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Baconroll posted:When was the last time a top of the line current generation fighter or tank (i.e. not an export monkey model) with a fully trained crew fought a similar level equipped/trained opponent ? There's the stuff like others have said, and in the first Gulf War theoretically there were T-80's lined up against M1's. Don't think they traded shots much, the Republican Guard ran pretty quick due to other elements of the battlefield being compromised for them. Though if I had to guess, the Iran-Iraq War was the last time equally armed and trained armies lined up against each other. Both were conscript armies using mainly late 60's and early 70's Soviet tech for the most part, with some US assets thrown in. Predictably due to this arrangement of capabilities, it devolved into a trench war with gas use, ballistic missiles targeting civilian population centers, and unrestricted naval warfare. Funny how that happens.
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Feb 5, 2014 05:23
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VikingSkull posted:There's the stuff like others have said, and in the first Gulf War theoretically there were T-80's lined up against M1's. Don't think they traded shots much, the Republican Guard ran pretty quick due to other elements of the battlefield being compromised for them. No, the Republican Guard ran T-72M and -M1s, plus their local knock-off, which were hella more basic than the upgraded T-72As and -Bs the Soviets had coming into service during the 1980s (their allies, not so much). Also, clear similarities notwithstanding, the T-72 line of tanks differs from the -64/-80 line in a couple of important ways, which tends to draw in Russia vs. Ukraine flamewars and has been covered already either in this thread or somewhere else on these here forums mind you, so I'll leave it at that for the moment. Also those US M1s were of the -A1(HA) standard which are a pretty far cry form the vanilla M1 that went into service in 1980. I think it's fair to get the details in order before trying to paint a broader picture, for accuracy's sake at least, so I'm sorry for getting on your case! And American tanks did of course trade shots with Republican Guard forces, but I'll agree that the latter mostly cut and ran. quote:Though if I had to guess, the Iran-Iraq War was the last time equally armed and trained armies lined up against each other. Both were conscript armies using mainly late 60's and early 70's Soviet tech for the most part, with some US assets thrown in. Predictably due to this arrangement of capabilities, it devolved into a trench war with gas use, ballistic missiles targeting civilian population centers, and unrestricted naval warfare. All kinds of similarly trained and equipped 'armies' have faced each other over the last couple of decades, from ex-USSR republics' infighting, through Third World conflicts, up to the (parts of) the 2008 Russia-Georgia War.
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Feb 5, 2014 06:09
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Points taken, I thought that the so-called "Lion of Babylon" was a T-80 variant, and not a T-72. Thanks for the more detailed info. I can take your point of being accurate in this thread, it's kind of the place for it, so get on my case all you want, haha. The whole "not an export" point of that question is what fucks it up, because outside of very limited engagements in Korea and Vietnam where Soviet advisors "may" have been at the controls, that type of conflict never happened. You have to include top of the line export models, too, because export Soviet tech is the only thing US and NATO forces have encountered, for the most part. Here's a weird one, how many wars have been fought between Soviet client states from, say, 1945-1991? The NATO side didn't really see any of that with their customers.
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Feb 5, 2014 06:18
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VikingSkull posted:Points taken, I thought that the so-called "Lion of Babylon" was a T-80 variant, and not a T-72. Thanks for the more detailed info. I can take your point of being accurate in this thread, it's kind of the place for it, so get on my case all you want, haha. Oh yeah not counting 'monkey models' is a bit problematic since even their closest allies in the Warsaw Pact got T-72Ms. US troops never faced Soviet-built tanks in Vietnam (only some PT-76s or something, once, IIRC) so that's out. Then you've got the Middle East wars of course, and I think Warbadger once said ITT that the Iraqis did get regular T-72s in the original export batches so there's that, but 2008 should probably count - T-72 SIM-1s vs. T-72B(M)s - although I don't believe there was much tank-on-tank fighting. Somalia and Ethiopia were nominally USSR client states when they fought each other, although the Soviets pretty much switched sides from the former to the latter.
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Feb 5, 2014 06:30
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I think I remember that T-72 post, there's something in the back of my head making me think Iraq was the only country to receive the full model somehow. It might have been mentioned in the early days of the Syria war in D&D where people were identifying the type of tank in that infamous cook-off video. e- Wiki states that Iraq was delivered a number of the original T-72's, though most ended up being -M's and M1's. Somehow, as of 2008, they had 125 T-72M1's still in service  e2- lol "North Korea – Probably a T-72S was sold to the North Koreans in the early 1990s". "A" as in, "a nation-state placed an order for a single MBT". The gently caress is that? Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 06:42
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VikingSkull posted:I think I remember that T-72 post, there's something in the back of my head making me think Iraq was the only country to receive the full model somehow. It might have been mentioned in the early days of the Syria war in D&D where people were identifying the type of tank in that infamous cook-off video. The GDR initially received some basic 'Ural' models, as did the ČSLA if I'm not mistaken.
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Feb 5, 2014 06:48
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Both were also allowed to produce their own licensed versions, too, weren't they? Poland, too, IIRC. I kind of leave the core Pact nations out of the sphere of Soviet client state. They had the capability to produce their own arms, and in many cases a licensed weapon made in the GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia etc were of superior quality. It's like saying the UK was an American client state....they were, but not really, ya know? Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 06:50
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Dead Reckoning posted:In his new memoir, Gates says he fired Wynne and Moseley because of the mismanagement of the nuclear force in particular. That's especially hilarious because the degradation of the AF nuclear forces has been so thorough it it couldn't have been more effective if it was on purpose, and Gates shares a bit of the responsibility for it because he basically told the AF and Navy that all their long term plans not directly related to helping out in Iraq and Afghanistan could go eat poo poo. The Air Force has a whole portfolio of missions way beyond flying CAS over Afghanistan, and when we're fighting tooth and nail to keep the tools and training we need for missions like "gain and maintain air superiority" that enable everything else the US Military does, you can imagine how much attention was being paid to things like nuclear deterrence and our space programs. Just picked up that memoir, need to read it. I still maintain that the double whammy of Minot and nuke fuzes to Taiwan was just a bureaucratic smokescreen to shitcan them for their advocacy (borderline insubordination) over the Raptor and his perception that they weren't doing enough with RPAs. And to be honest, the RPA thing isn't a fair criticism, because while you could probably make the case that they could've done more, at the time even if those two had started kicking everyone in the rear end as soon as they took office in '05 they wouldn't have been able to meet Gates's demands because there wasn't the capacity. Right around the time they got canned there was serious discussion about completely shutting down the training pipeline and sending all the instructors to fly combat, and even that wouldn't have come anywhere close to meeting his demands (and that's not even getting into the intel back end, which is the real bottleneck.) Of course, we went ahead and basically did that anyway a couple of years later, with predictable results. And yes, criticizing "next war-itis" was all well and good...right up until it turns into "this war-itis," which is idiotic from a strategic perspective when "this war" is running around a landlocked country in Central Asia accomplishing absolutely nothing other than enriching the corrupt piece of poo poo pederast local government officials and getting Americans (not to mention countless local civilians) killed. From that article, I've got what is the perfect summary of Gates's time as Secdef: "It's very shortsighted, but then again that was Gates' mantra as he focused on today — now yesterday — and pretty much ignored the future."
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Feb 5, 2014 06:58
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VikingSkull posted:Both were also allowed to produce their own licensed versions, too, weren't they? Poland, too, IIRC. Only Czechoslovakia and Poland did licensed production of tanks within the WP sphere, with the latter also pulling some weight in aerospace. East German industry did a lot of component manufacturing of course: computers, optics, etc. Pretty much everything that was supposed to make them the most advanced economy in the bloc really, and still it all had to be nickle and dimed away after 1990 because it was so horribly uncompetitive. At least Poland has kept up a somewhat functioning arms industry; no-one was asking for more MPi-Ks or Robotron fire control systems. quote:I kind of leave the core Pact nations out of the sphere of Soviet client state. They had the capability to produce their own arms, and in many cases a licensed weapon made in the GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia etc were of superior quality. It's like saying the UK was an American client state....they were, but not really, ya know? Ah, a political argument 
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Feb 5, 2014 07:05
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Remember when people seriously discussed the invasion of Iraq as part of a long term strategy to reshape the Middle East? When Libya "disarmed" their WMDs neocons wouldn't shut up about "ITS WORKING SEE". A bunch of dipshits finally managed to destroy the WTC and the country goes goddamn apeshit and invades a totally unrelated country two years later.  ... Anyway, tankchat. Gulf War 1 wasn't a total 73 Easting from start to finish, but it was pretty drat close. The training and equipment of the US Army deployed in near-ideal conditions against second line equipment and not as well trained troops had predicable results, although I don't think anyone expected it to be that one sided.
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Feb 5, 2014 07:07
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Smiling Jack posted:When Libya "disarmed" their WMDs neocons wouldn't shut up about "ITS WORKING SEE". Only took another 10 years. And another war. And regime change. And help from the various nice folks who probably carted some of that stuff off before it could be destroyed.
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Feb 5, 2014 07:10
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grover posted:What seems especially potent is the 2-ship (or 4-ship) dispersed formation, where one aircraft is radiating, and the others stay silent, stealthy and undetected until BAM, amraams come out of loving nowhere and the target dies, never even having seen the raptor that killed him. The fighter version of the Saab 37 Viggen had this operational except with Skyflash instead of AMRAAM (and without the stealth, of course) in the second half of the 1980's, and I'm pretty sure the Soviets had something similar around the same time. It's not exactly a new idea. That particular fighter-to-fighter datalink feature carried over to the Gripen A and B, which could carry AMRAAM (but not Skyflash). Then everything was supposed to be NATO standardized for interoperability reasons so the Gripen C and D lost the indigenous Swedish data link (that only let you talk to Viggens, other Gripens and Swedish ground installations) in favor of link 16 which let you talk to everyone else, and I'm pretty sure when that happened the capability disappeared, at least for a while. It may or may not be there today, I'm not sure. edit: at the same time (Gripen C/D) they changed the instrumentation from the Swedish air force's traditional metric system to the feet/knots/nautical miles system used literally everywhere else in aviation. Took a while to teach all the old horses new tricks. 
TheFluff fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 09:35
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The funny thing about the horrid F-35 program versus programs of the past is if you look at the rather absurd requirements for it (why yes, run this until the late 2020s at the earliest, fill the roles of 4 other aircraft for 3 US services, and 2 foreign nations) it sort of makes sense. Compared to the old-school procurement post- WWII with multiple thousand unit purchases being turned over every 3 (early 50s) to 12(70s) years) the program (adjusted for inflation, and taken with a giant, enormous, Grover-sized grain of salt) might actually be a decent one in terms of cost. Then again, if what you're comparing it to is various Russian planes (vaporware which never turns out to actually be produced in viable numbers since 1992), the Eurofighter(which has had a development cycle even more hosed than the F-35, with the entire first block series being scrapped ), the Gripen (which isn't even a semi-next-gen fighter), or the F-22 (which, amazingly, after years of gently caress-ups and problems might actually be adhering to the design documents in the near future), anything can seem like a decent buy.
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Feb 5, 2014 12:55
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More pictures, F-15's this time! Click for 1920x1080 resolution                             --- Last one:   'Fess up, which one of you guys is this? 
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Feb 5, 2014 18:52
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Crescendo posted:More pictures, F-15's this time!  I know who that guy is. Surprisingly good maintainer.
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Feb 5, 2014 19:11
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VikingSkull posted:Both were also allowed to produce their own licensed versions, too, weren't they? Poland, too, IIRC. A lot of countries produced their own domestic variants of the T-72 export models, usually with improvements of some sort or another over the original because they were basically 1 generation behind what the Soviets were using. That basically means that by the time you could buy the tank the Soviets had a new version out to give you some great ideas about what you should upgrade on it. The Iraqis had a bunch of T-72 Urals, T-72Ms (basically the same thing as the Ural), T-72M1s (basically the T-72A), and their own version of the T-72M1 called the Lion of Babil. They basically slapped some additional laminated armor on the front, installed laser rangefinders and a Chinese ECM module meant to gently caress with IR/NV optics, and even some european IR optics in a few. Overall it was probably a better tank than the Soviet T-72A it was based on (at least the lucky ones with the LRF and IR sensor), but well, it was still more or less a late 70s MBT meant to be the economy-option T-64. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 19:30
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cross post                            
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Feb 5, 2014 19:49
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So if this guy bumps a ball with his MP5, do you call scratch? I wouldn't.
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Feb 5, 2014 21:12
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Koesj posted:Also those US M1s were of the -A1(HA) standard which are a pretty far cry form the vanilla M1 that went into service in 1980. There were also M60A1 RISE Passives from the Marines' 1st, 3rd, and 4th Tank Battalions   
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Feb 5, 2014 23:49
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Did the Marines have M1s or M1A1s in Desert Storm?
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Feb 6, 2014 01:33
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Mortabis posted:Did the Marines have M1s or M1A1s in Desert Storm? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_of_the_Gulf_War_ground_campaign Judging by that order of battle, unless you count the US Army regiments augmenting 2nd Marine Division then the answer is neither.
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Feb 6, 2014 02:00
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Mortabis posted:Did the Marines have M1s or M1A1s in Desert Storm? If memory serves they mostly had whatever the 80s/90s model of the M60 was plus a small number of M1A1s. I think it was 3 battalions with M60s and 1 that re-equipped with M1A1s right before shipping out. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Feb 6, 2014 |
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Feb 6, 2014 02:05
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It's kinda weird seeing M60s with the reactive armor kit. Like I first think M1 Abrams with TUSK but then the shape of everything is all not-Abrams and yeah. Maybe it's just me but they look odd.
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Feb 6, 2014 02:14
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Mortabis posted:Did the Marines have M1s or M1A1s in Desert Storm? Desert Storm was the M-60 series swan song in the US military, the USMC finally got the Abrams shortly after that. Love them or hate them the Marines are the "red-headed stepchildren" of US military procurement.
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Feb 6, 2014 02:47
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Well, look at the mess they made of the F-35 program when they were brought in from the start. Marines. Marines are why we can't have nice things.
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Feb 6, 2014 03:16
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darnon posted:Well, look at the mess they made of the F-35 program when they were brought in from the start. Blame the Pentagon, Joint Service projects seldom go well.
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Feb 6, 2014 03:43
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Outside Dawg posted:Blame the Pentagon, Joint Service projects seldom go well. Blame Congress, I guarantee the AF and Marines had no interest in sharing a fixed-wing platform.
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Feb 6, 2014 03:59
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Godholio posted:Blame Congress, I guarantee the AF and Marines had no interest in sharing a fixed-wing platform. I can go with this.
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Feb 6, 2014 05:42
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Outside Dawg posted:Desert Storm was the M-60 series swan song in the US military, the USMC finally got the Abrams shortly after that. Incorrect. 2d Tank Battalion, commanded by LtCol Cesare Cardi from 1989 until after the war, was fully equipped with M1A1s for Desert Storm. B Company, the first trained in using the Abrams, completed its M1A1 training on 19 November 1990, and the remaining companies finished by 23 December. Somewhere on one of my hard drives I have a picture of one of 2d Tank Battalion's Abrams, but alas I cannot find it. Luckily this occasional paper from the USMC History Division has a picture of them right on the cover: https://www.mcu.usmc.mil/historydiv...ert%20Storm.pdf edit: I was looking in the wrong place!  double edit: The bottom two pictures of the M60s in my last post are from Desert Storm. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Feb 6, 2014 |
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Feb 6, 2014 06:08
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Incorrect. 2d Tank Battalion, commanded by LtCol Cesare Cardi from 1989 until after the war, was fully equipped with M1A1s for Desert Storm. B Company, the first trained in using the Abrams, completed its M1A1 training on 19 November 1990, and the remaining companies finished by 23 December. No, not entirely incorrect. "2D" was not entirely equipped with Abrams, trained in their use yes, but fully equipped with Abrams no. 2D was still using the M60A1's during Desert Storm. I could see a platoon or perhaps even a Company of the Battalion having some M1's . Accordingly here is a picture (DOD released image)captioned, "Marines from Company D, 2nd Tank Battalion, drive their M-60A1 main battle tank over a sand berm on Hill 231 while rehearsing their role as part of Task Force Breach Alpha during Operation Desert Storm. The tank is fitted with reactive armor and an M-9 bulldozer kit."  But Desert Storm was indeed the M60 series swan song. I'm not sure about the link to the paper you posted, but it would not load, which sucks because I would really like to give it a read. (edit to add link):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Tank_Battalion
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Feb 6, 2014 08:21
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Psion posted:It's kinda weird seeing M60s with the reactive armor kit. Like I first think M1 Abrams with TUSK but then the shape of everything is all not-Abrams and yeah. Maybe it's just me but they look odd.
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Feb 6, 2014 08:25
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Outside Dawg posted:No, not entirely incorrect. "2D" was not entirely equipped with Abrams, trained in their use yes, but fully equipped with Abrams no. 2D was still using the M60A1's during Desert Storm. I could see a platoon or perhaps even a Company of the Battalion having some M1's . Accordingly here is a picture (DOD released image)captioned, "Marines from Company D, 2nd Tank Battalion, drive their M-60A1 main battle tank over a sand berm on Hill 231 while rehearsing their role as part of Task Force Breach Alpha during Operation Desert Storm. The tank is fitted with reactive armor and an M-9 bulldozer kit." Entirely incorrect. That tank is either attached from 4th Tank Battalion, which gave its B and C companies to the 2d, or that caption is flat-out wrong. Poor captioning is a relatively common problem in DOD imagery, unfortunately. I have an oral history interview (which is public domain incidentally) with LtCol Cardi from 8 April 1991 in which he states: quote:Shortly after our arrival, we began deprocessing 60 M1A1 main battle tanks ... We deprocessed those tanks between the period of between 7-10 January, a period of about four days, when normally the deprocessing period takes approximately 20 days for the same number of vehicles. Now, 60 is larger than a full battalion (58) but Cardi may just be rounding up. On the other hand, the occasional paper mentions that there were 5 companies equipped with Abrams, which would mean one of the companies from the 4th would have them, but because it is part of an occasional paper rather than a definitive history, mistakes are relatively common. quote:I'm not sure about the link to the paper you posted, but it would not load, which sucks because I would really like to give it a read. Try right-clicking and downloading it.
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Feb 6, 2014 15:55
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Entirely incorrect. Attached reserve companies usually get re-lettered to the next letter in sequence. Anyways, it seems that units from 4th Tanks used M1A1s and units from 8th Tanks used M60s in the Gulf War.
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Feb 6, 2014 17:41
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Entirely incorrect. I've got not dog in this fight, but just to be an rear end I'll point out that any kind of oral history project needs to be taken with a giant loving grain of salt when you're talking about the specifics of "this had that many of these and we took them to this specific location." Memory is a bitch and even people who shouldn't gently caress up the details (officers, NCOs, etc. who were looking at the original paperwork and maps as part of their daily jobs) do, even after just a couple of years. It can certainly be used for this kind of thing, but it should also be corroborated with either other testimony or a different type of resource whenever possible, especially if you are asserting it over another piece of evidence that you feel is flawed. And, yes, official captions on images are frequently all loving kinds of cocked up. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Feb 6, 2014 |
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Feb 6, 2014 17:55
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Cyrano4747 posted:I've got not dog in this fight, but just to be an rear end I'll point out that any kind of oral history project needs to be taken with a giant loving grain of salt when you're talking about the specifics of "this had that many of these and we took them to this specific location." Memory is a bitch and even people who shouldn't gently caress up the details (officers, NCOs, etc. who were looking at the original paperwork and maps as part of their daily jobs) do, even after just a couple of years. It can certainly be used for this kind of thing, but it should also be corroborated with either other testimony or a different type of resource whenever possible, especially if you are asserting it over another piece of evidence that you feel is flawed. This interview was taken about a month and a half after the war ended, so while some of the details are questionable I somehow doubt a battalion commander would forget the difference between having only a company of tanks and an entire battalion of them.
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Feb 6, 2014 18:17
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Now, 60 is larger than a full battalion (58) but Cardi may just be rounding up. On the other hand, the occasional paper mentions that there were 5 companies equipped with Abrams, which would mean one of the companies from the 4th would have them, but because it is part of an occasional paper rather than a definitive history, mistakes are relatively common. Since 14 tanks is a company where are the extra pair of tanks going? Battalion headquarters I guess?
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Feb 6, 2014 19:02
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:This interview was taken about a month and a half after the war ended, so while some of the details are questionable I somehow doubt a battalion commander would forget the difference between having only a company of tanks and an entire battalion of them. A bit more looking into it provided more information than I had read on this before. You are correct that 2D upgraded to Abrams upon deployment, and I was mistaken on that point. However for you to label the entire post as "entirely incorrect" is mistaken, as the Gulf War was indeed the last hurrah for the M60A1 tank in the US military. I did come across this; http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/histories/db/marines/usmcpersiangulfdoc3_016.html quote:The 4th Tank Battalion provided its Companies B and C to
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Feb 6, 2014 19:46
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Koesj posted:Only Czechoslovakia and Poland did licensed production of tanks within the WP sphere, with the latter also pulling some weight in aerospace. East German industry did a lot of component manufacturing of course: computers, optics, etc. Pretty much everything that was supposed to make them the most advanced economy in the bloc really, and still it all had to be nickle and dimed away after 1990 because it was so horribly uncompetitive. At least Poland has kept up a somewhat functioning arms industry; no-one was asking for more MPi-Ks or Robotron fire control systems. Rumania made the TR-77 and TR-85 (T-55) tanks too. Hungary tried to get in on the action too, but that ended up going... less well: "Between 1949 and 1955 there was also a huge effort to build a big Hungarian army. All procedures, disciplines, and equipment were exact copies of the Soviet Red Army in methods and material, but the huge costs collapsed the economy by 1956. After the autumn 1956 revolution was crushed in Budapest, the Soviets took away most of the Hungarian Army's equipment, including dismantling the entire Hungarian Air Force, because a sizable percentage of the Army fought alongside the Hungarian revolutionaries. Three years later in 1959, the Soviets began helping rebuild the Hungarian Army and resupplying them with new arms and equipment as well as rebuilding the Hungarian Air Force. Satisfied that Hungary was stable and firmly committed once again to the Warsaw Pact, the Soviets offered the Hungarians a choice of withdrawal for all Soviet troops in the country. The new Hungarian leader, János Kádár, asked for all the 200,000 Soviet troops to stay, because it allowed the socialist Hungarian People's Republic to neglect its own draft-based armed forces, quickly leading to deterioration of the military. Large sums of money were saved that way and spent on feel-good socialist measures for the population, thus Hungary could become "the happiest barrack" in the Soviet Bloc." As for the Single Engined Soviet fighter, it was the MiG-31/Chengdu JF-17 I was thinking off. I guess as avionics % cost of the airplane goes up there's less and less reason to toss on another engine, unless you are weighting in upkeep costs (i.e Gripen). And stop dissing the MiG-23, it's a pretty (buff) plane 
Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Feb 6, 2014 |
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Feb 6, 2014 19:49
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TheFluff posted:
Wait, global aviation is still Imperial and not Metric?
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Feb 6, 2014 20:24
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Deptfordx posted:Wait, global aviation is still Imperial and not Metric? Yes, but it's not exactly imperial either, it's a weird mix of nautical measurements and imperial. Distances are measured in nautical miles and speeds are in knots, while altitude is in feet or hundreds of nominal feet. Nautical miles and knots (one knot is a nautical mile per hour) are actually sorta sensible units though. A nautical mile is supposed to be a minute-of-arc measured along any meridian of the globe (in other words, a nautical mile in its original definition is 1/5400th - 90*60 - of the distance between the pole and the equator, measured along the surface of the earth). It's a very handy unit for navigation on open sea and in open air, where you work a lot with latitude/longitude positions, great-circles etc. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Feb 6, 2014 |
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Feb 6, 2014 20:29
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