Modelling armour in Ukraine crisis

Ha! Already had that appointment a couple times. I can tell you for fact they are no fun to wake up in the middle of! :grimacing:

:beer:

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I made the mistake of looking at the monitor once. Interesting view. My real gripe was never the procedure itself, but the prep work the night before.
Ken

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No lie!

:beer:

Yes indeed. Thank goodness Iā€™m good for several years until the next oneā€¦ :toilet:

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H.P.

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First one I screamed so loud I woke myself up! And that was with levels of anesthetic they arenā€™t allowed to give me nowā€¦

Cheers,

M

Yes indeed, but at least now if someone tells me my head is up my a$$ I can reply ā€œNo, but if it was I know what the view would be likeā€¦ā€.

Ye Gods yes, except the stuff they send me takes up a whole day. Oddly enough the last time was a rush job and I got away with an enema on arrival, but I think it may only have been a sigmoidoscopy.

Hey, I thought we were keeping the cr@p on the ā€œWould You Build It?ā€ thread?

:poop:

Cheers,

M

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Germany ought to man up, and send its own tanks, let alone wringing their hands over letting someone else send theirs - otherwise theyā€™ll be using their own tanks against Russisct invaders. The rest of us are just in disbelief at the intransigence. The original aid ā€˜packageā€™ consisting of combat helmets verged on an insult - although we can agree that Germany has upped its game more recently.

I think you underestimate the capabilities of the equipment and over estimate the capabilities of the invaders. 14 Leopards is more than enough to severely dent Putinā€™s ambitions. They outrange the best Russian tank gun on the battlefield by a considerable margin for starters. These tanks are not being sent in isolation either, the UK is sending the very capable CR2. I suspect other countries will follow suit in varying degrees. A total of 300 modern tanks could quite literally drive the invasion back to its own borders.

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the tanks are only one part of the equation, the actual kit on board the vehicle not to mention the crew and more importantly their training are far more important and i donā€™t think these donated tanks will have all the whistles and bells on them as no one wants western tech falling in to Russian hands.

I was listening to a senior defence analyst and former member of the General Staff (incidentally, formally a tank, Regt & Brigade Commander) on the radio the other day.

We tend to think of Ukrainian crews being trained from scratch, this isnā€™t the case - the majority of them have had a great deal of experience in the last year, and would probably put your average NATO tanker to shame.

He said that the technical aspects of operating a modern AFV could be quite easily trained to such troops in around a week, and he laughed out loud when asked if he thought that Ukrainian tank crews would need to have a lengthy appreaisal of how to operate heavy armour effectively (tactically) on their own ground.

Weā€™re already supplying and losing sophisticated equipment, this shouldnā€™t make a scrap of difference. I can imagine that anything regarding secue communications will be removed, but even then, i wouldnā€™t count on it. This idea that we should be cautious about supplying western tech for fear it will fall into enemy hands is media driven paranoia.

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i would say itā€™s not hysterical western media but more of a historic fact, you only have to look at how the communists managed to copy the American sidewinder air to air missile.

superior technology or equipment is no sure path to victory, just ask the Germans in WW2 or the Americans in Vietnam. or our own recent interlude in Afghanistan.

Well iā€™m not a senior defence analyst and former member of the General Staff, so what would i know ? :slight_smile:

He seemed fairly confident that it wouldnā€™t be a problem.

ā€œsuperior technology or equipment is no sure path to victory, just ask the Germans in WW2 or the Americans in Vietnam. or our own recent interlude in Afghanistan.ā€

That is true, but then subsequently being squeamish about deploying it is the basis for a rationale that will simply allow Vlad to move his pink rocking horse another country closer to another country grab. Iā€™d rather surrender a bit of technology than be a party to such an iniquity.

I mean seriously, does anyone genuinely think that Russia has never had access to the blueprints for our equipment?

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Right, there has never ever been a Soviet spy working in any western country.
The Soviets did not get information about nuclear weapons et.c.and et.c.
:grin:

Two Swedish citizens were convicted of espionage for Russia a few days ago.
Any country who thinks they are safe from spies and infiltrators are more than
extremely naive.

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To avoid editing my previous post.

In all conflicts one should also be aware of this concept:

The basic idea is to manipulate members of the opposing nation into
acting in a way which benefits ones own interests.
There were lots of arguments in Sweden for not joining NATO, promote peace
by not joining a war pact, not join a club run by the US, neutrality to keep us
out of European wars, to have a neutral and independent voice in the worlds and
not be seen as a US American puppet controlled from Washington, yada, yada, yada.
Who benefitted from all this talk?
The USSR / Russia ā€¦

While making lunch for the kids I had this thought:
Nowadays many/most of the ā€˜useful idiotsā€™ can be replaced with ā€œvoicesā€ on social media.

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I think weā€™ll be seeing western MBTs in Ukraine this year, now it is clear the Russians arenā€™t going to succeed. After all, who would want to miss out on free battlefield testing of their hardware? Itā€™s the same with most of the proxy wars fought since WW2 - both sides take advantage to test their kit in real combat. Sure, thereā€™s a risk of tech leakage, but as Robin says their spies probably already have our secretsā€¦

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That and itā€™s all part of the game to sell future systems later.

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There may be a wider strategic goal.

To supply Ukraine with just enough equipment to prevent a Russian victory (already been done) and then to continue to defend with an adequate amount of equipment until Russia has no choice but to withdraw to firstly save face (unlikely Vlad) and to prevent economic collapse (work in progress).

I reckon the end game is to weaken Russia to the point where they canā€™t continue to threaten NATO militarily (we now know theyā€™d get a right spanking if they did anyway) and to attempt to force regime change.

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I suspect they will give in shortly after Vlad suffers a bit of 9mm lead poisoning from within the inner circle - he canā€™t afford to back out if he wants to survive. The question is whether a newly-strengthened Ukraine can manage to take back all its territory including Crimea?

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