On 3/26/2022 8:10 AM, a425couple wrote:
--
>
> Did the war with Ukraine reveal just how militarily and economically
> weak Russia really is? ---
>
> His rather cynical conclusion is that arms budgets need to be protected,
> and if that means playing up the threat, then that’s what the generals
> and others will do, in order to protect their turf.
>
> Which appears to be what has happened here, both inside and outside Russia.
>
> Western military forces have a vested interest in making the threat seem
> credible, in order to keep the money taps open so they can buy lots of
> lovely shiny new toys.
>
> Russian military generals have a vested interest in doing something
> similar, also in order to keep the money taps open so they can buy lots
> of lovely shiny new toys (just not, you know, military ones - more along
> the lines of big mansions and luxury yachts).
>
> But that is only ever actually tested when the rubber actually hits the
> road.
>
> Which is what is happening in Ukraine.
>
> And what is happening when the rubber hits the road there is that the
> wheels are, in some cases quite literally, coming off. ---
>
another along same line

Willard Foxton
British Telly producer - covered 2 wars & got PTSDMar 11
What about the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war has defied expectations and
conventional wisdom about warfare?
As someone who has been in a couple of wars and is advising on reporting
it for the BBC, my hot take is that I really don’t really know what’s
happening in Ukraine on the Russian side.

There’s just not enough verifiable information. For what it’s worth I
doubt Putin knows either, behind the wall of yes men and lies; but
basically you are just not seeing anything from the Russian advances.

In terms of performance, topline is it’s very difficult to gauge what
level of mobilisation has occurred or what the EXACT given objectives
were, so it’s very hard to really analyse.

But, stepping out of the professional take for a second, my gut feeling
is I think in seeking to assert Russian strength, Putin has exposed key
Russian weaknesses, where they have a lot of exciting weapons on paper,
and not a lot of boring capacity to project that power, maintain
equipment or even crew it well. I mean we sort of knew this but it’s
much worse than even the most optimistic western analysts predicted.

Key parts of this:

Russia can’t do logistics for shit because of corruption

So - it looks like the Russian military was a lot worse than everyone
assumed, with predictable factors like low morale, poor and
overconfident leadership and lots of corruption, maybe even more than
the level of corruption Russians in the know suspected.

So for example, all the trucks tyres falling apart because they are
cheap Chinese copies of Russian tyres was something I think nobody expected.

The logistics problems they are suffering are very real. They don’t seem
to be able to get fuel, food or ammunition forward and must be running
short of heavy electric batteries too.

I think the airforce readiness rate, in terms of what hi-tech equipment
is working must be appalling. Zooming in and looking at the stores on
the planes and it’s all 500lb dumb bombs, so all the planes are
basically hitting like it’s WW2, making a lot of noise but little impact.

The last 2 weeks or so we haven’t seen any choppers or planes engaged by
Ukrainian missiles firing chaff or flares, which suggests they’ve run out.

But - they aren’t flying that much, and to be honest the most effective
way to set up a no fly zone seems to be to just leave it to the Russian
Air Force, who seem pretty incapable of mounting major operations anyway.

The whole western conversation about no fly zones seems to miss the fact
that most of the damage is being done by tube artillery and rocket barrages.

And the Russians are still going forward, albeit slowly. Ultimately if
Putin wants to take Kiev, he can, he just has to kill a lot of Russians,
a LOT of Ukrainians and level the city to do it.

Historically, I think the Winter War is the best comparison - shiny much
feared Russian army actual has to fight rather than parade and all the
weaknesses concealed by parades, sales brochures and useful idiots/Quora
fans come out. But obviously the Russians did eventually win that one….

Russian AAA is much, much weaker than anticipated

Almost every western analyst has been surprised by the fact Russian SAMs
and SHORAD aren’t completely dominating the sky. In particular the
surprising success of the low-speed Bayraktar drone seems to suggest
either the Russian missile brochures are completely bullshit, the radars
are much worse than anticipated or the operators are barely trained.

One of the persistent questions about western vs Russian weapons design
has been “why can the Russians build self propelled AAA systems much
better than we can?” and the answer seems to be, they can’t, they just
exist in a system where everyone happily lies about the results, tests
and effectiveness so they can sell this kit to despots in the Middle East.

This might be a purely tactical problem (eg the AAA is not deployed
properly because it’s tires have fallen off and the crew have run away)
but it’s definitely going to be hard to sell this stuff for a couple of
decades.

Even the most modern Russian tanks are much more vulnerable to missiles
than anyone suspected

The story re: Russian built armour in iraq getting humiliated has always
been “ah yes, armour in iraq/Syria got destroyed because the T72M was
the export version, the actual Russian, T72 with Refleks, T80/90 with
Kontakt5, Arena and Shtora are basically immune to missiles” but Ukraine
has shown that’s a complete nonsense and you now have Russian crews
welding “cope cages” on top of their tanks to try to stop Javelin & NLAW
(without any success it must be said).

In particular the Arena APS & Shtora jammers have been shown to be
near-worthless (in contrast with the Israeli trophy system, which seems
to work pretty well).

The other important thing to note is that tank technology has been shown
up as basically 30 years out of date. In the early 90s there were all
sorts of crazy next gen tank plans of which very few have manifested
because there has been no point and budgets were slashed. And that's in
the West. Its doubly more so for Russia, who only started serious new
development about 10 years ago meaning almost none of the new systems
are close to operational, yet alone being ready for widespread deployment.

So in some ways its not surprising that the infantry missiles that were
specifically designed to defeat current tanks....defeat current tanks,
because tanks haven't changed in ages. Its sort of a panzerfaust from
1945 is really good against a WW1 tank...because it is 30 years more
advanced.

207.8K views7.8K upvotes52 shares470 comments

Michael Barnard
· Wed
Very thoughtful. I had heard that Russian tires were failing due to poor
maintenance, but if you know the provenance of the tires, that could
explain things as well.

Burst tyre on army truck shows Russia failed to keep military kit
maintained, expert says

Robert Gallagher
· March 14
Willard. Well thank you for your very informative article on the issue a
Russian preparedness.

One thing I would like to inform you is that the history of the tank has
pretty much run its course, sort of like the history of the battleship.

As you know, battleships were made obsolete because of the adaptation of
aircraft carriers.

There are a lot of missiles that are capable of easily punching holes in
tanks, even tanks with armor that is thicker than your foot is long.

These missiles can easily blow the turret right off any tank.

The fact that these Russian tanks that have been hit by these missiles
are not burning for an entire day indicates that they do not have very
much ammunition inside of them.

The point I am making is that the days of invasions with armored tank
divisions are over.

Also, low level air support is pretty much a thing of the past now that
one soldier can take a shoulder held rocket launcher and shoot down the
most sophisticated jet fighter.

I am not really surprised that this Russian convoy it's not doing very
well. I am sure that the Russian soldiers probably feel like they're a
big fat target inside their vehicles. It also does not take very much
thinking to realize that if you were a Russian soldier you would
probably feel safer outside of the vehicle, and/or, sleeping in a tent
at night then inside of a vehicle that can be blown up at any moment.

So the point I am making is that this “armored horse” brigade is a
battle strategy that has become obsolete in modern day warfare, so to speak.

With the availability of these new high-speed, high impact weapons, the
tank and other ground vehicles are simply too slow to maneuver quick
enough to get out of harms way.

In a day of hypersonic weaponry, instant communications and rapid
deployment by high-speed aircraft one can no longer hide behind armor,
or old battle strategies, with obsolete or outdated equipment.

Things have changed a bit.

Erik Orlow
· March 16
Very interesting. I was wondering in light of this invasion if tanks
were becoming obsolete.

Robert Letourneux
· Thu
Very interesting post. 100 years after its invention we could be seeing
the end of the Age of the Tank.