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There's not really much doubt about what this is - it's a Electronics Intelligence (ELINT) device intended to pick up communications, that is supposed to be moored in international waters (the balloon gets the payload over the horizon and increases the reach, but keeps it low enough to pick up signals better than an ELINT satellite would) that came loose and is now drifting along weather patterns. There's little to be done about it (fighter aircraft don't go high enough to shoot it down easily, and trying would create a massive hazard for civilians on the ground), and in the end it only really merits a Stern Look Of Disapproval at the diplomatic level. This is literally a non-event that's being blown massively out of proportion by social media.

but that is completely unrelated to Iran's extremist stance of killing all jews.

It isn't, really. A nasty security threat like that is a big driver toward keeping the extreme-right in power in Israel, because that's where the fortress mentality is coming from.

Providing longer ranger missiles for HIMARS could have a significant difference, allowing Ukraine to strike supply hubs even inside Russia, maybe in the hope of deterring Russian bombing runs against its infrastructure, though they are not getting them. What they ask for is as much about politics, the art of possible, as it is about its military utility.

They are getting longer-ranged HIMARS-compatible missiles. The Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb has significantly greater range than the standard GMLRS rockets they have been using. Though the range is not as long as ATACMS, and they lack the knockout power of that missile's warhead, they're likely to be of greater use - the primary components (rocket engines from deactivated cluster rockets and Small Diameter Bombs) are available in huge numbers, and they can be fired in the standard salvos of six instead of only one rocket.

Quote from: Strongpoint on January 28, 2023, 07:44:06 am

Quote from: King Zultan on January 28, 2023, 04:14:35 am

Do the tanks get blown up so often that they keep needing new ones or are they just getting lots of them for a big push later?

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html

Here are documented Ukrainian losses. 450 tanks. You can multiply it (at leas)t by 2 to include undocumented and non-combat losses. Rounding up it is ~1000 tanks lost.

Note this doesn't mean - OMG, tanks are obsolete, they are so easily destroyed.

It is the role of the tank - to be destroyed in the most dangerous areas of the front. It was like that in WW1, in WW2, in the cold war conflicts. Anywhere except very lopsided wars

PS. Russia lost 1650 confirmed... but for them it is not as critical. They have TONS of them. And them sending T62s doesn't mean they are running out, it merely means that they had some laying around in good condition to burn away while they modernize\restore T72s from storage\reserve

This statement is silly.  Whatever the missing amounts are, it's not half the total.. there are too many losses on the list for there to be that many missing.  There are too many Russia T-80 Us (and Ukrainian Bulats) for that to be the case.

As for 'these thousands of losses doesn't matter', heh.  Yeah, no.  Don't know what you're selling but I'm not buying that.  Just the usual lies, "Our losses don't matter, but you have to double their losses to get the real total!"

No, Strongpoint's being perfectly reasonable here. We're only getting the confirmed kill picture from fully secured areas (which is why you see the numbers shoot up shortly after an area is retaken) or from areas where the fighting is largely done by irregulars and militia (very little of the combat footage that's coming out is coming from the Ukrainian Army proper - they're maintaining security). Doubling the numbers on both sides for actual losses may or may not be excessive, but there's no doubt that both are far higher than reflected by those lists.

Russia also genuinely is in a better position to take casualties, from a purely material perspective. They have a lot more men and equipment theoretically (as mentioned by others, much of their "stored" equipment is nothing but stripped and rusted-out hulks at this point) available to them. So far they've wasted a lot due to incompetence, and Ukraine has done very well through foreign aid and strong competence of their own, but that does not yet change the core material calculus. That won't help them in the end if the Ukrainians continue to have a massive qualitative advantage as well as extreme success in interdiction, and they may well be at a stage where actively correcting their core problems is nigh-impossible in this war, but the numbers are there.

There's a few lines here that really make me put stronger credence in the "this isn't Julia" theory.

I wish to point out that at 73 Easting the Iraqis were caught unprepared, their response and coordination were nonexistent, their weapons incapable of damaging the Abrams from the front, the Abrams were capable of killing everything they fought, and even Bradleys turned out to be more than a match one-on-one for Iraqi tank crews.

Sure the Iraqis in general just got blitzed by air support but 73 Easting specifically saw tanks (and IFVs) fight tanks (and IFVs), directly, as the deciding factors on each side of the battle. Air support wiped out the Iraqis overall but every time US tanks met their opponents their opponents died without a serious contest.

Given Russian skill and equipment being demonstrably awful, I would FULLY expect to see at least one or two 73 Easting-level slaughters here or there. The conditions are all present after all.

You can't decouple the effects of spending a month being pounded by the world's five most capable air forces for a month like that. It isn't just about directly destroying units - their support structure and logistics had been blasted to hell, and the crews were worn to nubs because they'd been waiting for flying death to descend on them. The same battle, with the same forces, fought  in January instead of February very well could have had a different outcome. Or at least been less of a one-sided massacre.

Quote from: Lord Shonus on January 26, 2023, 07:56:58 pm

But they are a massive increase in combat power if used intelligently.

Any idea how what such used might entail?

From what I gather, due to proliferation of anti-tank weapon and few painful lessons of using easily detectable larger formations, Russian is now using tanks in support roles as howitzer spread around the front.

So I suspect, that there won't ne much tank-on-tank fighting nor much opportunities for tank optics to shine, much like Russian counterparts they tanks will be mainly used as howitzer, relying on its more advanced integrated fire control and utilizing the large supply of advanced ammo to rain indirect fire to  dislodge entrenched Russian positions.

Don't be fooled by what gets released as propaganda. It isn't necessarily a lie, but it is fundamentally incomplete because the main combat formations are maintaining operational security. There's hard evidence that Ukrainian and Russian tanks have been clashing directly since this war began. Using tanks as support howitzers is a thing (and not a makeshift one - many tank designs have the necessary sights built in even if these particular ones don't), but it is not the main thing they're doing with them. When the Leopards and Challengers get to the front, Ukraine will use them the same way tanks have been used since Soissons in 1918 - form a massive armored fist (probably more than one), aim them at a weak point of the enemy line, and try to blast through. Man-portable ATGMs have a limited ability to counter this as long as you pump enough infantry in to guard the flanks as you advance, because they're simply not mobile. Attack helicopters can contribute, but are vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire and are themselves in short supply. Fundamentally, the only real way to stop a competently performed armored thrust is to either cut it off from supply and let it wither (difficult, and leaves whatever forces you use to do it vulnerable), or to match it with an armored thrust of your own and have a big old-fashioned tank battle.

Russia has no stuff of the Javelin or NLAWs level but they do have enough anti-tank missiles and produce them in 3 shifts now. Western tanks are far from immune from those.

Also, most tanks are lost to enemy tanks, artillery or loitering munitions.

I know that Russian army looks funny sometimes, but they have shitload of weapons and the situation you describe may happen only against some reserve units somewhere.

I see this trend among the Western public as if Russia is kinda done and will soon fight with shovels. It is not and it will not. They have resources for many years of war and major offensives.

These new tanks won't be an instant I Win button, and there's still going to be a lot of hard fighting, but you're massively underestimating the increase in capabilities. No tank is immune to a heavy ATGM, and in theory those will take out a Abrams as easily as anything else - I say in theory because there's been very few cases of such missiles actually being fired at first-line Western tanks. Most of what has been used has been much lighter and more portable systems that don't have the warhead to punch through from any angle. What makes Javelin so good is the integrated (and very expensive) top-attack function that gets around armor - nothing Russian-made in that weight class has that capability. This negates a large portion of Russia's deployed ATGM capability.

The extremely good optics and especially night-vision optics will (as long as Ukranian crews continue their stellar tactical awareness and coordination, of course - unlike Russia they've shown themselves to be perfectly capable of providing a proper infantry screen) also make hiding the bigger missiles for an attack much more difficult. Not impossible by any means, but more difficult.

In tank-on-tank fights, the differences are heavily magnified. Late-era Soviet-derived ballistic computers and rangefinders are very good. Current gen-Western equivalents, by comparison, are very nearly black magic. Crews that have used both (both from places like Poland that are transitioning, and evaluation crews on units that have been acquired somewhere or other) have used terms like "war with cheat codes" to describe just how ludicrously fast it can be to track and service a target. The aforementioned incredible optics and thermals are an even bigger factor here, because tanks are fundamentally hot objects.

Nobody with any sense thinks that these new tanks are going to arrive and reenact 73 Easting - the only reason Iraq performed so ludicrously bad in a similar matchup is that they'd been crushed from the air. But they are a massive increase in combat power if used intelligently.