t90 vs Abrams(test1: open field,armour)

[BTR]

So my understanding is that the 25% numbers are blown turrets, not just catastrophic loss?

 

All the tanks stated to be lost are losses beyond repairs. Out of those losses, 24% are ammo explosions. 

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Do you have the breakdown for the other losses?   Iraq/Kuwait is still filled with T-72 wrecks, and I'll be darned if I didn't see most of them entirely decapitated.  

 

Also even if it was a 25% chance of catastrophic explosion, that's still really high for what might be on other tanks merely a mission kill (RPG strikes especially).  

[BTR]

There is quite a detailed breakdown for all losses of 08/08/08 in the link I provided. It's all in Russian, but google might be able to help that. 

[VladimirTarasov]

About the T-80 being hit by RPG-7 22 times, I honestly think that is bullcrap.... Unless most rounds hit the thickest turret parts ect.. ect.. It sounds very fake. But I will tell you that what tankers went through in Chechnya is very sad (1st chechen war) ERA blocks not put on, Familiarization of plans was bad. Lacked maps. Lacked proper support, and worst of all went into a total urban environment where terrorists would hide in basements and rooftops and cluster RPG from all directions. Russian tankers are brave (sorry some Russkii opinion) if you ask me. Where as Americans had full support full training better experience (longer service but of course these are good things) overall they were superior to Russian tankers of that time, Still is in some areas. 

Quick what would you do for people on this forum, Imagine you are a tank commander and your cannon wont depress low enough to take out a RPG squad, You are being bombarded by shells, Your infantry support cant come to you because they're experiencing the same problems. You're 12.7 HMG is destroyed, You're air support wont come in, Artillery support is too risky... That was hell.

 

2nd Chechen war came along with extremely better results, Tanks were used in full support, Better training, Maps, Air support fully available. This led to about 2-10 tanks lost in whole war (from memory possible for more)

Edited April 16, 2015 by VladimirTarasov

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

 

 

There is quite a detailed breakdown for all losses of 08/08/08 in the link I provided. It's all in Russian, but google might be able to help that. 

 

Nah.  I'm now just a casual observer of military affairs, sometimes Guardsman and talker of crap not motivated enough to try to figure out Googusian.  Assumed if you'd gone through it you had the breakdown at a glance.

 

 

 

About the T-80 being hit by RPG-7 22 times, I honestly think that is bullcrap.... Unless most rounds hit the thickest turret parts ect.. ect.. It sounds very fake

 

I wouldn't rule it out.  I knew someone who's M1 took something like 19 RPG-7 strikes in a fire fight.  With the older insurgent handy type warheads, it's not often the really good warheads* or fired at the right spots.

 

 

 

 But I will tell you that what tankers went through in Chechnya is very sad (1st chechen war) ERA blocks not put on, Familiarization of plans was bad. Lacked maps. Lacked proper support, and worst of all went into a total urban environment where terrorists would hide in basements and rooftops and cluster RPG from all directions.

 

Worse than that.  You missed the fact the basic plan was stupid to put it mildly, a total lack of meaningful command and control, and a fundamental abject lack of understanding of what was inside Grozny.  Also the whole isolation plan was really well designed to deal with a force of conventional peer type enemies but totally neglected many of the actual logistical trails used by the Chechens in the city.

 

Further I think the annual training plans for the units involved had something like six total hours of urban combat worked in. While a lack of urban focus is not unexpected, it's a bit mind boggling considering many of the better lessons for operating in urban environment came from the Soviet army circa 1945 (which makes the resemblance of the Russian tactics in 1999-2000 to that earlier time somewhat darkly humorous).  

 

The Russian soldier may be brave, but historically his life has been sold cheaply for want of proper preparation, or due care for his well being.  And bravery takes a distant place to logistics, training, and planning in war.

 

 

 

Where as Americans had full support full training better experience (longer service but of course these are good things) overall they were superior to Russian tankers of that time, Still is in some areas. 

 

That, and the Thunderrun was an unconventional, but fairly well planned out mission.  It had proper recon, it was based on a known enemy, and used terrain that allowed for armored forces to mass fires and effects.  Contrasted to the fighting in Fallujah (which the insurgents within indeed tried very hard to borrow from Grozny 1994), there was not much of a difference in forces, but there was an understanding of a much more determined opposition, and much less speed friendly terrain.  It'd be a mistake to simply assume better trained Russian tankers would have mattered terribly much if the plan still boiled down to a show of force parade with a terribly executed cordon around the city.

 

 

 

Quick what would you do for people on this forum, Imagine you are a tank commander and your cannon wont depress low enough to take out a RPG squad, 

 

HEAT round close as we can get it, dump smoke, back the tank up.  Or more practically in an urban fight, never ever lead with an AFV.  Worked in Aachen 44, Berlin 45, Hue 68, and Fallujah 04.  Baghdad 2003 was an exception simply because it was a fight on a highway+right of way, which was significantly more room and negated some of the problems with taking armor into a city.  

 

*As a tangent, one of my instructors at ABOLC had operated in an AO in Iraq in which the insurgents had gotten their mitts on a whole mess of the anti-personnel RPGs.  Not being savvy to the reality that they were anything but odd looking AT rockets, many were expended against tanks.  The total inefficiency of the rockets against anything with armor led to the belief that the US somehow had "force shields" on some tanks that stopped rockets in that particular corner of Iraq**.

 

**As a tangent to the tangents, the Iraqis often believed we had capabilities that frankly were science fiction movie fodder, ranging from believing our dark glasses allowed us to see through clothes, to having dug an underground rail system to evacuate dead US soldiers from Baghdad to Turkey or something.  They also had difficulty understanding many American action movies were fiction, so believing we had Terminator type robot soldiers and expecting SOF units to act like Rambo were not uncommon either.

[Battlefront.com]

Traditionally Russia (Soviet Union) has had excellent strategic level planning, very good operational planning, and mediocre/poor tactical execution backed by decent to excellent hardware. When everything was well balanced in relation to the enemy and conditions, it was hard to beat in the strategic or operational sense. One or two things could go wrong and ultimate victory, even it a bit more expensive than planned, was more likely to happen than not. But when things were out of balance, disaster usually followed.

The operation in Grozny (1st Chechen War) was an example of almost everything being out of balance. On the planning side, strategic, operational, and tactical all sucked. On the logistics side, strategic, operational, and tactical all sucked. Leadership on the spot sucked at all levels more than it didn't. Equipment was the least of Russia's problems for that engagement, though of course its shortcomings did not help overcome all the massive problems elsewhere. There's no possible way it could have.

The bottom line is Russia was not prepared to fight that particular enemy in that particular place at that particular time in the way it did. And that's why it lost.

The US has often made up for bad strategic and operational planning because everything else is generally good to excellent. At least for a period of time, after which the strategic planning shortcomings tend to undermine long term victory.

Steve

[Apocal]

About the T-80 being hit by RPG-7 22 times, I honestly think that is bullcrap.... Unless most rounds hit the thickest turret parts ect.. ect.. It sounds very fake.

 

Hit over twenty times, only penetrated around a dozen. HEAT's after-armor effects are pretty limited. If it doesn't touch off ammo, directly intersect a crewman's vital organs or start a fire, there isn't much else to it.

[John Kettler]

Apocal,

There are several Russian tanker accounts at IRemeber.ru which talk about what happens when a Panzerfaust hit a buttoned tank and didn't blow up the ammo. The tank looks okay, and only on close inspection can the kopeck sized hole in the armor be seen. But no one answers the frinedly knock. The blast pressure has killed the crew, with not a scratch on the men. The accounts say the way to avoid this fate was to crack the hatches, so the blast had a safe outlet. Given this alone, and disregarding the searing heat from the HEAT, as it were, I find your argument rather dubious, and it certainly woul;dn't give me warm fuzzies were I told it before being sent into battle. I'll let one of our British CMers handle the proper dialogue for that situation.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Apocal]

Apocal,

There are several Russian tanker accounts at IRemeber.ru which talk about what happens when a Panzerfaust hit a buttoned tank and didn't blow up the ammo. The tank looks okay, and only on close inspection can the kopeck sized hole in the armor be seen. But no one answers the frinedly knock. The blast pressure has killed the crew, with not a scratch on the men. The accounts say the way to avoid this fate was to crack the hatches, so the blast had a safe outlet. Given this alone, and disregarding the searing heat from the HEAT, as it were, I find your argument rather dubious, and it certainly woul;dn't give me warm fuzzies were I told it before being sent into battle.

 

Briefly skimming the IRemember.ru English language memoirs for mentions of panzerfausts:

"In one of the German towns one such thing was launched at my tank at a range of about thirty meters. Luckily, it only broke an idle wheel off that caused the track go off. The tank spun in its place, and only the radio operator was wounded by armor fragments."

 

Meanwhile, taken from the Army Times article, "'Something' Felled An Abrams Tank In Iraq - But What?"

"The "something" continued into the crew compartment, where it passed through the gunner's seatback, grazed the kidney area of the gunner's flak jacket and finally came to rest after boring a hole 1-1/2 to 2 inches deep in the hull on the far side of the tank.

 

As it passed through the interior, it hit enough critical components to knock the tank out of action.

 

...

 

Nevertheless, the Abrams continues its record of providing extraordinary crew protection. The four-man crew suffered only minor injuries in the attack. The tank commander received "minor shrapnel wounds to the legs and arms and the gunner got some in his arm" as a result of the attack, according to the report."

[Alpharius]

The funny sing is that T-90 was the OP tank in the demo. 

P.S. necroposting for the god of necroposting.

[Stagler]

The funny sing is that T-90 was the OP tank in the demo. 

P.S. necroposting for the god of necroposting.

 

What, the T-90AM?

Much time has passed since the heady days of the demo my friend.