Western-made armor isn't working in Ukraine because it wasn't designed for a conflict of this intensity, Ukrainian analyst says
Western-made armor isn't working in Ukraine because it wasn't designed for a conflict of this intensity, Ukrainian analyst says
Sophisticated, Western-made armor is proving inadequate on the battlefield in Ukraine, a military analyst told The Wall Street Journal.
Western-made armor is failing in Ukraine because it wasn't designed to sustain a conflict of this intensity, a military analyst told The Wall Street Journal.
Taras Chmut, a military analyst who's the head of the Come Back Alive Foundation, which has raised money to purchase and provide arms and equipment to Ukraine, said that "a lot of Western armor doesn't work here because it had been created not for an all-out war but for conflicts of low or medium intensity."
"If you throw it into a mass offensive, it just doesn't perform," he said.
Chmut went on to say Ukraine's Western allies should instead turn their attention to delivering simpler and cheaper systems, but in larger quantities, something Ukraine has repeatedly requested, the newspaper reported.
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Western armor isn't meant to be driven across the country into battle on the front lines. It's meant to operate in areas of air dominance where most defensive fortifications have been bombed well in advance. It's also designed to be able to attack and move with speed and accuracy, not charging forward.
So... Basically, it's not designed for use in a peer engagement?
They are designed for peer engagement under a different strategy than ww2 era doctrines where tanks provided cover for infantry.
An Abrams is designed to use it's superior range, accuracy and speed to take out medium hard targets. Similar to the Mongols horse archer strategy.
How's that working out in Ukraine?
The Abrams was basically designed to take down insurgents in the Middle East lol
Considering the project that led to the Abrams was approved in 1973, it's pretty clear who it was designed to fight.
The modern M1A2 came out in 1992, after the Gulf War. It's something like 10 tons heavier than the original M1.
The Abrams was designed in a period were the primary focus would have been defending Europe from a Soviet invasion. It's done extremely well against soviet tanks, at least with American crews. The Ukraine troops are likely less effective having significantly less training and experience with them.
The Abrams has seen action in... Iraq? Afghanistan? Both places where the US had complete superiority fighting against decidedly non-Soviet and non-Russian crews.
You could have put a Sherman covered in modern armour and with a modern gun and it would have done fine in Iraq and Afghanistan.
no, it's because the core doctrine and design (at least of the leopard 1/2) is to use them in defensive battles against larger numbers of tanks - that was the entire NATO strategy in western Europe during the cold war, when all of that hardware was designed
not for rolling into unknown territory and getting hit by entrenched infantry AT, as Turkey discovered a few years ago
But... Isn't that LITERALLY the exact doctrine the Nazis used to design their Tigers and Panthers?
The same tanks that, by the end of the war, were both outclassed and outnumbered by Soviet and American designs?
Why would the Nazis design for defensive operations.
Meanwhile the purpose of the Bundeswehr was literally to stall the enemy at the border until an army arrives.
At the end of 1941, Operation Barbarossa was decidedly a failure and Germany was facing mounting pressure in both the Atlantic and in North Africa. The Tiger entered service in 1942, the Panther entered service in 1943, and the Tiger II in 1944, when Nazi Germany was decidedly on the back foot and facing mounting pressure from the Soviets to the East.
You're assuming that Nazi arms development had anything to do with military necessity instead of fewer dreams. Germany? On the defensive? That's defeatist talk, any last words before your summary execution?
The prototype of the Tiger was called Durchbruchwagen, "breakthrough vehicle". Not very defensive, also, development started way before Barbarossa. The Tiger that went into production then got even heavier armour and even larger gun because what the Heer had during Barbarossa was shit compared to what the Soviets fielded.
The Tiger's system of interleaving road wheels weren't designed for offensive operations in the muddy and wet Soviet Union and are much better equipped for land closer to Germany. Henschel and Porsche were told to submit updated designs ready by mid-1942 (Henschel ended up getting the contract). By that point, the Soviet Union was launching an aggressive counteroffensive on the Eastern Front.
What, exactly, other than vague discussions prior to the war for prototypes that were conceived of but never completed, suggests that the Tiger was designed for offense?
That the Tiger I is a tripling down on the principles behind those prototypes? Also, Hitler being directly involved and ordering not yet even produced (or properly tested) tanks to Africa, long before the second Almein battle? That its main use on the eastern front was Operation Citadel?
Of course design-wise it was mostly a tank killer, able to destroy Soviet tanks at 2km while barely getting a scratch unless they came closer than 100m. That's a quality that's useful both offensively as well as defensively and the tech was quite new so speaking of "defensive design" or "offensive design" is probably an anachronism in the first place. The idea that anything Hitler touched ever had defensive intent, however, is rather ludicrous. It almost amounts to claiming that he wasn't insane.
He wasn't, though. Not in mid 1941, at least. At that point, Nazi Germany had conquered continental Europe and only had Britain to deal with. Operation Barbarossa was a strategic misstep, but not one born of insanity: there was no indication that the Soviets had the industrial capacity or capability to mobilize and modernize their military so quickly. Moreover, the USSR had vast natural resources reserves (most notably oil) and vast agricultural production, and so they were a legitimate strategic target.
By the start of 1942, the invasion of the USSR had failed and the US had joined the war, and the rest is history.
Hitler doesn't need to be insane to be a terrible person. Why make things worse than they are? Hitler's three critical missteps were aligning with the Japanese in the Tripartite Pact (for which he gained little but gave the US justification to join the war in Europe), pursuing the Battle of Britain (for which he burned a ton of resources and time but ended up not invading because he lacked naval superiority), and invading the Soviet Union (which he did too late in the season and after waiting too long because the Germans spent so much time dicking around Britain).
There's a lot of propaganda surrounding the efficacy of German tanks in WW2 (a good chunk of it coming from "sources" like Death Traps by Cooper). What we do know, though, comes mostly from US reports (because I don't speak Russian). According to a report by the US Army Ballistic Research Lab, the average distance a US tank (M4) would disable a German Panzer 4/5/6 was similar to th average distance that a German Panzer would disable a US tank. The purported advantage that German tanks had in terms of optics and in terms of gun weren't that relevant: Germany's primary advantage was in training over the Soviets and Americans.
Hitler doesn’t need to be insane to be a terrible person. Why make things worse than they are?
We may be working with different definitions of "insane", here. We don't know exactly what went on, it's kinda hard to diagnose the dead, but symptom-wise his well-attested levels of mania as well as depression were anything but the sign of a well-adjusted personality. And taking meth to deal with the depression part certainly didn't help. Could be due to multiple underlying factors, though, borderline, narcissism, plain old PTSD, a nasty neurosis, all are candidates.
Hitler’s three critical missteps
Strategically, possibly, as in those things being the straws that broke the war machine's back. Doctrinally everything about the war was straight nuts, though, like the no retreat orders. Not to mention starting it in the first place.
What peers?
If you trust what Congress keeps trying to ram down your throat, China.
First of all a "military peer" just means a nation that has similar military capabilities/power as oneself. And right now China is the only military peer to NATO, that is just a fact.
Second China is also positioning itself as a military adversary to NATO and its allies in many ways. And that is not the interpretation of "congress", that is geopolitical reality.
China lacks capability to project power basically anywhere. Their north is covered by Russia (lol) and Mongolia (neutral and without significant marginal value). Their south is a dense jungle that's basically impossible to properly invade (see: Vietnam, Korea, Vietnam 2). Their southwest is boxed in by the Himalayas that are literally the world's biggest wall. Invading the west would basically be asking for ETIM 2. Invading over the ocean to the east is essentially impossible, and going from that straight into a densely-forested mountain or densely-populated city is even less possible.
China has no ways of being a military adversary because they, by geography, have no offensive options. The only thing China can feasibly go after is unpopulated "land" that's basically free to claim.
You know the US is flanked on either side by oceans? Literally invading over an ocean is a thing we have been doing for over 100 years at this point.
Yeah, how's that worked out?
Pulled out of Korea, pulled out of Vietnam, pulled out of Iraq, pulled out of Afghanistan.
The US achieves nothing through its invasions except (when successful) overthrowing a government and allowing a more corrupt and despotic government to take it's place. Why would China want to do that?
Yeah, we didn't pull out because it was impossible to wage a war there. We pulled out because it became clear that we can't win the hearts and minds of a populace by bombing them into the stone age.
War has never been a problem for the US. Understanding local customs, elevating popular representative leaders and providing resources for reconstruction... that's typically been the weak point.
Yeah, we didn’t pull out because it was impossible to wage a war there.
We pulled out because it became clear that we can’t win the hearts and minds of a populace by bombing them into the stone age.
Said right in the same paragraph without a hint of irony
War isn't about killing people, it is about achieving strategic objectives. The former is literally how the nazis viewed warfare and was antiquated back then.
NATO has no peers, so yes.
parts of that design difference is the size: western tanks are all larger silhouette, which they had to pay to have better accuracy at extreme ranges
afaik, they're made for defense in depth and retreating at their effective range while thinning out attacking tanks
The large silhouette is more of an armour/survivability thing rather than a FCS/accuracy thing
The west probably should have anticipated having armour that works in these conditions. *Especially *considering they've been trying to get this war going for over a decade at least.
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