12:19 – Johan No.1
Wow… a whole bunch of answers went into a reading list to absorb in small portions and a lot of new knowledge, ended up only +1 at the end but crazy much information to take in.
12:28 – Johan No.1
If they are former conscripts, it probably means extended reserve training time on top of that, and there should be a couple of million in the mobilization reserve?
Then there are different roles as Paul writes, and key personnel are scarce. It is quick to learn to load but difficult to command a tank company.
With a bit of luck, and luck we have, the deployed T90 and T80 tanks that are now appearing will perform very poorly in the terrain, and cooperation between different branches of the military is probably one of the last things they learn, so they will likely drive around on their own and expose themselves quite a lot without causing much damage.
Then everything arrives gradually as there is heavy pressure and things are fired away a bit like on a glorified shooting range.
That said, it was terrible warfare from day one from Russia in this war.
I have a video I haven’t been able to find again where 4 tanks had driven nose-to-nose and were knocked out, and behind them stood an MTLB driving back and forth, right in the middle of a field with a forest 100m to the left.
It was like the living room in the cuckoo’s nest but I can’t manage to find it unfortunately…
12:34 – Johan No.1
It seems like all the elite units have been thrown into the Russian attacks.
VDV, Guards, and the Naval Infantry are all between Vuhledar – Siversk and are achieving very little.
So it is completely reasonable that it is tough right now and if there is a retreat on any front section, also completely reasonable.
They seem to be deploying armor on a large scale judging by the losses.
Here I have probably gotten completely spun around in the stands because I was quite sure they were holding back the more capable units for a spring offensive but they seem to be going all in with everything right now.
Only a trolling from Belarus is missing.
12:42 – MatsExtrude
Thanks! You and Paul are on the same page, it is the lack of higher-ranking officers that will cause the Russians the most problems.
Without being an expert, I also think we’ve seen a lot that seems a bit ill-considered. Perhaps mainly that they often bunch up with only a couple of meters between them.
13:46 – Johan No.1
That pro-Russian blogs are ecstatic about the uprising or whatever it is in Brazil says it all, I think.
Bolsonaro has played on the same half as T-P and I followed Qanon quite early and watched fascinated as it developed into something quite persistent. It was just a conspiracy theory like all the others, there was FRBanon, CIAanon, etc., but this one took off. It contained the same ingredients but something stuck.
I am still convinced that Qanon was one of the Russians’ most successful psyops since the Cambridge Four or whatever they were called.
17:48 – Johan No.1
Certainly 32 on this but now an offensive is at least possible in the east.
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1612398509382148098?s=46&t=lKP0_uVb2roQDNQdlx-TBQ
17:51 – Johan No.1
The Brits are also already considering Boxer APC and some old general is out making the rounds saying they should donate Warrior.
There will probably be a couple of brigades with top-shelf armor from this.
There are probably one or two strategists who will follow this glued to their screens when newer systems, NATO-style units, and tactics are tested against what they were built for.
18:08 – Johan No.1
Surtrutn is spamming below so I’ll join in here 😀
Now it seems Billström has confirmed that Archer is on the way and that other offensive weapons are also on the table, so I am a bit curious about all those who time and again have explained to us Archer and CV90 believers that we are ignorant imbeciles who don’t understand better and that Sweden cannot spare Archer or CV90.
There were absolutely no Leo2s.
For Western armor generally, it was a no-no because of:
Supply chains
Difficulties learning the systems
Only NATO countries should get Western armor
No repair possible, Archer was the worst and could only be repaired in Boden
What have I forgotten?
The explanatory models have been many and obviously wrong.
18:10 – Johan No.1
Sorry that I wrote spamming Surtrutn, I now see that it is a new post for each one that just starts the same.
I thought you had a delay and pressed send 20 times so there were many duplicate posts.
Good posts 👍
10:04 – Johan No.1
Big difference between eastern tanks and western ones is the turret ammunition storage – the crew gets grilled.
In a western tank the chance to survive is high and if the tank is knocked out they get a new one.
The ammunition is stored in a compartment outside the turret in a western tank and you hit a button so a hatch opens and you get your shell.
Modified eastern tanks with good targeting systems and good additional armor are probably also okay, it is the unmodified or earlier modifications that are trumped by the western ones on the table.
Russian tanks have the advantage of a low profile but western tanks can stand behind a “hill” and get protection from it, Russian tanks can’t manage that due to the gun’s elevation. There are probably some cover positions in Ukraine that western tanks can exploit?
Above all – the crew, and Russian crews have proven completely incompetent since day 1 of the war and with a bit of luck the T80 and T90 are now being driven by absolute circus performers.
That’s what I think but as I said, Earlier M really knows this for real 😀
09:52 – Johan No.1
It still fascinates me that there are two absolute truths in the Ukraine war. The pro-Russian side is well-made, and if you lack integrity and a moral compass, it’s very easy to get caught in it.
Then, once hooked, all counterarguments become attempts to smear the “truth,” no matter how correct they are.
Young teenagers who happen to drift past the big issues – environment, peace, equality – become radicalized very quickly and are completely hopeless to reason with. Eventually, it becomes a struggle to win the conversation at any cost, and they go all in with personal attacks and start ranking attributes that people are born with in some kind of interpretive priority pyramid (which always gives themselves interpretive priority) without realizing that they themselves have slipped into what they claim to fight against. They ruin every dinner for years, and it goes on like that until they mature.
This has pretty much been the general debate climate for a couple of years now, and now you might ask someone in the thread how it was in the 80s before the wall fell and the Soviet subversive activities worked overtime?
I experienced that post-1989 until a bit after the millennium was calm, but then it picked up again. My parents were devoted ’68ers and passionate about everything they cared about back then, but I only have third-hand knowledge of that time, though I guess there was quite a bit of mudslinging when it happened?
Ukraine is no pushover and has a long way to go as a country before they are a benefit to the EU, and there is some risk that they become Europe’s biggest mafia. The EU must balance this very tactfully because Ukraine has a huge check to cash in, and if we don’t meet them in balance, they will take the payment in other ways with a million battle-hardened soldiers slipping into the underworld and taking over Europe’s drug trade and prostitution.
– some criticism is justified but not as an argument to support Russia.
That one can justify this kind of war living in Europe where one enjoys freedom and security is quite unpleasant.
Many politicians have struggled in the first year of the war because they have lacked both integrity and a moral compass and because there is no clear winner. They hate this.
(a bit simplified because there should be a layer of advisors they should listen to, I don’t know how it looks everywhere, but if I had to guess, it has been calm for too long, so the old crusty hawks have been maneuvered out over time?)
Now I feel that they have started to get a somewhat straight queue here and that enough countries in the free West are in favor of helping Ukraine win the war so that now it is only a matter of time – but it took its time.
This is the vacuum dictatorships always exploit either to enslave their own country or to attack unfortunate neighbors.
The free West has no absolute right to go to war just because they don’t like something – then you are entering dictatorship territory and sniffing around. The debate about what is reasonable or not is incredibly easy to disrupt, and Russia has succeeded excellently in this; there are those who still consider them victims. It took a huge mistake for the curtains to be pulled back and for us to finally see the stripped dictatorship creature in all its darkness.
This basically applies to all issues – there is a guiding star – can I, or someone else, show that what has been done is best for the project (not an individual party in the project but the project), then it can be as unconventional as you want.
Apply that to nuclear power – is it best for Sweden to shut down functioning and paid-off electricity production without having new electricity production to replace it?
Or Ukraine – is it best for the EU/Sweden if Russia is kicked out with their feet first or manages to invade Ukraine or freeze the conflict?
You can keep going like that with all questions, requiring some knowledge of the subject and then managing to connect the threads for the whole, and finally having enough integrity not to be convinced of the opposite against better knowledge.
Unfortunately, these qualities are probably not the ones most rewarded for climbing the political ladder in many countries, but they are critical in times of unrest, and times of unrest definitely come at regular intervals. Then a certain type of personality is needed to be early, to go against the current with an unclear winner. Where loss might be a crashed career, not many choose to run first.
Zelensky is a very unique man who turned out to have everything, including the ability to play his role excellently.
I want to believe that Sweden should have these qualities in sufficient amounts from birth, and the train has not yet left to send anything that makes a difference for Ukraine. Then maybe I am a bit biased and not completely objective here, I don’t know.
The USA and UK have some kind of underlying system that automatically kicks in when major injustices are committed; I still have a lot to understand about this, but it has obviously worked since the Napoleonic era, and it is a gross simplification to attribute it to economic interests and enriching themselves. The USA, for example, could have waged a much more brutal war against Russia and also against China, or allied with both for some kind of world domination, but they don’t.
The world was a different place in the 1700s, so it cannot be compared directly, but it was the USA and Europe that dealt with their not-so-pretty legacy while Russia and China have continued to be colonial powers, and MENA is running some fancy version of slavery still.
Why did the USA and Europe stop something that paid off well if they do everything to enrich themselves?
Why is it the USA and the free West that help Ukraine with Russia and China on the other axis?
There is no direct point to the above text other than that I have not experienced a buildup to a world war before now and have now been able to draw my own conclusions rather than having read history and had everything served up ready-made.