I'm mostly over playing Top Trumps with tanks. Any tank is better than no tank, and a T90M will get taken out by a mine just as much as a T55. I'm more interested in what this says about the larger ammunition and logistics issues and what it might mean for training. Even the youngest Russian men who served in T55s are past 70 now. And these tanks were put away late in their service lives, with the best ones exported. There's going to be maintenance issues. T55s are still being used in African countries. Maybe they can help Russia. At least they have a reputation of reliability.
i agree to an extent that it can do a job. Just sceptical it is really adding much even if they have all the shells as you say. what it does show is how bad the losses must be if they are down to getting t55s and BTR50 out of storage does this mean they are out of t72 hulls? Or is this an alternate supply line where they simply can’t refurb enough t72 whereas these work with little work?
Oh! There is one thing unique about the T55 besides the ammunition. T55s don't have an autoloader. As a result, the T55 will have a crew of 4 instead of 3. Additionally, since Russia has had an autoloader since the 60s, they don't have any training on how to operate as loaders. Considering the ability of Russians to train their soldiers, I'm sure that will go well. Also, T55s have an interesting feature. In order to fit more shells, they have "wet storage" in their fuel tanks. Even more fun, in order to fit more fuel, they put a tank immediately behind the front armor.. So.. thin steel armor (by modern standards) with no ERA, coupled with shells in the fuel tanks and fuel immediately behind the area most likely to be exposed to fire..
WTF? I'm no military expert at all. But you're telling me they store shells for the T55 inside the fuel tank? Or did I just completely misunderstand you?
Nope. You did not misunderstand me. Literally shells in the fuel tank. The good news (for the crew), it is diesel, so it's not explosive and actually protects the shells fairly well from fire.
Ukraine is starting to probe along the front lines to find a Russian weakpoint. Today they marched into a village near Zaporizhzhia and started fighting with Russian units that are there. It is unclear that they will remain, but such small assaults are becoming increasingly common. Ukrainian Forces have reportedly Advanced today and Captured the Northern Section in the Settlement of Novodanylivka to the Southeast of Orikhiv; this Town has been in the “Gray Zone” between Russian and Ukrainian Lines in the Region for the last few months. pic.twitter.com/tRYzyZyrrr— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 22, 2023
Remember this? The Germans and Slovaks finally worked out a deal today. Now the PzH2000's can be repaired in Slovakia without delay. Only a month and a half after the problem started. That's the kind of break-neck speed you expect during war time. https://nitter.1d4.us/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1638598458448723969
Basically As of this moment there are T90s 80s 72s being refurbished heck even upgraded. Same goes for T62. But the plants doing this are at 100% capacity. They need numbers
A huge queue is shown by a local resident in a new cemetery in Vladivostok, Russian Far East. According to them, there was not a single grave in this location just in December. Mobilisation in effect. pic.twitter.com/W6JAKDL3c2— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) March 22, 2023 This place is a 10,000 km trip to Ukraine. That's a long way to go, and a long way to come back in a box.
A Russian on Telegram is claiming the Russian UR-77 demining vehicle is crap. Part of it is the design it shares with other vehicles of the type, including western ones. It launches two 100m long connected lines of explosives to clear a path a vehicle-width wide, but it can only launch it 200-300m and that means it is in danger, especially as Ukrainian mine fields are (he says) 500-700m deep. But more than that, he says often one or both lines will fail to detonate, rendering that attempt useless and requiring another try. Those charges are very bulky and it's specialized equipment. I'm guessing they don't have a lot of them at any one time, even in a prepared attack.
OK - so i looked this up on Kos and they say the main bottle neck is the range finders. T55 has ancient WWII era range finding, whereas the new range finders are in short supply. So you can ship T55 easier. But it is almost useless to shoot at anything. Like @spejic says it would like never be used for direct fire but rather for indirect shelling and fire correction by a drone. i.e. useless Obviously, advances in armor, engines, communications, armament will make any tank first designed in WW2 archaic. But one aspect of the T55’s archaic design will stand out to anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves engaged in combat in one of these vehicles: range finding. Every tank has a “gunner’s sight’ that contains a range finder, that will tell the gunner how far away the target is, so they can obtain a fire solution. That is, the gunner needs to know how high to elevate the gun to hit his target. Modern tanks like the Leopard 2’s ENES or the T90M’s SOSNA-U have laser range finders that can almost instantly provide fire solutions on any target at vast ranges. Late era cold war tanks like modernized T72s and older model T80s have optical range finders like the 1PN96MT-02—it is both less accurate and a slower way to obtain a fire solution, and the maximum range is considerably less. Optics also experience advancements from 1945 — 1980, so newer model optical range finders were considerably better than older ones. Leopard 2: EMES Laser Range Finder 10,000m T90/T80: SOSNA-U Laser range finder 6500m T80/T72: 1PN96MT-02 Optical range finder 3000m T64/T62: TSh-2B-41 Optical Range Finder 2500m T55/T54: TPKU-2B Optical range finder 1000m So basically, if a Leopard 2 is on a hill with extensive LOS (line of sight) extending 10km, it could theoretically hit a column of approaching tanks from 10km (6 miles). A T90 could shoot back once it’s within 6.5km (4 miles). if you’re unfortunately enough to be on a T55 charging at a platoon of Leopard 2s, you’d have to travel 9 kms through enemy fire to get within 1km before you could even shoot back with a prayer of hitting anything. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...hy-ancient-T55s-are-being-pulled-from-storage
I was wondering about this as there are a few videos appearing of ukranian troops taking over russian trenches
Something I never really appreciated until i misspent the Trump end of times on Schwerpunkt doctrine is that the training of the crew, UX, and coordination is much more important than the spec sheet of the tank. Especially gunnery and command/control were real art forms, let alone coordinating with infantry in an actual battle. Experienced crews were much more valuable than their tanks. e.g Germany built 18,000 AFVs in 1944 yet invaded Russia with only 3000 ish tanks total. This is one reason losses got so high. Even if you get 100 brand new tanks per month, by definition you cannot get 300 highly trained/experienced crew every month So just like with infantry, Russian crews are increasingly goons
One of the OSINT accounts I follow on Twitter thinks the T55 story may be wishful thinking. At least one of the videos circulating is from October and there is no indication the tanks are heading to Ukraine. This Video showing T-54/T-55 Tanks also began to circulate today with many Accounts claiming that these Tanks were also going to Ukraine; however this Video is from at least October of 2022 at the earliest and likely shows these Tanks being moved to Dismantling Plants. pic.twitter.com/Sbz5fm1oAa— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 23, 2023
Ukraine is reporting that Russia has withdrew all forces from Nova Kakhovka. This is the city by the dam on the Dnipro River by Ukraine that controls the water level of the lake that starts by Zaporizhzhia. It was also one of the primary ways Russia was able to keep their troops in the Kherson region supplied prior to their withdrawal. This does not, however, mean Ukraine is there. Russia has pulled back most/all of their forces south of the Dnipro so they aren’t within range of Ukraine’s artillery. So it is probably safe to say this city is now in thr no man’s land between the Russian forces south of the Dnipro and the Ukrainian forces north of the Dnipro. ‼️ All units of the Russian occupiers deployed in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Region, have left the city. This was reported by the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff. pic.twitter.com/HrtehHoyb9— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 23, 2023 One thing that would be interesting is if this means Ukraine controls the dam and if they can repair the dam. As mentioned previously, the Russians had been slowly draining the lake and this draining was putting the Nuclear Power Plant at risk as it uses water from the lake to cool its reactors.
I think the point of the OSINT person I linked is that we don't know what Russia is doing with the T-55s. Prior to the start of the war, they only had a low hundreds of T-55s in total, of which only about 100 were actually in storage, and were in the process of scrapping them. The train could very well be taking the next batch of T-55s from storage to the scrapping plant. We will, of course, find out in a few weeks/months if/when T-55s start showing up in Oryx.
These tanks serve their highest current purpose. In 3rd world nations like Russia tanks serve for running over citizens Tiananmen-style or for general citizen intimidation.
Looks like DeSantis has realized he stepped in it by saying that Ukraine was a territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine and wasn't of vital interest to the US.. He had an interview yesterday with Piers Morgan where he did a bit of an about face and acknowledged that Putin was a war criminal and should be prosecuted and that Russia was hostile to the US. https://www.axios.com/2023/03/22/desantis-trump-putin-war-criminal
This is indirectly related to the war, but it might have some impact. The Central African Republic has a lot of gold under its ground. Most of the mining is done by Russian companies. Those are guarded by Wagner Group, who don't take kindly to others trying to do the same. Migrant miners have been found dead multiple times. Recently the CAR invited China to mine as well. On March 19 the mine was stormed and the Chinese were all shot. The government blames rebels, but the mine guards (who were not harmed) told reporters that the attackers were white and dressed in Russian military clothes. China are now conducting their own investigation. We'll have to see how this affects Russia-China relations.
China has been super aggressive with obtaining mining rights in Africa. This incident sounds like the wild, wild, west aspect of mining but China making inroads in major mining deposits in Africa is a concern for the west.
Interesting. When Wagner mercs attacked a U.S.-protected oil field in Syria back in . . . I think 2018 . . . it did not go at all well for the Wagners. Unless their objective was to have 300 of their people die in the firefight against a force of 40 U.S. commandos, that is.
This story is rapidly approaching a unit of UK Marines bested an entire US Marine battalion levels of misinformation.. Yes, there were only 40 US Special Forces at the oil field, but those soldiers may not have fired a shot during that entire engagement. What happened is a group of Syrians with the support of a contingent of Wagner were told that an oil field was unprotected and given orders to go secure it. Unbeknownst to the soldiers, the oil field actually had a group of US special forces there to protect it. The special forces soldiers saw a convoy of vehicles full of armed soldiers headed their direction and sent it up the chain of command. Someone at HQ called up the Russians on the de-escalation phone and asked if they had a unit operating in the area because they had soldiers at the oil field and there was a group of soldiers headed their direction. The person on the other end of the phone informed them they were unaware of any Russians in the area. The US HQ thanked the Russians, got in contact with the special forces and told them they weren't Russian. At this point, the special forces team relayed the location of the convoy to their air and artillery support. Shortly thereafter, several HIMARS rounds landed on the trucks in the front and back of the convoy and an AC-130 gunship that was in station near the oil field started lighting up the rest of the convoy. This was followed by several more HIMARS and even bombing runs by US fighter/bombers. The Wagner forces, who were expecting a nice peaceful ride into the oil field and had no heavy arms and no MANPADS, called up their HQ asking why the Americans were blowing the hell out of their convoy headed towards an unoccupied oil field and what they were supposed to do. At which point their HQ called up the Russian HQ. The Russians went "Teehee. We didn't know you were there! Pull back", called up the Americans on the de-escalation line and said, "Sorry, we actually do have units in the area. We've told them to pull back. Please stop killing them." This all took several hours, during which time the US continued to rain hell on the Syrians and Wagners. So.. No.. 40 US special forces did not fight off a group of 300 Wagners. The US's global leading combined arms doctrine called in the strength of the US Army and US Air Force to drop bombs and HIMARS on top of an unsuspecting and completely unprepared group of Syrians and a contingent of Wagners long before they even got close to the oil field.
Sadly, someone in the Ukrainian PR department misinterpreted information that was given to them and the Russians are very much still in Nova Kakhovka. Russia was just doing their normal rotation of units in the city and the PR department only saw the message about the units leaving Nova Kakhovka and missed the message about units also arriving in the city. The end.https://t.co/ULmPQ6bota pic.twitter.com/PaIQTGzKL0— Def Mon (@DefMon3) March 23, 2023