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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

yeh. but those states, in particular the baltic states and poland, paid rather a high price for being buffer states don't you think?

Yes, but my point was unlike Iraq and Afghanistan there's a good reason not to walk away. So they don't end up as "buffer states" for Putin Russia.

It's something that's actually possible, unlike at the end of WW2.
 
It's been announced by the PM and MOD.

The training isn't a real problem: it's a tank, it's got levers to make it turn, and a big gun you point at stuff.

The problems are going to be around logistics and support. Stuff like spares, recovery vehicles (boring stuff like the size of tow hitches), ammunition, fuel, the spanner for fixing tracks, and about a billion other things that aren't very exciting, but will stop an armoured advance quicker than you can say Javelin.

Also, bridges. Western main battle tanks are much heavier that Soviet/Russian MBT's, 20+ tons heavier...

Chally 2 holds the world record for a tank kill. 5km. You'll not find a Russian tank that can put accurately putrounds out to half that. The only chally that's ever been destroyed was by another Challenger in a friendly fire accident.

And it's got a kettle.

Crossing bridges can be an issue you say?
 
It's been announced by the PM and MOD.

The training isn't a real problem: it's a tank, it's got levers to make it turn, and a big gun you point at stuff.

The problems are going to be around logistics and support. Stuff like spares, recovery vehicles (boring stuff like the size of tow hitches), ammunition, fuel, the spanner for fixing tracks, and about a billion other things that aren't very exciting, but will stop an armoured advance quicker than you can say Javelin.

Also, bridges. Western main battle tanks are much heavier that Soviet/Russian MBT's, 20+ tons heavier...

Chally 2 holds the world record for a tank kill. 5km. You'll not find a Russian tank that can put accurately putrounds out to half that. The only chally that's ever been destroyed was by another Challenger in a friendly fire accident.

And it's got a kettle.
there was an article on the guardian website about this that i saw, and they seemed to think the 20 tonne weight thing would be important on other infrastructure apart from bridges. i suppose it's one thing to roar across the fulda gap in a challenger and another to go across country in the rather boggier ukraine
 
It's been announced by the PM and MOD.

The training isn't a real problem: it's a tank, it's got levers to make it turn, and a big gun you point at stuff.

The problems are going to be around logistics and support. Stuff like spares, recovery vehicles (boring stuff like the size of tow hitches), ammunition, fuel, the spanner for fixing tracks, and about a billion other things that aren't very exciting, but will stop an armoured advance quicker than you can say Javelin.

Also, bridges. Western main battle tanks are much heavier that Soviet/Russian MBT's, 20+ tons heavier...

Chally 2 holds the world record for a tank kill. 5km. You'll not find a Russian tank that can put accurately putrounds out to half that. The only chally that's ever been destroyed was by another Challenger in a friendly fire accident.

And it's got a kettle.
Russians are saying will lead to more civilian deaths.

Which is fair enough given their experience...They sent a load of tanks into Ukraine and quite a lot of innocent civilians died.

Agree training shouldn't be problem. Eastern Europeans never put milk in before the hot water
 
Russians are saying will lead to more civilian deaths.

Which is fair enough given their experience...They sent a load of tanks into Ukraine and quite a lot of innocent civilians died.

Agree training shouldn't be problem. Eastern Europeans never put milk in before the hot water
putting milk in tea - whether before or after the hot water - is an abomination
 
Which is the better gun? the rifled Challenger II one or the smoothbore one of our allies?

The rifled gun is better for killing tanks at longer ranges - it's more accurate.

But... It's more expensive compared to smoothbore barrels, and the ammunition is more expensive than for smoothbore barrels. Add this to modern , western fire control systems which make the smoothbore only marginally less capable than the rifled, and you get a decision that you may as well go for smoothbore.

The barrel for the Challenger 3 tank - replacement for Ch2 - is smoothbore. Ch2 is now the only tank in NATO that is rifled, so not only does that create a logistics bottleneck, it also - because of a lack of economies of scale - makes British ammunition much more expensive than US, or German, or Finnish etc.. ammunition.
 
It's been announced by the PM and MOD.

The training isn't a real problem: it's a tank, it's got levers to make it turn, and a big gun you point at stuff.

The problems are going to be around logistics and support. Stuff like spares, recovery vehicles (boring stuff like the size of tow hitches), ammunition, fuel, the spanner for fixing tracks, and about a billion other things that aren't very exciting, but will stop an armoured advance quicker than you can say Javelin.

Also, bridges. Western main battle tanks are much heavier that Soviet/Russian MBT's, 20+ tons heavier...

Chally 2 holds the world record for a tank kill. 5km. You'll not find a Russian tank that can put accurately putrounds out to half that. The only chally that's ever been destroyed was by another Challenger in a friendly fire accident.

And it's got a kettle.
It's a BV, if you don't mind. Otherwise, how can someone charge £100,000 to specify it? :hmm:
 
ISW's daily report occasionally mentions arson attacks at army recruitment / mobilization centres. Usually thrown molotov cocktails.
The podcast I linked to suggests that this probably is spontaneous social protest - I think they're more talking about bigger fires in more strategic locations, and some of the partisan stuff like disruption of railway lines and communications nodes.
 

The CIA's Operation Red Sox post WW2 is worth catching up on. The CIA sent 85 agents to their death trying to link up with 'resistance groups' in Soviet areas.
" The main body of Ukrainian insurgents, and in particular the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, had already been linked directly to Nazi atrocities in the region. “They were Nazis, pure and simple,” one CIA operations chief said. “Worse than that, because a lot of them did the Nazis’ dirty work for them.”

 
The CIA's Operation Red Sox post WW2 is worth catching up on. The CIA sent 85 agents to their death trying to link up with 'resistance groups' in Soviet areas.
" The main body of Ukrainian insurgents, and in particular the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, had already been linked directly to Nazi atrocities in the region. “They were Nazis, pure and simple,” one CIA operations chief said. “Worse than that, because a lot of them did the Nazis’ dirty work for them.”

A continuous policy up to the present day.
 
picked this up from the UKR livemap application this morning :

"Moldovan bomb squads detonated an 80-kilogram explosive warhead from a Russian missile that fell in the northern part of the country near Larga on January 14"


[]

IIRC, that's the same area that has had "stuff" dropped on it previously.
 
picked this up from the UKR livemap application this morning :

"Moldovan bomb squads detonated an 80-kilogram explosive warhead from a Russian missile that fell in the northern part of the country near Larga on January 14"


[]

IIRC, that's the same area that has had "stuff" dropped on it previously.

Who fired the missile and at what.
 
Who fired the missile and at what.

With an 80kg warhead - taking the article, and it's translation(s) at face value - it's almost certainly a surface to air missile, fired from Ukraine, at an incoming air/surface to surface missile, or a Russian aircraft.

Possiblity it could be a Russian SAM, fired from Belarus, it's certainly possible, but in terms of numbers fired, probably Ukrainian. The port of Odessa is pretty close to the Moldovan border, so i wouldn't fall off my chair if the Ukrainians had fired at Russian missiles, and one had gone astray.
 
Bit of leeway there as to whether "Russian Missile" means fired by Russians or made by Russians of course. If that fact isnt made clearer then its likely fired from Ukraine and they know it

I've no idea if Ukraine still has S300s, id guess they do
 
A continuous policy up to the present day.
There seems to be a pattern with Americans backing one side and some decades later backing the other side, I guess most countries do the same and its just America does so much of that sort of shit that it shows up more clearly.
 
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