The War in the Ukraine

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Botnet

Junior Member
Registered Member
I'm interested as to how the Western media will attempt to spin these claims that Russia is going to withdraw from Kherson a week from now when it inevitably ends up happening? Or will they pretend it never happened? Looking forward to the 404 errors the western media and "analysts" are about to experience...but I expect they'll be back to studiously praising Zelensky's verbal vomit.

Just like how Ukraine claimed Russia was gonna blow the dam and flood themselves (never happened) or that Russia was going to blow up their own power plant (never happened), this is just another statement that came out of Zelensky's ass. They have no reason to retreat. If their position was compromised, and the Ukrainians were at the edge of the city, that would be understandable. However, the Ukrainians are miles away, and have been for months now. Sure, they managed to overwhelm the initial hamlets, but the Russians simply retreated to their fortified positions, compacting the area they would have to defend. All part of their defense in depth strategy. It's been going well, so why would they retreat now?
 
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GodRektsNoobs

Senior Member
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Sinnavuuty said:
They can be used for both indirect fire support and infantry support. In case the M-55S is perfect for fire ambushes and supporting border guards, this will allow troops based in northern Ukraine to be released if Kiev so desires, can be used by pro-Western Georgian legion, for sure will alleviate more troops to be sent to the east and south, where the offensive is still ongoing.

In terms of guns, the 1950s British L7 105mm in the M-55S is almost on par with the Soviet U-5TS 115mm gun in the T-62M. L7 offers better ammo, accuracy and aim (thanks to the three-part thermal sleeve that reduces muzzle flex by more than 70%, helping to increase the weapon's accuracy). The L7 is an extremely old rifled tank gun that cannot fire modern kinetic penetrators, will function as a fire support vehicle, but will not reliably penetrate Russian Kontak or Relikt. The 125mm flat bore on the Ukrainian T-64 is much more capable than the L7. The M-55S is more protected thanks to Rafael ERA blocks. It's still a seriously outdated tank, but it's better than no tank at all. Also, you probably don't know that during the modernization of the T-62, only the old hull and turret remained on it, and new systems will be installed as on the updated T-72 and T-80. They will be extremely important against IFVs, AFVs etc.

One other thing, Ukraine doesn't even have ammunition for the L7. There are APFSDS for the L7 made in Europe from 2004. It is still inferior in performance to the Soviet APFSDS from the 80s for the 2A46. The DM33 they are getting from Slovenia is worse than 3BM42, but not that bad. It is possible that another country will ship better shells, however, the US has a large stock of M833 which is equivalent. Basically they don't operate modern 105mm APFSDS, and no HE available for L7 (afaik Slovenia uses 1kg Israeli M110) is better than the ones used on T-62s, Ukraine still hasn't received better ammunition than it had before the war (the best was 3BM42), doubtful, we'll have to see that yet.

Also in the M-55S, the gunner is provided with the Slovenian Fontana SGS-55 dual-axis day-intensification/image stabilized sight with a laser rangefinder that provides information to the fire control computer. As an option, a thermal version of this system is also available. Fontana material in Slovenia is good but quite dated, especially when some T-62Ms are running around with newer FCS and thermal sights (more important views than FCS for these dated vehicles used almost exclusively for fire support), the Volna fire control system includes the main armament-mounted KDT-2 laser rangefinder, which has a maximum range of 4,000 m, TShSM-41U sights, Meteor M1 stabilizer, and BV62 ballistic computer. The T-62M can traverse a maximum depth of 1.4 m without preparation.

In terms of overall armor, the M-55S is inferior to the T-62M, it has something like 5% less frontal armor and 20% less in the turret, there is also no fire stabilizer, basically it is inferior in many ways. Armor? A lot worse. Gun? Worse. FCS? Depends on variant of T-62M. mobility? Worse. T-62M base armor is better than current M-55S armor, even with fancy Israeli addons. The Israeli Blazer ERA is quite literally the same if not worse than Kontakt-1, and is ancient. Maybe it's Super Blazer and not regular Blazer. Which even then offers no tandem protection and the bare minimum of kinetic protection. Afaik not even enough to stop 3BM6 at 1000m with T-55 base armor included.

As long as Ukraine sends garbage east and south, they don't need to send modern armored units, that's waste of resource, they don't need to take what is not rotten, they take it because they know the enemy's inferiority, spend big resources bringing modern units while the enemy using inferior tanks that were sent from the other enemy is simply idiotic. Furthermore, the shipment of M-55S only indicates that NATO is running out of ways to supply more operational tanks by the AFU or according to standard Ukraine/NATO usage, more precisely, T-72 and equivalents. Western countries are running out of T-72 tanks, so they need to transfer T-55-based combat vehicles, for which the AFU does not have ammunition, to Ukraine. Another issue is that as it was removed from the reserve, it is important to check its conservation. I consider this a possible transition to other 105mm armored vehicles such as the M60A3 which I see as the most likely Taiwanese donor. If it is to send regular garbage to the AFU, Romania should do its part and send the Romanian T-55, they have 122 of the base version (base version is from 1957) and 226 of a patched one (because modern is not - uses the base tank body and put explosive reactive armor and new optics in 1998, but it's still a T-55, same gun, same pure steel armor) called TR-85, throws 500 tanks on top of the AFU at once time, while Romania itself would have a chance of getting a German or Turkish tank practically for free.

The T-62s are not only being repaired, but they are being modernized with modern thermal imaging, night visions, reinforced protection, installation of articulated armor, protection against missile systems, rear protection against grenade launchers, in this context, it is worth remembering that the T-62 tanks used in Ukraine are there not for lack of armored vehicles, but because they are armed with volunteers from South Ossetia, in addition to also being in service with Cossack units, parts of the brigade operate in a southerly direction.

333mm vs 308mm at 2km...lol

It's not my problem if you don't accept the veracity of the news, I've already informed about this. Now, interesting your position on Forbes and Bloomberg sources, I will remember this when news of the poor performance of the West or bad news of the West in general is published, I believe you will maintain consistency and accept that in fact the sources are bad and that the news is not true.
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Sorry to dig up old posts, but what if Ukrainians somehow get their hands on export Chinese 105mm APFSDS or HEAT via Pakistan? They could be a threat to any Russian vehicle short of T-90, right? And this could be a very realistic scenario since Pakistan is already supplying Ukraine with arms.
 
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reservior dogs

Junior Member
Registered Member
GodRektsNoobs said:
Sorry to dig up old posts, but what if Ukrainians somehow get their hands on export Chinese 105mm APFSDS or HEAT via Pakistan? They could be a threat to any Russian vehicle short of T-90, right? And this could be a very realistic scenario since Pakistan is already supplying Ukraine with arms.
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Yes, it is interesting that Pakistan is now supplying Ukraine. However, I think that if they supply something that will make a big difference in the battle field and the weapon is Chinese, the Chinese will have a say on this.
 
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Atomicfrog

Major
Registered Member
GodRektsNoobs said:
Sorry to dig up old posts, but what if Ukrainians somehow get their hands on export Chinese 105mm APFSDS or HEAT via Pakistan? They could be a threat to any Russian vehicle short of T-90, right? And this could be a very realistic scenario since Pakistan is already supplying Ukraine with arms.
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They have plenty of weapons able to pierce through tanks. MBT are mostly dying from atgm, artillery and mines in Ukraine. T-55 is way enough to blow out a bunker or an apc or doing fire support. The same with T-62 or old t-72. The attrition is just high on any vehicule on the front from both sides, why bother with high tech, they will blow anyway. No need for another fancy ammo that will be mixed up with others, like the headaches from blowing up 155mm with wrong ammunition on the UKR side. Logistics are a mess with all these different guns, equipment and ammo.
 
Lethe

Lethe

Captain
xypher said:
To be fair, I don't think any modern country can enlist 40% of military age males without a societal collapse aside from poor countries with huge TFRs, primarily because there's usually nothing to collapse anyway, lol. Maybe India can do that since most of their population is not doing anything anyway because their government is still going for services instead of manufacturing...
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Abominable said:
Numbers of military age men a country has isn't always comparable. Countries in the 1900s had much better demographic structures than they do now.

Russia probably has one of the worst demographic structures in the world, there is no way they can enlist 40% of military age males without society collapsing.
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If Moscow called even 15% of Russia's ~23 million males aged 18-44 to active service, that would be a dramatic escalation from current force levels. Of course there are issues in terms of how fast you can scale but, given Russia's obvious dearth of manpower, and how poorly the conflict has been going to date, Occam's Razor suggests that the most likely reason Moscow has not drastically increased its force commitment to Ukraine is because the present regime would not survive an attempt to do so.
 
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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
SolarWarden said:
Looks like the Russian offensive in Pavlivka has been a disaster.
It also seems mud season isn't hurting Ukraine like folks thought it would.
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We thought it would stall Ukraine's advances and it did.

Making major offensives in the middle of mud season is retarded in the first place. If anyone in the Russian command decided to do it well the result was as expected. They should just hold the line, wait for the bulk of the reinforcements to arrive, and for the ground to harden with winter frost before going on the offensive.
 
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