Tag Archives: Tanks

Tank Wars: NATO’s Sleight Of Hand – Why NATO’s Top Tanks Won’t See Real Action, by Simplicius76

Posted on February 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

Why the tanks aren’t going to make a difference. From Simplicius76 at simplicius76.substack.com:

But instead will be coddled through a carefully curated and choreographed ventriloquist act in Ukraine.

One frothy contingent of the West is gleefully anticipating the upcoming, unprecedented infusion of Western armor into Ukraine as the prelude to Kursk 2.0, where peerless Western tanks will gloriously outman and outgun Russia’s Soviet-legacy armor. (well, the tragi-comic irony of the comparison doesn’t escape us)

But a new bombshell report is putting the brakes on those far-flung ideations.

It’s now come to light that Britain is busy furiously putting together plans to keep their Challenger-2 tanks from falling into Russian hands, so that Russia doesn’t get a peek at their much-vaunted ‘Chobham’ armor.

The plan consists of something we suspected all along: that secret teams will be in place to babysit and coddle the tanks at all times, taking fastidious care to make certain they are never in real danger of falling into Russian hands.

Britain led the world by pledging 14 Challenger 2s to Ukraine — but defence sources say it would be a nightmare if one was captured by Vladimir Putin’s invaders.

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Truth About Tanks: How NATO Lied Its Way to Disaster in Ukraine, by Scott Ritter

Posted on February 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Tanks are certainly not the be-all and end-all of modern industrial warfare. From Scott Ritter at unz.com:

Tank warfare has evolved. The large force-on-force armored battles that were the hallmark of much of WWII, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, which served as the foundation of operational doctrine for both NATO and the Soviet Union (and which was implemented in full by the United States during Operation Desert Storm in 1991), has run its course.

Like most military technological innovations, the ability to make a modern main battle tank survivable has been outstripped by the fielding of defensive systems designed to overcome such defenses. If a modern military force attempted to launch a large-scale tank-dominated attack against a well-equipped peer-level opponent armed with modern anti-tank missiles, the result would be a decisive defeat for the attacking party marked by the smoking hulks of burned-out tanks.

Don’t get me wrong: tanks still have a vital role to play on the modern battlefield. Their status as a mobile bunker is invaluable in the kind of meat-grinder conflicts of attrition that have come to define the current stage of large-scale ground combat. Speed and armor still contribute to survivability, and the main gun of a tank remains one of the deadliest weapons on the modern battlefield.

But the modern tank performs best as part of a combined arms team, supported by infantry (mounted and unmounted) and copious amounts of supporting arms (artillery and close air support.) As part of such a team, especially one that is well-trained in the art of close combat, the tank remains an essential weapon of war. However, if operated in isolation, a tank is simply an expensive mobile coffin.

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Mission Creep? How the US role in Ukraine has slowly escalated, by Branko Marcetic

Posted on January 26, 2023 | 1 comment

The Ukraine mission may creep right up to nuclear war. From Branko Marcetic at responsiblestatecraft.org:

The Biden team has quietly blown past red lines of involvement. The question now, is how far is it willing to go.

When the United States involves itself militarily in a conflict, it often finds it hard to get itself out, let alone avoid deep entanglements that blow well past lines it had drawn at the start of the intervention.

It happened in Vietnam, when U.S. military advisers helping the South Vietnamese fight Viet Cong eventually became U.S. soldiers fighting an American war. It happened in Afghanistan, when an initial invasion to capture al-Qaida and overthrow the Taliban morphed into a nearly two-decade-long nation-building project. And it could be happening right now in Ukraine.

Little by little, NATO and the United States are creeping closer to the catastrophic scenario President Joe Biden said “we must strive to prevent” — direct conflict between the United States and Russia. Despite stressing at the start of the war that “our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict,” current and former intelligence officials told the Intercept back in October that “there is a much larger presence of both CIA and US special operations personnel” in Ukraine than there was when Russia invaded, conducting “clandestine American operations” in the country that “are now far more extensive.”

Among those clandestine operations, investigative journalist and former Green Beret Jack Murphy reported on Dec. 24 to little mainstream attention, is the CIA’s work with an unnamed NATO ally’s spy agency to carry out sabotage operations within Russia, reportedly the cause of the unexplained explosions that have rocked Russian infrastructure throughout the war. This is the kind of activity that skirts dangerously close to direct NATO-Russia confrontation.

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Moscow, Baghdad Sign Huge Arms Deal, by Peter Korzun

Posted on July 23, 2017 | Leave a comment

Looks like Iraq is not going to be the Middle East’s shining star of democracy nor a reliable US satrapy. It’s lining up with Iran and Russia. From Peter Korzun at strategic-culture.org:

It was reported on July 20 that Russia and Iraq have struck a deal on supplying a large batch of T-90 tanks. Vladimir Kozhin, the Russian president’s aide for military technical cooperation, confirmed the agreement but declined to provide details, saying only «the number of tanks is substantial». Russian military analyst Ruslan Pukhov told Russian newspaper Izvestia that the deal might cover deliveries of several hundred T-90 tanks, and that the contract may exceed $1 billion.

The T-90 is among the best-selling tanks in the world. Hundreds of vehicles have been sold to India, Algeria, Azerbaijan and other countries. A small number of tanks has been delivered to Syria to reinforce the military’s capabilities of combatting Islamic State (IS). Kuwait, Vietnam and Egypt are considering the option of purchasing T-90s.

Known for its firepower, enhanced protection and mobility, the T-90 features a smoothbore 2A46M 125mm main gun that can fire both armor-piercing shells and anti-tank missiles and the 1A45T fire-control system. Standard protective measures include sophisticated armor, ensuring all-round protection of the crew and critical systems, including Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armor and active infrared jammers to defend the T-90 from inbound rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and other projectiles.

During the battle for Aleppo, Syria, a T-90 was hit by US-made BGM-71 TOW missile. The direct impact caused no damage

The agreement to purchase the tanks was also confirmed by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. The T-90s will reinforce the Iraqi M1A1 Abrams fleet damaged in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) militants. The decision to buy the Russian tanks was prompted by the successful performance of T-90s in Syria. During the battle for Aleppo, Syria, a T-90 was hit by US-made BGM-71 TOW missile. The direct impact caused no damage. For comparison, in October last year, an M1 Abrams was hit by a 9M133 Kornet anti-tank missile at the Qurayyah crossroads south of Mosul. The missile rammed into the turret from behind to make the ammunition compartment explode.

To continue reading: Moscow, Baghdad Sign Huge Arms Deal

 

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