Posted on 06/10/2018 8:00:47 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Ping.
This is what I was thinking of, but apparently it’s a T-72. I’m still trying to figure out where the crewman came from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ7rkOHNaik
Yeah, that was earlier in the Syrian war - few years ago. The tanks are export model T-72s with some upgrades but no APS. The crewman was (IIRC) the track commander who was blown out of his hatch.
That’s basicly what I said above.
I do not agree that the Saudis should have such advanced tanks.
If it’s not a “shot trap”, then why are the Russians fielding an updated T-90M that has bar armor or nets covering the “trap” across the frontal arc:
What a joke. Omg I wish we hadn’t done that. Don’t you??
what we did in Iraq was a crime.
Spktyr and others. I think you are right about the Iraqi tanks my son examined may have been a lighter, domestic version of the Soviet one, but why would the Soviets sell Hussein inferior quality tanks for the Republic Guard?
You would think that they would want the RG to have the best models to fend off the Iranians and the US if push came to shove.
Since he was not a “tanker”, I don’t think he had any knowledge of the variations of the M72 that all of your have mentioned.
At least 3 - 5 RG tank divisions were destroyed by our planes (F-16s that my son saw as well as the Palladin rocket artillery), and the Abrams M-1’s.
The whole issue of the quality of Communist/Russian/Red China arms being sold to Pakistan, India, possibly Egypt, etc. raises some alarming questions that I hope you knowledgeable Freepers will address as new articles come out on the worldwide Communist/Russian arms sales programs expand to Africa, the Middle East and perhaps Latin America.
If you watch the entire video, you’ll see that the mesh armor is all the way around the turret, not just the frontal arc. This is something that pretty much everyone is putting on their tanks that have to go into urban warfare these days as a popular trick is to RPG a segment of ERA, then hit the now unprotected surface with another RPG.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-945a7cd46790af0fd26d732c39084422-c
http://www.armyvehicles.dk/images/leopard2a5dk_desert_ba.jpg
We’re even putting it on the Abrams with TUSK 1.
http://defense-update.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/slat-reactive-TUSK.jpg
TUSK 2 includes convex ERA plates on top of hull and turret slat armor:
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/8144/u-s-army-m1-abrams-tanks-in-europe-are-getting-explosive-reactive-armor
Same policy pretty much every major power has - export markets don’t get the full-up version of any major weapons system in case the exporter has to go back and fight them some day. For example, we don’t sell any Abrams with depleted uranium armor to *anyone*. We don’t even sell it to the Canadians - Burlington type composite armor is the best any tank sold by the US to another country will get. Same thing with the Russians - they’re not dumb enough to sell full-house tanks to people they may have to go fight or to people that might sell them to people they may have to go fight. No APS system was a common downgrade, because if the Soviets and the Russians had to fight the purchaser of their tanks later they thought it would be better if those tanks could be obliterated by standard infantry units firing Konkurs missiles instead of having to saturation attack every single one of the tanks being used on their makers.
Egypt buys a mix of our export gear, Euro export gear and Russian export gear. They have nothing actually fully major-power-frontline.
None of the major powers sell full up versions of their top line systems to anyone as a general rule but there are exceptions when it comes to jointly produced or developed products. One exception is India because they end up being co-developers of the stuff with Russia and therefore had the tech/knowhow anyway. India buying Russian gear these days is more like a joint venture rather than a client state buying a product someone else developed.
The other exception is Pakistan, which has the same relationship with China.
The Saudis have lost at least six of them to Iranian upgraded copies of the Konkurs in Yemen. They don’t have the depleted uranium armor of the US models, but they have most of the other upgrades to M1A2 SEP status short of the all-up encrypted comms and a couple of other things. They don’t have TUSK 1 or TUSK 2, but the loss of the M1A2S’s in Yemen, along with the ongoing losses of Turkish Leopards in Syria show that the NATO disdain for APS is woefully misplaced. This is why we’re hastily upgrading a few of our Abrams with the Israeli Trophy APS system.
Huh? You were there, right? You saw the ruinous conditions and the horrible outcomes of the tyrannical and evil government, our dug up mass graves of women and children and saw devastated cities in the south, saw the torture chambers in the NW and listened to the accountso f those who survived? Did you watch the women throw salt on the roadways as we liberated town and after town, did you protect the voting stations and see the light of self-determination sparkle in men and women’s eyes? Did you feed children and get hugs and kisses from them just because? Did you count chemical munitions in desert bunkers? did you watch on satellite/aerial platforms as convoys of suspicious material convoyed into Syria ( I do wonder why we did not attack them, we had fast movers in bound)?
Did you help eliminate over 10,000 foreign fighters in the sands and towns of IRQ rather than see them come to our soil?
You don’t know what yo don’t know. And I cannot tell you more, you wouldn’t believe it anyway.
The real crime is what Obama did by removing all of our security forces in 2014. He left a vacuum filled by men who hate everyone and who demonstrated it. Wonder why IRQ is leaning towards RUS to provide military equipment? hey don’t really think USA has their backs.
While I was privy to much more intel than you would ever know, I also know that I was a lowly Engineer Major in the field and in several Hqs, so my access and understanding is incomplete too.
Thank you for your service. My point is that we should not have been there. It was far too expensive in lives and tax dollars and achieved nothing. My mother use to say” keep your nose out of other people’s business”. I would have totally supported attacking the Sunni Saudi Arabia for attacking our country on 9/11. I would have removed their terrorist supporting regime and seized their oil to pay us back for the horrible loss of our lives and money — but not Iraq. The did nothing to us. The Gulf war was over in 1991. No wmd.
Yep, that’s the official story line. No WMD. No AQ ( snicker snicker), no ties to 9/11 (chuckle chuckle) No 20t of Yellow Cake or chem/bio capability ( ha ha)
You know, the reason why all that is buried is because of who was providing it all.... Can you say WWIII? Boy scout.
The cost of liberating a country and creating a fledgling representative republic indeed is high and risky- espc. if the watch changes mid stream and there is not a long term commitment to the people there. Whatever the reason for the operation was, the end state was a game changer in the Mideast- the only other free elected government in the region, save Israel.
I imagine if the allies packed up and went home after subduing Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy- the Russians or other radical forces would have owned those countries as a start, no, we stayed there in force and in de facto control politically for 60 + years, and still have a robust presence today. Wonder why? Vacuums by nature get filled with whatever is fastest to move.... Laws of Nature.
One major complaint I had with XXXX (the OPLAN) was that paragraph 4 ( Civil Military Operations) which was the responsibility of the State Department had nothing of substance filled in- meaning, there was no serious plan as of May 2003 for governance and stabilization- that by doctrine is a civil authority mission, not a military one. Security is the military role after conflict, stabilization is the role of State. Who was State then?
I truly believe State thought that the combat would take a year- in spite of What Franks was saying; that would give them time to flesh out a plan as territory was reclaimed. War is not like that when modern tools and strategies to reduce capability are applied.
You would have created a situation far removed from reality in your scenario. True, KSA is not our friend. Now that we are pushing the envelop of oil exports, they are hopping mad once again, this time for economic cause though ( screw-em).
This is why Trump is so pertinent- he has no ties to any of these state actors, he is a business man, and the bottom line in his business as POTUS seems to be the US population, working class through investor, and it is working out quite well.
I hope we never see another careerist politician in the White House.
I agree in large measure.
Concur. I was also an O-4, though my first exposure to the sandbox was as a treadhead in Afghanistan, and got to Iraq only by virtue of helping a contractor write up his plan for convoy security escorts between FSBs in the days of the CPA. Once the Iraquis took over letting out he contracts, the bribes got excessive, and back to A-stan I went.
As in Vietnam, we gave them the time to do something with it. That they did not says a lot about them, primarily their political leadership, our foes who knew how to exploit our blundering, and our own too-short short term goals and long term *see what develops vagueness. Our own political leadership was nothing to brag about and set no examples for others, either.
On the other hand, as with Vietnam, we may well end up more victorious than we had expected.
Concur. I was also an O-4, though my first exposure to the sandbox was as a treadhead in Afghanistan, and got to Iraq only by virtue of helping a contractor write up his plan for convoy security escorts between FSBs in the days of the CPA. Once the Iraquis took over letting out he contracts, the bribes got excessive, and back to A-stan I went.
As in Vietnam, we gave them the time to do something with it. That they did not says a lot about them, primarily their political leadership, our foes who knew how to exploit our blundering, and our own too-short short term goals and long term *see what develops vagueness. Our own political leadership was nothing to brag about and set no examples for others, either.
On the other hand, as with Vietnam, we may well end up more victorious than we had expected.
That makes sense for them.
The Iraqi’s are use to the T-72 based system, have some infrastructure to support it, and it’s a cheaper tank to purchase and sustain, by a long shot.
The M1 was a great tank, but it’s antiquated. In today’s world of >1,200 mm penetration HEAT ATGMs, tandem warheads that are top and dive attack, etc. this tank is showing it’s age.
It was a great concept when it came out. The design incorporated lessons learned, it was an excellent design, used state of the art technology, yet was made to be rugged, rebuilt, to be upgraded in the future... It was the ultimate tank when the A1 variant was fielded in the mid 80s (it became the gold standard everyone compared themselves to). But today this is an old machine which is evolutionarily seen at it’s end. Technology and the change in threat models have made this tank out dated.
The only thing keeping this old machine alive today is that we are not in a serious conflict with a formidable enemy leveraging newer technologies against us in great numbers. The M1 today is like a P51 Mustang in 1965, and you can keep trying to bolt new shit to it to make it a viable platform and be somewhat effective, but it’s conceptually outdated.
Tanks have been buried all over the desert, many up near Syria.
wy69
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