Comparing Tanks

GarryB wrote:
Something perhaps the west needs to learn about... printing new money is not going to work forever...

This part has a second meaning because there are people ignorant enough to publicly speak about the wealth factor they have no bloody idea about.
As far as we are well aware of the size of Russias military budget, we can start to apply some analytical thinking.
They spent about on pair with UK and France.
And what they have there? What is a real bang for bucks?
Well, it is quite impressive to anyone, who owns at least a shade of intellect only.
First, they have a fully working nuclear triad, that is not the case for none of those.
Let us be honest, Mirage is hardly a nuclear deterrence option, right?
For the Brits, the situation is even worse. The only part of nuclear deterrence is the fleet, while it is hanged on Americans.
Russians have a working, wide, and complex surveillance system for its nuclear deterrence factor, including satellites, OTH radar net.
None of the other two has this comfort.
Russia has brand new weaponry in all the nuclear forces. State of the art pieces some 2 generations ahead of anything that can be thrown on them. Does not apply to F/UK either.
Russias fleet is bigger in size than both of them, combined. With running stable programs of generation replacement for all stuff they have there, with massive modernization projects in running.
Not only that ...
They have a new generation of weapon systems for all that fleet, that we can hardly say about any of the potential opponents other than China. Who is not an opponent, but a partner.
The Russian land army is about double the size of both F/UK, combined.
They have new pieces of equipment in functionally all directions, with new tanks, IFV, cargo, artillery, transportation, surveillance, individual weapons, and soldiers gear.
None of the two others has it, they lack such a complex solution even combined.
Russia airforces are more than double of the other two, again combined ... plus the others lack expensive strategic part of the fleet.
Long story short, they get about 2-4 factor bang for bucks when compared to the other nuclear-capable powers.
Making a comparison with Murica, who spent about 10x more, and lags behind in functionally all the military programs - in some of them for 2 decades - is simply clueless.
To talk nonsenses about the economically driven inability of Russia to maintain a high quality armed forces is proof of radical lack of knowledge, and deserves a serious spanking. But I am getting too old for that fun

Well that's just it. A pipe clamp in Russian DOD terms would cost perhaps 50 US cents - that same clamp in Western DOD terms will be more like 50 USD.
But yes it's quite amazing what Russia can accomplish with less than a 10th of US Defense budget!

GarryB wrote:The British were as friendly to the Soviets as they are to Russia now, Stalin had no more reason to trust Churchill as he had to trust Hitler.

Churchill et. al once claimed that they had no lasting friend, only interests. Which means friendship to him is expendable.

Nowadays I see too many people who repeated again and again the "no lasting friend" mantra like some sort of supreme God-like moral code. Wonder why these people desire such a pathetic lifestyle like that.

RTN wrote:Russia will target NATO tank regiments with Ballistic and cruise missiles like the Iskander and similarly the U.S too will target Russian tank regiments with stand off and long range cruise missiles.

Unlikely. If there is tank battle between Russia and NATO both sides will probably target each other with sensor fused weapons like RBK-500 and CBU - 105.

Mir wrote:Well that's just it. A pipe clamp in Russian DOD terms would cost perhaps 50 US cents - that same clamp in Western DOD terms will be more like 50 USD.
But yes it's quite amazing what Russia can accomplish with less than a 10th of US Defense budget!  

Western dick stroking propaganda would have people believe that the size of the US budget is a pure metric of its potency. In the real world,
it is hard evidence of its corruption. There is nothing that would justify any of the ludicrous markups on basic components used by the US MIC.
This is a form of transfer pricing racket where trillions of tax payer dollars are siphoned into private sector pockets. Look at the recent report
on the state of US hypersonic missile systems put out by the US government itself. Where did all that money go that they have to reinvent the
wheel and play catch-up with Russia. Criminal imbeciles like Bolton claim that Russia stole US tech. That is pathetic coping with the pathetic
state of US technology which probably was never there and existed as fake reports put out by fly by night subcontractors operating under the
"roof" of the established corporations.

The F-35 program is clearly a racket as well. No variant of the F-35 will ever justify the money squandered on it. It is not a tech breakthrough
that can produce benefits later. Instead we will have yet another racket to make a "sixth gen" stealth wunderwaffen for a few trillion more. Russia
is avoiding this rot by having the government acting in the interest of the voters instead of the corporate mafia and cracking the whip.

GarryB wrote: The original post seemed to be complaining that the T-72 upgrade is not producing a new competitive tank able to dominate a WWIII battlefield against a HATO force, but as pointed out it is the cheap numbers tank, if the enemy has any quality then T-90s will be used which are being upgraded, and in time T-14s will be used which will probably dominate the battlefield, while the T-72 will support them very well... and be affordable.

In 1991 during the Battle of 73 Easting, odds were stacked against us. Yet, due to superior technology and training we defeated the Iraqis hands down.

A major tank battle where the U.S achieved a major victory.

RTN wrote:

GarryB wrote: The original post seemed to be complaining that the T-72 upgrade is not producing a new competitive tank able to dominate a WWIII battlefield against a HATO force, but as pointed out it is the cheap numbers tank, if the enemy has any quality then T-90s will be used which are being upgraded, and in time T-14s will be used which will probably dominate the battlefield, while the T-72 will support them very well... and be affordable.

 In 1991 during the Battle of 73 Easting, odds were stacked against us. Yet, due to superior technology and training we defeated the Iraqis hands down.

A major tank battle where the U.S achieved a major victory.

You had complete air superiority. You had complete command and control over the battlefield. You picked them off at will. I would say the odds were in your favour.

Mir wrote:You had complete air superiority.

That's because Iraqi Air Force refused to fight and escaped to Iran.

Mir wrote:You had complete command and control over the battlefield. You picked them off at will. I would say the odds were in your favour.

It was a battle that almost exclusively featured MBTS and IFVs. Hardly any air support. And yet we won, decisively.

RTN wrote:

Mir wrote:You had complete air superiority.

That's because Iraqi Air Force refused to fight and escaped to Iran.

Mir wrote:You had complete command and control over the battlefield. You picked them off at will. I would say the odds were in your favour.

It was a battle that almost exclusively featured MBTS and IFVs. Hardly any air support. And yet we won, decisively.

The war started with a massive air campaign against the Iraqis. The Iraqis Air Force fought back to some extend but they were completely outnumbered and their air defenses destroyed. Some of the aircraft left for Iran as they had no chance of surviving. Despite being outnumbered the Mig-25's did rather well. I think they shot down a couple of F-15E's if I remember correctly and managed to escape despite being attacked by quite a number of F-15C's firing a lot of AAM's to no effect. I think in the end they managed to shoot down 2 Mig-25's?

The US used little air support by choice and not because they were forced. Apaches and A-10's were used extensively throughout the war. As I said they already had complete command and control of the battlefield when the ground offensive started.

As far as thermal imagers goes I think this was likely a late Soviet era development?

kvs wrote:
The F-35 program is clearly a racket as well.     

Imagine all that taxpayers' money that can be stolen in daylight, just in front of people's eyes!
It would be hard to find a weapon program that actually worked for them in the last 20+ years.
There are fuckups in any single one.
Zumwalt is a disaster and a floating proof of technical impotency.
The entire LCS program is something one can only laugh at. They are taking out of services ships that are 7 years old It is 1/5 of the typical life of a ship. Not to mention, that for $0.7bln a piece they got a motorboat with a salutation gun And a mighty Griffin system welded on deck Oh well, sure, only first two were 0.7, others just about 0.4bln apiece
Seen any of their ships live, lately? They look like on their way to the scrapyard.  
Anechoic panels torn off the hull of a sub is something we could have seen 20 tears ago, in the worst days of the Russian fleet. Now, we can refresh our memory with Virginias.
The only way for them to get a modern ship is to ask Italians to build one
At the moment, I am grabbing all the popcorn I can handle, and wait for the beginning of the new boomer program. That will be a show, I grant you!

Mir wrote:
The war started with a massive air campaign against the Iraqis.

It is worth adding that even before the campaign was started, it was already lost by the Iraqis.
Their entire C&C and AD system was revealed in full to the opponents, as it was built by German and French enterprises like Siemens and Alcatel. Coalition forces had on the table a functionally whole net of communication and command, location of secret AD command centers, even detailed construction plans of underground secret facilities. Because, again, it used to be European construction companies who build them for Iraq. The whole civil defense was projected by a German construction companies.

How does the Croatian M 95 Degman compare to Russian and other Western tanks?


Is it a good Main Battle tank and why Croatia hasn't exported it to other countries?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-95_Degman

Croatia cannot produce any tanks by itself. Yugoslavia had a T-72 license. In Croatia they made the hull and had the assembly line.
These tanks were based on existing hardware they had. They can do upgrades but new hardware? Not really.

Croatia will just become another consumer of Western hardware. They simply do not have enough scale to be a tank builder.
Croatia has less than half the population of Belgium. Most countries in NATO with their amount of population don't even operate tanks.

lancelot wrote:Croatia cannot produce any tanks by itself. Yugoslavia had a T-72 license. In Croatia they made the hull and had the assembly line.
These tanks were based on existing hardware they had. They can do upgrades but new hardware? Not really.

Croatia will just become another consumer of Western hardware. They simply do not have enough scale to be a tank builder.
Croatia has less than half the population of Belgium. Most countries in NATO with their amount of population don't even operate tanks.

The gun of M-84 was made in Slovenia, and most of the FCS for it either.
All exWarPac members lost the sole ability to build tanks.