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

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.

And when countries like the US repeat such things that they have no friends they only have interests... what is wrong with these people and why do they think it is OK to use so called allies like this?

We will help you this time because it is in our interests to do so but next time you might be in our way so don't expect any special treatment... what a bunch of .

The fact that they are occasionally open and honest about it is no compensation, because it shows they are dumb as too.

But they still think they are the best thing to happen to the planet and when you challenge them on that they will say China and Russia are no better and what would it be like if they were in charge... they don't get that they don't want to be in charge, and don't think you should be in charge either... you had a go and everything is much worse... we are further away from a bright future than we were in 1991.

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.

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.