Are we talking two different types of gas here? Do you mean natural gas or vehicle fuel? Tanks run off of vehicle fuels.
Yes. I’m talking about vehicle fuel, not natural gas. Russian tanks take a lot of it. It takes a lot of fuel to get Russian tanks moving, and if Ukraine cuts off the fuel supply (basically blowing up a fuel train or bombing a road, the the Russian tanks are immmobilized, they can’t go anywhere… then the Russian tanks are sitting ducks, they basically sit there without gas and forced to either surrender or get destroyed (they can already be be destroyed with gas by US-provided TOW and Javelin missiles, which will likely happen.)
Anyway disrupting the fuel supply is likely priority #1 for Ukraine if Russia invades… and could make life hell for the Russians… it’s kind of like the insurgents of WW2, except now communications are better with cell phones and radios… its easier for Ukraine to have an organized insurgency, operating behind enemy lines and disputing the supply train…
…real life isn’t a game of “Command and Conquer.” You can’t set up a processing plant and generate infinite amounts of TOW and Javelin missiles. You seem to have rather simplistic views of how a real-world conflict between Russia and the Ukraine would play out.
The Trump admin has already approved lethal aid to Ukraine… and the US has already sold $50 billion worth of Javelin missiles to Ukraine, what makes you think he won’t give them more???
Plus even during the Obama admin the CIA was supplying the Syrian rebels with missiles, and they were doing terrible damage to the Syrian regime… Syrian rebels are a lot more shady than the Ukrainian military…
There are people in the pentagon seeing what Ukraine needs… and providing a way for them to have it to stop the Russian bear…
…my understanding is that the Pentagon is sending lethal aid in the form of this personto help with the preparations to “stop the Russian bear.” His instructions are to make the Ukrainian military “more shady” so that they can put those 50 BILLION dollars worth of Javelin missiles to good use.
How many Javelins does $50B buy you?
A ton, if it were accurate. But alas, off by three orders of magnitude:
that’s not going to be enough.
200 Javelin missiles is a lot of dead Russians… now imagine a whole container ship filled with Javelin missiles sent to Ukraine… Trump would love to them missiles, because it would put to bed any concerns that he’s pro-Russia.
Remember every Russian soldier has a mother, a father, girlfriend… Putin is gonna have to explain to all these people why he got their son killed.
I’d describe it as old not overly pessimistic. Things have been changing rapidly in the last decade. More recent data:
Adding the officers with the volunteer enlisted gets us over 600k professional troops in 2016 and possibly up to 650k today. They’ve been stacking the professionals into their new Battalion Tactical Group (BTG) formations and leaving. Those formations have seen significant combat experience inside Ukraine giving the professional soldiers real world experience. They’ve also shifted to all of their leaders being professional. That’s a big change from the the old Soviet model where top conscripts were sent to a short course after initial entry training and made into Sergeants.
There’s real issues with making so many changes so quickly. Their old culture shifted a lot of work to officers that in the west is generally considered Sergeant’s business. Changing the culture of roles is hard and it takes a long time to truly grow the kind of senior NCOs I relied upon during my career. Manning issues can leave relatively hollow units that have a hard time training well. They cheated and fully manned the early BTGs leaving the rest with more serious manning issues. I have yet to see if they’ve maintained that as they’ve begun vastly expanded transformation of their formations into BTGs. (Initially it was only one per Brigade and they appeared to get priority for everything, not just personnel.)
[qoute] It does have an upgraded sight, bigger gun and new engine and suspension/chassis, but it’s still the same old Soviet crap tank in the end…and they don’t have a lot of them.
[/QUOTE]
Improvements in reactive armor since the end of the Cold War have improved protection against chemical energy rounds (including newer tandem warheads) while introducing the capability of greatly reducing penetration by kinetic energy rounds. The Kalina fire control system from the T14 is included and includes the ability to automatically track targets. There’s a state of the art thermal sight replacing the old passive infrared with IR searchlight night capability. They’ve improved mobility, firepower, and protection while greatly improving night capability. As a retired armor officer, I see a much more capable combat vehicle if the upgrades actually work.
Numbers are hard to assess accurately from open source data. There’s always a risk of buying into overoptimistic claims. It’s not like Russia has problems with spreading disinformation. 
As of September 2016 the manager of the factory conducting the upgrades said they’ve upgraded “about 1,000” T72s to the B3 standard. A non-Russian source has about 300 fielded as of Jan 2017 along with about 350 T90 variants in service. (The major performance improvement in the T90A versus the T72 B3 is the addition of the Shtora-1 active protection system.) As a point of comparison the US Armored Brigade Combat Team has 90 tanks total. There’s currently 10 ABCTs in the US Army with a total of about 900 tanks. I’d describe the Russia fielding of relatively modern main battle tanks as “a lot.”
Russia is not interested in Ukraine. They are interested in the Krim because of it’s strategic position and the Russian Navy base there (Black Sea control) AND because many Russian oligarchs (that’s friends of the CiC) have vacation homes there. It’s a really nice place to be. They didn’t waste any time securing the Krim. If the rest was relevant it would already be under control.
There are some historical sentiments, since Ukraine is considered to be the origin of the tribes that went on to form Russia. There is some fear because once again “The West” is moving in to Russian territory (Imagine how you would feel if Russia and it’s allies would move their influence and military closer and closer to our borders, meanwhile assimilating other countries that used to be our allies). But in general, if Russia wanted to occupy Ukraine, they would have done it by now. They are certainly capable.
Fundamentally the Ukraine is big, and has a large population and industrial base. For the Russians to conquer it militarily wouldn’t be a fast or easy thing- Ukraine’s military is about a quarter the size of the Russian military, but the Russian numbers include their navy, and a lot of troops that wouldn’t be deployed- they’re in the Far East, or in the Caucasus or elsewhere the Russians want to keep troops.
So we’re probably not looking at the classic 3:1 attacker/defender ratio to assure success in attacks. While the Russians would probably locally gain that ratio, that would also open them up to artillery and air strikes, as they’d have to concentrate their forces and engage in maneuver warfare.
And finally, both sides would incur heavy casualties- we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of men squaring off against each other with rough parity in equipment- this isn’t a Gulf War/Gulf War II type situation where the 1991/2003 US military squared off against an Iraq with 1965 technology.
Don’t for a minute think Ukrainians are not as nationalistic as Americans. In Ukraine its extremely common for both your grandfathers to have fought in the Second World War.
For America the Second World War was an adventure, for Ukraine it was a personal tragedy.
Schools were bombed, churches were bombed, houses were burned to the ground with people still in them, Jews were told to dig their own graves…
In Ukraine it’s extremly common to have many aunts, uncles, cousins, etc who were slayed by the Nazi killers…
Conscription in Ukraine lasted for decades, part of being a man is serving in the army at 18 years old. Many boys volunteer for the army.
Plus Ukraine suffered the Holodomer, millions were starved to death, the years of Stalin and his oppressive rule are not forgotten either…
Russia’s ‘allies’ were allied at gunpoint. Poland was invaded by Russia fifteen days after Germany did, Russia (okay, the USSR) divided the country between them. Then executed 22,000 or so of their Polish captives.
The invasion of Hungary in 1956 and that of Czechoslovakia in 1968 does not compare with any action within NATO or other alliance except maybe the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The former Warsaw Pact members are afraid of Russia invading them; Russia should not be worried that Georgia or Ukraine will attack them. It’s simultaneous paranoia and excuse.
I for one would like to read Stranger on a Train on this topic. When is his suspension over? Will he come back? Is “he” really a conglomerate of experts?
Btw, I’m Polish. My father was in the Polish navy when Poland was under occupation by the ussr. On a goodwill visit to America, when his ship pulled into New York Harbor, he jumped off the ship and swam to America… I live in a heavily Polish area (Greenpoint Brooklyn)… When i grew up Polish people would scream in the streets with big signs saying “Russkie go home” … there was a lot of political movements at that time to free Poland from Russian rule … if a Russian person went up to a pole and said he was Russian, he would likely get punched in the face… at my school there were a couple Russian kids in class with us, and they were all bullied and harassed… a russian kid would rarely admit he was Russian because there was a ton of Polish at my school… admitting you were ethic Russian was seen as having big balls, it rarely happened. Russia is seen as Satan to Polish people…
Here is some things most Polish think about Russia.
A warmonger
The devil
Someone who would machine gun you in front of your own church
A thief
You will find that most Polish peope have an extremely low opinion of Russia. If a country could have an arch enemy, than Russia is Poland’s arch enemy… a historical enemy, somebody who is hated by every generation…
Polish people have a higher opinion of Germany than Russia…Germany is viewed as a country trying to recover from their past crimes and admit they were wrong… Russia on the hand is viewed as a country trying to whitewash their past crimes and that angers Polish people greatly…
I can believe it based on the level of hate that Czechs and Hungarians have for them.
Interestingly, they were both extremely happy to interact with us Americans (this was 11 years ago).
Yes, Polish people love America very much. Many Polish people dream of going to NYC. I have family in in Poland so I often send them pictures of what I’m doing and they are amazed. America is viewed as the land of opportunity, Poland is viewed as a land of tall churches, the historic home of the Polish people. Many Polish people love American tv shows, movies, American brands like Nike, etc… many Polish peope from my area (Brooklyn) have served in the US Army and were proud. Polish people love American actors on tv and how straight and white their teeth are, nobody in Poland has teeth as white as Americans… Polish people are also educated in world affairs and can talk intelligently, many hold degrees in law, medicine, finance…
Russians are a lot less educated in world affairs than Polish people. There have been waves of Russians that moved into my area (Brooklyn) since the ussr collapsed… they have the worst teeth I have ever seen human beings have, a lot of times half their teeth are missing and the other half is black… I’ve seen older Russian guys with no teeth at all, just gums… its disgusting… also a lot of them don’t bathe in the shower like normal people… , they wash in the sink (mostly the older generation, but there’s a lot of them)… also many Russian don’t get jobs (they can’t get a job) so they walk around on the street all day and beg… you can’t have a conversation them about world affairs, they don’t know anything about politics or history… except they all know Putin is and they love because he gives them the mentality that Russia is strong…the ones that do know some history know the wrong stuff, they deny any Russian crimes against Poland even though massacres like Katyn are documented… they claim that western media (fox, cnn) is bullshit but that Russian media is to be trusted…lol…
Wow, what fascinating insights you have into ethnicity and how it determines one’s roles in life. Tell me, what do you think about the dental hygiene of the Chinese, and how it relates to their prospects for invading a neighbouring country? Are Hungarians as educated in world affairs as the nearby Slovaks? (Could the difference have something to do with the well-known preference of Hungarians for baths over showers?) What do you think about the job prospects in Brooklyn for Armenian emigrés?