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Definitely the former. The undermanned tanks are sitting ducks. It's amazing how much the Russians are being hampered by corruption. Here in the West we try to gauge the enemy's strength by looking at the theoretical performance of weapons, and their quantity. But it's all bullshit if corruption has been eating away for all of Putin's rule. It's too sad to be funny, but...it's almost funny. You can see from old newspaper articles that corruption in the Black Sea fleet was investigated. I bet it was one reason the Moskva sank. Maybe ghost crews were manning the missile defences, or there wasn't enough armour because the refit budget had been fiddled.
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I saw a thread on Twitter that pulled together documented evidence of theft of funds which were intended for the refurbishment of naval defensive missile systems, which included those fitted to Moskva. The implication was that its defensive systems, like so much of Russia’s military, had been hollowed out by corruption, leaving just a facade of capability.
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Not sure about the T72 but generally the Commander has more periscopes so can see more, the gunner has better sights so you have a choice of seeing or shooting depending which seat is vacant.
You can see bugger all when you are hatch down and rely on teamwork within your he vehicle and the Troop to have decent situational awareness. You have a headset with the Troop radio in one ear, the Squadron in the other and your vehicle intercom in both. I’ve done it in CVRTs and CVRWs in training and it’s knackering, that’s why you see Commanders hatches open. Doing this one crew member short whilst people are actually shooting at you would be very difficult. Crews have to train together to be any good I was an attachment to make up numbers in a Yeomanry (TA) unit and was a liability for at least a week and contributed little after that.
I’d go with fewer tanks fully crewed and leave some of the older variants that have been seen at home. But then I’m not going to be shot for embezzling soldiers salaries. -
Yeah, I’m no meteorologist but that doesn’t look like much of a ‘storm’ that could sink a warship...
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You'd think it should of been easy to rescue anyone not injured in the initial and subsequent blasts
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Speaking of ships - an article which sounds like an anecdote - how India bought a soviet aircraft carrier.
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Over 500,000 Ukrainians, including 121,000 children, have been
forcibly deported to the Russian Federation, where they are given
documents which ban them from leaving Russia for 2 years. -
Olaf Scholz feet dragging masterclass
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I'm going to repeat myself by saying Russia needs to be completely isolated from the modern world with total embargo on everything and no visas for it's people, unless it's humanitarian - you burn your Russian passport when entering a Schengen area and promise never to return to Russia - you're welcome in civilised society.
Ukraine has all the rights to invade and denazify Russia though.
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Strong interview with Scholz
DER SPIEGEL: The U.S. government says that it only took 48 hours from
the time of Joe Biden’s signature for weapons deliveries to Ukraine to
happen. For us, it’s more like 48 days. -
That’s a tough read. Scholz may be right that Germany doesn’t have a lot of stuff lying around surplus. And making more isn’t easy.
USA has incredible stock levels, that’s why they can supply literally within hours.
Few if any other countries have anything comparable. Germany probably doesn’t, I know Canada has hardly any stockpiles of anything.
Even basic stuff like small arms ammunition, when I was in the 70s it was carefully handed out on range days and we had to sign for how much we got. Then we had to give any unused back after counting it out.
One time we had a training day with TOW anti tanks. We watched the trainer fire one . Nobody I know ever got to fire one ever again…everything was carefully packed up and taken away.
US doctrine has always been that any nato vs CCCP war would “Come as You Are”. The was would be more intense than anything previous, and there would be no time for resupply. An F15 takes months to build, a war would be over before a replacement would come onstream. Hence the habit if keeping large overstock. -
NATO members commit to keep X amount of stuff in stock and most only keep that amount. With stuff like ration packs that goes out of date the stock is rotated with the old stuff being issued for training and new bought. So they never have a surplus unless NATO agree to release stock.
It also means everything you train with is at the end of its life. -
Ive fired some 9mm that could barely make it down a 30m range, it was going out of date and must have been badly stored.
When most 7.62mm weapons were being phased out I did a shoot at dusk with thousands of rounds of 1-in-1 tracer to use it up. It looks like a solid red line from your barrel, the range looked like a scene from Star Wars. -
Even basic stuff like small arms ammunition, when I was in the 70s it was carefully handed out on range days and we had to sign for how much we got. Then we had to give any unused back after counting it out.
To be fair this is about safety protocol and not about stock level. You need to ensure nothing is left in the weapon and rounds aren’t nicked. It’s still done this way.
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Russian invasion of Ukraine
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Which is the better option, less tanks with correct crews or more tanks with incorrect crew?