Ukraine’s current tanks are outmatched AND outnumbered (>2000). Pre-war most of them were T-64s that haven’t been produced since Soviet times and Russia had mothballed theirs. They mostly use the more modern T-72, T-80 and T-90 in various states of being upgraded. Russia had about 2000/500 active T-72s/T80s before the war and 8000/3000 in storage(*).
NATO could never deliver tanks in numbers to compete with that. What they can do is to provide tanks superior to Russia’s best tanks.
Keed linked a good video at UP where a military expert explained that the presence or lack of thermal imaging is one of the most important factors. Most Russian tanks are not equipped with it while NATO tanks are. Also NATO tanks are designed with maintenance in mind meaning they can easily be repaired.
Keeping all of that in mind I think they prefer Western tanks although its a moot question because there just aren’t enough Soviet tanks left in Europe. It’s either Western tanks or ~nothing.
(*) how well those have been maintained and how many of those can be restored is an open question
Clown boy seems to blink when he says a number in that announcement. All lies I assume not just the Bradleys part. I’m not sure if he has a tell or just coincidence.
UA officials say it was an X-22 cruise missile. Arestovich said it was hit, and fell onto Dnipro. Which on RU tv gets spun into this was somehow ukraine’s fault. which is now percolating into general population.
there’s a whole youtube genre where ukrainians and russians talk to each other via chatroulette sites. the level of idiocy those russians display is insane. it’s basically, zelensky joked about russia once, it’s fair game to bomb residential buildings.
I realize Putin has frothing nationalists to appease (ie this Soledar/Bakhmut crusade), but from podcasts I’ve listened to the most effective thing the RU military is doing atm is these cruise missile attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure, specifically against the power grid and so on. There has been some ink spilt on Russians running out of cruise missiles but that seems like wishcasting. They are running out of conventional artillery ammo, but they should have a ~year of cruise missiles and a decent amount of time to source/produce more.
And there is an asymmetry here, it takes more resources to shoot down a cruise missile than to launch one, leading to difficult choices like chosing to protect cities or advanced positions. It seems like the Ukrainians are stuck in a perpetual ‘sing for you supper’ situation, having to show fierce and component resistance in order to obtain Western hardware but until they get like some state of the art Iron Dome shit or the ability/clearance to strike at the sources of the missile barrages they are facing, they’re on the bad end of this facet of the attrition war. Hot thoughts btw, I could be wrong obv.
I’m kinda surprised to see @goofy heart this post, because I’m going to cite him when disagreeing with you. The article he posted a little while back about strategic bombing argued and backed up the idea that bombing civilian infrastructure – and I include cruise missiles under the umbrella of “strategic bombing” along with bombs dropped from planes – never has won anyone a war. Instead, it generally just makes the civilian population hate the enemy more and deepen their support for war. Russia’s missiles are getting through and doing damage, sure. But is that effective? At inflicting misery? Sure. At winning the war? I don’t think so, unless you think this war is going to be won by murdering every man, woman, and child in Ukraine, or if you think Zelenskyy is getting closer to surrendering with every missile that lands.
I don’t think so, and I think that every missile that hits civilian territory instead of a Ukrainian military target is a wasted opportunity for the Russians to do damage that would actually help them win the war. I also think that all the damage being done to Ukrainian civilians strengthens their case to keep getting aid from the West while making it hard for Russia to recruit allies.
I always have s for thoughtful takes. For reference, that article on strategic bombing is here:
I think Devereaux would agree with you that these Russian strikes are ineffective and certainly not going to win them the war:
At the same time, industrial bombing – which also has, at best, a somewhat mixed track record – isn’t an option for Russia for the same reasons it wasn’t an option for the United States in Vietnam or Korea: the industrial production which sustains the Ukrainian war effort is largely happening outside of Ukraine. Ukraine’s entire GDP pre-war was $189bn nominal. As of October 3rd, 2022, Ukraine has commitments of over $93bn in aid; $52.3bn of that is from the United States, a country against which Putin has very little leverage and which he most certainly cannot safely bomb. Assuming the United States’ European partners can tough it through the difficult economic headwinds of this winter, it is entirely within NATO resources to supply and fund Ukraine’s war effort indefinitely; in fact in terms of United States military spending it is an absolute steal , neutralizing a major competitor for a tiny fraction of the overall military budget.
I guess the question is, what do they achieve? Taking out the Ukrainian power grid is a good way to inflict misery on the Ukrainian population, especially during winter, but Devereaux would argue that a.) all that does is harden the population’s will to resist their attackers, and b.) attacks against the Ukrainian power grid don’t actually hurt Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, and thus don’t really get Russia any closer to victory.
a.) and b.) might be true but the comparison to WW2 isn‘t apt. Modern drones and missiles can hit their targets with great accuracy while during WW2 it was necessary to carpet bomb to have a chance to maybe have one or two hit the actual targets.
Russia won‘t have to drop the same amount of tonnage to achieve their strategic goals so it won‘t cost them 2 billion. I am also skeptical that it has no meaningful impact, for example frontline operations rely on working internet access.
One thing that seems kind of interesting to me is as the war has drawn out seems Ukraine military is actually becoming overall relatively stronger with time due to continued training of soldiers and getting progressively more western weapons? So it’s not really like Ukrainian ability to fight is being degraded
In WW2 my understanding is that strategic bombing was to try and impact the enemies ability to produce war materiel and therefor its ability to wage war. That doesn’t really apply in the modern age where you are basically going to fight a war with what you started with (or can get from allies). No one is building 100,000 planes for Ukraine. Targeting civilians is just being a dick.
This, like a lot of things in US history, has a kernel of truth but sugarcoats a lot. The firebombings of e.g. Dresden and Tokyo had very little to do with impacting industry and a lot more to do with slaughtering and terrorizing civilians.
Oh, I forgot about how much we lie in our history. I can see it starting with the idea of hitting factories and then transforming into just fucking things up as it became clear strategic bombing wasn’t accurate enough for what they wanted to do with it.
there are tactical effects of using a strategic weapon, such as causing pain and drawing resources away from the front but those effects are smaller than spending the same ammo closer to the line of contact, where there is a chance of killing combatants, or at least create an immediate disruption to rotation, supplies, and communications.
still even if the conventional wisdom of 21st century tstates that strategic bombing is not going to win any wars outright, it could still be true that strategic bombing could help win the war at least as told by the occupiers side, or that the threat of such a bombing could influence the outcome anyway.
It kinda started off that way but eventually both sides determined it’s a lot easier to carpet-bomb residential areas and everyone was off to the races.
Accuracy back then was measured in kilometers as opposed to meters today. The only way to hit a target was to carpet-bomb and hope to get lucky and there always were residential areas within several kilometers of the targets.
apparently Poland will be the first to send Leopards, and new german minister isn’t going to stop them (might still slow them down). between those leopards, british challengers, and 2-3x as many APCs and other assets, it could be enough for UA to attempt a counter somewhere in the south east before Feb 24th.
s for thoughtful takes. For reference, that article on strategic bombing is here: