See subject.
This could be part of a more general and less answerable (here) factual question, which is,
What is the USA, and the rest of the world’s good defense forces, closely observing, noting, and in time integrating into their own knowledge of any adversary/the Russians’ tactics and discrete weaponry for countermeasures?
Leo
None that I’ve seen. They are basically following their doctrinal handbook to the letter, so far. There isn’t anything new they have introduced that I’ve seen anyway.
Probably the biggest thing is how well the ATGMs are working, and possibly how not to do deep strike air mobile operations. They are probably looking at the portable SAMs as well wrt helicopter doctrine, and how well or poorly they are performing.
Follow the Z to your next destination? Other than that, I have nothing.
are we limited to the russians?
firstly: the importance of COMMITTMENT of an army … strikes me as a key element of this war. Its not so much a quantities game as it is a quality game …
secondly, the Ukrainians managed to introduce the tactic of sophisticated humor (stealing armored vehicles with tractors, offering sunflower-seeds-with a twist, random pedestrians stopping trank-convoys)…
… and the tactic of balls-of-steel (detonating the bridge you are standing on, tank-mine-clearing with a cigarette in your mouth,…)
Prior to the war, a lot of Russian tanks were seen sporting metal-cage armor on the top of their turrets, like wearing a big hat. The idea was to defend against top-attack missiles like Javelin, that have tandem warheads.
Not sure whether such defenses have actually worked in combat or not. Would be curious to see.
Possibly not?
It’s been a long time since I’ve read up on the Javelin but IIRC it’s IR guided and aims for the hot engine cover, effecting a mission-kill. A cage on the turret would be ineffective.
John Oliver just played the clip with the old woman trying to give the sunflower seeds to the Russian soldier. “Put these seeds in your pocket so that when you die here sunflowers will grow.” She didn’t explicitly say “from your decaying corpse” but it sure was implied. That is one awesomely stone-cold put-down.
There is a definite lack of new weapons that I’ve seen. Mostly variants of vehicles that I had to identify when I was a young soldier in 1989. The tanks are all T-72s with some T-90s. The much heralded T-14 Armada is no where to be found. I read somewhere that they may have only produced 20 of them so far. Supposedly they are now using thermobaric rockets but the TOS-1 has been around for decades.
On the Ukrainian side apparently they are using the few combat drones they bought from Turkey with some effectiveness.
Some of their new missiles are getting used. ISKANDERs for instance.
There’s footage of three different strikes by TB2 drones here and here. Their use isn’t entirely new; they were used in Azerbaijan. Things like this, and footage of columns of Ukrainian vehicles moving on roads in daylight really show that the Russians don’t have the degree of control of the skies that they have been claiming to have.
ETA: It’s actually only two strikes, two of the videos are of the same strike; one a 15 second video of it and the other a 30 second video of it.
I would be very careful with Twitter videos and propaganda generally.
For instance, the “Go fuck yourself” video at Snake Island, well it turns out they surrendered.
be wary of propaganda, of all sides./
to all of you with something of a military background:
how do you feel about those endlessly long tank/supply-truck/armed-personnel carrier convoys?
isnt that like shooting fish in a barrel?
again, I am not a specialist in this at all, but just think of what a couple of warthogs pulling up from behind could do?
any thoughts on that? are those long columns military “best practice”?
Logistics are easier when you have air supremacy. Rumors and propaganda aside the feeling I have is Russia has control of the skies. If Ukraine was able to do more we would have more than two videos of air strikes. I have seen nothing about Ukrainian artillery.
I don’t see how Russia could not be in control of the skies with their numerical superiority.
My greatest regret of this war will be not getting to see the F-22 notch a few hundred kills.
Man…my greatest regret is that this all happened at all, that Putin and Russia made this calculation that they could simply go in and invade and conquer a neighboring power simply because they wanted to. I think one of the things I’m most glad if this cluster fuck had to happen, is that the US and NATO/Europe didn’t get involved but still managed to unify enough to throw down some serious sanctions and economic impacts for this adventure on Russia. Also, this seems to have been a wake-up call for NATO and Europe…and one they seem to have actually heard. Silver linings to really dark storms.
So far, not only has Putin vastly strengthened the EU and NATO, but he’s even gotten Germany to commit to 100% renewable energy by 2035. The guy is good for the environment.
He almost deserves a Nobel Prize.
To be fair, it’s not like if the tables were turned, we’d have 40-50-something Russians saying “Well, it’s all the same M1 Abrams and Bradleys that I had to identify back in 1989.”
But I agree… the Russian tanks are primarily various T-72 models, with some T-90s that might be more or less equivalent to modern Western tanks.
The T-72 have all been upgraded multiple times by the Russians, so they are also more or less equivalent to modern western tanks. Just like the Abrams has gone through multiple upgrade cycles to keep it relevant. Same with the T-90s. Ukraine’s T-64s have also been upgraded quite extensively, and in fact, they build new ones that have a lot of the upgrades in them.
I think people tend to get stuck in the fact that those T-72s were first produced decades ago and don’t realize that countries that want to stay relevant wrt their militaries are constantly upgrading them with more advanced features and armor packages and the like.