Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Devastator]

You're right that the list isn't complete, but doubling it is not accurate at all.  Several items have been lost in quantities that would be outright impossible to lose twice as many, and the exact missing quantities are going to vary heavily depending on what sort of item it isl, particularly since the reports are usually made by whoever killed/captured it.

And yes, I'm aware that Russia has more resources to take losses, but the losses have fundamentally changed how Russia conducts the war.  They haven't been doing large-scale attacks, for instance, or operating maneuver units behind the line of contact.  That S-D river crossing, for instance, was the last time a really large group of mechanized units was on the offense, and the extreme losses were what prevented future attempts.

There's been no more vertical envelopment attacks, like there were when the war kicked off, too.

Russian losses have fundamentally affected their ability to conduct the war, and limited their options on the battlefield.  They have mattered, and they continue to matter.  The material calculus has changed and will continue to change.

[EuchreJack]

I'm not really sure what is the point of this latest argument about Ukrainians losses vs Russian losses.

Fog of war means we really don't know.

I would point out that the modern nature of the specific tanks being requested by Ukraine should make a significant difference.
T-72 vs. Abrams is HUGE.

[hector13]

They’re not getting Abrams for a long, long time. They take a great deal of training - which probably isn’t going to be given in Ukraine - and they take a lot to maintain, and I think they wouldn’t be given from the present US stock but procured through private contractors (at least according to a BBC article I read).

I think the US said they’d give the Abrams so Germany would consent to the Leopards.

[Starver]

I would point out that the modern nature of the specific tanks being requested by Ukraine should make a significant difference.
T-72 vs. Abrams is HUGE.

I've been trying to go into the specifics of what models of what, from what era are involved (well, as much as I can piece together from encyclopedic sources). By age of creation, alone, the M1A2 could be from '92 (good 'Merkin stock, etc, except that it is already known to come from the export manifest; and I didn't read that as freshly manufactured on demand, but assumed indirectly from what's already been exported out there just maybe not yet been too shop-soiled yet) whilst the other the T-72B3M that's a line of the T-72 product that should be no more ancient than 2016, and supposedly quite the bee's knees amongst it's fellows. Also that's potentially hundreds of the Russian model vs 31 of the US one. Not that it'd be pitted directly. (And one total of T-72s of 'any kind' that I established, my prior "but they won't all be there" aside, is just over 2000... not seemingly including the 8k in 'storage').  So we also need the current bias in tactical brilliance to be maintained.

OTOH, I was already getting not a little interested about the possibilities of up to 200 PT-91s arriving from Poland (or perhaps the places Poland had already passed such models on to. And, interesting, enough, the PT-91 is a custom Pole version (1991+) of the T-72M export range. The first part of the submodal differential gap involves losing the nice composite armour, but one of the things the Poles added back (at least in some versions of the tale) in their national personalisation of the model was reactive armour so... would seem like a decent switch.

And on the balance of some of the other stats, and the inherent cultural familiarity with most of it, and that whole delivery-delay... I'm beginning to wonder if the PT-91 is a better fit than the Abrams?


Not that we can be sure what'll be the best choice to come out on top against what until we get to see what actual match-brackets are drawn for real. And now I'm closing my spreadsheet on the matter, because I just couldn't get all the details I wanted to do the actual comparisons I had intended to do with it. This is the point at which I leave this to those analyst guys who I already said are the ones that need to make such judgement calls, not me.

[bloop_bleep]

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!"

Ukrainian losses is "our losses" for Strongpoint. They're saying "you should double our losses to get a more accurate picture, Russian losses don't matter as much to them at the same number."

[Devastator]

Nah, if it was double it'd have to include a majority of the donated polish tanks, for instance, as well as simply far too many IFVs and AFVs to have basically any left.  Aircraft losses would be greater than 100% of the UAF.  It's more than those listed, but double is mathmatically implausable.  I'm not going to use a guesstimation like that, though, there are too many variables.

I'm not sure all the types have been nailed down for specific variants, anyway, but good try, bloop.

[Madman198237]

I would point out that the modern nature of the specific tanks being requested by Ukraine should make a significant difference.
T-72 vs. Abrams is HUGE.

I've been trying to go into the specifics of what models of what, from what era are involved (well, as much as I can piece together from encyclopedic sources). By age of creation, alone, the M1A2 could be from '92 (good 'Merkin stock, etc, except that it is already known to come from the export manifest; and I didn't read that as freshly manufactured on demand, but assumed indirectly from what's already been exported out there just maybe not yet been too shop-soiled yet)

From the US, Ukraine will be receiving new-build M1A2 variants with tungsten inserts in place of DU inserts. This is standard procedure for exports and doesn't reduce the effectiveness of the armor too much. As for what optics systems, thermals, fire-control systems, and whatnot, we're not sure. I doubt the US will be telling anyone any time soon.

The T-72B3 and other Russian vehicles are newer, perhaps, than US equivalents (unless Ukraine gets some of the SEP v3 improvements on their tanks), but you need to realize that Russia is not a first-world nation and hasn't been for thirty years, at least. Their tech is not modern standard. A T-72B3 comes with a nice ERA package, but it has that package because its base armor configuration is no longer sufficient and couldn't be sufficiently upgraded. It has better thermals than previous generations, but most T-72s of previous generations have no thermals at all, even if officially they're supposed to...and even then their thermals/night vision is a generation behind Western vehicles' equipment.


And, finally, it's quite clear that either the US was just poking Germany into releasing Leopard 2s from its own forces and, more importantly, other nations' arsenals...or is just getting Ukraine ready to use more Abrams tanks at a later date. The first is more likely, of course. In either case, 31 Abrams will not be fighting thousands of T-72s.

[Lord Shonus]

Both Leopard 2 and Challenger 2 are, as far as I can determine from unclassified sources, equivalent to recent-model Abrams tanks in fire control and optics systems. That's the most important thing Western armor brings to the table.

[anewaname]

the middle east

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Brits were the instigators in the Middle East before oil. They promoted cultural and religious differences to encourage conflict, weakening the Ottoman Empire before WWI because of the threat to sea routes. After oil, the Brits ensured that any majority political group in that region would stay too weak to challenge the Brits by empowering and arming minority political groups. What would they not do, to retain that power?

Did all of the British activities get into the history books? Or just the ones too big to be covered up? How many of the unknown activities caused deadly conflicts and left generations of scarred people with ideas of "just retribution" against their neighbors? So, some farmers along a border are murdered in the night and it appears to be done by farmers of a different ethnicity. That's not going in the history books, but when that political party gets some loans and buys weapons, then purges people of one ethnicity, it goes in the history books with no mention of the Brits.

The line between British Petroleum and Desert Storm is one of many straight lines, all stemming from Britain's decision to control that region's oil by upsetting political hierarchies through encouraged violence.

Here's the problem with this line of reasoning. The Ottoman Empire was a sovereign state long before the British got involved. Before the British Empire even existed - the Ottomans date back to the 1300s, at a time when England was freshly unified and the other nations on the British Isles were still independent.  Laying all the problems of the "Sick Man Of Europe" (which accumulated for literal centuries) at Britain's feet is fundamentally a Eurocentric "the only things that matter are things white people do" stance.

Do you think the Ottomans wanted to increase the religious/cultural divisions between the regions they subjugated? They didn't want those regions in chaos.

The people who did work to increase the religious/cultural divisions are the ones that never wanted the Ottomans to drive their armies into lands of the european peer group again.

Britain didn't care about the middle east region beyond their desire to keep an Ottoman-sized power from ruling, but that changed when the oil was found... They needed it and they needed others to not have it.

Britain and the US supported the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian in 1953 because he planned to nationalize Iran's oil industry which would kick British Petroleum out of the country. This was also too big to keep out of the history books, and the US admitted to their part in 2013. Their dictator puppet held power for 20 years while the Iranian majority listened to the imported voice recordings of a "mighty weapon of god", the future Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran had their 1979 revolution, kicked the foreigners out of Iran, and because the Ayatollah wasn't a holy hypocrite, he deputized many people with the righteousness of god which:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- caused many people to flee the country, including this excellent person
- inspired Rock the Casbah
- is part of the reason the Mahsa Amini protests involve old people who think God has authorized them to hurt other people

So how do the Brits respond? They talk to Iraq, another minority political power that they helped into power, and said... "that stuff happening in Iran, it will come for you next... let us help you fight them". The Iraq-Iran war was launched and when it ended, Iraq was in debt from buying weapons that they couldn't pay the loans on, and when they found they couldn't sell their oil because the Brits+friends had recentered their operations in Kuwait and competition was not wanted, Saddam invaded Kuwait...

That line from British Petroleum's founding to Desert Storm is very straight.

Ukraine

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Currently, the western oil companies and their backers are staying out of Ukraine, but they had to drop their half-written contracts and flee the country when Crimea was invaded. They were planning a hostile takeover of Putin's monopoly on the gas pipelines into the EU, and Putin responded. They should not be allowed to profit from those resources after the war.

[Strongpoint]

I think I was quite misunderstood. I never meant that Russian losses are not noticeable (they'll need many years to recover their army to the combat level of February 2022).

Saying that, I am really, really, really tired of "Russia is on a verge of military collapse." No, they are not. Not even close. They are the ones who creepingly advance. They train reserves and brings new military hardware from whatever sources they can.

[jipehog]

I would point out that the modern nature of the specific tanks being requested by Ukraine should make a significant difference.
T-72 vs. Abrams is HUGE.

Difference between Homemade meal vs field rations is huge, though unlikely to sway the tied of war, and what difference it will make in the field is what I am most interested in. New western tanks might offer significant tactical advantage, it might be instrumental in enabling another counteroffensive to effect strategic change, or maybe western planners are utilizing what is left in their stores, maybe a stop gap measure to address logistical shortfalls in other areas for example.

As noted, the HIMARS was such a game changer not because of its technical specs per se or because few dozen HIMARS had any hope of matching Russian firepower but because combined with westerns intelligence it was able to achieve a very specific goal, neutralize Russia's principal military advantage in artillery firepower by striking at their ammunition depots (these can eat hundreds of tons of ammo a day) straining Russian logistics.

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.

[Lord Shonus]

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.

[Loud Whispers]

Do you think the Ottomans wanted to increase the religious/cultural divisions between the regions they subjugated? They didn't want those regions in chaos.

The people who did work to increase the religious/cultural divisions are the ones that never wanted the Ottomans to drive their armies into lands of the european peer group again.

The Ottoman Empire wasn't a monolithic entity, it was an Empire with its own factional politics. How the Ottoman Empire treated Christians, Slavs, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, Greeks e.t.c. varied from Sultan to Sultan. In the case of Slavs, Armenians and Kurds, the Ottomans deliberately pit the ethnic groups against one another to pursue a policy of divide and rule. The early practice of kidnapping Christian children and raising them as Turks, followed by the blood tax again taking Christian children and raising them as Muslim Turks, followed by the early modern drive to erase Armenian and Arab identity within the Ottoman Empire all point to the darker periods of Ottoman rule where it sought to eliminate those it viewed as impure - leading to the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. That's also to say nothing of the enslavement of the steppe Slavs or east Africans, in which Ottoman scholars wrote extensively why these races were inferior and docile slaves, despite abundant evidence to the contrary (amusingly they do not advise attempting to enslave Georgians as they apparently always had a reputation for being well-armed and vigorously keen to defend themselves lmao). Point being, Lord Shonus is right. The Ottoman Empire was an ancient Empire that can't be boiled down to "it was this or that" because depending on the time, it might have been many things at once, and the problems that besot the ancient Empire long predate the madness of the French and British partitions

Currently, the western oil companies and their backers are staying out of Ukraine, but they had to drop their half-written contracts and flee the country when Crimea was invaded. They were planning a hostile takeover of Putin's monopoly on the gas pipelines into the EU, and Putin responded. They should not be allowed to profit from those resources after the war.

???
But Putin is the one who pushed to bypass the Ukrainian pipelines with Nord stream I and II?? How is it the West's fault if Putin is responding to Putin's plan to bypass Putin's pilelines in Ukraine so Putin can invade Ukraine to punish Ukraine for no longer being critical for selling Putin's gas to Putin's business partners in Berlin...?

You've got the chain of causality all busted up m8. Russia couldn't invade Ukraine when it needed Ukraine in order to sell gas to Europe. The germans helped the Russians get rid of that obstacle, so the Russians planned a hostile takeover of Ukraine to fulfil their own geopolitical objectives based off of Duginist theory that Russia needs Ukraine in order to be a superpower. You keep making the mistake of thinking Turks and Russians have no will, and only ever react to the machinations of the eternal Anglo

[jipehog]

As a realist I believe that all countries act in their rational self-interes, and what led Putin into Ukraine is cascade of events exacerbated by the perceived [relative] weakening of USA on the global stage, which revisionist powers like Russia (,Turkey ,Iran ,etc) exploited to expand their sphere of influence and increase their power.

Putin believes that the collapse of the Soviet empire was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of his time, after he solidified his control within he turned on the outside, seeking to reintegrate the former soviet republics into his version of EU and NATO a Russian led economic and military alliance that would solidify its dominance. Unfortunately for Putin, post 1990 Russia had very little to offer and while these countries (which still were heavily dependent on Russia) signed cooperation with Russia they didn't allow Putin to go to second base, instead seeking better relations with Europe. Going as far as established an alternative regional economic organization GUAM to declare their neutrality, naturally Putin wouldn't have any of that, and we started to see various means of coercion, which worked pretty well for Putin until Ukraine. I believe that Ukraine, the biggest of Putin's target in his 'near aboard', was a huge miscalculation.  Meant to be an example to deter any more initiates that do not align with Russia's regional goal.

Otherwise, in the modern world it is very hard to conquer and subjugate people, soft power has achieved much more by framing common grounds often going along ethnics, religious and ideological lines. Putin used the idea of Russian world and various religious and ideological to unite people behind greater idea. Similarly Erdogan tried to leverage Turkey as head of the Muslim world (hence his combative stance with Macron) and its Turkic ancestory in central Asia.

[Strongpoint]

As a realist I believe that all countries act in their rational self-interest

It is not realism, people are irrational. This means that all governments are irrational to some extent. Governments led by maniacs like Putin ARE NOT rational

Also, if you think that politicians always act only in the interest of their countries... Are you interested in some bridges?