Beer

44 minutes ago, mr.T said:

Germany is offering Marders and Fuchses not Leopards in exchange for T72 and clones to ukraine. There are no Leopard2 to be had.

No. That was offered to Slovenia, not to us. In our case it's tanks. That is officially confirmed. 

On 5/2/2022 at 9:29 PM, Beer said:

 

I don't think that it's the main criteria. My few cents how I feel it here (not saying I am right of course). 

 

There are only three viable options - Leopard 2, Abrams, K2. IMHO Merkava or Leclerc are not on the table (despite our traditionally good relationship with Israel). Out of those three we can safely say that K2 has a chance only if Czechia is not alone in EU to buy it. After the failed bid in Poland the chances are slim. Maybe if Norway selects the K2..., otherwise no chance even though K2 would be for sure a very interesting option for the military because it has some reasonable advantages for us such as three-men crew or lower weight. Leopard 2 is for sure a sensible option from technical point of view but I think that the militaty would prefer cooperation with US (and Poland) rather than Germany. Just have a look on the stuff we are using. We are neighbouring with Germany but we use basically no German weapons, none of Euro projects lead by Germany, not even anything second-hand (we have a handful of Dingo II but that's it). The reasons are IMHO purely political. The new government leans even more towards US and at least for now it also stands with Poland. Now when Poland decided for Abrams the option to share the Polish service and mainteanance base with them and Americans is for sure very attractive (despite all the technical troubles the Abrams brings for us - mainly the excessive weight). On the other hand it's also possible that some sort of weapon deal with Germany may also go through in the future as a sort of friendly gesture. We'll see. 

The recent development changes the situation somewhat. Germany came with an offer of some tanks for free in exchange for the tanks our MOD donated to Ukraine. Nobody wants to speak on public what exactly was offered but the general undestranding is that it's something requiring modernization, posibly Leopart 2A4. I'll post an update in more appropriate thread when details come out and when the position of Czech government towards the offer is more clear.  

Pretty rare (and not produced anymore) CZ-807 with a volunteer soldier of VSU. 

From our side this time only helis including the quie famous Alien Tiger. 

21 hours ago, mr.T said:

Drones in contested environment need to be considered dispensable. In the past wars like Afghanistan ,Syria ,Libya ,Irak a drone like Predator or TB-2 could rack up lots of missions before suffering a loss , here its unlimited budget and supply that is keeping the TB-2 in the fight inUkraine, in any scenario where West wouldn't be dropping 50 billion$ in two months there would be nothing left in the skies. Now as long as there are TB-2 that can be bought, Ukraine can replenish we are all paying for it, and when they burn through stock of those US will supply Predator or similar.

 

In many ways small suicide drones might be more bang for the buck , end of the day if TB-2 can't drop more than 4 munitions before its shot down its kinda expensive to loose after a flight or two not to mention it needs an airstrip to operate.

 

 

Neither you, nor me or whomever else on this forum knows what is the average mission ratio of the TB-2 on Ukraine or for what all they have been used for. Without offering any hard data this is a not a topic for any serious discussion. 

9 hours ago, rocketeer said:

Now that I stopped laughing, here's the deal buddy.

 

Painting the letter Z on your wrecked hardware is bordering on standard procedure in Ukrainian Armed Force and National Guard. That's what they do whenever they have the time.

 

I'm not even talking about the absolute idiots that ultimately ended up costing Ukraine (the country) ¾ of it's economy and good chunk of the territory — the so-called "Ukrainian cyber army".

 

The reason to why LostArmour had to close the database is that the contents were simply exploited to throw in even more fakes after minor photoshopping. Or video editing for that matter.

 

Which makes the overwhelming majority of Oryx database simply worthless, as the kills cannot be reliably attributed. But there should be reason why this genius was kicked the hell out of LostArmour, if memory serves? 😂

That's not worth a reply but I'll try in a similar maner as Autokara. 

T-72B3, B3 obr.2016, T-80U family, T-80BVM, T-90A, BTR-82A, Tos-1, 1A, Tor family, Buk M2, BMP-3, BMD-4, BTR-MDM, Tigr, Typhoons, Kamaz, modern Urals, Su-34, Su-25SM, Su-30SM, Su35S, Mi-28N, Mi-35M, Ka-52, Orlan-10, Zala, Forpost etc. many other. I guess those are all Ukrainean with painted Z on them, right? 

Anyway whatever floats your boat. Just check if it's not sinking. 

An interesting onboard video dated May 9 of a launch of missiles from Tu-22M3 on Odessa. Possibly a first combat footage of Kinzhal aero-balistic missile launch (I guess Kh-32 is not land-attack capable, is it?).  

Btw. This  Russian mantra NATO here, NATO there is just ridiculous. 

Our MOD is planning to order some MALE UAVs this year. At this moment the main favorite seems to be Elbit Hermes 900. 

This is roughly one complete Russian mechanized battalion destroyed in a failed bridging attempt near Bilohorivka (or Belogorovka in Russian) yesterday. 

One particularly important UAV-related point we can take from the current war is that in the drone age crossing rivers became even more difficult than in the past. With so many UAVs it's basically impossible to build a pontoon bridge which stands for more than one day before it's found and destroyed by artillery/MLRS. 

1 minute ago, RobertV said:

Some limited success doesn't disprove the point of TB-2's being pretty fucking  insignificant in grand scheme of things.  

The grand scheme of things consists of large number of events which appear to be pretty insignifficant. In fact nearly everything appear insignificant standing next to the artillery (not only in this war) but it doesn't mean you can go to war with just artillery and nothing else. 

It doesn't matter for whom Oryx works or whom he supports. The point is that majority of the documented losses on his blog are real. Most of them have gigantic letters Z and V written on them and a large part of the machinery is also exclusively used only by Russia. There is certainly a grey zone in which certain losses can be attributed to both sides (lostarmour.info for comparison) but that doesn't make the list useless because there is still a lot of undisputable facts which one can take from the database. See, the 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya tank division is the only unit in this war using T-80U family of tanks. Those can't be mixed with Ukrainean. They are Russian and they are of 4th division. That's a fact. This division which was considered one of the best in the Russian army beyond any doubt lost more than 1/3 of its tanks. It doesn't mattter who delivered the message but without Oryx's list we would hardly know that because lostarmour doesn't show Russian losses at all (perhaps is not allowed to do so). 

My previous point that there are most likely numerous Ukrainean losses missing in the database was not about the databse per se. It's natural thing done by the side which controls the territory where losses occur. See how many Azeri losses surfaces only after the 2019 war? We will never know how many never got on public. That's simply the advantage of the side which controls the battlefield and it will continue to be like that in any future conflict.  

50 seems to be very inflated number (for whatever reason) but even if it was true it's more than clear that TB-2 is not a suitable weapon for penetrating into well defended airspace. It works better than I thought when used reasonably. 

Looking at this tweet from H I Sutton it doesn't look like the island would be abandoned (yet). Anyway Admiral Makarov was found near Sevastopol. 

6 hours ago, mr.T said:

Snake island is so far from Crimea that it can't really be protected without ships providing SAM umbrella , even so given how the war is fought(ukraines near unlimited ISR and drone resources courtesy of western sponsors) i don't see much use for snake island , who ever occupies it be it Russians or Ukrainians is literally a sitting duck , while island does not provide any offensive capability . With appearance of new artillery and even 155mm guided shells , Ukrainians can literally shot at it from mainland shores . But if they man it Russians can bomb them at will as well.

 

 

IMHO the thing about the island is that if ever Ukraineans manage to fortify it somehow they can attack anything sailing along the whole western Crimean coastline up to Sevastopol and Balaklava by placing a neptune battery or two on the island. Sure it's tiny and therefore extremely difficult to defend but it's also the only way for Ukraine to get Sevastopol within their range. 

13 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

If you judge by Oryx list then yes, image is going to be distorted. Bunch of destroyed UAF vics are not on his list. Hell, i checked his Bulat section after a week or 2 after 2 Bulats casualties were spotted and he didn't had them counted.

 

2 Bulats that were lost in the field are those pics i posted above. 1 was abandoned, looks like.

I remember reading somewhere (can't recall where anymore) that one of the videos was actuallly taken by Ukrainean soldier and that the tank was not abandoned. The damaged one for sure was. Anyway it's just a tiny number. 

2 hours ago, Alzoc said:

 

Well I understand that they didn't popped up earlier since the Ukrainian didn't want to engage in an open fight with the Russian army, so they kept their armoured forces mostly hidden.

 

But as you said, it is weird that they appear isolated . If the Ukrainian engaged in counter attack they would want their armor to be concentrated...

Unless they use them as armored recon before entering a village that used to be occupied by the Russian.

The tank has more chance to survive an ambush than anything else and that would explain why they only send them one at a time (with infantry backup if they aren't stupid).

IMHO the picture of the way how VSU fights is somewhat distorted by the lack of evidence of their losses. It's obvious that Ukraineans manage to hide well large part of their losses - if you'd place all existing photos and videos of the VSU losses on the map you would find large areas of the battlefield with no footage at all. I think that the media image of light infantry war is not correct. 

Regarding the Bulats it's also a question how many of them are actually present in VSU units. They didn't have many and they lost around 20 in 2014 battles. Two of the three recently known lost ones were destroyed by an airstrike on the Kharkiv tank school yeard. I believe only one of them was lost in combat. 

2 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

 

Sasha Kots, military journalists who is currently working somewhere around Izyum in his telegram:

 

Oh, and more:
 

Would like to see a video of that for confirmation. 

That obviously isn't true. 

The island was not deserted which is clearly proven by the fact that there is a lot of secondary explosions from stored ammo and that two more Raptor crafts were hit around the island afterwards. The statement about mechanical failure of a Tor launcher is also good only for someone who didn't see the footage. Overall it was at least two Tors, one Strela 10M and two ZU-23-2 destroyed on the island by the strikes preparing the way for the Su-27 strike. 

Since this part of the statement is obviously untrue I don't see any reason why the rest shall be true.   

Also even the Wagner's RSOFM telegram stated that the destroyed helicopter was Russian and that the island was deserted only afterwards. 

Bayraktar TB-2 versus Russian Mi-8AMTSh on the Zmijinyi island. 

And some more Raptor crafts. It looks like after the cruiser Moscow is gone this part of the Black sea became a free hunting ground for TB-2 as there are no AD/airforce elements present to prevent them doing so. 

After the Bayraktars disabled the AD of the Zmijinyi island in previous strikes they did this with a pair of Su-27 carrying heavier ordonance. There must be barely anything left on the island and I personally don't see the Russian to try to hold it anymore. Watch till the end. 

The prototype of the Ukrainean 155 mm SpH Bohdana allegedly in action in Donbas. 

New view of the destroyed T-90M near Kharkiv.

20 hours ago, Alzoc said:

They will already be running two different types of MBT (plus the T-72s in reseve) soon enough anyway. That is already madness enough.

 

At least with the Leopard 2 they have the German industry right at the border for logistical support if needed.

With the M1 they'll have to create all the logistical support that goes with it (plus maybe have to deal with some shenanigans with imperials units...).

They may be able to rely on existing US army infrastructure in Europe for a while but they'll have to create their own at some point, and that will probably cost them an arm.

The biggest problem will probably be the M1's weight (especially if they are taking the latest version), a lot of their infrastructures probably can't handle it and there is also the question of whether they'll have to replace their bridging equipment (there are a lot of rivers in Poland).

It's definitively a capable MBT but switching the logistics will be a nightmare and will be insanely expensive.

 

I understand that it is mainly a political purchase to have a guarantee against Russia, but IMO they should have stuck with their Leopard 2 (maybe keep modernizing them) and replace all of their MBTs at once in the future (K2 PL or any indigenous design) to keep only one type of MBT in service.

Żółć may correct me but I believe there is a plan for having joint US/Polish repair and mainteanance facility for M1 in Poland adjacent to the new US forward storage base. I don't know how much of a real advantage it is to have Germany as a supplier of the Leos just over the border. The German foreign and military policy has been fickle and the tanks are produced in Greece anyway. 

I agree with the weight. Same issue for our eventual purchase. 

20 hours ago, Żółć said:

I agree with you. In my oppinion Poland is stuck with Abrams for good, and it will eventually become our only MBT. But to be fair, there is still a lot of talk about K2 and K2PL in Poland, including military journalists and some politicians. The vice minister of defence talked, in today's article, about talks, that are held with Hyundai considering the aquasition of K2.

IMHO Running three different modern MBT families (plus fourth type in reserve) would be just mad and I don't think the Polish MOD is mad. That's what only the Gulf states do. 

16 hours ago, Lord_James said:

I would think with the price of gasoline going up, people wouldn’t be very enthused with the gas hungry Abrams. 

I don't think that it's the main criteria. My few cents how I feel it here (not saying I am right of course). 

There are only three viable options - Leopard 2, Abrams, K2. IMHO Merkava or Leclerc are not on the table (despite our traditionally good relationship with Israel). Out of those three we can safely say that K2 has a chance only if Czechia is not alone in EU to buy it. After the failed bid in Poland the chances are slim. Maybe if Norway selects the K2..., otherwise no chance even though K2 would be for sure a very interesting option for the military because it has some reasonable advantages for us such as three-men crew or lower weight. Leopard 2 is for sure a sensible option from technical point of view but I think that the militaty would prefer cooperation with US (and Poland) rather than Germany. Just have a look on the stuff we are using. We are neighbouring with Germany but we use basically no German weapons, none of Euro projects lead by Germany, not even anything second-hand (we have a handful of Dingo II but that's it). The reasons are IMHO purely political. The new government leans even more towards US and at least for now it also stands with Poland. Now when Poland decided for Abrams the option to share the Polish service and mainteanance base with them and Americans is for sure very attractive (despite all the technical troubles the Abrams brings for us - mainly the excessive weight). On the other hand it's also possible that some sort of weapon deal with Germany may also go through in the future as a sort of friendly gesture. We'll see.