Talking bollocks thread

Gary, does the red letters in your name mean you are an administrator? Jus would like to know.

Ah the old Evil Russia vs the Good USA chat, I am doing US work atm and even I find this topic utterly annoying in how repetitive it gets and how much every repeats themselves.

Want the truth we are worse than the russians currently not to say Russia is a shining angel because it isn't but this is a classic problem for both sides here, they each refuse to see the fault of the side they are with.

This is why this type of chat just turns into the same stuff.

Again my pardon to all for hijacking the true subject of this post. Tend to go off on a tangent I blame it on advanced age, but who am I kidding.

GarryB wrote:
It was common knowledge through the cold war that anything from the Soviets that sounded too good to be true probably was propaganda and anything negative was true.

Make fun of that all you like.

People back then had very limited information, but were aware of enormous losses sustained by Arab operators over many wars in the Middle East. Same in Vietnam and in the South Africa-Angola war. Military journalists had no shortage of opportunities to commit the image of burning Soviet tanks to film. You must admit that people back then had more than enough reasons to believe as they believed.

GarryB wrote:

One of the proposed faults of the T-64 was arm removal... despite there being barriers between the crew and autoloader to prevent them getting tangled up in the mechanism...

But it was never anything to do with the truth, which these hacks had no idea about... it was taking a positive feature and making it sound flawed, but tolerated because they are the evil empire who does not care about their people like the west does.

I think you may be confused. Your replies have nothing to do with the previous statements. For the record, here's what we were talking about in the comments before:

Interlinked wrote:

GarryB wrote:

Interlinked wrote:
Also, nobody knew that the T-80 would just be an incremental improvement over the T-64. Everyone thought that it was the next big future tank project.

That is not the way i remember it... most western experts at the time thought the T-64 was a failure because it was not exported and not produced in huge numbers, while the T-72 was produced in large numbers and was seen as the standard Soviet tank.

I don't see how that contradicts what I said

But even so, nobody had evidence to say the autoloaders on T-64s didn't rip off arms. Nobody had photos of the interior of the T-64 from that perspective. IIRC a bunch of intelligence officers managed to sneak into a GDR storage facility and take samples of the T-64's steel and photograph the inside of the tank, but that was in the 80's. Such information would not be declassified until the 2000's, at least.

GarryB wrote:
I don't touch Tom Clancy books... they are rubbish.

Good for you, but you haven't really answered my question. Could you be more specific about what books are out there that spread heresay like the myth that T-64 autoloaders rip off arms? It's fine if you can't think of anything, but don't expect me to believe you when you say things like:

GarryB wrote:Go to a second hand book store and look for any book about tanks from the 70s or 80s and they can't mention Soviet tank autoloaders without mentioning losing arms.

GarryB wrote:

Extreme propaganda existed on both sides, but during the cold war the "good guys" believed only their own information and disbelieved anything positive coming from the "enemy".

And the "bad guys" knew nothing at all about the "good guys" tanks, because the state held all of the information. It was only in the 90's when Russian experts started publishing books about domestic and foreign armour did people have any information at all... That was also the time when people in the West started getting more information about Soviet tanks. That is the simple truth. I find it very strange that you are antagonizing the West as a whole over this.

GarryB wrote:

You mean they didn't care they were wrong? Yes, that is true.

Oh, they cared. They just didn't have enough information to confirm or deny their hypotheses. I suppose that only you knew what was true and what was wrong back in the 70's and 80's? By the way, you still haven't been able to list even one book that talks about the T-64 autoloader ripping arms off, yet you implied that it was very commonly mentioned in any book on armour from the 70's and 80's. Since it would be so easy to find, why can't you list even one book title?

GarryB wrote:

Whose arms?

There was not manual loading.

How was the autoloader going to rip the arms off the commander or gunner?

Or perhaps it ripped them off the driver?

Photographs of the T-64 were top secret. Nobody in the public domain knew what they looked like inside. Maybe it's obvious to you now, but it wasn't obvious back then. Perhaps they knew that the T-64 was cramped, so the autoloader was operating very close to the crew. You tell me. You were the one who claimed that every book on armour from the 70's and 80's mentioned this. So far, you have nothing to show.


Let me give you an example: If the T-14 was introduced in USSR times, it would also have joined the Victory parade, and it would also have stopped in the middle of the parade. Camera crews will capture all of it on video, and they will film the recovery vehicle trying to pull the T-14. The announcer will say something silly like "The tank has stopped as part of a rehearsed practice for tank recovery".

It's absurd enough that the announcer during the 2015 parade rehearsal actually said something so silly, but remember that such things were common in USSR times. The government controlled the media, and they lied very often. Even during Gorbachev, official statements from the USSR were sometimes not consistent with reality, so yes, people were hesitant to believe statements from the USSR as a rule, and they never mention negative things about their own stuff. Did the USSR media mention that the T-64 had debilitating engine problems and that that was why they could not be deployed to East Germany for almost a decade after they were introduced? No. No they did not. I don't see you haranguing the USSR for that.

GarryB wrote:

Whose arms?

There was not manual loading.

How was the autoloader going to rip the arms off the commander or gunner?

Or perhaps it ripped them off the driver?

No it poped out of the hatch ripped the arms off nearby infantry. Autoloaders have a mind of their own.

I recall a case where some cia agents tried to steal a T-64 where the autoloader rammed the lot of them through the gun barrel I wish I could have seen the moment when the tanks commander returned in the morning to find vicera all over the crew compartment and some cia agents blocking the gun barrel.

Oh and Soviet APFSDS is designed to lquify enemy crews Russian APFSDS continues to do this the latest round is even called the Vacuum.

The-thing-next-door wrote:

No it poped out of the hatch ripped the arms off nearby infantry. Autoloaders have a mind of their own.

I recall a case where some cia agents tried to steal a T-64 where the autoloader rammed the lot of them through the gun barrel I wish I could have seen the moment when the tanks commander returned in the morning to find vicera all over the crew compartment and some cia agents blocking the gun barrel.

Oh and Soviet APFSDS is designed to lquify enemy crews Russian APFSDS continues to do this the latest round is even called the Vacuum.

I am not saying that T-64 autoloaders eat arms. I am saying that people during the 70's and 80's could neither confirm or disprove such myths, because they did not have access to that kind of information until much later.


Why don't you educate yourself: https://tankandafvnews.com/2016/01/20/the-united-states-military-liaison-mission-its-tri-mission-partners-and-the-quest-for-the-holy-grail/

"The first photo of the interior of a T-64A to be included in an official USMLM history appeared in 1982. The short caption credited “an unusual developed exploitation” for the source. The next T-64A interior photo to be included appeared in the 1983 USMLM history. In this case, the credit was given to a USMLM tour for gaining access to the tank and providing excellent close up photos of the tank’s interior. This reporting, however, contradicts British accounts regarding who was first. These British accounts clearly state that they were in-fact the first to obtain interior photos of the tank. On May 1, 1981, after observing an apparently unguarded tank shed and the surrounding area on a Soviet Army tank gunnery range for an hour, a BRIXMIS tour made its move. Tour members broke into the locked building and discovered five T-64As and a tank crew turret trainer. They extensively photographed one of these T-64As inside and out. It’s likely that one of these BRIXMIS photographs was the one included in the 1982 USMLM history."

So the first photos of the T-64A - and indeed, a T-64 of any kind - were obtained in 1981 or 1982, depending on who you ask. These photos were highly classified and were only recently declassified. How could anybody disprove that the autoloader of the T-64 didn't eat arms?

Now that that has been cleared up, where can we find books mentioning that autoloaders eat arms? Well, I can tell you. Captain James Warford wrote about the T-64 in an article published in ARMOR Magazine in 1987, and again as part of his Master's Thesis in 1992. Here's an excerpt.

"The reports concentrated mostly on the tank‘s automotive performance, but also went as far as to say that the automatic loading system sometimes “ate” Soviet tankers, and that “few gunners are excited about the prospect of having their arm fed into the breech of the cannon ...” More recent information, however, when combined with the timetable above, indicates that these early assessments were exaggerated and may not have been references to the T-64 at all. The most likely answer is that these well-publicized problems were related to the T-70 prototype, and that the majority of these problems had been solved by the time the T-64 was put into production. What took the Western intelligence community several years to realize has now been confirmed: by detouring from established procedures, the Soviets were able to field a truly innovative tank that had no real counterpart in the West."

Warford lists this book as being the source:
Burniece, Joseph R., and Hoven, Paul A., “Newest Soviet Armor: Super Tanks or Super Myth?”, Eagle, April, 1986, p. 56


No, it's not a Western plot to denigrate Soviet tanks. The Strv 103 had an autoloader as well, and people knew about that since the early 70's. Here's an article written by the designer of the Strv 103, Sven Berge, and published in ARMOR Magazine: https://tankandafvnews.com/2015/10/25/from-the-vault-the-gas-turbine-and-the-s-tank/. The myth of autoloaders eating arms can only be tracked down if someone can find that book from 1986.

I would really appreciate it if you guys (GarryB and Mindstorm especially) stopped antagonizing the spooky spooky West, because "filthy Westerners" like Warford, Zaloga and Ogorkiewicz et al should be respected for their work back in the day. They did the best they could with the information they had, and they were the original foundations of the armour enthusiast community as we know it today. They were some of the most thorough researchers, and taught you most of the things you know without you even knowing about it. Sure, the myth of autoloaders eating arms was probably started by a Westerner as well, but it was probably an unreliable source that led to that detail getting published. Remember that there was still quite a lot that was shrouded in mystery back then, and this is perfectly illustrated by Warford mentioning a "T-70", which we now know to be non-existent. Still, one thing is for sure: None of you can hold a candle to what these people have accomplished in this field of study.

Interlinked wrote:

The-thing-next-door wrote:

No it poped out of the hatch ripped the arms off nearby infantry. Autoloaders have a mind of their own.

I recall a case where some cia agents tried to steal a T-64 where the autoloader rammed the lot of them through the gun barrel I wish I could have seen the moment when the tanks commander returned in the morning to find vicera all over the crew compartment and some cia agents blocking the gun barrel.

Oh and Soviet APFSDS is designed to lquify enemy crews Russian APFSDS continues to do this the latest round is even called the Vacuum.

I am not saying that T-64 autoloaders eat arms. I am saying that people during the 70's and 80's could neither confirm or disprove such myths, because they did not have access to that kind of information until much later.

I know you are not saying that I am just taking the opportunity to to tell tales of the glorious spy killing autoloaders in the Red army and of the crew liquifying APFSDS rounds that cannot be comprehended by inferior western minds.

GarryB wrote:
I resent being lied to then, just like I resent being told now that Russian hackers interfered with the election... and when questioned they have to admit there was no effect but that they should not have had any say at all... this coming from a west that promoted all opposition to Putin in the last 20 years, or the person they felt they could manipulate the most easily. They spent enormous amounts on NGOs buying votes and corrupting officials in Russia and every time there is an election result they are not happy with they whinge and moan and bitch about how undemocratic Russia is... even at times when very unpopular candidates get elected in the west mainly because there are only two choices in the west in terms of political parties.... how democratic is that?

Should a country with only two Russia hating parties be giving anyone advice on democracy to anyone, let alone believing it is the greatest democracy on earth?

The west is more corrupt and in bed with big business than any other country on the planet and they promote corruption in other countries because it makes them easier to control...

Wonder why I don't like hearing the west preaching about right and wrong...

Sounds like you have an American ex-wife.

Do you remember how every Russian media outlet (both state and "independent") were reporting about how "ludicrous" it was that Russian soldiers were fighting in Ukraine? Do you remember how the government suppressed the publication of death tolls for Russian soldiers sent to Ukraine? Do you remember how vehemently they denied the presence of Russian and Russians supplied tanks in Donbass? Do you remember how every Russian news channel was repeating the same rubbish about how MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian Su-25? Do you resent RT for lying about that? Clearly not...

Why don't you tell everyone how the USSR reported on the Chernobyl disaster? Go ahead and regale us with tales about how state-controlled media acknowledged the accident promptly (they did not), and how they warned Soviet citizens in Pripyat about the danger (they did not), and how they swiftly evacuated people in the exclusion zone (they did not).

But back to tanks: you have no excuse to have this kind of attitude now that so many files and articles have been archived and released for public consumption on the Internet. Most issues of ARMOR magazine that I've read include an article about Soviet tanks, and how good they are. The vintage books that I have (like The Third World War: The Untold Story by Sir John Hackett) do not denigrate Soviet armour, but point out weaknesses in other areas such as avionics, which were well known at that point.

GarryB wrote:

Like you have mentioned elsewhere... base assumptions on evidence... there was no reason for the tank crew to be any where near the autoloader... the turret crew sit either side of the gun, not behind it where the autoloader is.

I wasn't alone, I remember a few dissenting voices asking why military parades did not include all these one armed tank crew members.

lol "dissenting voices". You talk like you were being oppressed by the entire might of the Western military-industrial complex. Nobody had accurate dimensions of the T-64, not even the CIA until the early 80's, which was when the USMLM managed to gain access to a T-64A in GDR. Even then, such details remain classified. Look at what's been redacted in this: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP83T00574R000100770001-1.pdf We can fill in the gaps with what we have learned from Russian writers, but the fact that those details are redacted shows how little information there would be if you couldn't read Russian.

Autoloaders eating arms is not implausible, because the T-64 looked tiny, especially with the commander popped out of his hatch giving a salute in a parade. There's more than enough reason for people to believe that the autoloader was dangerously close to the crew when the turret is that small, especially compared to Western tanks in general. Look at the BMP-1. The turret is tiny, and that meant that the autoloader had to extend over the gunner's left shoulder to load a shell into the cannon. There were plenty of chances for accidents there. Why not in the T-64?

GarryB wrote:
The same reason I have no videos about the airborne or amphibious forces.. you look at the title and you order it, but when it arrives it mentions the Soviets had airborne forces or amphibious forces and then spends the rest of the book talking about western forces. Went out the following weekend in a garage sale.

Finding good information was hard. The crap was thrust upon you...

Not exactly easy to track down those books that you claimed were everywhere, is it? It appears that the first publication to mention this myth was the one by Joseph Burniece et al., and that was in 1986. Unless it can be traced back even further, it seems that this myth appeared in the mid-80's, and would not have really appeared in books from the 70's.

GarryB wrote:

Not releasing information about a secret tank.. yet... what bastards.

Why release bad information about their own kit when the west is going to do it anyway?

And the West isn't going to release information about a secret tank during the 70's... Because they didn't have any. The works of independent authors and researchers who were working with whatever information was available to the public cannot be used to represent the West as a whole, which is what you are doing. Should I say that the opinions of Mikhail Rastopshin (a former NII Stali scientist and noted pessimist) on Russian tank armour is representative of the general consensus among Russian experts?

GarryB wrote:
The vehicles were secret, they really didn't know much at all, but it did not stop them producing articles and books.... wonder what they could fill those up with?

There was not a single book dedicated to any single Soviet AFV in the way that we are familiar with now. Practically all books at that time took a more holistic approach to examining Soviet armour and their capabilities, with recommendations to counteract the Soviet threat. Look at the articles published in ARMOR Magazine and you will understand what I mean. Articles on Soviet armour released in the 90's were based on the works of Russian researchers and writers, such as Mikhail Baryatinsky and Mikhail Svirin. In fact, most of what we understand about Soviet armour today is based on Western translations and interpretations of Mikhail Svirin's works in the 90's.

GarryB wrote:

Of course it was.... why even mention it if there is no evidence either way?

And yet you've given no evidence that it is a Western plot. You just insist that it is. You think that the U.S military had an organized effort to belittle Soviet tanks? Why? So that they would not get funding to develop the Abrams? So that Congress would have no incentive to fund a replacement for the M113? Did the Air Force also belittle the MiG-25 so that they could not get funding to develop the F-15? Look at archived NYT articles. Look at ARMOR Magazine articles. Look at practically everything that was published back then, and read what these people (sometimes high ranking officers) wrote about Soviet armour. We would consider what they wrote to be fear mongering nowadays. I have already given you multiple examples. You, on the other hand, have failed on every occasion to cite a single article or book that supports your viewpoint, which is even more absurd since all of this information is pretty easy to find on the Internet.

Media outlets are traditionally rather clueless about military issues, but they are worth reading because they usually convey the vies of military officials. Take a look at this NYT article as an example: Threat to NATO Is Seen in Armor On Soviet Tanks

''Never mind the numbers,'' he said in an interview. ''They've always been ahead of us numerically, but we've worked on the assumption that to some extent you can make up for numerical superiority with technical superiority.

''But what's happening now is that when it comes to fielding new technology, the Russians are running circles around us.''

And this article: Infantry's Antitank Weapons Are Faulted in Study

"The study said part of the problem would be that a large number of antitank gunners would be killed in the early stages of any conflict. For example, it said that up to 85 percent of the soldiers using TOW weapons and 33 percent of those using the Dragon antitank guns would be killed after firing a single round.

The study also found that estimates of the effectiveness of the weapons could be wrong because the figures were compiled under favorable conditions."

GarryB wrote:
The fact is that anything negative was considered true by all western so called experts of the period before and after the time any photos came to light.

Demonstrably false. Read my other comments.

GarryB wrote:
They were hardly going to say.... no it is not possible because the photos we have that we are not supposed to have show for the gunner to lose an arm they would have to be reaching around behind their position, which they never do because they are gunners... not loaders.

Once again, I remind you that such information was highly classified. Nobody knew about that stuff until recently.

GarryB wrote:

You could say the same about Tom Clancy  they each had a point of view and an ax to grind and were not above perpetuating lies when it suited.

I trust western experts to tell me about Russia like I trust them to tell me what is what in the world.... in other words I reject the CNN and BBC view and would rather see RT or Al Jiz, or the Chinese news channel.... They all lie, but at least the non western ones are not so smarmy and self righteous.

The BBC advert for itself where one of their female reporters claimed to give the complete picture... really?

A man dies in the UK and Putin did it.

Hilary lost an election so Russian hackers did it...

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

GarryB wrote:

But they were ready to repeat the rumour because if it sounds bad then it is probably true...

Who repeated the rumour? Which books? Which articles? You have to provide examples. You can keep on repeating the same thing, but I am sorry to inform you that your opinion is not worth more than solid evidence.

Garry and Interlinked could you please start another topic about military media.

Seems like everything you are trying to say is only your opinion. You simply cannot back it up with any facts whatsoever. If you still think that every Western military author believes what you think they believe, fine, but I've shown you and everyone else that that just isn't true. The dominant mindset back then was that the USSR had overwhelming superiority in a land war. Period. Reagan said it himself: http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/ronald-reagan/speeches/reagan-on-neutron-bomb-production.

Thanks anyway for moving this entire thread to somewhere more appropriate.

Arrow wrote:USA has more launcher.

Unless they buld at least 80 more cities and populate them with extra 300 million people they can have all the launchers they want, it won't matter after dust settles.

franco wrote:The U.S. State Department released aggregate New START numbers from the 1 September 2017 data exchange. Russia declared 1561 deployed warheads, 501 deployed launchers, and 790 total launchers. In March 2017 the numbers were 1765, 523, and 816 respectively.

The U.S. numbers in September 2017 were 1393 warheads, 660 deployed and 800 total launchers (1411, 673, and 820 in March 2017).

From above, the Russians would have 289 stored launchers (ICBM, SLBM or strategic bombers) while the US would have 140 stored launchers.

Unlike dumbasses around here like Arrow, someone finally posts numbers.

ABM's won't help since they have trouble against medium range missiles as is, and only when they are aware of launch, known ahead of time of launch and using transponders on missiles. All the while, 8 Russian subs can be sent off to the ocean in Arctic, carrying 16 BM's each, with about 4 - 8 warheads each. Yeah, it would mark end of the world at that point. That isn't including cruise missile nuclear warheads systems....

miketheterrible wrote:All the while, 8 Russian subs can be sent off to the ocean in Arctic, carrying 16 BM's each, with about 4 - 8 warheads each.

Nope. You can't have all 8 on patrol. Maximum of 2 can patrol, with possibility of 1-2 more near their port at various readiness levels (most likely 1 can sail back to predefined locations within the hour/day a decision is made). There rest will be days if not weeks away from deployment.

So that's 3 boats max. That number can hardly end the world or do any serious damage to nations the size of US or China. That is if opposing force SSNs and ASW do not manage to trash one of them. And believe there's plenty of assets out there shadowing SSBNs for a living.

During war time, it won't matter on what's allowed vs not if they are to be sent out.

miketheterrible wrote:During war time, it won't matter on what's allowed vs not if they are to be sent out.

And it will take time. Russia's 8 SSBN fleet can do 2 SSBNs as max and 1 more can be sent out for sure within a day (if they're lucky).
The rest will sit in the port and do nothing for a week (if they last that long).

During war, there's about 50 NATO SSNs and to a lesser extent SSKs (Norwegians) that can shadow Russian assets and can push the button on any Russian SSBN. Possibly eliminating Russia's submarine nuke deterrent by 50% if not 100%.

God you guys are dolts. Go do some basic research on how many vessels Russia actually has for fucks sakes.

Add to that, Arrow, your fucking stupid. Full stop. You know shit about military or effects of nuclear weapons to be used. Hence the term MAD. Look it up.

And seriously kilo, if you think that your smart, then you state that Russian sites which has Russian subs ported at are hit without retaliation of land based nuclear weapons causing deviation in US, then your lying to yourself. Russians arent fucking stupid like you think they are.

miketheterrible wrote:God you guys are dolts. Go do some basic research on how many vessels Russia actually has for fucks sakes.

7 SSBNs in the Northern Fleet, but surely some delta IVs starting from K-51 will be gone by early 2020s.
And 2 in the Pacific.

Delta IIIs are as good as done for and 8 Boreis are financed/planned.

Russia will basically get to have one boomer on patrol in the Pacific fleet and one in the Northern fleet.

That is all.