There's intelligence value in capturing complete working NATO comms equipment for a teardown analysis of their hardwired capabilities.
No sensitive systems on any of the vehicles that are used in frontline combat.
This is war is interesting in the aspect of technology because of its asymmetry. Russia uses and loses its most modern and sensitive systems which when captured are immediately traded with NATO. Ukraine however uses outdated systems and aid from NATO is stripped of anything sensitive so even if they're captured nothing or very little of critical value is lost. This is particularly true in the realm of communications. Those stripdowns are one of the main reasons why transfer of equipment takes long time - if transferred systems are new they have to be replaced by something older.
The downgrading of communications doesn't matter a lot because Ukraine wouldn't be able to properly utilise those solutions. Personnel training and skill gap are the biggest challenge for AFU and those make any effective use of advanced communications problematic. Training has been cut to the bone to produce numbers so while there are visible differences in tactics especially for formations trained by NATO there's still a huge skill gap remaining that needs to be filled for those soldiers to be put on equal footing with properly trained NATO formations
as far as technology use goes. A typical well trained or "rapid reaction" NATO unit has
a minimum of two to four years experience and is staffed by even more experienced officers and NCOs. In Ukraine experienced officers are too reliant on life-long habit of ex-Soviet doctrine, NCOs are experienced in the reality of ATO 2014-2022 and defensive campaign of 2022 and enlisted are mobilized personnel after (too) short training.
Also as far as C2/C3 equipment goes Ukraine likely still doesn't have sufficient numbers to properly equip its entire army to the same standard that US Army had in Iraq in 2003, or probably even in 1991. Military grade C2/C3 is not something that can be mass produced as commercial solutions and they are an order of magnitude (or two) more expensive. You can't put a commercial telecom manufacturer to work on that and Ukrainian military is currently at ~700k people total with ~300-400k in all land formations. It makes no sense to transfer most modern communications with tanks - which all have to be accounted for in terms of cost - and leave battalion and company commanders with insecure systems.
Ukraine fights this war
on the cheap even when sometimes it gets superficially flashy items like HIMARS or PzH2000 or Leopard 2A6 and that's because no matter how much money it has it's not enough for the sheer scale of warfare taking place there.
It will be funny if the Armata ends up with a copy of the Leopard's engine
It would be
really funny because Russia is incapable of replicating German combustion engine technology in mass production. So it would have to be a joke.
As with many other Soviet/Russian systems the problem doesn't like in the capacity of engineers to design a high-quality product but with the capacity of the industrial process to bring the design to completion. Manufacturing in Russia is of very poor quality and what makes Leopard's engine special is the quality of development, materials and manufacture. There are very few areas in Russian defense and heavy industry where quality is retained but they tend to be focused on strategic branches like rocketry, nuclear power etc. Aviation has higher priority than heavy vehicles and road transport is
not prioritised in Russia.
Russian industry is simply not sufficiently developed to replicate something like MB873 within limits of affordability even though it's technically an old design. There's plenty of evidence for that in naval propulsion.
Also Germany is an automotive powerhouse with decades of tradition. Per Wiki vehicle production in 2021 in Germany was at 3,3m vehicles while German companies (in 2017, per Wiki) made 17m vehicles. In comparison Russia in 2021 only made 1,5m vehicles and in 2022 it was little over 600k due to sanctions and war. Russia's heavy vehicle industry runs on inefficient and outdated but cheap designs which are affordable due to price of energy in Russia. Civilian industry always forms the foundation for human capital in defense industry.
If you spend your life training to be a long distance runner you can't become a sprinter overnight.
Besides I don't think engine is the most valuable part of the tank. Arguably transmission is the hardest part because that's something even Korea had problems with in K2/Altay. And arguably Russian copy of Leo's transmission would benefit more from aerospace propulsion like helicopters. T-90s with Leo's transmission would be better than T-14 with Leo's engine.
Leopard 2's performance has been consistently underwhelming everytime it has been used in combat. It's an overhyped weapon, plain and simple.[cut b/c 10k limit]
Tanks don't fight duels. When a tank fights a tank it's only a few steps away from a SNAFU of submarine fighting another submarine (I already made a few posts explaining why this is a bad idea and where it came from). Tanks do that because unlike submarines there are many tanks on a typical battlefield so statistically it is going to happen with some regularity. But ideally you
don't want a tank to fight another tank. An IFV with ATGM is better because while a tank can survive an ATGM an IFV can't survive a tank round. Similarly infantry. Tank vs tank is something that World of Tanks popularised and that game (and others like it) is for idiots who think spending money on pay-to-win and screaming into the headset is better than psychotherapy.
In contemporary combined arms warfare tanks are breakthrough spearheads. They are supposed to raid the rear once a gap in the frontline is created and the gap is created with combined arms assault in a short span of time. Then tanks enter the gap and push forward disorganising the rear and forcing the enemy to abandon defensive positions or risk being cut off. That's what tanks are
really for. Everything else is a bonus.
So technically speaking what you've seen on that clip is tanks being used in roles which are secondary to their purpose. It was
armed recon where
tanks supported the infantry in the Bradleys. They just got stuck on a minefield before they reached their objective and got smacked by arty.
That happens
all the time in this war. How do you think Russia lost 2000+ tanks and 3600 ifv/apcs but is still in the fight?
Mines + arty = 70% +20% all vehicle losses for both sides. You get hit, you ditch the junk and run to fight another day. It only looks "stupid" if you're an armchair warrior watching UAV clips online. Most of those "experts" wouldn't know which way to run if they were hit like that. But hey they have high rank on CoD and ARMA is
stupid.
This is also why the POV video is fine. The next group of Bradleys came to take the infantry and crews but were partly- or unsuccessful. Despite what armchair warriors online claim that's not bad from a unit with very limited training. It was bad luck. Once you get stuck on a minefield it's arty time and personnel is priority. So losing a few more Bradleys to rescue personnel is precisely what NATO instructors would teach them. Per Oryx they've lost 15 M2s. That's
only 15 M2s. They still have 84 left There's never more than a battalion (30) in action at any time, and usually it's 1-2 companies (10-20). If you have personnel you can rotate them on the same vehicles and keep fighting. Ukrainians get tired faster than NATO vehicles break down.
Bradleys are really necessary only to achieve breakthrough in difficult and heavily defended terrain. Afterward even US Army doctrine suggests wheeled vehicles in greater number and dispersion. If AFU reaches Tokmak they may as well lose all 99 M2s in the process and it's a win.
Also Leopards were only used twice in combat. By Turkey in 2016 (and possibly later) when they were horribly misused as fire support vehicles by untrained crews without proper infantry support. They were also L2A4s which are 1985-1992 upgrade of 1979 L2A0 design which does play a role because L2A4 was not a "frontal charge" MBT. It was "retreat, maintain distance and fire" MBT because it was as fast in reverse than Soviet tanks going forward.
This is the second time Leopards are being used and this time it's against a peer opponent with defense in depth and without air support. I'm surprised it's only been three so far. After a week of fighting I expected more. If clips of more destroyed vehicles don't come up next week that means that Ukrainian offensive is doing better than expected.
For comparison - on
day 13 of invasion Oryx counted Russian losses at
~140 mbt and
~300 ifv/apc and that was when Russia was
gaining ground.
This is the same thing, except against a more consolidated front. If by next Saturday Ukraine loses 140mbt and 300 ifv/apc and consistently
moves forward then offensive is
working because unlike Ukraine in march 2022 Russia in the south has only symbolic depth and
nowhere to go.
As counter-intuitive as it may be drowning Russian forces in Ukrainian blood is a viable solution if enemy depth is~100km and the only other way is straight into the sea. And
if the southern front breaks the war is effectively over no matter the casualties. The rest will be politics and formalities.
I suggest holding judgment for a week or two. It took Russia
five weeks of fighting before it lost SMO/1st phase.
