Russian Ground Forces: News #3

Yes... a new ERA in light vehicle protection...

The newer ERA types have much less HE and so their operation requires less solid support from behind to operate properly... meaning they can be fitted to much lighter vehicles without risk of crushing hulls...

Mir wrote:

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:PZM-2M

How great is that! Ingenious solution to a sticky problem!

It is said that it can dig 1300m long at a deapth of 1m in 1 hour. I guess it could do the work of what was made for Kursk battle in few days with 10 or so vehicles. Pretty impressive.

And they have plenty of other models of all sorts.

It is said that it can dig 1300m long at a deapth of 1m in 1 hour. I guess it could do the work of what was made for Kursk battle in few days with 10 or so vehicles. Pretty impressive.

And they have plenty of other models of all sorts.

Yes, in those days when you stopped you started digging... you might not even finish and be ordered to move on, but this vehicle should mean the main trench lines get dug very quickly and you can take the spoil and also a spade and dig out firing position ledges and make them more comfortable and useful... and of course a bit of top cover while you are at it for the firing positions...

Awesome most of the time, but in frozen soil it is critical... and even more useful.

They do have a range of explosive shaped charges for digging trench lines in frozen soil manually, but one of these vehicles would make all the difference...

They do work slower in frozen or wet conditions...

The catapillar portion of the vehicle looks rather clever... seems to lift the front up so sort of the opposite of a half track.

Isos wrote:

Mir wrote:

How great is that! Ingenious solution to a sticky problem!

It is said that it can dig 1300m long at a deapth of 1m in 1 hour. I guess it could do the work of what was made for Kursk battle in few days with 10 or so vehicles. Pretty impressive.

And they have plenty of other models of all sorts.

I am well aware of the vast combat engineering capabilities of the Russians. I was actually referring to this >>

[/quote]

Catherine-FC thermal imaging camera and the Russian Zarya thermal imaging camera of the 3rd generation.

Couldn't find a thread specifically for Zapad

Zapad-2021 Strategic-Operational exercise – part 10 (Reserve)
access_time04/09/2021
folder_openNews

Officially the Russian Armed Forces have called up 18,000 reservists to take part in events associated with ‘Zapad’. Is this a lot? Enough to stand up four combined-arms brigades. But it is clear that reservists did not go to the land forces only, so the number of new (sub)units is definitely smaller.

At the same time, I think that the focus was more on adding personnel to undermanned units and force-generating new combined arms battalions, rather than brigades. This allows for much wider testing of the reserve model across different units, oblasts and regions.

As reservists were called up, between 18 and 28 August between 50 to 250 main battle tanks were removed from the 7024th (?) Storage and Maintenance Base in Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy. This is noteworthy because the unit is subordinated to the Southern Military District (SMD) Command, not the Western MD one. With these tanks, the Russian Armed Forces could generate between two to eight tank battalions using just this depot.



More at link https://rochan-consulting.com/zapad-2021-strategic-operational-exercise-part-10-reserve/

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:Catherine-FC thermal imaging camera and the Russian Zarya thermal imaging camera of the 3rd generation.

Vastly better gray scale depth and resolution. Not too shabby for Russians who "cannot into IR imaging". If Russia was so far
behind it would not have the base to reach this level. This implies the claims of backwardness are BS. But we have assorted
experts judging Russia's technology level by cell phone production. Truly brain damaging analysis.

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:Catherine-FC thermal imaging camera and the Russian Zarya thermal imaging camera of the 3rd generation.

What was the introduction date of catherine and that russian camera ?

Thales has upgraded it and russian probably have access to the old version.

Isos wrote:

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:Catherine-FC thermal imaging camera and the Russian Zarya thermal imaging camera of the 3rd generation.

What was the introduction date of catherine and that russian camera ?

Thales has upgraded it and russian probably have access to the old version.

It's about what the Russian army had before, and what it has now

Keep in mind, that Catherine XP is being produced in Russia, in Volgograd. They get the license rights in 2012.

It refutes claims by the US to own the night...

GarryB wrote:It refutes claims by the US to own the night...

Indeed. I will repeat since it is not clear to some: if Russia did not have the CCD tech, then it would not be able to produce
such IR images. Claims were being routinely made that Russia lagged in a major way and had to import CCDs or even the
while camera based on them. This is clearly BS. As for improvements in imaging by France or whichever country, that
is not relevant to my point. And Russia will keep improving its CCDs.

US never had the monopoly in this technology.

Japan, Europeans and other asian countries were and are just as good if not better.

Russia was sure lagging but it seem they have catch up. The ToT of Catherine camera helped for sure. They wouldn't have asked for it if they didn't need to. .

Illumination rounds fired by artillery are sometimes better than those cameras. You illuminate the enemy foces and even your soldiers can see them while you stay in the dark.

The US believes it is the centre of the universe and that if they ban the export of thermal imagers and night vision equipment that they will retain their insurmountable advantage at fighting at night.

Obviously they are wrong... French thermals are some of the best available anywhere... and many US systems are not even that good either.

The Soviets neglected Thermal Imagers because they were so expensive, they spend more on LLLTV which resulted in systems like the Shkval-M and Shkval-K on the Su-25TM and Ka-50.

The automatic target tracking hardware and software has been rather useful in a range of systems for back up optical guidance on various light, medium, and heavy SAMs as well as ATGMs like Kornet and for tracking targets for tank gun fired missiles, as well as Pantsir and TOR and now SOSNA missiles where the smart stuff is in the launcher and the missiles are cheap command guided missiles they can mass produce in enormous numbers.

Most of the armchair generals missing some serious issues that were notorious to the TI technology at the early stages, ie. 80s.
Not mentioning the weather, that I have already talked about, a standard WarPac tactics to operate at night was extensive use of special illuminating ammo.
Functionally none of the early thermal imagers could effectively deal with that, lacking proper filters.
In opposite - this used to be a perfect environment for all the light intensifiers.
Sure that required an advance prepared operation, but was perfected at any wargames held here.

A Shtora dazzler can be used to disrupt the TI optical channel, too, and that is not something commonly known.
I never found any info that it was a designed feature, or just came with practise.

It works best at long ranges, so requires a target awareness, but is possible.
Next generation of those dazzlers and how it works, can be checked here :

It is how 5P-42 Filin system works.
Good luck hitting a tank behind that curtain ... and this is what "shtora" meand, actually

Experimental Russian shells:
125 mm APFSDS Svinets-1,2

152 mm APFSDS Grifel-1,2 and 152 mm shrapnel shell Grifel-3

Experimental APFSDS with RAMJET

^^^
Thanks....any more info on the Ramjet shell? Looks very interesting

The dazzlers on SHTORA were primarily intended to overwhelm the IR sensors on wire guided ATGMs like TOW and Milan and HOT and KONKURS and FAGOT.

These missile systems had a gionometer that tracked the missile which had an IR flare in its tail... normally on one fin so as the missile rolled in flight the IR flare would move in a circle pattern or more accurately as a corkscrew flight path which the IR tracker in the guidance system would follow and it would compare the location of the missile in the centre of the corkscrew with the position of the target as identified by the centre of the crosshairs and a command was send down the wire to manouver the missile back in to the centre of view.

The dazzlers overwhelmed the IR port so the guidance system could not see where the missile was and therefore could not tell it how to manouver to get into the centre of view.

Early missiles had IR flares but later models had IR LED modules that did the same thing.

SHTORA itself is a complete system of which the dazzlers were only a single component.

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:Experimental Russian shells:
125 mm APFSDS Svinets-1,2

Wait isn't Svinets in service?

It is, some reports suggest its serial production to start as early as 2005.

The-thing-next-door wrote:

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:Experimental Russian shells:
125 mm APFSDS Svinets-1,2

Wait isn't Svinets in service?

I don't know. They have been talking about this for a long time, but there is very little information