As we (And the many countries that have bought their armor as well.) are finding out they aren't as good as they advertised. And the signs were already there years ago if we (Not us here.) had paid more attention. Right "
off the bat" Egypt comes to mind in its massive shift from Russian armor to American armor for well over a decade now.
Let me remind you that Egypt have had enough combat experience against an army from a small country called Israel. Though strong leadership and training played a
major role in their success against Egypt (+ Syria) but so did in most cases they had better tanks as well.
Egypt has learned from their mistake, Syria has not.
In the "
Cold War" we feared the
mass of Russian armor (However with the advent of the
T-80 and they were stationed in
East Germany (
Only Warsaw Pact country to have them outside of Russia.) did cause some worries for
NATO. But fortunately for
NATO Russia feared the "
DRAGON" ATGW.
If only they knew what we did, they might've given it a try. I posted at least twice maybe in this thread or one labeled "
CIA something" the CIA documents that were released after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the mid 90's that discussed
both these topics
and more.
Other examples of the "signs" should've been the
Afghan/Russian War and when I finally we think we woke up and realized "
The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself" and overcame that in both
Iraqi Wars.
Maybe in my favorite of all tank countries
INDIA that again just
MAYBE they'll wake to the fact they have a
GREAT tank in the
ARJUN which we have both in the game and the current development of a lightweight tank to counter the Chinese
TYPE 15 in the mountainous areas of India. Also, they will probably have to deal with an "
unfriendly" Pakistan for some time to come.
As of this writing depending on source it appears Russia has lost
8-10 of their best tanks the
T-90M.
That's about 1/2 of their total fielded force.
Here's the story and all I can say to a point I made above is maybe the Russian Army had wished they could've sent some of their Armor commanders and crews for training in
Israel.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-tank...eapons-1725661
Some of the above from the Moscow Times with link to their story.
This as good as any location for the following. We are it looks like going to commit to giving
longer range anti-ship missiles to the Ukraine. Using my naval training and having operated "
restricted waters" the "
bathtubs" called the
Sea of Azov and the
Black Sea might soon afford no "
safe harbor" anywhere in those waters.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...80eed590efe09b
Ukraine has recently commented that the
Crimea will be considered as
legitimate target inside their country. I believe I also read that in one of the above articles.
Regards,
Pat
'