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They really should have put the Canyonero song over this.
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Jan 14, 2023 19:34
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Kraftwerk posted:If a bunch of challengers show up at any battle I imagine that one specific battle would be a massive propaganda victory for Ukraine. Demonstrating they can use it responsibly and win on a tactical level then opens up the doors for a large shipment of leopards or Abrams. You not going to be seeing anything like that with Challenger tanks, at least they shouldn't be used that way. Out all the MBTs NATO has to offer Challengers are the least suited for urban combat or medium range engagements due their large size and weight; Their main gimmick is they have some of the longest engagement capabilities out of any tank credited chiefly to their rifled cannon (Leopard and Abrams use smoothbore cannons) which where they really shine. Long range combat.
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Jan 14, 2023 20:05
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All this talk of MBTs and poo poo doesn't really matter. The poster that said that 12 tanks won't do much is spot on. Unless the OSINT guys are off by orders of magnitude, they have the tanks they need. The question is whether they have enough Russian ammunition for all those tanks. If they don't then they to rely on ammo shipments from abroad then they need to change out their tank fleet wholesale and have the Americans ship them all the ammunition. 12 tanks, 60 tanks, or 100 tanks in that scenario is peanuts if the ammunition situation is chronic. More to the point, is more tanks going to actually help? Western MBTs have more bells and whistles and have better protection but a tank is a tank. The real question is how long will it take for the Ukrainians to increase the number of high capability units that can actually make use of all of these tanks and infantry tracks that can change this from a war of grinding attrition to one of movement where they can expel the Russians without grinding for every street corner. If the answer is not in the near future then sending Challengers or Abrams or Leopards or what have you is pointless. The West is better off just building and supplying them with infinite artillery systems and drones and helping them win the grinding war instead. Like what is happening in Bakhmut, Soledar, and Kremminia won't be affected by a handful of western MBTs. Another 200 artillery platforms with enough ammunition to keep them going 24/7 and plaster the Russian infantry and artillery is worth much more in that scenario.
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Jan 14, 2023 20:32
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Explain how the delivery of tanks, no matter how insignificant, negatively affects the deliveries of other, more important systems. Anyway, all these arguments are tired and misleading. They don't have experienced units to use these tanks -> yeah, they need these tanks to start training said units 12 tanks is very little -> nobody is saying 12 tanks is the end of it. They need ammunition more than tanks -> European logistics aren't so overwhelmed that sending item A would preclude sending item B also, the only limiting factor is political will. Furthermore, Ukraine itself doesn't share the belief that they would be undone by another piece of kit in their inventory, quite the opposite as can be seen from their lobbying for the MBTs to be sent. Had Western countries started trickling in MBTs 6 months ago, Ukraine today would be in possession of a functional Western armoured force. Same goes for fighter jets. Instead here we are clutching pearls that Ukraine isn't ready to receive this form of aid because we've deliberately hindered said readiness to receive it through navel gazing obstinate behaviour. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 20:42
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MikeC posted:All this talk of MBTs and poo poo doesn't really matter. The poster that said that 12 tanks won't do much is spot on. Unless the OSINT guys are off by orders of magnitude, they have the tanks they need. The question is whether they have enough Russian ammunition for all those tanks. If they don't then they to rely on ammo shipments from abroad then they need to change out their tank fleet wholesale and have the Americans ship them all the ammunition. 12 tanks, 60 tanks, or 100 tanks in that scenario is peanuts if the ammunition situation is chronic. More to the point, is more tanks going to actually help? Western MBTs have more bells and whistles and have better protection but a tank is a tank. The real question is how long will it take for the Ukrainians to increase the number of high capability units that can actually make use of all of these tanks and infantry tracks that can change this from a war of grinding attrition to one of movement where they can expel the Russians without grinding for every street corner. If the answer is not in the near future then sending Challengers or Abrams or Leopards or what have you is pointless. The West is better off just building and supplying them with infinite artillery systems and drones and helping them win the grinding war instead. All I can think is that Ukraine has been asking for tanks like crazy ever since the war began. So I think they must feel like western tanks will make a difference.
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Jan 14, 2023 20:45
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I'd assume the hopes are longer term for Ukraine. Break the seal on the idea of giving Ukraine western tanks so that it can ramp up and eventually Ukraine can replace its lovely old soviet tanks with soviet ammo with western tanks supplied by western ammo/parts. The west only has so many former soviet nations with old soviet ammo and parts stocks, for the long term Ukraine really want to slowly switch over to NATO standards.
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Jan 14, 2023 20:50
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Baronjutter posted:I'd assume the hopes are longer term for Ukraine. Break the seal on the idea of giving Ukraine western tanks so that it can ramp up and eventually Ukraine can replace its lovely old soviet tanks with soviet ammo with western tanks supplied by western ammo/parts. The west only has so many former soviet nations with old soviet ammo and parts stocks, for the long term Ukraine really want to slowly switch over to NATO standards. This is my thinking as well, in the immediate term it doesn't really matter much at all but it makes good press, headlines, etc. In the future, I'm sure Ukraine will be well equipped with more modern tanks, IFVs, etc. or whatever, that's great news and that will be significant.
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Jan 14, 2023 21:52
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MikeC posted:More to the point, is more tanks going to actually help? The Ukrainians seem to think so, one would assume they know their own requirements better than we do.
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Jan 14, 2023 21:56
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Ukraine has a lot of troops and comparatively little armor, so yes, I imagine more tanks will help. Ukraine certainly seems to think so.
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Jan 14, 2023 22:13
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Back Hack posted:You not going to be seeing anything like that with Challenger tanks, at least they shouldn't be used that way. Out all the MBTs NATO has to offer Challengers are the least suited for urban combat or medium range engagements due their large size and weight; Their main gimmick is they have some of the longest engagement capabilities out of any tank credited chiefly to their rifled cannon (Leopard and Abrams use smoothbore cannons) which where they really shine. Long range combat. That rifled cannon does allow for them to conduct obstacle reduction more effectively, though, due to using HEP rounds (high explosive plastique). The rifling spins the round, which causes the plastic explosive to expand on impact a bit more. This is useful for things such as knocking larger holes in concrete walls, destroying bunkers, etc. Okay, so let's talk about the perpetual negative posting about low numbers of MBTs. In product development there's a concept called MVP: Minimum Viable Product. The word "minimum" often gets too much attention, but the idea is to build (and thus pay for) the minimum functionality that your end users will find useful before investing more money into the product. Once your users have the product, invest in the things they want based on how they're using it. The reason for sending small numbers of anything initially isn't tactics but logistics. Many posters and commentators correctly point out that getting the logistics infrastructure to support hundreds of Western tanks is going to be really freaking hard. They're right: it will be. So don't try to build that logistics capability Day 1. Instead, figure out how to do it for a small number of platforms. Say, twelve of them. Then, as that capability gets sorted out, you can start sending larger numbers of them. Here's a brief list of things off the top of one old tanker's head I'd want to sort out with twelve tanks before I had to solve it for twelve-hundred tanks:
These are just a few things, and all of them are easier to solve if you're only dealing with a handful of vehicles. But if you solve them now, and think about scale while solving them, then you can bring on more. Think of incorporating foreign weapons as a metabolism problem. How quickly can you integrate these systems into your existing--and growing--army? Sometimes you need to "go slow to go fast", and taking on relatively small numbers to start is a good way of doing that.
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Jan 14, 2023 22:15
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The Challenger seems like not the best western tank to give to Ukraine simply because there are so few of them. Like Ukraine is getting 12 at first but how many can they realistically expect to get in the future? The UK only has like 220+ of them and I doubt they are going to give them all to Ukraine. I'm sure that a lot of the training on them can transfer over to any other western tank but it still seems like a waste of time to train them on tanks that they will never have in any real quantity.
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Jan 14, 2023 22:54
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Charliegrs posted:The Challenger seems like not the best western tank to give to Ukraine simply because there are so few of them. Like Ukraine is getting 12 at first but how many can they realistically expect to get in the future? The UK only has like 220+ of them and I doubt they are going to give them all to Ukraine. I'm sure that a lot of the training on them can transfer over to any other western tank but it still seems like a waste of time to train them on tanks that they will never have in any real quantity. But it's also not very likely that Great Britain, an island nation with nukes and no resources worth fighting over, will actually need their tanks.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:01
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Charliegrs posted:The Challenger seems like not the best western tank to give to Ukraine simply because there are so few of them. Correct. Leopard 2 is a better candidate for this reason - it's not unrealistic that hundreds of Leo's could be donated to Ukraine eventually. But it requires more coordination between users to get done. Most are members of NATO and/or EU so it shouldn't be impassable obstacle, but coordination always takes some time.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:03
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Zudgemud posted:But it's also not very likely that Great Britain, an island nation with nukes and no resources worth fighting over, will actually need their tanks. Tony Blair is still young enough to make a comeback.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:04
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Nenonen posted:Tony Blair is still young enough to make a comeback. Are we arguing here that Tony Blais is a resource to be fought over? Because  , in any case it's probably for the good of the universe if GB donates all their tanks to Ukraine before someone like Blair can come back and "need" them. 
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Jan 14, 2023 23:11
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I think the main value of Challengers is political, in that UK can just send them and be done with it, and then the Scholzes of this world have to stammer out something about Challengers being defensive MBTs or whatever else is going tobe the stumbling turn of phrase for that day. Ukrainians will be more than happy with that alone.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:13
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steinrokkan posted:They don't have experienced units to use My interpretation of NATO strategy is to slowly boil the frog on Putin, slowly ramping up the 'natoness' of the arms and support they are giving to Ukraine to avoid escalating into a nuclear war. But with this, they will also suddenly ramp up capabilities so that Ukraine doesn't start losing, I assume the risk of nuclear war is not so bad as the risk of Russia winning the war. The timing of the increased anti-air resources seems to fit this strategy. The timing of tanks and ifvs does too, since if Ukraine is to do an offensive they would be a big help. Though this does reveal a bit of a weakness in the strategy in that there are going to be delays that you generally don't want. The offensive might get delayed while the armour is being integrated. IMHO as soon as Ukraine has a serious problem that can only be solved by air power, NATO countries will start sending planes.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:29
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I also wonder to what extent the figures are accurate. If you publicly say “I am giving Ukraine 12 MBT’s” then Russia can’t really flip its poo poo over this salami slice. And if you actually give them 60, Russia might knock out 13 of them before they start suspecting you actually gave more than 12, and even then they’d need to identify even more to be 100% sure. This gives Ukraine a head start. Russia might claim to have killed 18 himars and we say “what liars, there are only 12 in Ukraine” but maybe the USA secretly shipped 40 of them? There’s no real way to know for sure.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:39
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The Great Game never ended; Britain has had a vested interest in loving with Russia and vice versa for well over a century, to the point where it's force of habit as much as anything. Giving Ukraine a bunch of its current MBT lets the UK put some very prominent new pieces on the board that can cause Russia harm for relatively little cost, as well as encouraging its allies to follow suit. The ultimate thinking is "how hard can we smash Russia's armed forces without suffering any losses ourselves or triggering a nuclear response?", and since Ukraine wants tanks, why not give them some? (Especially if, being cynical, there's a good chance that those Challengers were going to be mothballed because of the rickety state of the UK economy.)
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Jan 14, 2023 23:40
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Deltasquid posted:I also wonder to what extent the figures are accurate. If you publicly say “I am giving Ukraine 12 MBT’s” then Russia can’t really flip its poo poo over this salami slice. And if you actually give them 60, Russia might knock out 13 of them before they start suspecting you actually gave more than 12, and even then they’d need to identify even more to be 100% sure. This gives Ukraine a head start. I mean, the figures can't be accurate in the first place, because many countries sending help, like Italy, just don't tell what they're sending, so their stuff is often only identified after the fact. Just looking at stuff like the PzH2000, you have several countries (Lithuania, Germany) supplying them, repairing them and therefore there are always some going both ways. If Germany says they send X, but actually it was Y, you'd never know because you have no guarantee that e.g. maybe Lithuania didn't mix some of theirs in to the stream for specific cases where the depot in Lithuania couldn't solve the issue, and this would make outside observation only give you wrong numbers. Another reason why Leo-2s would be a better choice than Challengers, because if multiple countries start sending their Leos in, Russia would need some actual wizards to find out how many are actually going into Ukraine. How many countries make Challengers, on the other hand? Right. Far harder to obfuscate numbers if they are all come from the same source.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:53
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Ukraine getting tanks was an inevitability, not something up in the air. It was simply a question of how long it would take, what would cause people to start giving them tanks and who would take the first step imo.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:58
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Deteriorata posted:In and of itself, no. The point is it break the ice and shame others into sending Leopards or Abrams.
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Jan 15, 2023 00:09
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Deltasquid posted:I also wonder to what extent the figures are accurate. If you publicly say “I am giving Ukraine 12 MBT’s” then Russia can’t really flip its poo poo over this salami slice. And if you actually give them 60, Russia might knock out 13 of them before they start suspecting you actually gave more than 12, and even then they’d need to identify even more to be 100% sure. This gives Ukraine a head start. We can be pretty sure bc pics or video of equipment losses tends to end up on Telegram for the obvious reason that it's war propaganda's bread and butter.
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Jan 15, 2023 00:29
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Confirmed as 14 Challengers and ~30 AS-90 self propelled artillery.
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Jan 15, 2023 00:32
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Charliegrs posted:They really should have put the Canyonero song over this. https://twitter.com/allwrongthink/status/1613876576986308609?s=20&t=aQ2mCbZ2ZeXG6-jWoa0tmg
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Jan 15, 2023 00:50
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Deltasquid posted:I also wonder to what extent the figures are accurate. If you publicly say “I am giving Ukraine 12 MBT’s” then Russia can’t really flip its poo poo over this salami slice. And if you actually give them 60, Russia might knock out 13 of them before they start suspecting you actually gave more than 12, and even then they’d need to identify even more to be 100% sure. This gives Ukraine a head start. There's not that many ways to hide the transfer of government property that cost several millions of pounds per unit, weigh over 60 tons and are as big as a small house. And which there are just a couple hundred of. Western governments are supposed to be accountable, so they can't just mysteriously lose the tanks into a black hole any more than Rishi Sunak can sell his office Bentley and pocket the money. Someone will inevitably find it out. But even before that happens, the transfer of the tanks is a major logistical operation which won't be missed by Russia's spies nor the public. There's just no point in trying to pretend when social media will instantaneously catch you. And the last point is that Britain is the sole user of the tank (besides Oman, hehe) and there aren't enough of them to make a difference without seriously downgrading the British army. It still is a valuable donation, but there will never be hundreds of Challengers in Ukraine because there only barely are hundreds of them in existence.
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Jan 15, 2023 01:50
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fuctifino posted:Tanks, but not soldiers as your post implied My post didn't infer anything, the UK government themselves describe it as such. Training crews and giving the tanks is deploying a squadron. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-accelerates-ukraine-support-ahead-of-anniversary-of-putins-war I think Australia should do similar with their stock of Abrams.
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Jan 15, 2023 02:08
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your post was fine but the wording was ambiguous and made it sound like potentially a *crewed* squadron of tanks was being sent to Ukraine
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Jan 15, 2023 02:18
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Cicero posted:Ukraine has a lot of troops and comparatively little armor, so yes, I imagine more tanks will help. Ukraine certainly seems to think so. A single tank properly defensively emplaced (hull down, in revetment for example) with IR and infantry support is going to greatly increase the defensive firepower of an entrenched defensive position. HESH projectiles are effective against buildings and light vehicles (and one would assume massed infantry assault), and it has a chain gun and a machine gun as well, with option for a secondary anti-infantry kit that includes a 40mm grenade launcher. Tanks also offer cover in offensive or defensive contexts with their bulk and armor. They would be a magnet for an airstrike on an entrenched position but it seems that the air war is limited to NOE duck and cover for both sides due to SAM efficacy. I am curious to know if anyone has info on Ukrainian tank losses and whether ATGMs have been deployed effectively by Russian soldiers. Understandable if this information is deliberately suppressed.
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Jan 15, 2023 04:23
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Russia has very good AT. Ukraine has, generally, some higher quality AT systems, but Russia's are plenty effective as well. Within a matter of months Russians adapted by simply staying outside of the range of Ukrainian AT systems as much as humanly possible. Conversely Russia has cannon-launched ATGMs that Ukraine was finding difficult to work around because they were outranging Ukrainian AT systems by ~1km. Latest phase of how Russian tanks are used is increasingly that... they aren't. They're still required for offensive actions to some extent and they're certainly still around, but Ukraine has been destroying everything that they can find with PGMs (particularly the guided 155m shells, which have apparently become their go to way of dealing with Russian armor) because 1) they have them and they work and 2) requires minimal exposure of Ukrainian forces to enemy fire compared to every other available way of destroying tanks. You can see evidence of Russia using tanks less over the last month around Bakhmut and Soledar where Russia is using almost exclusively infantry. Supposedly this is largely because of the efficacy of excalibur rounds, though I also wonder if it doesn't reflect at least some degree of scarcity of vehicles as well. A couple of months ago Ukraine was churning out extremely long range drone footage of Russian tanks taking direct artillery hits and that was promptly followed up by more large shipments of excalibur rounds, but that footage has, for some reason, slowed down. (Unknown Tank category on Oryx's list has a ton of these strikes). As an aside, Oryx's count of Ukrainian losses was within ~10% of the Russian equivalent's counting of Ukrainian losses last time I cross referenced the two, so I'd defer to their count for estimation of Ukrainian tank losses. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 04:35
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Huggybear posted:I am curious to know if anyone has info on Ukrainian tank losses and whether ATGMs have been deployed effectively by Russian soldiers. Understandable if this information is deliberately suppressed. https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html Oryx has documented loss of 264 tanks, undoubtedly way below the real number due to OPSEC. Hard to know what % of losses should be attributed to ATGMs, but Russia has plenty of tandem warhead stuff going on, and I think Kornet has a top attack variant even, if unlikely as ubiquitous as Javelin.
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Jan 15, 2023 04:54
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People keep suggesting the idea that the slow pace of Western shipment of heavy equipment is because of a deliberate boil-the-frog strategy, but it seems to me like it's just as likely that to begin with the West just plain wasn't certain if Kyiv was going to stand as an independent nation, and afterwards wasn't certain that heavier equipment would actually make a difference or if shipping stuff over just meant tipping their poo poo into a black hole of destruction with no appreciable gain. After THAT point it likely became a matter of working up the internal political will to act and getting the generals to look into how to actually make the logistics of it all work. Governments take a while to make up their minds and then act, and tend to be reluctant to be too proactive, news at ten. Keep in mind one of the paradoxes of the Ukrainian War is that Ukraine's very need for weapons showcases why it's a bad idea for European nations to be underarmed and might make them reluctant to send more (especially given that a lot of them brought into the peace dividend and weren't heavily armed to begin with anyways). Yeah, sure, "We fight them in Ukraine so we don't have to fight them over here," but from the perspective of a national government it's still uncomfortable to strip out of your armor and hand it off to some other guy to fight while you twiddle your thumbs in your skivvies waiting for replacements at some undetermined later point, even if it does make sense. Especially if you've got an internal political faction who's more than ready to yell at you for wasting taxpayer money and/or stripping your nation of its defenses.
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Jan 15, 2023 06:40
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https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1613756753430069249 Wouldn't it make more sense to wait until the rest of their territory is retaken?
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Jan 15, 2023 06:59
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Willo567 posted:https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1613756753430069249 I figure it makes more sense to threaten all potential areas of reconquest you can and not leave something off the table until it's up in the "correct order" Forces russia to spread their defense even thinner
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Jan 15, 2023 07:09
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Staluigi posted:I figure it makes more sense to threaten all potential areas of reconquest you can and not leave something off the table until it's up in the "correct order" Do you think his thoughts actually represent what Ukraine plans on doing next, or what he wants to do?
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Jan 15, 2023 07:29
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Willo567 posted:Wouldn't it make more sense to wait until the rest of their territory is retaken? Could be a political decision as well. There may be certain countries that are fine helping Ukraine push Russia back to pre-February borders, but might not be as supporting regarding taking back Crimea. And just talking out of my rear end here, but Russia might be more sensitive about losing Crimea than the other recent regions? Threatening it might get Russia to do something even dumber than usual.
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Jan 15, 2023 11:12
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Willo567 posted:Do you think his thoughts actually represent what Ukraine plans on doing next, or what he wants to do? It’s literally a random guy.
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Jan 15, 2023 13:21
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cinci zoo sniper posted:It’s literally a random guy. It's a reserved colonel in the AFU
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Jan 15, 2023 13:25
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Willo567 posted:It's a reserved colonel in the AFU Yeah, it’s literally a random guy.
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Jan 15, 2023 13:27
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Willo567 posted:Do you think his thoughts actually represent what Ukraine plans on doing next, or what he wants to do? Most likely: it's some rando's opinion Less likely: it's propaganda to help force russia to spread their defenses over a wide front Least likely: it's the unvarnished truth of ukranian battle planning
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