How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Huba]

Double post

Edited January 18, 2023 by Huba

[Huba]

22 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

What the defense industry like or don't like is one thing, there is also such a thing as strategic national interests and for example France would never float that boat. 

The other thing would be that you are replacing one temporary item with another temporary item costing quite some overhead. Why not send the Abrams from stock to Ukraine  instead?. Lass hassle, same/better result as Ukraine also doesn't have to deal with the logistics which seem not to be worth it for the 200 challengers that exist.

If the West is going to send heavy AFVs, I'd say they better chose one and deliver a full service package to Ukraine - including training, logistics tail, etc. But I guess because of industry /national / geopolitical interests that won't happen.

I'd say that none of the tanks that would be potentially replaced by the M1s were "temporary", neither the M1s would have to be. As a platform M1 will be used for decades to come by the US, upgrading them and leaving in service would be a very viable option for any involved nation - and that's the part that EU industry would hate the most. If we were really to get serious about re-arming, this wouldn't be a problem as the M1s would go to the reserve and were replaced by new vehicles. A real win-win, as having common equipment with the biggest NATO nation would be a great asset in case you actually have to go to war. But it looks like nobody really believes that will happen and prefers to retain the status quo.
The costs would be there of course, no discussion, but there's no way to continue helping Ukraine without incurring them. For comparison, PL payed about $10M a pop for the M1A1FEPs - tanks were supposedly free, the cost being complete overhauls, transport, setting up the logistics and so on. IMO the moment US starts delivering M1s directly to Ukraine, everyone in the EU will just proceed to look the other way without making any meaningful contribution in this field.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Huba

[Huba]

I guess today will be another day of me spamming the forum like crazy, brace yourselves gentlemen.

So it looks like after yesterday Biden - Scholz call we might expect joint announcement about weapon deliveries. The thread below talks about it a bit more, but it looks like the Leopards will be set free.

Also, in an hour Putin is expected to deliver an "important speech". Let's see what happens, but announcement of further mobilization and perhaps other measures like closing borders are expected:

 

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, Lethaface said:

The issue with this (and other posts calling for countries to do away their tanks to Ukraine and get new ones) is: what are your tankers / mechanics etc going to do for the ~decade that it takes to get a new tank in service? Train with tanks from the museum?

 

Retrain them as drone operators?

 

[Butschi]

19 minutes ago, Huba said:

So it looks like after yesterday Biden - Scholz call we might expect joint announcement about weapon deliveries. The thread below talks about it a bit more, but it looks like the Leopards will be set free.

I wouldn't hold my breath. On German TV the opinions was that signals from the chancellor's office indicate we are not going to get an explicit announcement today.

[Huba]

1 minute ago, Butschi said:

I wouldn't hold my breath. On German TV the opinions was that signals from the chancellor's office indicate we are not going to get an explicit announcement today.

Oh dang  All right, I'm willing to wait till Friday then.

[Butschi]

1 minute ago, Huba said:

Oh dang  All right, I'm willing to wait till Friday then.

Speculating is fun, though, and who knows, maybe our news people are wrong. At least everyone seems to be certain that we will have a definite answer on Friday.

[Combatintman]

2 hours ago, Lethaface said:

The issue with this (and other posts calling for countries to do away their tanks to Ukraine and get new ones) is: what are your tankers / mechanics etc going to do for the ~decade that it takes to get a new tank in service? Train with tanks from the museum?

 

To be fair we do have rather a good one ...

Home - The Tank Museum

 

[Huba]

12 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

To be fair we do have rather a good one ...

Home - The Tank Museum

 

French one in Saumur is not too shabby either - Challengers and Leclercs can be send, both countries have enough toys to play with in the meantime

Edited January 18, 2023 by Huba

[paxromana]

8 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

To be fair we do have rather a good one ...

Home - The Tank Museum

 

So do the Germans ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Tank_Museum

... and the French ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musée_des_Blindés

... heck, even Australia does ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Armour_and_Artillery_Museum

 

[Lethaface]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

I'd say that none of the tanks that would be potentially replaced by the M1s were "temporary", neither the M1s would have to be. As a platform M1 will be used for decades to come by the US, upgrading them and leaving in service would be a very viable option for any involved nation - and that's the part that EU industry would hate the most. If we were really to get serious about re-arming, this wouldn't be a problem as the M1s would go to the reserve and were replaced by new vehicles. A real win-win, as having common equipment with the biggest NATO nation would be a great asset in case you actually have to go to war. But it looks like nobody really believes that will happen and prefers to retain the status quo.
The costs would be there of course, no discussion, but there's no way to continue helping Ukraine without incurring them. For comparison, PL payed about $10M a pop for the M1A1FEPs - tanks were supposedly free, the cost being complete overhauls, transport, setting up the logistics and so on. IMO the moment US starts delivering M1s directly to Ukraine, everyone in the EU will just proceed to look the other way without making any meaningful contribution in this field.

The original poster was proposing buying/leasing M1 Abrams to replace the challengers. Assuming that the Challengers have to go either way, i'll consider them 'temporary'. In the case you go for the 'Abrams switch' then, until a decision is made regarding what should replace it in the future, the replacement Abrams are also to be considered temporary.

So UK has to replace their tank arm (including training, logistics, ammo, etc etc) to Abrams and unless they stick with Abrams, another time in the not so distant future.
While Ukraine has to incorporate the Challenger tank AND probably will phase it out as well in the not too distant future. 

In my ears that sounds like throwing 3 stones to catch 1 bird.

Ukraine is going to need a move to a different tank platform anyway (unless they go for Oplot-M modernization /something of their own instead of western tanks). So might as well have Ukraine make the move to Abrams instead of UK, given that they seem to have a more urgent requirement for m as well. 

But indeed it's all speculation anyway. In an utopian world we would develop an EU tank where all participants share in production and training. 

[Butschi]

2 minutes ago, paxromana said:

So do the Germans ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Tank_Museum

I already imagine how BILD-Zeitung et al. would have a field day with that kind of news. On the other hand, some of their older readers would feel quite at home and anyway some of the old kit might even still work more reliably than the current stuff. 

[Lethaface]

22 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

To be fair we do have rather a good one ...

Home - The Tank Museum

 

I guess there's room for a 'Special Tank Service', featuring a motley crew of King Tigers, Jagdpanthers among other exotical AFVS and commanded by John Cleese. 

Probably would make Putin's envy of Great Britain even bigger given his affection for 'special' stuff.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Lethaface

[Huba]

We have one too, albeit not comparable to Bovington:

https://muzeumbronipancernej.pl/

Edited January 18, 2023 by Huba

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, Lethaface said:

What the defense industry like or don't like is one thing, there is also such a thing as strategic national interests and for example France would never float that boat. 

The other thing would be that you are replacing one temporary item with another temporary item costing quite some overhead. Why not send the Abrams from stock to Ukraine  instead?. Lass hassle, same/better result as Ukraine also doesn't have to deal with the logistics which seem not to be worth it for the 200 challengers that exist.

If the West is going to send heavy AFVs, I'd say they better chose one and deliver a full service package to Ukraine - including training, logistics tail, etc. But I guess because of industry /national / geopolitical interests that won't happen.

 

Quote

 

https://www.forces.net/news/land-vehicles/challenger-3-incoming-british-tank-hits-milestone-steel-cut-upgraded

 

 

 

The British tank program is in a weird place. They never really got any export sales except for Jordan. So their are a very small number of of them in use world wide. The British have about ~250 of them in service now. The current plan is to upgrade ~150 of them with a new turret that uses the same gun and ammo as the newest Abrams/Leopard models, or near enough, 120mm smoothbore with digital everything. The basic idea is that instead of going thru all these hoops to sort of, but not really standardize with the Abrams/Leopard industrial ecosystem. Maybe they should just buy either Abrams or Leopards. Now all of these issues apply to Ukraine in the long term. But Ukraine has a largish short term problem with the Russian Army. 

I think the basic idea is that the Challenger II fleet would be shipped to Ukraine with the expectation that it would be mostly expended in the process of winning this war, and in the long term their would just be one less tank model in NATO. Is this even vaguely acceptable politically? I have no idea. It seems to make a lot of sense from From a NATO industrial base and logistics compatibility perspective in the long term.

Edit: And for whatever combination of reasons the British seem more willing to do SOMETHING in the short term, as in right now. The right now part matters at the moment.

4 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Reportedly this was helicopter of State Emergency Service, more likely EC225. It crased in Brovary town. 9 persons were onboard - all dead. Because of helicopter fell on kindergarden and on the street also many victims on the land -  9 persons lost (among them three children), 29 were injured (among them 15 children). 

All high officials of Ministry of Internal Affairs are lost - minister Denys Monastyrskyi, first deputy of minister Yevheniy Yenin and state secretar of MIA Yuriy Lubkovych

Anyway this was wrong decision to put all chiefs in one helicopter

 According to witnesses, helicopter has flown on low altitude over the town and probably pilots didn't spot in time multy-storey building on their course in fog (this is srange - my house in 11 km from. Brovary and despite cloudy weather, I can't say that too dense fog was around). Then they sharply climbed up to avoid collision, but the helicopter lost control, stalled and crashed. But this is unconfirmed version in TG.

Other versions, which now are sharing are diversion and technical malfunction. It's knowingly, that former minister Avakov, who signed big contract with France and Eurocopter, bought not only new,but also used choppers, which were stored due to their technical problems

On the photo - kindergarden in fire after helicopter crash

That is an avoidable tragedy Ukraine didn't need. Sincerest sympathies to all the families. It does seem like most of the people who made the bad decisions involved were in the helicopter. That the entire upper level of the ministry was in one helicopter being one of the bad decisions in question. Can I recommend that Zelensky not get in any helicopter, EVER?

Edited January 18, 2023 by dan/california

[Peregrine]

17 minutes ago, Huba said:

French one in Saumur is not too shabby either - Challengers and Leclercs can be send, both countries have enough toys to play with in the meantime

This one is great. I would expect even your average non-tank person would enjoy it. Pretty much every tank of note. Can't climb on them though.

[The_MonkeyKing]

One of the most brilliant interviews(in term me learning new stuff) of the war: 
former head of RAF Intelligence Edward Stringer 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNepMICxRJM

To raise the best part: timestamp link https://youtu.be/SNepMICxRJM?t=2566
"Is it time to gift the entire British tank fleet to UKR?" (includes the whole mech force)

• TLDR or TLDW: Absolutely yes. One of the "best deals" in security strategy in a long while. 
• Strategically thinking MoDs exists to protect from acute threat to our way of live in the transatlantic area. The threat has revealed itself clearly, we do not have to wait on the goal line for it to come to us. We need to remove that threat and that threat will not come back in years. (combine this to the fact RUS is using up the super power heritage that is never coming back)
• British have old legacy equipment that was created for this job. We already saw the announcements of AS90 that he takes to mean that "We have now pretty much decided to get rid of those". 
• The counter sending the tanks is: "We have NATO commitments and need to defend ourselves and always be ready". He says that is what he would call "fallacy: No, sorry you cannot take that, it is the last one and somebody might want that." The task it was bought originally for is now, why would we need to keep it?
  Lets look who would really worry about giving the tanks?
  1. NATO: Stoltenberg is arguing for more aid and has not raided such concerns 
  2. What countries would be most worried about Brits losing their mech force? Those are the ones on the frontlines (Estonia, Poland...) and they are to most enthusiastic for these transfer for Ukraine. If they are saying this, we should be listening.
• This is an opportunity for Britain to get rid of (and replace) its indigenous, no longer produced or sold tank fleets. Time to join multinational programs?

 

[Splinty]

17 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

The original poster was proposing buying/leasing M1 Abrams to replace the challengers. Assuming that the Challengers have to go either way, i'll consider them 'temporary'. In the case you go for the 'Abrams switch' then, until a decision is made regarding what should replace it in the future, the replacement Abrams are also to be considered temporary.

So UK has to replace their tank arm (including training, logistics, ammo, etc etc) to Abrams and unless they stick with Abrams, another time in the not so distant future.
While Ukraine has to incorporate the Challenger tank AND probably will phase it out as well in the not too distant future. 

In my ears that sounds like throwing 3 stones to catch 1 bird.

Ukraine is going to need a move to a different tank platform anyway (unless they go for Oplot-M modernization /something of their own instead of western tanks). So might as well have Ukraine make the move to Abrams instead of UK, given that they seem to have a more urgent requirement for m as well. 

But indeed it's all speculation anyway. In an utopian world we would develop an EU tank where all participants share in production and training. 

The difficulty with Ukraine getting Abrams lies in the engine. Ukraine certainly can relatively easily incorporate armor with diesel engines fairly quickly. Learning to operate and support turbine engines is a whole different animal. Sending an Abrams back to Poland for repairs isn't really feasible for mobile warfare. 

[Lethaface]

2 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

The British tank program is in a weird place. They never really got any export sales except for Jordan. So their are a very small number of of them in use world wide. The British have about ~250 of them in service now. The current plan is to upgrade ~150 of them with a new turret that uses the same gun and ammo as the newest Abrams/Leopard models, or near enough, 120mm smoothbore with digital everything. The basic idea is that instead of going thru all these hoops to sort of, but not really standardize with the Abrams/Leopard industrial ecosystem. Maybe they should just buy either Abrams or Leopards. Now all of these issues apply to Ukraine in the long term. But Ukraine has a largish short term problem with the Russian Army. 

I think the basic idea is that the Challenger II fleet would be shipped to Ukraine with the expectation that it would be mostly expended in the process of winning this war, and in the long term their would just be one less tank model in NATO. Is this even vaguely acceptable politically? I have no idea. It seems to make a lot of sense from From a NATO industrial base and logistics compatibility perspective in the long term.

Oh I get the basic idea, economies of scale and standardization. But I see some practical concerns. Buying the Abrams out of the available stock and shipping them to Ukraine seems to give less pracitcal problems imo, compared to robbing the British tank arm of their service tanks and shipping them to Ukraine, while shipping the Abrams to UK and switching the whole tank arm including training/etc. 
But I'm repeating myself, guess I made my point but it's free to disagree or see things differently :).

  

[dan/california]

4 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

One of the most brilliant interviews(in term me learning new stuff) of the war: 
former head of RAF Intelligence Edward Stringer 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNepMICxRJM

To raise the best part: timestamp link https://youtu.be/SNepMICxRJM?t=2566
"Is it time to gift the entire British tank fleet to UKR?" (includes the whole mech force)

• TLDR or TLDW: Absolutely yes. One of the "best deals" in security strategy in a long while. 
• Strategically thinking MoDs exists to protect from acute threat to our way of live in the transatlantic area. The threat has revealed itself clearly, we do not have to wait on the goal line for it to come to us. We need to remove that threat and that threat will not come back in years. (combine this to the fact RUS is using up the super power heritage that is never coming back)
• British have old legacy equipment that was created for this job. We already saw the announcements of AS90 that he takes to mean that "We have now pretty much decided to get rid of those". 
• The counter sending the tanks is: "We have NATO commitments and need to defend ourselves and always be ready". He says that is what he would call "fallacy: No, sorry you cannot take that, it is the last one and somebody might want that." The task it was bought originally for is now, why would we need to keep it?
  Lets look who would really worry about giving the tanks?
  1. NATO: Stoltenberg is arguing for more aid and has not raided such concerns 
  2. What countries would be most worried about Brits losing their mech force? Those are the ones on the frontlines (Estonia, Poland...) and they are to most enthusiastic for these transfer for Ukraine. If they are saying this, we should be listening.
• This is an opportunity for Britain to get rid of (and replace) its indigenous, no longer produced or sold tank fleets. Time to join multinational programs?

 

Monkey king writes a much better summary than i do. 

[The_MonkeyKing]

2 minutes ago, Splinty said:

The difficulty with Ukraine getting Abrams lies in the engine. Ukraine certainly can relatively easily incorporate armor with diesel engines fairly quickly. Learning to operate and support turbine engines is a whole different animal. Sending an Abrams back to Poland for repairs isn't really feasible for mobile warfare. 

Ukrainians are operating old(and less old) soviet T-80s with turbines. As one person knowledgeable of the subject stated the Abrams turbine will be "easy mode" compared to these.

[Huba]

11 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Ukrainians are operating old(and less old) soviet T-80s with turbines. As one person knowledgeable of the subject stated the Abrams turbine will be "easy mode" compared to these.

Training Ukrainians to use Patriot was reportedly compressed to two months. It might mean that they stared well in advance (but the same might be possible with turbine mechanics, can't it? ), but more realistically it means permanent on-call support of NATO specialists, and probably some "contractors" or dual citizenship people on the ground in support. Nobody will be advertising that, but rumors are that this is already happening with some systems.

19 minutes ago, Peregrine said:

This one is great. I would expect even your average non-tank person would enjoy it. Pretty much every tank of note. Can't climb on them though.

I was most impressed by the Conqueror, it was the most imposing and you could get tired just by walking past it, it was so wide. The whole museum is a must see to anyone interested in the subject, and it's a very nice TGV ride from Paris too.
 

And 200 more MRAPs from Canuckistan. I stopped counting that a long time ago, but I'm sure that at least 2K armored cars were not delivered there.

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by Huba

[Lethaface]

9 minutes ago, Splinty said:

The difficulty with Ukraine getting Abrams lies in the engine. Ukraine certainly can relatively easily incorporate armor with diesel engines fairly quickly. Learning to operate and support turbine engines is a whole different animal. Sending an Abrams back to Poland for repairs isn't really feasible for mobile warfare. 

That could be an argument indeed. 
However AFAIK they already do repairs on howitzers etc in Poland. Plus Poland borders Ukraine so if a repair facility would be located in Western Ukraine the distance to the front would be greater than the extra distance to Poland anyway. Unless one would locate such a facility in western Poland.
Also I imagine the 'field repair', beyond topping of oil and the likes of modern tank engines is to swap out the whole engine pack and send it back to a factory/workplace? 

[Lethaface]

8 minutes ago, Huba said:

Training Ukrainians to use Patriot was reportedly compressed to two months. It might mean that they stared well in advance (but the same might be possible with turbine mechanics, can't it? ), but more realistically it means permanent on-call support of NATO specialists, and probably some "contractors" or dual citizenship people on the ground in support. Nobody will be advertising that, but rumors are that this is already happening with some systems.

I think you can safely assume that as a fact.

[Huba]

5 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

However AFAIK they already do repairs on howitzers etc in Poland. Plus Poland borders Ukraine so if a repair facility would be located in Western Ukraine the distance to the front would be greater than the extra distance to Poland anyway. Unless one would locate such a facility in western Poland.

I was wondering about that too. If you have to load the bloody thing on a train or a flatbed, does moving it 800km instead of 500 make that much of a difference? It literally is a few hours, maybe half a day more in total.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Huba