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.
They are talking specifically about tanks in the article. The armor on the tanks provided to Ukraine is allegedly not thought enough for mines, etc.
There isn’t enough armour in the world to stop a few proper anti-tank mines or anti-tank missiles or anti-tank drones.
Yeah, that’s what I wasn’t following. MBTs are going to need repairs, no matter how heavily armored, when you run them over a minefield, hit them with anti tank missles or drones. APVs aren’t designed to survive that, just to keep the occupants alive from something that would have turned them into a thick red mist.
Uh have they tried using anti mine systems to clear a path? I’m pretty sure western military doesn’t just go charging forward crossing their fingers…
For known minefields yes. For a regular road that might have one or two mines, no. Mine clearing is extremely slow. Even if you do it, someone might come in the night and plant more mines. The best you can do is keep an eye out for signs that mines have been planted.
The Russians made the defensive mine fields more than double the width of any mine clearing explosive device. This means they can’t quickly clear a section and move through without being sitting ducks.
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So… Basically, it’s not designed for use in a peer engagement?
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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It is a strange article. It argues that western armor isn’t designed for sustained conflict but offers up the solution of more cheaply made vehicles. I would assume that would greatly increase the number of human casualties. Can Ukraine sustain an increase of human loses? Training troops takes time also. The simple vehicles could make it easier to get troops training but I don’t know if trading troops is a good strategy when fighting a country with a higher population.
The thing is, an increase in armour casualties reduces infantry casualties by more than 1:1. There’s a reason the Tiger and Panther in WW2 are largely seen as strategic blunders today: a few complex and technologically superior tanks aren’t very useful, particularly if they require complex supply lines to support.
Yes true if they lack appropriate air support and logistics support. Which is the case for Ukraine.
Modern western strategy is very different from that of WW2. The key is integration of air support, artillery, armor, infantry, etc. If Ukraine had superior fighter jets, to gain air superiority and anti tank and anti personnel platforms like A10 and Apache, all platforms working in sync and all backed by logistics support to keep everything operating, it would be a different story I guess.
Related, I wonder if they’re suggesting the old Russian tanks would somehow perform better than the western ones? Because as far as I know, western tanks have the best armor systems, the highest accuracy, and the ability to fire while moving. Maybe they need to adapt their tactics to make better use of their platforms?
Have you been watching General Dynamics promotional videos?
The early stages of the Ukraine war showed that even massive superiority in combined arms is useless because of how asymmetric warfare has become. Your million dollar tank is just as vulnerable to a $500 drone as a twenty thousand dollar Jeep. Your hundred million dollar jet is still going to get shot out of the air in a CAS role by a $10000 missile. The only wars that the West have been able to fight have been against insurgents riding in the back of old Toyota Hiluxes carrying Soviet-era AK-47s.
Modern Western tank doctrine values crew survivability, even at the cost of maintainability and production capacity. It’s the same design principle that the Nazis used to justify the Tiger, Panther, and Konigstiger (mind you, Nazi doctrine also relied heavily on tightly integrated combined arms).
Interesting. I know that Ukraine was given a bunch of handheld anti tank weapons to great effect. And I guess the Bradleys are supposed to be adept as tank killers?
I’m not sure what Russia has in the way of similar besides drones.
Why do they even need the M1 tanks?
You could marginally increase the survivability of one tank (say, by 20%)… Or you could build another tank and increase the survivability of someone that would otherwise be infantry by an order of magnitude.
Tanks take bags of flesh off the battleground and that’s extremely advantageous.
The US operates under the assumption that they will be fighting a war on the other side of the world, so designing a more robust tank is important both in terms of PR (because dead bodies coming home is bad), in terms of logistics (because shipping twice the number of tanks around the world isn’t that great), and in terms of who they’re fighting (mostly insurgents without advanced anti-tank munitions, so survivability is far higher when hit).
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It was designed to make money for shareholders. Like every other piece of planned obsolescence trash that gets shit out now days.
This isn’t WW2, there’s plenty of anti tank weaponry available. It’s a lot cheaper than tanks and it’s going to do what it’s designed to do. Look how well tanks worked out for the Russians. Tanks are just not nearly as effective in modern warfare.
Basically it was designed for wiping out civilians in the off chance a few of them actually shoot back.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.”
Despite Chmut’s comments, some advanced Western systems Ukraine has received were conceived with the highest-intensity combat in mind — NATO going head-to-head with Soviet forces.
The US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Abrams main battle tanks were built specifically to counter Soviet ground forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly criticized Western allies for delays in the deliveries of weapons, saying earlier this month that slower arms shipments were hurting Ukraine’s chances of success in its ongoing counteroffensive.
Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the German think tank European Resilience Initiative Center, previously told Insider that Ukraine was stepping up its domestic production in part because of concern that Western deliveries would not keep up with its military needs.
The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Are they saying that their tactics are the same as in WW2 and that’s the West’s fault?
Well we don’t give them planes, do we?
What about the 500 helmets we send from germany? I was told this is exactly what the Ukraine needed.
I’m not sure if you are joking, but in this case armor does not mean body armor, but tanks.
Sounds like a euphemism for confessing that Western made armor is poor-quality and vastly overestimates itself. Quelle surprise.
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Incorrect doctrine usage ≠ poor quality
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Sounds like NATO needs their own monkey models
Western doctrine is what happens when you ask nazis, people who ideologically are incapable of learning from history, “Hey, why did you lose to the Soviets? How should we beat them?”
Please note that ukraine and russia were both part of the USSR during this period so claiming this is “Russian propaganda” is denigrating the lives of millions of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians who died at the hands of the nazis or pushing nazis out of eastern europe. (Also even if you could say it was favorable to Russia, which it is not, it is also factually true)
Western doctrine is also largely based on the US’ needs. Artillery just isn’t practical for the US, who needs to be prepared to fight all over the world oceans away from home. Artillery is much more stationary compared to air power due to the size of the guns and the difficulty moving them, while the US can easily fly planes anywhere we need them. As such, Western doctrine became heavily reliant on having air supremacy and massive amounts of air support and our equipment was designed for that battlefield. Ukraine just doesn’t have nearly the same arial capabilities as NATO, relying much more on artillery which NATO weapons and doctrine weren’t designed around, and they’re having to figure out how to make them work without air power
Yes, because US military doctrine is meant for colonialism, not fighting a war. Theyre a piper tiger and now the world knows it.
I’ll say it.
This is Russian propaganda.
So brave. Well, I’m off to the power plant, those ukrainian red army soldiers and civilians spinning in their graves aren’t going to hooked up to generators by themselves.
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Right wingers stop using rape cynically challenge difficulty level impossible.
Right wingers putting a content warning before talking about a traumatic experience 1/3 of women experience difficulty level impossible
What are you doing to fight rape in your community? How are you fighting the US military, the largest band of rapists on the planet? Facebook posts don’t count.
Classic whataboutism there.
But to answer your questions, I vote for candidates that take rape allegations and the abysmal police and military response to rapes seriously. I support my family, friends and community members who have been raped or expienced sexual assault, in whatever way thay helps the get the closure they desire.
I don’t have Facebook, and I agree, it doesn’t count.
I agree, the far right is a bunch of shitheads. Trump should swing, and all his cronies should be forced to watch from prison.
Say all you want about the US military, but they haven’t let violent rapists out of prison and promised them pardons if they commit war crimes on neighboring sovereign nations.
Honestly, I’m just wasting time here. You aren’t paid to argue in good faith anyway.
Cries of “whataboutism” were silly when those cries were used to justify British imperialism in Ireland and they’re silly now.
But to answer your questions, I vote for candidates that take rape allegations and the abysmal police and military response to rapes seriously.
We live in an oligarchy, So your vote is meaningless.
I support my family, friends and community members who have been raped or expienced sexual assault, in whatever way thay helps the get the closure they desire.
Wow, that is incredibly vague, and does nothing about the larger issue. It is entirely reactionary without any proactive components.
I agree, the far right is a bunch of shitheads.
Yes, I am glad we agree you’re a shithead.
Say all you want about the US military, but they haven’t let violent rapists out of prison and promised them pardons if they commit war crimes on neighboring sovereign nations.
Oh they’ve done much worse. They’ve killed millions of people in West Asia over the last two decades. Most women in the military experience some form of sexual violence, and those women are on their team.
Honestly, I’m just wasting time here. You aren’t paid to argue in good faith anyway.
Lmao, baselessly accusing me of being a paid actor while accusing me of bad faith.
Cries of “whataboutism” were silly when those cries were used to justify British imperialism in Ireland and they’re silly now.
Why are we bringing this up? What does this have to do with the 100% Geneva Convention Violation warcrime run Russia has been doing in Ukraine for over a year at this point?
Yes, I am glad we agree you’re a shithead.
Shithead, maybe, rightwing… I don’t think I really need to defend myself from this point. It’s hilarious how out of touch you are.
They’ve killed millions of people in West Asia over the last two decades. Most women in the military experience some form of sexual violence, and those women are on their team.
War is hell comrade. Go ahead and post some numbers about Russia’s record on those items before you point a finger at the US. Before you yell whataboutism, remember that the topic in this conversation was the warcrime that Russia is currently commiting.
Lmao, baselessly accusing me of being a paid actor while accusing me of bad faith.
There is a lot more evidence of you being a Russian warcrime apologist than there is of me being a right-winger :)
