pushed out by the China channels one assumes, Asia Times being Hong Kong based.  The usual suspects have been banging the drum in Europe about Putin being serious about nukes this time, and Putin himself has made a speech indicating that Ukraine using long range missiles to attack targets in russia will be construed as an act of war by Nato.  Russia will thereafter be at war with Nato, he says, despite having presented the conflict as a clash with Nato since the early days.
One senses desperation from Putin.  Ramping up the nuclear rhetoric alongside the empty threat to stop exporting uranium all looks like Moscow is in panic mode.  Calling in the propaganda assets to amplify his message about being serious is equally desperate.
A desperate man with lots of nukes needs to be taken very seriously.  I am glad I am not the one to call his bluff.

Can we just be done with all this preaching, virtue signaling, the whole holier than thou attitude, and this "if you are not for me you are against me" stuff? Your country has not declared war against Russia, yet? Put your face into the dirt and apologize on behalf your whole country!
Last time I looked, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the war and not ensuring everyone knows that we 105% support Ukraine and despise Russia.

The only thing I have to disagree with is this constant acting as though the US are the only grown up in the room and have to manage the squabbling or fearful children. It is easy to scoff at the fear of others when you are far away on a different continent and armed to the teeth with nuked and not next door neighbor with Russia (and no, Alaska doesn't count! 🙂).

If it's ok...I can pass on a personal experience on this front. I actually ran into a French influencer while on a trip in Japan who, when he realized my wife and lived in DC, proceeded to regale us with the glories of his life in Saint Petersburg and how immigration was ruining France. He did not, for some time, realize that we know France quite well and also assumed because we played dumb that we didn't understand anything about the war in Ukraine. It was utterly fascinating to see in microcosm how the game is played by these folks and how in his version it was tailored to a French perspective. And he is one of quite literally thousands. 
What we did not know until today is that, as an RT employee, he works pretty much directly for Russian intelligence. 
Coda: after we let him yammer on for a while, he stumbled into a critique of 'decadent art' only to discover that my better half is a working artist and topic expert. He was gone, in outraged confusion, within three minutes. Personally I felt cheated I didn't get my shot. C'est la vie. 

Deleted as per Steve's request.

Can we just be done with all this preaching, virtue signaling, the whole holier than thou attitude, and this "if you are not for me you are against me" stuff? Your country has not declared war against Russia, yet? Put your face into the dirt and apologize on behalf your whole country!
Last time I looked, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the war and not ensuring everyone knows that we 105% support Ukraine and despise Russia.

Can we just be done with all this preaching, virtue signaling, the whole holier than thou attitude, and this "if you are not for me you are against me" stuff? Your country has not declared war against Russia, yet? Put your face into the dirt and apologize on behalf your whole country!
Last time I looked, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the war and not ensuring everyone knows that we 105% support Ukraine and despise Russia.

Sorry, I think you have misread, I am really undecided as to whether this constitutes pro-Russian propaganda...I have not seen the film. All my posts call the absolute as Russian propaganda into question. From some neutral write ups it does not look pro-Russian but I would need to see the film in order to really decide.
I am more than willing to attack misinformation or pure opinion without factual basis. In fact, we need to do this in healthy discourse, it is called "challenging." It can get heated but if a poster comes onto this thread pushing biases, skewing or outright lies...they need to be challenged. I have gone after pro-Russian and MAGA drive bys just as vigorously.
I am not going to agree with a position just because a poster is Ukrainian or is pushing a pro-Ukrainian point, if it is based on misinformation or lies. "NATO warplanes escort Russian drones to strikes on Odessa" was an outright lie. If the poster who posted it felt insulted by my calling them out...well then they are insulted.
I have no problem with disagreeing, but if my opposition wraps themselves in the blanket of uninformed biased opinions, they are going to get called on it. For example, openly calling out Canada for supporting Russia in this war is twisting events at best but you have shown no restraint or consideration before making that accusation. Is that an insult to you? Or is it what I have seen happen this morning?  

I've mostly refrained from commenting on this topic because I no longer live or pay taxes in Canada, but all this pile-on is making me feel for our German friends who seem destined to face ritual bashings on this thread for not rerouting their entire budget to the AFU.
My personal feeling is that this movie is fairly sus. The filmmaker has a bit of a shady background. The topic is at best insensitive, especially given Canada's significant ethnic Ukrainian population (already 3.5% in the 2021 Census).
However.
The Canadian federal budget is getting up in the range of 500 billion dollars. This movie received something like 350 thousand dollars of funding for the arts, coming from a pool of money that both the federal government and Canadian cable TV providers pay into, some of which is granted to regional public broadcasters. One of those public broadcasters decided to invest in this movie, presumably after receiving a grant application, and perhaps not doing all of its due diligence. Or perhaps they did do their due diligence and decided nevertheless that this documentary might still provide something of interest to the kinds of viewers who tune in to watch Antiques Roadshow and Michael Palin and the Ontario provincial assembly question period. 
Ironically due to the Streisand effect this movie is now getting way more press than it probably ever would have if it had just done the festival circuit and then disappeared onto public access TV.
For sure, this is a political blunder - and it has since been acknowledged as such by all involved - but let's not pretend like a drop in the bucket of the Canadian federal budget going to a propaganda flick for the bad guys is anywhere near as problematic as literal billionaire media moguls pumping out the same nonsense and worse on major commercial networks, cable news channels and social media. It's important to keep things in perspective.