Sturgeon

"Slava Ukraini"
ooof

One sided news is one sided. People have a reason to flex their hate boners, and by god are they making it obvious. 

Incredible. Russian negotiated a corridor for civs just to shell them! It was their evil plan all along! Its totally like corridors in Aleppo!
 
They can't get to Georgia from Leningrad, "Leningrad" doesn't exist for 31 year.

I wouldn't know, tbh, guns aren't my thing at all.

Wanted to do this post 2 days ago after digesting new events, but was too exhausted after workshifts to do effortposting, i was coming back to home during night time. My thoughts on this war, noise surrounding it, strategical implications and expectations, for those who care.
 
 
What i think.
   After 2017 it was obvious Ukraine will not do anything from Minsk agreements as Ukr politicians were publicly shitting on them and were doing nothing to make it real. DPR and LPR fate became obvious - they are not wanted in Ukraine. Putin's decision to recognize republics was constatations of situation. I expected thing to go slowly but deliberatly towards something i will describe later. But events went in very different way from what i thought would happen. Now, i'm not going to spit in the back of our soldiers executing orders, as Army should be this way, but politicians and other higher ups are free game im my eyes.
 
   Decision to start a full scale war in my opinion was stupidiest thing our political leadership have done in past 22 years. I'm not sure why or what triggered it, but looks like a plan was being worked on for long time, probably even before last year. Putin usually was carefull, but this is rackless decision.
   Our PR can scream about this operation being against nazis and nationalists, but the fact is this war is against Ukraine and everyone inside of it, as effects of war are going to touch nearly everyone who lives inside directly or indirectly.
 
   I don't have hard feelings about it, as i "burned down" during 2015, but this was wrong call. Not because war is bad, but because net result is not going to be what i would like to see.
 
 
   Good vs Evil
   Now, in medias narrative is that Good Democratical Ukraine is fighting Evil Russian dictatorship, in my view both states are dogshit.
 
   Ukraine is highly corrupted country that was run by oligarchs before coup in 2014 and now sort of run by oligarchs together by nationalists with piece of sovereignty outsorced to US foreigh policy makers, a country that effectively suppressed opposition in 2015-16 and where you have less rights than even in Russia, if you are not following "main course". One time per few years population needs to go to specific places where they instal another politicain as a leader who will became highly unpopular by the end of his term.
 
   Russia is highly corrupted country that was run by oligarchs before Putin and now sort of run by oligarchs together with Putin and his "clan", a country that sort of suppressed opposition in 2000s and where you have some rights, but there are workarounds, if you really want to. One time per few years population needs to go to specific places where we approve prolongation of power of our leader.
 
   Personally, i fail to see who is here an actual good guy. Both, in grand scheme of things, are kind of assholes. Maybe reason for people far away to see this conflict differently than war between Azerbaijan and Armenia is mix of agressor vs defender and Goliath vs David situation, and the fact that what they see on videos is a country and people more relatable than some Middle Eastern Arabs that are getting democracy delivered to their homes. But that is how i see it.
 
 
   Why this war is in such way it is (copy pasted from Discord): 
 
   I think we started this war with soft boxing gloves on, for some fucking reason. Maybe they expected less resistance, which may show how much attention they gave to situation on Donbass and how well they took into account 8 years of nationalistic propaganda and having armed conflict in 2.5 regions.
 
   Note absolutely no videos coming from our MoD, nothing about combat. Also note how for several days we used no artillery, very limited cruise missile strikes and no airstrikes (like in Syria with 100+ sorties per day from small base in Hmeimym). All this led to major units not being destroyed, equipment partially left in working condition. Internet was not turned off, mobile phones working. They did jack shit on this front. They did half measures and got half results.
 
   Thanks to that UAF was not destroyed. Convoy routes left undefended. No use of CAS, no proper AA coverage. Big units in bypassed cities left without serious blocking formations. They can orginise by using just mobiles phones. Thanks to ability to film and upload videos to the internet, net is now flooded with videos of Russian equipment destroyed and soldiers killed. Uplifting material for other side. All this instead of getting moral collapse of enemy faster and destruction and murder to minimun turned 180. Ukrainians are fighting back harder that what was anticipated is my expectation.
 
   Another boggus decision was using such small number of forces for operation. I saw claims of ~50k in initial phase. 100k is possibly going to be total number of forces. Ukraine is 40+ mln country. Not sure how they will hold it. Even with Rosgvardia there is not enough people to hold whole country.
 
   In the end results will be same on grand scale, but path to that result will be bloodier and longer. I guess thats why Putin fired that big star commander. But i guess they had plan B for bloodier route, which is why we now see MRLS used to bombard enemy.
 
   You can't "half-fight" the war, trying to look friendly on tv. What was supposed to be public flogging of Ukraine starts to be 1939 Soviet war with Finland, where USSR technically won, but Germans, looking at how it was won, thought Red Army was umm.. "incompetent" and decision to invade USSR was taken with taking into account poor results of that war. 
 
 
   Expectations, future
   After declaration of recognition of republics i thought we will start to help rebels in taking back 2 oblast', and this will be the end of hot-ish phase of conflict in Donbass region after quick strike against main forces of UAF in this region (which are most of their forces) and enforcing some sort of political comma in a conflict and moving to next phase.
 
   Reality went in different direction.
   I suspect this war will continue for a week (optimistically), 2-3 weeks if Russian command will not unfuck their plans, or turn into strange military stalment for a month or 2 when most of Ukraine is going to be technically captured, but vast territories and many towns/villages will not have any occupation forces to keep an order, so motivated people will have space to continue strategically unorginised conflict until we will pump necessary amount of internal troops to put it down enough for law enforcements to handle situation.  
 
   After that expect new government, neutral status and Russian troops leaving, with scars of stupidity of leadership. And after some time - nationalists will rise, again, maybe even at bigger scale. Reason - they were screaming about Russian invasion for 8 years and now it is a reality. Their voice was heard by people in Ukraine before, but and now it have big and firm foundation to stand on thanks to this war happening.
 

I wouldn't know, tbh, guns aren't my thing at all.

Recent influx of people here turned this thread from something that looks like information being shared into a shit show. Great job, i guess. 

On this forum we are PROUD supporters of VLADIMIR PUTIN

On this forum we are PROUD supporters of VLADIMIR PUTIN

The US is the ultimate exemplar of modern industrial propaganda, and learned from the old master (the UK).
 
This is easy to demonstrate (if filled with tedious quotations and references), because where else is the narrative of "giant, technologically-advanced country rolls over smaller country and dominates them for twenty years for no good reason, only to leave in shame as the local lads make it too hard for them to stay" Full Metal Jacket and not Red Dawn: Kabul edition. Who else could even think of pulling of the move of "these guys fought the Reds and so we armed them and helped radicalize them, then they sat around for twenty years and did more or less nothing, then someone completely different hurt us and so we decided that they were evil monsters and had to go". That's some Eastasia-level shit right there, and that's without even looking at the sequel where they go "so we just left, but never lost, but are going to punish these guys forever about it, but the real fight were the lessons we learned along the way".

Dude, no. Just... I mean, did you fall into a coma in 2004 and only just wake up? Are you an amnesiac or something?
 
Knocking over other countries is a terrible idea if your purposes are to safeguard liberal democracy. Even if you grant someone the right to get rid of "dictators" and "terrorists" that run places in a way you don't like (and that's a planet-sized "if"), it never works. The locals never turn around, look at all the foreign troops lording it over them and go "you know what, we like these guys so much that we're going to vote for someone who aligns perfectly with their interests and never cause trouble again". 
 
If you actually believe in the concept of a liberal, rules-based international order, then the US declaring a bunch of countries guilty of a crime they didn't commit and invading them was one of the crimes of the new century. And even if you don't; it's results have been an unmitigated disaster by the very justifications that they themselves provided. No democracy flowered, no peace was achieved. The only beneficiaries were a bunch of defence contractors and an even more virulent crop of terrorists that the US effectively manufactured and spread around a quarter of the globe.
 
So if you are going to blame Russia for unprovoked aggression and breaking international norms, then you have to blame the US for showing them how it's done: never once apologizing for the act, and never facing any consequences except the inevitable blow-back that comes with some of the stupidest policy decisions in history. That's just basic mental consistency.
 
And if you really think that simply being able to paint your enemies as illiberal is all you need to justify any heinous act, then how is a democratically-elected Russian government, who sees the government in the Ukraine as the illegitimate result of a soft coup by the US, not also going to be able to use that to argue their case?
 
Learn to use your head, or get off this forum.

No, it's sad how you guys clearly are swallowing up Putin's propoganda and lies of "denazification" (esp. when he's the one actively hiring Nazis to fight for him. Read: WAGNER GROUP), and are justifying the invasion of a democratic state and the murder of innocents, and for what? So you can create a new puppet state? Thank god the western world is looking at Russia with disgust.
 
Even more sad, if you as a Russian suddenly become wiser and realize how wrong this war is, and then decide you want to demonstrate against it, you'll be arrested (and likely physically mistreated). That's the price you pay for living in a dictatorship where there is no freedom of press or speech.   
 
Only thing I can think of which beats this is when a few (thankfully very few) people living in the west, enjoying all the freedom that comes with that, out of sheer ignorance start supporting this war. That is truly mindblowing.

The first two photos are bad photoshop (look at the fuzzy edge around the flag), the third the celebration of an historical event.
Besides, even if the first two photos weren't doctored, it would more likely be some individual thing than some shadow conspiracy to bring back the USSR.

Very detailed video, this youtube channel is quickly becoming my top space related videomaker.

Ian got his hands on NK LMG
 

I too am confused as to what the point of a 50+ tonne TFV tonk is supposed to be. They're not achieving a meaningful increase in any strategic mobility, are there bridges they think they'll be able to cross that a proper MBT wouldn't?

At war, protection is statistical. 
You’re not only facing the highest threat but the whole one which starts with rifles. 
The more you can face, the better this is. 

T-10M moving to it's place in Museum of military history in Padikovo. Tank was taken from army shooting range, engine is late version.

A list of little less trashy animea than average. One about ex-boxer at least sounds like not haram.
 
@Sturgeon also will like the fact that there is a 4th Evangelion movie (i totally missed that, lol), more religios sounding bs! More giant humanoid biorobots fist fights!
 

So, Sherman vs Panther is a topic that has been chewed over on this forum until only gristle remains. I accordingly have very little to add except to urge the newer members to dig into some of our older threads.
 
In terms of chronological progression vs what hindsight tells us - as @Sturgeon has stated, a T-44/T-54 was entirely within the state of the art in 1939. If aircraft seem to have more quickly arrived at a local optimum, it's partly a function of more resources being poured into them than tanks*, partly a function of the relative utility of outdated models^, and partly a function of different operational and strategic tradeoffs.
 
Tanks are rigidly constrained by fuel supply lines, bridge sizing, tunnel width and train gauges. The result is that you want to get along with the smallest, lightest, most mobile vehicle you can until such time as it isn't tenable any more. With aircraft, the major limitation of runways only kicks in at the very frontline, and accordingly puts hard constraints only on shorter-ranged types such as interceptors and tactical support aircraft. Even then, this mostly bites around the point where jet aircraft become common and landing speeds start to balloon.
 
 
*Resources put into tank vs. aircraft production in WW2 are uniformly almost impossible to directly quantify given wildly fluctuating budgets, the different strategic resources needed by each, the inaccuracies of stated prices, and the fact that all the services kept their own accounts. On the Nazi side of things, wild swings in allocation were frequent but the luftwaffe nearly always ended up with the lion's share of resources (especially scarce resources such as aluminium). As for the Army, only around 20% of their budget went into tanks. The production figures of all combatant nations reflect this: around two aircraft were produced for every tank.
 
 
^An outdated tank can still provide valuable frontline service, while an outdated fighter or bomber is dead weight.

The various design competitions and the judgings thereof are a good resource for seeing how to approach tank design (especially in a fictional context).

Something to think about is that the tank that won the "WWII-era" (Cascadia) competition ended up a lot like a T-55. In theory you could have been making T-55s from 1939 on. They didn't, because actual chronological development doesn't work that way. In 1939, what is a T-55 designed to kill?

As LoooSeR said, context is important.

During the 1940s, tanks were simple enough that relatively small countries could design and field reasonably competitive designs on their own.  The expertise required for tanks largely overlapped with either other armament industries (tank guns were often adapted naval, AA guns, or field artillery and the engines were often modified aircraft powerplants), or civilian heavy industries (much of the casting/welding and transmission design could be readily adapted from car/train/ship making industries).

By the 1990s, however, tanks were much higher tech and a lot of that tech was much more tank-specific.  It should be possible to adapt a helicopter turbine or heavy prime mover engine to work in a tank.  Fabrication of the hull could still probably be done with expertise from other industries.  Production of the special armor packages, transmission and running gear would require tank-specific knowledge but not necessarily tank-specific industry.  Production of the gun, fire control systems, and other combat electronics would by that point require very specific knowledge and would overlap relatively little with too many other things already in production if it were a nation's first tank.

I think it's instructive to look at the smallest/poorest countries that have produced their own tanks.  Romania was able to produce the TR-85, albeit in somewhat limited quantities, and they didn't design their own gun, and the turret and hull design are at least based on the design of the T-54/55 albeit very heavily modified.  As far as I can tell they did design their own engine and transmission, which is quite impressive, but this took some time and all the while they were cribbing notes off of foreign designs.  No shame in that; high specific output diesels are not easy to design.

Israel designed the Merkava, which has a completely original hull and turret design, locally designed suspension and tracks, and locally designed special armor packages and fire control on the later models.  The engine is either US or German designed, and the transmissions have been US, German or Israeli designed based on the mark.  The gun was a straightforward clone of the M68, and later a locally designed version of the German 120mm smoothbore.  Both of these guns are compatible with the wide range of ammunition in either caliber, although Israel has a local ammunition industry capable of designing and producing its own tank gun ammunition (which in some cases has been widely adopted outside of Israel).

South Korea has produced two MBTs locally, the K1 and K2.  The former had a great deal of assistance from Chrysler, but the latter appears to be a largely local effort.  Early K2s had a German designed engine and transmission, but these are eventually to be phased out and replaced with locally-designed equivalents.  I believe the tracks are German-designed.  Not sure about the suspension.  The armor packages and fire control system are locally designed and manufactured.  The gun is some sort of version of the German 120mm, although again South Korea is capable of designing and producing their own ammunition.

Turkey, which has roughly the same size economy as South Korea if we discount their current economic woes, has had a much harder time developing their own MBT.  Despite considerable help from South Korea, they have struggled to develop their own engine and transmission and are currently dependent on political good will from Germany if the project is to go forward quickly.  I don't want to give the impression that Turkey has a weak local manufacturing sector or is a stranger to high tech industries.  Neither is true; they are actually capable of producing their own helicopter gas turbines, combat UAVs, missiles, and a variety of other quite challenging materiel.  Turkey has, current monetary woes aside, a well diversified and fairly well developed economy.  They're just not a match for South Korea, which has an extremely well-developed heavy industry and electronics sector relative to the country's size, natural resources and population.  Israel has an even smaller population and GDP, but their defense industry is outrageously well-developed for a country of that size for some mysterious reason, and there is abundant local expertise in the design of complex weaponry.

So, any country that is plausibly going to mass-produce a 1990s tech-level tank (and let's be honest, that's not dramatically different than a 2022 tech level tank) is going to need a fairly robust economy, well developed local heavy industry, and a large number of mechanical and electrical engineers.  I think the poorest of the countries I just listed is Romania, with the 39th largest GDP in the world (out of 190-something).  By the 1990s, being able to design and produce a tank on ones own was a privilege reserved for a fairly small number of countries.  Even countries that could plausibly design their own engine, transmission and tracks frequently farmed these out to Germany's Renk and Diehl, respectively.  Alternatively, you might say that Brazil in the 1980s represents the floor economy of a nation capable of designing and producing its own tank, although the entire turret on that vehicle is a British design from Vickers.

So that would be the first thing I would say about designing a 1990s tank; it's not for small nations, and even the rich ones frequently used foreign components.

As for what a 1990s tank would realistically look like, by the 1990s most tanks were really samey.
 
Powerplant:  The earliest tanks with diesels were experimented with in the 1930s, I believe either the Japanese or the Soviets were the first.  By the 1940s the advantages were obvious, but de-rated aviation gasoline engines were reliable and already in mass production, so many countries stuck with those.  I'm less clear on the rationale for the Germans keeping gasoline motors as theirs were not aeroderivative.  In any case, there actually was a German tank diesel program, it just went nowhere.

By the 1990s there were pretty much two realistic possibilities for a tank powerplant; either a turbodiesel or a gas turbine.  1990s MBTs are about half armor by weight, so they're very sensitive to the compactness of things.  Turbocharged diesels don't have amazing power density, although with a lot of careful engineering they can be made competitive, but they have very low fuel consumption and lower waste heat rejection requirements than gasoline engines.  Once you factor in the volume of the engine plus the volume of the fuel plus the volume of the cooling fans, and the strategic mobility advantage the fuel-sipping diesel, it's definitely coming out ahead of the gasoline motor.

Gas turbines do not scale down particularly well.  Very large gas turbines like the 33,000 horsepower Rolls Royce WR-21 naval gas turbine in the Type 45 destroyer achieve 42% thermal efficiency, which is like middling efficiency by diesel standards.  A gas turbine that will fit inside of a tank is much less efficient; realistically about a match for a gasoline engine in terms of specific fuel consumption when it's at design point and much worse if it's idling or doing any kind of stop and go.  Gas turbines also need beefier air filters than diesels due to much higher mass airflow through the engine.  However, there are still a number of advantages that must be taken into consideration.  Gas turbines are (very nearly) completely self-cooling, so while there will still need to be cooling fans to keep the transmission cool, the total powerpack losses to cooling power will be smaller and the ballistic windows from the ventilation will be much smaller.  Gas turbines with a free power turbine (which is most of them) have a very different torque/RPM characteristics from a diesel; they produce max torque at their lowest RPM and max power at their minimum torque.  These are very favorable characteristics if you want to keep the transmission small (although the Abrams' XR-1100 transmission was, as I understand, designed to work with both the AVCR-1360 and AGT-1500 so it likely does not take much advantage of this effect).  Gas turbines are easier to start in the cold.  Gas turbines have very little vibration because their moving parts rotate rather than reciprocate.  Gas turbines are actually multi-fuel, no questions asked and no mucking around with adjusting the engine to suit the fuel.  The Brayton cycle uses continuous, constant-pressure ignition which simply does not care about octane numbers or cetane numbers.  Finally, it's easier to design gas turbine fuel burners so they produce very little smoke than it is to ensure that a diesel produces very little smoke due to the much different fuel burn stoichiometry of a gas turbine.  It should be noted that not all gas turbine designers have actually succeeded in doing so, however.

A gas turbine good enough for a tank would be roughly similar to a turboshaft for a helicopter, albeit tweaked more for better fuel consumption than for absolute power to weight ratio.  The list of countries that can design very good turboshaft engines is quite short, but then so is the list of countries that can make high specific power diesels.  If tank-sized gas turbines performed as well as ship-sized ones this would be no contest, but they don't so either choice is competitive and it's pretty ambiguous which is "best".  But most countries in the world realistically do not have the luxury to pick and choose between a top of the line diesel and a top of the line turbine.  Interestingly, the UK is in a position to make such a choice and they still managed to fuck it up somehow by fielding a tank diesel that's 300 horsepower short of its stablemates.  The French hyperbar engine is a turbocharged diesel, just tweaked for very fast throttle response and compactness at some expense to efficiency.

Armament:  By the 1990s, advances in digital fire control systems largely rendered gun-launched missiles obsolete.  There was probably still a case for them as a sort of long-range precision round for swatting at helicopters and the like, but that role could also be filled with something like M830A1.  There were various flirtations in the mid Cold War era with sorta-kinda howitzer like armament for tanks in the form of medium pressure guns and gun/launcher hybrids, but by the late 1970s there was basically a consensus amongst all sensible people that the tank armament of the future would either be the Rheinmetall 120mm or would look a lot like it.  Even British engineers were aware of this:



In any event, the Soviets taking their toys and going home meant that the world did not suddenly fill with various super-tanks, and tank lethality ended up being more economically improved by advances in ammunition design rather than arming the tanks with larger guns.



You can't go too much larger than current 120mm without requiring an autoloader.