Russian troops ditch 30 armoured vehicles in single incident

Pretty much an indictment on Putin, who started his invasion a year ago.

I think, if in defence, I would rather be in a trench than a vehicle – but with a vehicle nearby to whisk me away to a fall back position as required.

I think any war will ultimately end up similar. Fancy jets and columns of tanks etc only get you so far, raw numbers of troops defending villages with artillery raining down is how things will quickly end up with once the top end stuff is taken off the board. It’s why doing the easy job of cutting troops numbers Vs having to deal with cancelling long term procurement contracts is such a bad idea and realsitically why the British army is getting to a point of being combat ineffective, just not the strength in numbers.

When both sides have similar capability it is bloodbath for both.

You only have to watch Kanal13 @Kanal13AZ on YouTube to see how tough the war is and how important drones are… to spot the enemy and for situational awareness. Trenches don’t even provide protection.

Probably car paint from one of the plants ‘gifted’ to the Russian state.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if one of the car plants had in fact been turned into a tank refurbishing facility.

At the rate the orcs are loosing them they will need to replace them pretty fast!

I may have it all wrong, but don’t the Ukraine Army have the “yellow” armband, so one might assumed that it is a captured vehicle, with the standard “squaddie happy snap” being taken.

Looks matt to me. I think the white is paint not reflection.

The C1s could well be the answer to Ukraines request for hundreds of MBTs.
I’m surprised the UK/ Germany haven’t already started buying them up. If Rheinmetal are prepared to refurb them then great. Win win.
Less risk to the UK sending C2s which we may well need sometime soon in defence of NATO or our allies around the world from the Sino Ruskie axis.

I saw that article on Bulgarian military site. I don’t know how trust worthy it is. I can’t read German newspapers and haven’t looked at the companies website.
Just this morning I read rhienmetal have said they can supply KF51 panthers by the end of the year. Lots of talk not much action.
If and it’s a very big if the challenger 1 tanks are in a suitable state to be refurbished and can be fitted with modern sensors cheaply enough and have spares or spares can be made it’s viable.
I’m sure ex army boys who operated and maintained challenger 1 would be happy to have a training job for a while.
Next is the cost. If it can be fixed up cheap enough then great. If it’s costing £10m a vehicle to get into service and a years worth of parts probably not worth it. Timescale is also important.
After the war it will be best to get Ukraine to build its own tanks. That project can be started ASAP but actual manufacturer would hard in a war zone.
With western finiancial support and Ukrainian manufacturer skills a great tank Could be made.

They are taking deliveries from North Korea, who has one of the largest artillery ordnance stockpiles in the world.

Russia borders Ukraine so they haven’t even got any logistical problems. it’s a huge advantage when you look at some other world conflicts where weapons and supplies have had to be transported hundreds or even thousands of miles.

I last heard there are only 20 Armata T-14 and they are still going through Acceptance tests.

We can’t gift Ukraine any Eurofighter. The RAF already has too few high performance jets.
Purchasing Grippers or F16s from reserve stocks or used stocks is a much better idea. Typhoon is going to be needed for RAF.
I think the only way RAF can give tranche 1 typhoons is if they are replaced asap by tranche 3/4 aircraft.

Ukraine has no money, its tax base has collapsed. It is currently being supported monthly by the US. Much of the money going in now is gifted but there is a lot of loans (old and new) which are unlikely to be ever be repaid. The debts are just too large for any realistic tax base to repay after the war has ended.

I assumed we had gifted most, if not all, of the materiel sent so far. Doubtless the Americans have sold everything at high price or come up with some sort of Lend-Lease deal whereby the Ukrainians are given x years to pay them.

The majority of the major equipment the US has sent was, or was getting towards end of life even the M777 was going to be reduced substantially in numbers though experience in Ukraine has likely reversed that proposal it’s been reported. There are exceptions of course HIMARS being the most obvious but that’s probably why to a degree they have been only filtered through conservatively. And we know how reluctant Biden is to send Abrams, be easier to get a prisoner of Colour off of Death row,

“Likely” is used a lot by the Institute for the Study of War, which is indeed based in Washington DC. Well worth a daily look at their website, which is very informative.

Hi Graham it’s actually risk manager speak…both likely and probably are very specific risk management terms from a standardised risk management matrix ( the Australian risk matrix) everyone who deals with and assesses life and limb risks tend to use it now as a way to explain and quantify risk, giving a risk a score between 2 and 25…with 25 being a catastrophic risk that will happen ( this was the risk score for a pandemic on the national risk register, which was over egging the pudding a bit but in any one year we where always expecting it to happen).

the risk of likelihood of something happening goes from 1=5.

value of 5=almost certain= will occurs in most circumstances and more than 2 per year
Value of 4=likely= expected to occur 50%= will happen 1-2 a year
value of 3= Possible=expected to occur less than 50%= will happen once ever 3-5 years.
Value of 2= unlikely = unusual occurrence= Once every 5-10 years
value of 1= rare= not expected to occur= less than once in a decade

then you have the outcome again a value between one and five.
value 1= insignificant= no treatment required no impact
value 2= minor= first aid or local impact
value 3=moderate = medical treat to same life or limb, significant event or cost
Value 4 = major= permeate injury, limb loss or major service disruption, very signifying loss
Value 5 = catastrophic= dead, loss of life, total loss of services very significant unmanageable cost and outcome.

so if an organisation that studies something like geopolitical risk, military risk, public health or anything else than can cause people to be dead uses a term “Likely” it has a very specific meaning and a score of 4 if that is attached to something like an airliner crashing and killing people (outcome score of 5) it’s something to pay attention to ( risk score of 20 is very very iffy). It’s a way people that spend their time assessing how many people are going to die of something nasty talk…..it is odd unless your mind is in a place that can convert the risk of deaths into a number that need to be managed down…..so our risk is 5×5=25 we do this and that and this which changes the risk to 2×5=10 is that acceptable amelioration ( which it would be).

if someone ever tells you a risk is scored at 25….either level quickly or start looking for the casualties.

I agree. In 1934 a governmental Rearmament Committee was set up – we just got ready for WW2, some 5 years later. With todays sophisticated kit and less of a manufacturing sector, then perhaps we need 10 years to be ready for a major conflict, especially the army.

Wow 😀

The HS2 project has left the station and would probably cost more to scrap than complete. At the end of the day we need to invest wisely in all areas of society. As for our leaders it should perhaps be remembered that we all picked them. It should also be remembered that Ben & Boris quickly agreed a plan which surely saved Kiev from being overrun in the early days of the war whilst foreign governments dithered. The best people to run our country would not be seen dead anywhere near politics – personally until we choose our leaders on better criteria we only have ourselves to blame.