Sturgeon
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Everything posted by Sturgeon
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Anywhere. Wikipedia, probably. -
By having the capitalist Americans build all your factories and bureaus? Yeah, that is one way.
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- challenger 2
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Submissions are now CLOSED.
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thank goodness we've gotten past all that and embraced robust, strong soviet policy which handily out-competed it.
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- challenger 2
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baste
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Some even more illuminating photos.
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Oh sure I thought there was something else illuminating in those photos we hadn't established.
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I can tell you once I started laying out Comanche's turret it became obvious how bad CR2's armor must be.
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Not sure I'm seeing it.
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Yeah you're right about that. Maybe I just hang out too much here.
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Idk man it seems to be largely falling apart to me.
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Watching the mythology of Challenger 2 collapse finally after all these years has been deeply satisfying to me.
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Also @Toxn, @Sten, @N-L-M, @Xoon, and @Curly_
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@A. T. Mahan @Dominus Dolorem @Lord_James @delete013, the new deadline is Saturday the 24th of July. The judges agree that the time has come, so consider it firm.
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Hah, that's interesting. Hunnicutt makes it seem like they standardized most/all of it. Thank you, my mistake. Thank you for the apology. I'm not going to ban you, of course. I know your posting record here and BTTR. But, you know, be nice to the admin hahah. My meaning was simply "Poland has gotten invaded before". Nothing beyond that, not even an intent of "something something nazi tank blitzkrieg." How many tanks does Poland need? That's for them to decide. With this buy of Abrams, it will be easier for them to justify divesting their older vehicles. Like I said, maybe it's just my attitude but I would take the wins where I could. You and I should talk Leos sometime, I'm still learning about it (and modern tanks in general).
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How is it not? You accused me of bad faith argument or at least being too stupid to avoid a fallacy, you did it when I committed no such fallacy, and you committed the fallacy you accused me of to accuse me of it. I'd say that's VERY insulting.
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@N-L-Mif you'd enforce this por favor.
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Ah yes insult the Admin more. No, I was not strawmanning you, and it's interesting to me that from something I said that was pretty vague, you decided that I must be doing that. And then you took it further by suggesting that I was saying tanks aren't combined arms assets? This is not a wise course you're on right now. Since you've decided to make this a point of contention, and you attacked my character, and because I have shit to do in the real world, you get to dig up actual drawings of M1 Abrams and Leopard 2 roadwheels to prove me wrong, instead of just pulling numbers out of your ass. Chop chop!
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Does Poland need 800 tanks? Oh, I dunno. Diehl 570s fit on an Abrams. You need a different sprocket, but other than that they work fine. I've never heard anything about the Leopard 2 having different diameter roadwheels. "Share parts" was strong language on my part. They share basic interfaces and standards, would be more exact. Regardless, I don't see this as a huge issue, especially since in the long run they'll be trying to get rid of their older tank types.
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I doubt the US would foist off Abramses to someone if they didn't also get support equipment, so I bet the buy includes a lot of ancillaries. The bridges point someone else mentioned is perfectly salient but I think ultimately not that big a deal. There's a couple of reasons, but the biggest one is that the US has been operating in Europe with Abramses with this constraint (which is a big mobility obstacle on that continent) for literal decades. So they've figured it out, and the Polish Army will obviously be working closely with US forces in any case. So the opportunity for equipment and training transfer is there, and also in a real war chances are fairly good they will literally drive on US pontoon bridges etc.
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You've got a long way to go, I agree, but you gotta start somewhere. Maybe US milproc has just made me very low expectation, but I think it's a little weird not to take the wins when you get them. I wanted to address a couple of other things: 1. Nobody said anything to the contrary (and I appreciate you for not going there), but obviously my enthusiasm for the Abrams here is primarily that they will be available much sooner than Leopards. If the situation were reversed, I'd be in pretty much the same position. As I like to say: 2. "Poland has a tank development project". OK, but, give me a break? Poland's government is wrong when it's procuring tanks from the US, but it's right when it's got some slush project to develop a new tank that won't see service for 15 years? That's a little bit of dissonance, I think, unless I'm missing some key ingredient to the idea. Not that I have anything against Poland creating domestic tanks, but if your entire military industrial complex is riddled with grifters and cons, then maybe putting your eggs in the "buy tanks from the Americans" basket makes more sense than the "undertake a big long development project where all the incentives are there to stretch it out as much as possible to milk the Polish taxpayers for cash". 3. I'm not sure I understand the objection that there's no involvement of domestic Polish industry. Poland will be purchasing the tanks and maintaining them. No, they're not making them themselves, but that's because they need the tanks right now (again, for the sake of argument ignoring that there may be other military priorities that are more pressing, you need tanks). Also, the complaint that you're running multiple types of tanks is... A bit weird considering the tanks in question. Abrams and Leopard are sister tanks. They share most of their wear parts like roadwheels, tracks, etc.
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Pardon, the 786 figure I was remembering was from something different (US SEPv3 procurement). Been rather busy the last few days, I'll take that one on the chin. I still think Abrams is good for Poland and the negative reaction is basically Polish people's natural skepticism of their own milproc. Which is healthy.
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I had read that the buy was for 783 tanks.
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As far as I'm aware, and I'm conceding right off the bat that I'm not an expert, the tanks Poland has are either obsolete or inadequate in number. Poland is acquiring well more than 5 times the number of Abrams as they have Leo 2s on the upgrade path. First thing to note, these tanks exist and are ready to go (American tank production/conversion facilities are well under capacity by design) in short order. Second thing to note, these tanks share full operational compatibility with the largest tank operator in Europe. I don't think these factors can be ignored. Polish authors are very quick to say "we have more pressing concerns", but do you? Your tanks are not in a good place! This doesn't seem like a bad buy to me.
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All the people trying to argue that Poland adopting the most proven and solid main battle tank on earth is a bad thing just because it's American is really giving me a laugh. No, it's not the only worthy tank on earth. I'm not Damien. Maybe the K2 would have been better. But Poland needs assets and now. It's funny to me how the arguments revolve around effectively toenail clippings.
