Felt like China went all out on the propaganda after this visit, I don't think I've seen anything like this before for such a short two day visit.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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Like Russia in early 2022 they drank their own koolaid and thought that NATO produced arms were invincible and could easily streamroll legacy Soviet arms. Turns out however that a leopard 2 is just as vulnerable to those 2000 dollar FPVs as a T-72.
I mean some of those later nato arms are quite a bit less dated than the oldest soviet stuff. It's a big yikes that 2A6 which has a very recently redesigned turret on a more modern chassis than T72 to begin with apparently doesn't perform noticably better than a 72B3M...
But guys, do they?
I don't think the available evidence we have access to is enough to make this conclusion. For all we know those Leopards have been engaging in pretty much same level combat but still surviving more. As for videos, they only show shots. Abandoned Leos are due to various reasons including mines and artillery. I'm not convinced we can say Leos performed just as poorly as T-72s. I'm also not saying T-72s are certainly poorly protected. It's probably much less well protected than NATO tanks (ahem 15 tonnes of extra armour does something surprise surprise).
Even if they survive a bit longer, or do a bit better.
They are still much more costlier as well as produced in lower numbers, not to mention, it seems like they require more maintainence as well.
Their top is only 30mm steel. T-72 has at least 80mm, and has cope cage, ERA modules. Might better protected vs drones.
In any case they are not the wunderwaffen they thought they were going to be.
Before Russian- Ukraine war those wunder tank: Abrams Merkava Leopard is something magical god send weapons in heart of milions worshipers around the world. Now the reality show them those magical top secret composite armor can withstand even alien weapons fire is nothing but just a hyper myth. Lol
Pretty much impossible to get enough quality data to compare. But basically what we see show that there's negligible difference when used as part of a whole system.
Ukraine achieved its only major gains with T64s after all.
That is also just speculation.
Paraphrasing what many US nationalists say, you have to look at per capita! The T72 only needs to protect 3 people, and has a lower profile. The later models are also better armored on the top relative to nato tanks.
I'd only say the final result is close, but inconclusive. Which is really not impressive for nato side, because some of their tanks were claimed by themselves as next generation and marketed as equal to the newest ones from Russia/China. T72 is a very old design, and wasnt even well designed with new types of warfare in mind back when it was made.
On the topic of tanks, one of the thing that stood out to me is with the proliferation of FPVs and loitering munitions what was once considered to be the safer design - bustle autoloader is actually turning out to be a huge weak spot that FPV pilot will deliberate target. On the other hand the "less safe" Soviet style carousel autoloader with all the ammo side the vehicle protected by the primary armour + cope cage + generous application of ERA may actually turn out to be the safer option in this environment.