Russian invasion of Ukraine

[renton]

2 hours ago, Boo Khaki said:

Jist of it is a fundamental design philosophy that doesn't place any premium on crew or vehicle survivability.

... (didn't want to quote it all)

One of the important things here is strategic mobility. The Soviets expected to attack with their armoured forces driving deep in behind NATO front lines. 

To borrow a well known corporate phrase, they intended to move fast and break things. By keeping the tank weight down to 40 tonnes they could drive their spearheads for miles without needing to drag up specialist bridging gear or other engineering equipment, they could cross most of any civilian bridges and roads - they could keep moving. The idea being to keep going and not worry too much about logistics as it was hoped or intended the NATO front line would crumble before the situation got desperate (sound familiar)

However, if you want to drive weight down, but also want to keep a degree of survivability (i.e. a minimum thickness of a given armour) then it follows you have to reduce the volume protected by armour. Thus driving down the internal volume, necessitating the dodgy auto loader and exposed ammo carousel and also leading to fairly poor situational awareness and shit optics.

Western tank design, driven by defensive postures but also by a doctrine that would see them fight and win an air war, and then only advance as far as their logistical margin would allow - and also using the assumption they would Have good engineering support,  happily let their tanks grow to 65 tonnes or more.

Edited April 27, 2022 by renton

[Boo Khaki]

18 minutes ago, Hillonearth said:

Complete disregard for the safety of the crews can often favourably affect performance of military equipment - the one that I remember reading about is Japan's main WW2 bomber, the Mitsubishi Betty. They classed it as a heavy bomber although it was barely a medium bomber by Allied standards, but it was fast and had a long range. These characteristics were down to the fact that it was extremely light due to having absolutely no protection for the crew whatsover in terms of armour and not even self-sealing fuel tanks in the earlier models.

The Allies came to know it as The Flying Zippo as it took only a hit or two to catch fire - there were even occasions where they were brought down by rifle fire from the ground.

Yes, this was a common theme with the bulk of Imperial Japanese warplanes right up until 1944/45. Japanese fighter pilots were so entrenched in the mindset that out-dogfighting your opponent was the way to win aerial battles, that they were still insistent upon flying the light and agile Zero over and above more modern and capable models, even years after the arrival of Hellcats and adoption of boom and zoom saw them being shot out of the sky in inordinate numbers. The very last fighters of the IJA were every bit as good as anything the Allies could put in the sky, but by that time they'd run out of decent pilots, and only very slowly cottoned on to the fact that their beloved agile but unarmoured earlier fighters were no match at all because they were completely incapable of countering the zoom and boom.

There's a story about what happened when USN and USMC Hellcat pilots finally figured out the biggest flaw with the Zero. I can't quite remember the precise details, but it was something to do with the exact architecture of the Mitsubishi engine, the lack of fuel injection/flooding carbs/inadequate fuel pressure or something. If you climbed above the Zero and forced it to enter a dive to the right, the engine would cut out, and they'd be a sitting duck. Even after discovering this and taking advantage of it, Japanese pilots still preferred to fly the Zero above anything else, simply because they couldn't accept that tactics had moved on and their formerly dominant plane was reduced to being a flying coffin.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Boo Khaki

[Paco]

It’s all going to kick off in Kaliningrad shortly IMO. Several military planes doing laps, this just the most obvious one….
 
 

Hard to see student of history Vladimir Putin bothering his arse if Kaliningrad is seized, after all it was German for centuries before Stalin essentially took it as reparations in the post-WW2 carve-up.

It’s pretty much the German Crimea. Fair’s fair, right?

[ICTChris]

Russian troops are reported to have taken several villages and settlements in the Donbas.  None are particularly significant although it does show they are advancing, albeit slowly.

[ICTChris]

Interesting interview with a Ukrainian fighter, this caught my eye.  Elon Musk turned the war for Ukraine?

 

 

[Sergeant Wilson]

5 hours ago, Boo Khaki said:

Ok, I'll give you that, but only on the premise that we're talking about the observer being an ordinary human being, and not an autistic pedant.

"ITN news, your husband has just been run over and squashed, how did it happen?

I think it was a tank.

Well it might've looked like a tank to you, but it's actually..."

[ICTChris]

This is a translation of an interview with a separatist fighter on the current state of the war in Donetsk and Luhansk. It sounds brutal.

https://pastebin.com/f59DpGpT
 

Obviosily this is hard to verify but tallies with reports from other LNR and DNR sources, including Igor Girkin, a former leader of the separatists and extreme Russian nationalist who has spoken about how badly the war is going for them, the heavy casualties they’ve taken and the use of ‘human wave’ tactics.

[Newbornbairn]

53 minutes ago, Hillonearth said:

Complete disregard for the safety of the crews can often favourably affect performance of military equipment - the one that I remember reading about is Japan's main WW2 bomber, the Mitsubishi Betty. They classed it as a heavy bomber although it was barely a medium bomber by Allied standards, but it was fast and had a long range. These characteristics were down to the fact that it was extremely light due to having absolutely no protection for the crew whatsover in terms of armour and not even self-sealing fuel tanks in the earlier models.

The Allies came to know it as The Flying Zippo as it took only a hit or two to catch fire - there were even occasions where they were brought down by rifle fire from the ground.

Sank HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse though.

[Lex]

To the surprise of no one, things are spilling over into Moldova:

Expect that to slowly escalate in the coming weeks, then another invasion.

[Boo Khaki]

17 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

"ITN news, your husband has just been run over and squashed, how did it happen?

I think it was a tank.

Well it might've looked like a tank to you, but it's actually..."

I'd like to think Mrs Khakiskova would not only be able to correctly identify the specific vehicle type, but also display knowledge of the precise model, year in which it entered service, and provide some interesting factoid or anecdote about it in order to lighten the mood. She bloody ought to be after the number of times I've stood bolt upright and gone off on a ten minute monologue at the TV... unless she hasn't actually been paying attention 

[SweeperDee]

To the surprise of no one, things are spilling over into Moldova:

Expect that to slowly escalate in the coming weeks, then another invasion.

I don’t think Russia can actually stretch themselves at all tbh. Considering that I didn’t think Russia would be stupid enough to invade Ukraine but here we are.

[Salt n Vinegar]

22 minutes ago, Lex said:

To the surprise of no one, things are spilling over into Moldova:

Expect that to slowly escalate in the coming weeks, then another invasion.

Russia speakers being oppressed? I hope to Hell no nightclub bouncer has ever chucked a Russian speaker out, or we're all clucked. 

[Hillonearth]

2 hours ago, Newbornbairn said:

Sank HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse though.

Absolutely - it was a more than decent plane in terms of performance by the standards of the time and the theatre of war it was being used in. You'd just wouldn't live very long flying one.

In the Pacific theatre, the Americans were flying some real shiter planes in the early post Pearl harbor days too...you had the likes of the Vengeance which habitually flew so nose-up that the pilot was essentially flying the thing blind, and the ironically-named Devastator which was a torpedo bomber which had to slow down and fly low in a straight line towards its target at just over 100mph to deliver its torpedo...obviously most of them got blasted out the sky on their first mission.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Hillonearth

[Fullerene]

12 minutes ago, Hillonearth said:

Absolutely - it was a more than decent plane in terms of performance by the standards of the time and the theatre of war it was being used in. You'd just wouldn't live very long flying one.

In the Pacific theatre, the Americans were flying some real shiter planes in the early post Pearl harbor days too...you had the likes of the Vengeance which habitually flew so nose-up that the pilot was essentially flying the thing blind, and the ironically-named Devastator which was a torpedo bomber which had to slow down and fly low in a straight line towards its target at just over 100mph to deliver its torpedo...obviously most of them got blasted out the sky on their first mission.

You forgot to mention that there was a very high likelihood the torpedo wouldn't explode, even if it hit the target.  They even made a Hollywood movie about how useless the torpedoes were.

[Hillonearth]

9 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

You forgot to mention that there was a very high likelihood the torpedo wouldn't explode, even if it hit the target.  They even made a Hollywood movie about how useless the torpedoes were.

Forgot about that - I'd watched Midway a few months back as well! Yeah, that particular mission 4 out of 41 came back...

[welshbairn]

Some background on Transnistria.

https://meduza.io/feature/2022/04/26/chto-proishodit-v-pridnestrovie-rossiya-sobiraetsya-ego-prisoedinit-ili-vtorgnutsya-v-moldovu

[dorlomin]

T-72B3 turret from OSTINTechnical. 

Artistic metaphor of the Z-War. 

[LongTimeLurker]

3 hours ago, ICTChris said:

This is a translation of an interview with a separatist fighter on the current state of the war in Donetsk and Luhansk. It sounds brutal.

https://pastebin.com/f59DpGpT
 

Obviosily this is hard to verify but tallies with reports from other LNR and DNR sources, including Igor Girkin, a former leader of the separatists and extreme Russian nationalist who has spoken about how badly the war is going for them, the heavy casualties they’ve taken and the use of ‘human wave’ tactics.

Interesting thing to ponder is why Strelkov/Girkin gets away with being so candid and doesn't seem to fear mysteriously falling from a balcony late at night. Remember reading back in 2014 that there's reason to believe based on police sketches from eyewitnesses at the time that he may have planted one of the apartment building bombs that propelled Putin to power in 1999 and provided a pretext (to be fair Dudayev, Basayev & Co were providing plenty without any help from the FSB) for the Second Chechen War.

[highlandcowden]

4 hours ago, SweeperDee said:

I don’t think Russia can actually stretch themselves at all tbh. Considering that I didn’t think Russia would be stupid enough to invade Ukraine but here we are.

Surely you're right,Russia is barely able to manage the war it's currently fighting

[jagfox]

Not sure the porpoise of this tbh....