I’m sure most readers have seen the stories recently about the severe recruitment problems facing the US military. Here’s a good example:
Biden Administration Intentionally Weakening Military: Retired General
Boykin [Lt. General (Ret.) William Boykin] believes weakness is more than an international perception, and he gave examples of how Biden is intentionally weakening the military, including kicking out service members who refused to get the COVID-19 shot and teaching critical race theory and inclusion tolerance instead of teaching how to be in a constant state of readiness for war.
“All of these things that have nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with the agenda of the administration—you are doing them an injustice and ultimately you’re going to pay the price for that,” Boykin said.
“At the same time, they’re turning around and writing to old generals like me, saying, ‘We need help recruiting because we just can’t recruit enough people.’ Well let me explain to you how this thing of mathematics works. You get rid of all of them, and then those who are watching from the outside say, ‘I don’t want a part of that.’ And those on the inside, many of them leave on their own.”
Many in leadership at the Pentagon got their start under President Barack Obama, Boykin said.
“If they’re compromised—if they lack focus, the question we need to ask as a nation is, who’s mentoring the next generation of leaders? Who’s bringing up the warrior leaders for the future? The answer is nobody,” he said. “And that’s the hardest thing to fix in terms of restoring the Navy and the Army and Air Force and the Marine Corps.”
Judging from these articles, the challenge facing the Russians and Chinese will be how to deal with a US military that’s understrength, fatter, dumber, and sexually confused. Will they be up to the challenge?
A few days ago a commenter wrote about the Russians being so short of tanks that they were having to use “obsolete” T-62 tanks (in fact, Russia has also deployed T-90s). I responded at some length regarding the T-62. Today at The New Atlas Brian Berletic had an interesting discussion on Ukrainian pleas for more and better airplanes, air defense, and tanks. It’s all good stuff for military watchers: Ukraine Seeks F16s, Patriot Missiles, & Leopard Tanks. The mention of the Leopard tanks—they’re a German MBT, and rated up there with the Abrams—is interesting. NATO countries like Poland have stripped themselves of their older Soviet T-72 tanks—which are, in fact, inferior to the Ukrainian and Russian T-62s. Poland did this on the promise of receiving Leopard 2s, but has reportedly been stiffed by the Germans, who are remilitarizing—the Leopard 2s may be needed for the next Drang nach Osten:
Expulsion of Poles following the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Poles were removed to make room for German colonists, as part of a plan to Germanize western Poland.
Berletic cited the following article regarding the merits of this state of the art NATO MBT:
Turkey's Leopard 2 Tanks Are Getting Crushed in Syria
Not so good armor after all.
To give you an idea on the notion of “obsolescence” with regard to tanks, Turkey—a very important NATO member with a very large military—had been using Patton tanks. The most recent version dates to 1960, so it’s much older than the T-62, but it’s still widely used. But the Turks thought they could do better against the Kurds and ISIS with Leopard 2s. Not so much, as you can tell from the title of the article. Pictures are always good for … getting the picture:
Images of three destroyed Turkish Army Leopard 2A4s, which were destroyed by Daesh near Al-Bab
Three smashed Leopard 2A4 tanks sit smashed on the plain outside Al-Bab. ----------------------------- The 2A4's performance to date against ATGMs has been poor
Follow the link for more images.
How about the M-1 Abrams? I found this interesting snippet at its Wikipedia page:
In May 2008, it was reported that a U.S. M1 tank had also been damaged in Iraq by insurgent fire of a Soviet-made RPG-29 "Vampir", which uses a tandem-charge high-explosive anti-tank warhead to penetrate explosive reactive armor (ERA) as well as composite armor behind it. The U.S. considered the RPG-29 a high threat to armor and refused to allow the newly formed Iraqi Army to buy it, fearing that it would fall into the insurgents' hands.
Iraqi Army service
Between 2010 and 2012 the U.S. supplied 140 refurbished M1A1 Abrams tanks to Iraq. In mid-2014, they saw action when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant launched the June 2014 Northern Iraq offensive. During three months, about one-third of the Iraqi Army's M1 tanks had been damaged or destroyed by ISIL and some were captured by opposing forces. By December 2014, the Iraqi Army only had about 40 operational Abrams left. That month, the U.S. Department of State approved the sale of another 175 Abrams to Iraq.
The RPG-29 is Soviet era weaponry—it was adopted by the Red Army in 1989, but it’s still plenty good, as you can see from the above. And that’s Berletic’s point. There is no magic weapons system that will save Ukraine, and talk of outdated Russian systems are simply propaganda, in most cases. Tanks are highly vulnerable unless used in carefully monitored situations with plenty of support. The fact is, modern warfare is way more complicated than the MSM wants you to believe.
Finally, in Samarkand Putin once again referred to the West as having a “colonial” mentality. Perhaps this is what he had in mind:
Climate czar John Kerry warns Africa not to use natural gas to bring power to millions
Maybe he doesn’t want Russia developing any new markets for Russian gas? Maybe this isn’t really about the climate? I suspect Africans have that ploy figured out.
"A few days ago a commenter wrote about the Russians being so short of tanks that they were having to use “obsolete” T-62 tanks (in fact, Russia has also deployed T-90s). I responded at some length regarding the T-62."
There was a considerable discussion of this issue on the FYEOX discussion group over at Strategypage.com. (This is behind a paywall) Strategypage has a long history and was really OSINT before OSINT was a thing. Jim Dunnigan has a heavy wargaming background, and these aren't the kind of people who peddle stories about the Ghost of Kiev or the epic of Snake Island.
At the time we speculated about why the Russians were taking T-62s out of storage when newer models were available. I thought at the time that they might be using them to equip soldiers recruited in the Middle East, Wagner Group types maybe, or second line troops raised in the eastern provinces of Ukraine. One thing that they are reporting over there is that the Russians are falling out of love with the autoloader on their T-72s. You dispense with the gunner, but the price is that you end up storing ammunition in a carousel in the turret. Take a hit in the wrong place, and that turret gets blown fifty feet in the air. The blast is not survivable, and trained tank crews are not easily replaced.
The 82nd Airborne Division spent a not inconsiderable amount of time back in 2008-9 teaching me how to kill tanks and armored fighting vehicles, Soviet made ones in particular, and I have been loving the credulous coverage of the corporate press on all these armored warfare claims from the Ukrainians.
First off, epic tank battles have never been a thing that defines land warfare. Kursk, El Alamein, 6-Day War are some of the rare exceptions. Historically, tanks have been used to break through an enemies line and thrust deep into his rear, and the best responses to those thrusts have been to attack them with aircraft or with specialized anti-tank units waiting in ambush. Ukraine is no different—most of the destroyed armored vehicles we see have been taken out by drones, aircraft, artillery, or anti-tank guided missiles.
Secondly, to the extent the Russians have brought T-62’s out of storage, they most likely gave them to the DPR and LPR militias holding the line that had no armor. The chance they’ve been attrited of over 6000 T-72’s and T-90’s beggars belief. Of course, the Ukrainians could be lying, or they could have confused some T-64’s for T-62’s.
Soviet Medium Tank and MBT nomenclature really is pretty easy, numbers go up the younger the design—T-34 was the epic WWII tank, the T-54/55 was its early Cold War replacement, the T-62 was an iterative replacement for them, then the T-64 was a dramatic improvement in design but incredibly expensive and time consuming to build, so a cheaper version was built starting in the 1970’s—the T-72, probably the most prolifically manufactured Cold War MBT. The T-80 was a upgraded version of the T-64 that never caught on due to expense and reliability issues, and the current T-90 is the best of all post Soviet tanks being an upgraded T-72. I think when Mark says the Russian T-62’s are better he’s thinking of the T-64.
All of them have a big problem that NATO MBT’s got rid of in the 1980’s—they store ammunition for the main gun in the crew compartment, so a hit that penetrates the turret will likely detonate the ammo and kill the gunner and commander. The flip side is that NATO tanks are a foot or two taller and 20-30 tonnes heavier—making them more conspicuous targets and less likely to be able to get over Soviet made bridges. It drives me nuts they keep on writing Leopard and Leopard II interchangeably for the tanks Ukraine is using in Kharkov—that’s a 20 year and 20 ton difference in design, and the 2 probably will have bridging difficulties.
But none of these tank features matter if you don’t have air defense that can keep attack helicopters or kamikaze drones from hitting the lightly armored top of your tank turret. If you have poorly trained crews that can’t maintain them or employ them properly. Or if you don’t have any good infantry to accompany them to screen for and kill ATGM’s.
The reality is that Ukrainian tv doesn’t have thousands of Russian POWs in cages to show us or a No-man’s land covered in Russian corpses, so they try to show us as many reused pictures of destroyed vehicles as they can along with pictures of supposedly obsolete material being used at the front in order to show that their army is attriting the Russian army as bad as they’re getting hit.