The War in the Ukraine

FriedButter said:

The batteries don’t work? Where did all the batteries go? First the Javelins don’t have batteries and now the Swedish NLAW has none either. Did the West really just ship a bunch of weapons but left out the power supply? Hard to believe that Russia destroyed all the batteries with missiles and air strikes.

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Seems more like they used this as an opportunity to dispose of their age-expired stocks for a hefty profit as they are getting to recoup ‘costs’ for replenishing their own stocks from ‘aid packages’ that Ukraine needs to pay back with interest.

The overwhelming logic of the Ukrainian Gambit

Why offer the Ukrainian pawn as a sacrifice

on the one hand to destabilize Russia and here the thing goes from hurting Russia to the jackpot: Russia's enormous resources and on top of that cornering China, if you think about it carefully for a moment you will see that the prize was to drive any madman in Washington crazy.

And, on the other hand, to cut off trade relations between Germany and Russia and to consolidate the club of European vassals, an objective that has been fully achieved and there is no longer any trace, not even the slightest trace, of the Germany I knew.

Temstar said:

They talked about this on Guancha. Basically people are keen to use ATGM's thermal imager for general purpose observing because their quality are really good compare to commercial ones. This then tend to run the batteries flat and make it unusable when you actually need to shoot the missile.

Chinese export ATGM run into the same issue, Norinco gets around this issue not by trying to educate the users into not turning it on before you're about to take a shot but instead just packaging two batteries with each weapon for your viewing pleasure.

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NLAW doesn’t have a fancy thermal sight, it’s supposed to have night vision, but I’m pretty sure that’s very rudimentary and not worth shouldering an ATGM to use.

In the case of the NLAW, the original answers of old batteries and poor training are probably the causes. The Ukrainians probably were expecting them to be more user friendly and less maintenance demanding than RPGs, because, west always beat you know!

⚡️Briefing by Russian Defence Ministry

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation in Ukraine.

High-precision air-based missiles of the Russian Aerospace Forces have hit 5 control points, as well as 29 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration.

Operational-tactical, army and unmanned aviation have hit 61 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration.

The attacks have resulted in the elimination of more than 140 nationalists, as well as 9 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, 1 battery of BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers, 6 artillery mounts and mortars, 13 AFU vehicles of various purposes and 1 OSA-AKM anti-aircraft missile system.

Russian air defense means have shot down 1 Su-25 aircraft of the Air Forces of Ukraine near Sergeevka, Donetsk People's Republic and 1 Mi-8 helicopter near Kharkov during the day.

In addition, 7 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles have been shot down near Gorlovka, Golmovskyi, Yasinovataya, Varvarovka in Donetsk People's Republic, Malye Prokhody, Novaya Gnilitsa in Kharkov Region, and Pyatikhatka in Kherson Region. Also, 2 Ukrainian Smerch multiple-launch rockets have been intercepted near Malaya Kamyshevakha and Kamenka in Kharkov Region.

Missile troops and artillery have hit 128 command posts, 169 firing positions of artillery and mortar batteries, as well as 623 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration.

The attacks have resulted in the elimination of up to 200 nationalists, as well as 24 units of weapons and military equipment, including 1 battery of 155-mm M777 howitzers, 203-mm 2S7 Pion mount, BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher and 2 ammunition depots.

In total, 185 Ukrainian aircraft and 129 helicopters, 1,077 unmanned aerial vehicles, 326 anti-aircraft missile systems, 3,363 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 457 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,744 field artillery and mortars, as well as 3,329 units of special military vehicles were destroyed during the operation.

#MoD #Russia #Ukraine #Briefing
@mod_russia_en

Looking at the tank losses so far, it seems most of them are T-72B of different vintages and T-80BV and BVMs, but T-90's in general have been largely missing from the picture outside of the initial weeks of the war. Which makes me wonder why they haven't sent more of them and whether they are saving the tanks for something else, or they think the T-72B, B3 and B3M are good enough for the time being

sheogorath said:

Looking at the tank losses so far, it seems most of them are T-72B of different vintages and T-80BV and BVMs, but T-90's in general have been largely missing from the picture outside of the initial weeks of the war. Which makes me wonder why they haven't sent more of them and whether they are saving the tanks for something else, or they think the T-72B, B3 and B3M are good enough for the time being

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Tank on tank action is surprisingly limited in this war thus far, with the overwhelmingly majority of tank kills being made by ATGMs, Artillery, drones and aviation.

Against dug in infantry spamming ATGMs, artillery, and the odd drone, I really don’t think there is much of a difference between all the above tanks, especially against top attack like from Javelins, artillery and drones that bypass most armour and defences anyways.

I think the Russians probably quietly pulled their T90s back after initial deployments showed they were getting knocked out just as easily as T80s and T72s when used as spear-tip line breakers, so there wasn’t really all that much benefit in using them in that role.

Instead I think they are leveraging the much more modern sensors and fire control on the T90s to allow them to safely engage from longer distances, while any close support work is still being done by older tanks. Thus the T90s are becoming much less visible in combat and aftermath footage since those generally focus on tanks providing friendly troops with close support and destroyed vehicles.

Zichan said:

There are two power systems on the Javelin: one for the CLU and the other for the launcher. The latter lasts 5 minutes, while the former up to 20 hours.

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So an untrain careless fighter put them at on to be sure to be reasy and in the morning the launcher and missile are trashed...

If you were watching American media and/or following western commentators on Twitter, you'd have thought that the war would end two weeks after the delivery of those 'vaunted' switchblades.

sheogorath said:

Looking at the tank losses so far, it seems most of them are T-72B of different vintages and T-80BV and BVMs, but T-90's in general have been largely missing from the picture outside of the initial weeks of the war. Which makes me wonder why they haven't sent more of them and whether they are saving the tanks for something else, or they think the T-72B, B3 and B3M are good enough for the time being

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They use the tanks that will be replaced by T-14 for the dirty jobs more or less... they will need to ramp-up production.

Atomicfrog said:

So an untrain careless fighter put them at on to be sure to be reasy and in the morning the launcher and missile are trashed...

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Possibly.

The battery on the launcher is there to cool down the IR imager on the missile prior to launch. You only turn it on when you intend to fire.

The battery is replaceable, so no need to trash the (rather expensive) launcher. Unless the operator is clueless.