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Ukraine - Superthread

Given the current state of this warfare, how often will the Ukrainians in their new Leo's have the opportunity to see a Russian tank in the 4-5km range and be able to take the shot?

I'm no Zipper Head but that looks like exactly the kind of tank country the Leopards were designed for, so it's definitely a possibility IMHO.
 
I'm no Zipper Head but that looks like exactly the kind of tank country the Leopards were designed for, so it's definitely a possibility IMHO.
I would think so as well. Was just wondering if the Russians will be keeping their tanks within villages and such in order to mitigate the fact that they will be inferior tank force once the Leo's et al arrive. Right now its basically peer to peer in terms of equipment/tanks being used. Keeping their tanks hidden away within villages/towns will drastically lower the advantages the Leo's have in terms of reaching out and touching them 4-5km away.
 
I would think so as well. Was just wondering if the Russians will be keeping their tanks within villages and such in order to mitigate the fact that they will be inferior tank force once the Leo's et al arrive. Right now its basically peer to peer in terms of equipment/tanks being used. Keeping their tanks hidden away within villages/towns will drastically lower the advantages the Leo's have in terms of reaching out and touching them 4-5km away.
Watching the videos there is not much of those villages and towns left.

Has anyone like me drove though there own town and though "OMG" if this had been where they live? Imagining the houses, factories, commercial building with holes and/or flattened? Those videos are not some CGI movie its real in the 21st century. I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Ok guess I'm a weak gen x. What's on Netflix?

1917 is on. what the hell!
 
I'm no Zipper Head but that looks like exactly the kind of tank country the Leopards were designed for, so it's definitely a possibility IMHO.
There was an urban legend that the reason the Germans never used Shilo during the Winter. Was to basically reassure the Russians that they weren't getting any ideas about ...you know.
 
I would think so as well. Was just wondering if the Russians will be keeping their tanks within villages and such in order to mitigate the fact that they will be inferior tank force once the Leo's et al arrive. Right now its basically peer to peer in terms of equipment/tanks being used. Keeping their tanks hidden away within villages/towns will drastically lower the advantages the Leo's have in terms of reaching out and touching them 4-5km away.
pardon my ignorance but what good is a tank if it is parked in a shelter out of sight? Unless the surfaces are paved, the trails they leave are readily discernable with a drone so the Leo still advances securely whilst the drone drops one down the hatch.
 
Has anyone like me drove though there own town and though "OMG" if this had been where they live?

No. But, I walk through Bloor West Village* almost every other day or so.

Talking to people there, or just seeing the sadness in their eyes, is heart-breaking.

*
 
I think the biggest leap forward that the newer armour (Bradley/Leo/etc) will provide is the increase in Night Vision capability and night targeting/engagement.

What I foresee is the UKR forces bringing up a small number of them along a long stretch of the front and turning night into day with those crews...the RUS will no longer be 'safe' to hide in the night. They'll be subjected to direct fire from well beyond the range that their own night vision systems are capable of providing, which will increasingly demoralize and destroy them.

A couple of weeks of that in various 'penny packets' along the front will give the UKR folks in those vehicles live fire engagement practice, let them learn their capabilities in the real world (not just a training environment) and then draw the penny packets together in once spot for a decisive attack.

I suspect it would be mostly a 'spoiling' attack - useful, but not decisive. Designed to distract the RUS and force them to divert reserve troops (particularly armour) in that direction to hold the line.

Once those reserves are moving, I would think that the real UKR push will punch south - probably towards Melitopol.

Just my thoughts...
 
The assumption is that Canada isn’t the only one supply 120mm tank ammo.
Granted Canada may be in a better position than most other Leo users to supply it.

I think you’re extremely over estimating the cannon rounds fired in combat.
The most rounds that I’m aware of an Abrams firing in Iraq was a little over 125.

Since I assume most of those rounds will be APFSDS-T they are really only suited for Anti AFV work, and the load out of other rounds are generally low in NATO MBT’s.


The 120mm APFSDS-T can penetrate most Russian Tanks over 5km away, so they don’t need to be firing excessive ammunition given the FCS is also miles ahead of the Russian tanks.
The assumption there being that they will only be used tank vs armor. They already use tanks as indirect fire assets and as direct fire against hardened positions. I think they will use their tanks in unexpected ways.

But correct re other nations supplying ammo. Unless of course there is some coordination of assets going on and Canada was tasked with supplying ammo since not many tanks and other nations with more tanks in service supply tanks and retain ammo for their remaining fleet
 
I would think so as well. Was just wondering if the Russians will be keeping their tanks within villages and such in order to mitigate the fact that they will be inferior tank force once the Leo's et al arrive. Right now its basically peer to peer in terms of equipment/tanks being used. Keeping their tanks hidden away within villages/towns will drastically lower the advantages the Leo's have in terms of reaching out and touching them 4-5km away.
Let them hide in the villages/towns. Use your superior optics and range in the open areas between to surround and cut off the villages. With the Russian supply system being what it is how long until they run out of food and drinking water and surrender?
 
Let's ponder for a moment the 'indirect fire' that we've seen UKR use on numerous occasions with their tanks. Maybe that's part of why they've asked for so much 120mm ammo?

I'm not sure that's something which Western tanks have been setup for since the days of the Sherman? (105mm sherman in particular?)

Is that something they're going to do with the western tanks they get? I suspect not.

Once the UKR forces figure out how good the guns and optics (particularly NV optics) there is going to be a reckoning in the Russian lines that will leave a lot of '200's' behind.

NS
 
I would think so as well. Was just wondering if the Russians will be keeping their tanks within villages and such in order to mitigate the fact that they will be inferior tank force once the Leo's et al arrive. Right now its basically peer to peer in terms of equipment/tanks being used. Keeping their tanks hidden away within villages/towns will drastically lower the advantages the Leo's have in terms of reaching out and touching them 4-5km away.

Both the Russians and Ukrainians appear to be using their tanks as Self Propelled Guns with shots being called by UAV equipped forward observers.

Im going to guess it is also easier to train rookies to operate a tank in that mode than it is to train them to operate as part of a fsst moving armoured battle group.
 
Can't say I'm sad to read this....


Russia’s population nightmare is going to get even worse​

War in Ukraine has aggravated a crisis that long predates the conflict​



A DEMOGRAPHIC TRAGEDY is unfolding in Russia. Over the past three years the country has lost around 2m more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus. The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler’s occupation. And because so many men of fighting age are dead or in exile, women now outnumber men by at least 10m.

War is not the sole—or even the main—cause of these troubles, but it has made them all worse. According to Western estimates, 175,000-250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the past year (Russia’s figures are lower). Somewhere between 500,000 and 1m mostly young, educated people have evaded the meat-grinder by fleeing abroad. Even if Russia had no other demographic problems, losing so many in such a short time would be painful. As it is, the losses of war are placing more burdens on a shrinking, ailing population. Russia may be entering a doom loop of demographic decline.

The roots of Russia’s crisis go back 30 years. The country reached peak population in 1994, with 149m people. The total has since zig-zagged downwards. It was 145m in 2021 (that figure, from the UN, excludes the 2.4m people of Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014 and incorporated into its national accounts). According to UN projections, the total could be just 120m in 50 years, if current patterns persist. That would make Russia the 15th-most-populous country in the world, down from sixth in 1995. According to Alexei Raksha, an independent demographer who used to work for the state statistics service, if you look just at peacetime years, the number of births registered in April 2022 was the lowest since the 18th century. April was a particularly cruel month, but it was a revealing glimpse of a chronic problem.

Population decline is not unique to Russia: most post-communist states have seen dips, though not like this. Their declines have been slow but also manageable. Russia’s population in recent decades has seen a precipitous slump, then a partial recovery (thanks to a period of high immigration from parts of the ex-Soviet Union and more generous child allowances after 2007), followed by a renewed fall.

According to the state statistics agency, in 2020 and 2021 combined the country’s population declined by 1.3m; deaths outstripped births by 1.7m. (The UN also shows a fall, but it is shallower.) The decline was largest among ethnic Russians, whose number, the census of 2021 said, fell by 5.4m in 2010-21. Their share of the population fell from 78% to 72%. So much for Mr Putin’s boast to be expanding the Russki mir (Russian world).
All this began before the war and reflects Russia’s appalling covid pandemic. The official death toll from the disease was 388,091, which would be relatively low; but The Economist estimates total excess deaths in 2020-23 at between 1.2m and 1.6m. That would be comparable to the number in China and the United States, which have much larger populations. Russia may have had the largest covid death toll in the world after India, and the highest mortality rate of all, with 850-1,100 deaths per 100,000 people.

If you add pandemic mortality to the casualties of war and the flight from mobilisation, Russia lost between 1.9m and 2.8m people in 2020-23 on top of its normal demographic deterioration. That would be even worse than during the disastrous early 2000s, when the population was falling by roughly half a million a year.

What might that mean for Russia’s future? Demography is not always destiny; and Russia did for a while begin to reverse its decline in the mid-2010s. The impact of population change is often complex, as Russia’s military mobilisation shows. The decline in the number of ethnic Russians of call-up age (which is being raised from 18-27 to 21-30) will make it harder for the armed forces to carry out the regular spring draft, which begins in April.

Such complications notwithstanding, the overall effect of demographic decline will be to change Russia profoundly—and for the worse. Most countries which have suffered population falls have managed to avoid big social upheavals. Russia may be different. Its population is falling unusually fast and may drop to 130m by mid-century. The decline is associated with increased misery: the life expectancy at birth of Russian males plummeted from 68.8 in 2019 to 64.2 in 2021, partly because of covid, partly from alcohol-related disease. Russian men now die six years earlier than men in Bangladesh and 18 years earlier than men in Japan.

And Russia may not achieve what enables other countries to grow richer as they age: high and rising levels of education. Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, argues that the country presents a peculiar combination of third-world mortality and first-world education. It has some of the highest rates of educational attainment among over-25s in the world. But the exodus of well-educated young people is eroding this advantage. According to the communications ministry, 10% of IT workers left the country in 2022. Many were young men. Their flight is further skewing Russia’s unbalanced sex ratio, which in 2021 meant there were 121 females older than 18 for every 100 males.
The demographic doom loop has not, it appears, diminished Mr Putin’s craving for conquest. But it is rapidly making Russia a smaller, worse-educated and poorer country, from which young people flee and where men die in their 60s. The invasion has been a human catastrophe—and not only for Ukrainians.

 
Let's ponder for a moment the 'indirect fire' that we've seen UKR use on numerous occasions with their tanks. Maybe that's part of why they've asked for so much 120mm ammo?

I'm not sure that's something which Western tanks have been setup for since the days of the Sherman? (105mm sherman in particular?)

Is that something they're going to do with the western tanks they get? I suspect not.

Once the UKR forces figure out how good the guns and optics (particularly NV optics) there is going to be a reckoning in the Russian lines that will leave a lot of '200's' behind.

NS

But they still have to learn how to get full advantage out of the new kit. And that is better done in Poland.
 
Can't say I'm sad to read this....


Russia’s population nightmare is going to get even worse​

War in Ukraine has aggravated a crisis that long predates the conflict​



A DEMOGRAPHIC TRAGEDY is unfolding in Russia. Over the past three years the country has lost around 2m more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus. The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler’s occupation. And because so many men of fighting age are dead or in exile, women now outnumber men by at least 10m.

War is not the sole—or even the main—cause of these troubles, but it has made them all worse. According to Western estimates, 175,000-250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the past year (Russia’s figures are lower). Somewhere between 500,000 and 1m mostly young, educated people have evaded the meat-grinder by fleeing abroad. Even if Russia had no other demographic problems, losing so many in such a short time would be painful. As it is, the losses of war are placing more burdens on a shrinking, ailing population. Russia may be entering a doom loop of demographic decline.

The roots of Russia’s crisis go back 30 years. The country reached peak population in 1994, with 149m people. The total has since zig-zagged downwards. It was 145m in 2021 (that figure, from the UN, excludes the 2.4m people of Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014 and incorporated into its national accounts). According to UN projections, the total could be just 120m in 50 years, if current patterns persist. That would make Russia the 15th-most-populous country in the world, down from sixth in 1995. According to Alexei Raksha, an independent demographer who used to work for the state statistics service, if you look just at peacetime years, the number of births registered in April 2022 was the lowest since the 18th century. April was a particularly cruel month, but it was a revealing glimpse of a chronic problem.

Population decline is not unique to Russia: most post-communist states have seen dips, though not like this. Their declines have been slow but also manageable. Russia’s population in recent decades has seen a precipitous slump, then a partial recovery (thanks to a period of high immigration from parts of the ex-Soviet Union and more generous child allowances after 2007), followed by a renewed fall.

According to the state statistics agency, in 2020 and 2021 combined the country’s population declined by 1.3m; deaths outstripped births by 1.7m. (The UN also shows a fall, but it is shallower.) The decline was largest among ethnic Russians, whose number, the census of 2021 said, fell by 5.4m in 2010-21. Their share of the population fell from 78% to 72%. So much for Mr Putin’s boast to be expanding the Russki mir (Russian world).
All this began before the war and reflects Russia’s appalling covid pandemic. The official death toll from the disease was 388,091, which would be relatively low; but The Economist estimates total excess deaths in 2020-23 at between 1.2m and 1.6m. That would be comparable to the number in China and the United States, which have much larger populations. Russia may have had the largest covid death toll in the world after India, and the highest mortality rate of all, with 850-1,100 deaths per 100,000 people.

If you add pandemic mortality to the casualties of war and the flight from mobilisation, Russia lost between 1.9m and 2.8m people in 2020-23 on top of its normal demographic deterioration. That would be even worse than during the disastrous early 2000s, when the population was falling by roughly half a million a year.

What might that mean for Russia’s future? Demography is not always destiny; and Russia did for a while begin to reverse its decline in the mid-2010s. The impact of population change is often complex, as Russia’s military mobilisation shows. The decline in the number of ethnic Russians of call-up age (which is being raised from 18-27 to 21-30) will make it harder for the armed forces to carry out the regular spring draft, which begins in April.

Such complications notwithstanding, the overall effect of demographic decline will be to change Russia profoundly—and for the worse. Most countries which have suffered population falls have managed to avoid big social upheavals. Russia may be different. Its population is falling unusually fast and may drop to 130m by mid-century. The decline is associated with increased misery: the life expectancy at birth of Russian males plummeted from 68.8 in 2019 to 64.2 in 2021, partly because of covid, partly from alcohol-related disease. Russian men now die six years earlier than men in Bangladesh and 18 years earlier than men in Japan.

And Russia may not achieve what enables other countries to grow richer as they age: high and rising levels of education. Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, argues that the country presents a peculiar combination of third-world mortality and first-world education. It has some of the highest rates of educational attainment among over-25s in the world. But the exodus of well-educated young people is eroding this advantage. According to the communications ministry, 10% of IT workers left the country in 2022. Many were young men. Their flight is further skewing Russia’s unbalanced sex ratio, which in 2021 meant there were 121 females older than 18 for every 100 males.
The demographic doom loop has not, it appears, diminished Mr Putin’s craving for conquest. But it is rapidly making Russia a smaller, worse-educated and poorer country, from which young people flee and where men die in their 60s. The invasion has been a human catastrophe—and not only for Ukrainians.

Coming to almost every developed country plus many others in the world. China has a terrible population pyramid. Japan is bad too. Same with South Korea. Canada is bad but we are running different test by bring in millions.
 
Coming to almost every developed country plus many others in the world. China has a terrible population pyramid. Japan is bad too. Same with South Korea. Canada is bad but we are running different test by bring in millions.
Yup. We're post national and have no culture to preserve...
 
Can't say I'm sad to read this....


Russia’s population nightmare is going to get even worse​

War in Ukraine has aggravated a crisis that long predates the conflict​



A DEMOGRAPHIC TRAGEDY is unfolding in Russia. Over the past three years the country has lost around 2m more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus. The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler’s occupation. And because so many men of fighting age are dead or in exile, women now outnumber men by at least 10m.

War is not the sole—or even the main—cause of these troubles, but it has made them all worse. According to Western estimates, 175,000-250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the past year (Russia’s figures are lower). Somewhere between 500,000 and 1m mostly young, educated people have evaded the meat-grinder by fleeing abroad. Even if Russia had no other demographic problems, losing so many in such a short time would be painful. As it is, the losses of war are placing more burdens on a shrinking, ailing population. Russia may be entering a doom loop of demographic decline.

The roots of Russia’s crisis go back 30 years. The country reached peak population in 1994, with 149m people. The total has since zig-zagged downwards. It was 145m in 2021 (that figure, from the UN, excludes the 2.4m people of Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014 and incorporated into its national accounts). According to UN projections, the total could be just 120m in 50 years, if current patterns persist. That would make Russia the 15th-most-populous country in the world, down from sixth in 1995. According to Alexei Raksha, an independent demographer who used to work for the state statistics service, if you look just at peacetime years, the number of births registered in April 2022 was the lowest since the 18th century. April was a particularly cruel month, but it was a revealing glimpse of a chronic problem.

Population decline is not unique to Russia: most post-communist states have seen dips, though not like this. Their declines have been slow but also manageable. Russia’s population in recent decades has seen a precipitous slump, then a partial recovery (thanks to a period of high immigration from parts of the ex-Soviet Union and more generous child allowances after 2007), followed by a renewed fall.

According to the state statistics agency, in 2020 and 2021 combined the country’s population declined by 1.3m; deaths outstripped births by 1.7m. (The UN also shows a fall, but it is shallower.) The decline was largest among ethnic Russians, whose number, the census of 2021 said, fell by 5.4m in 2010-21. Their share of the population fell from 78% to 72%. So much for Mr Putin’s boast to be expanding the Russki mir (Russian world).
All this began before the war and reflects Russia’s appalling covid pandemic. The official death toll from the disease was 388,091, which would be relatively low; but The Economist estimates total excess deaths in 2020-23 at between 1.2m and 1.6m. That would be comparable to the number in China and the United States, which have much larger populations. Russia may have had the largest covid death toll in the world after India, and the highest mortality rate of all, with 850-1,100 deaths per 100,000 people.

If you add pandemic mortality to the casualties of war and the flight from mobilisation, Russia lost between 1.9m and 2.8m people in 2020-23 on top of its normal demographic deterioration. That would be even worse than during the disastrous early 2000s, when the population was falling by roughly half a million a year.

What might that mean for Russia’s future? Demography is not always destiny; and Russia did for a while begin to reverse its decline in the mid-2010s. The impact of population change is often complex, as Russia’s military mobilisation shows. The decline in the number of ethnic Russians of call-up age (which is being raised from 18-27 to 21-30) will make it harder for the armed forces to carry out the regular spring draft, which begins in April.

Such complications notwithstanding, the overall effect of demographic decline will be to change Russia profoundly—and for the worse. Most countries which have suffered population falls have managed to avoid big social upheavals. Russia may be different. Its population is falling unusually fast and may drop to 130m by mid-century. The decline is associated with increased misery: the life expectancy at birth of Russian males plummeted from 68.8 in 2019 to 64.2 in 2021, partly because of covid, partly from alcohol-related disease. Russian men now die six years earlier than men in Bangladesh and 18 years earlier than men in Japan.

And Russia may not achieve what enables other countries to grow richer as they age: high and rising levels of education. Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, argues that the country presents a peculiar combination of third-world mortality and first-world education. It has some of the highest rates of educational attainment among over-25s in the world. But the exodus of well-educated young people is eroding this advantage. According to the communications ministry, 10% of IT workers left the country in 2022. Many were young men. Their flight is further skewing Russia’s unbalanced sex ratio, which in 2021 meant there were 121 females older than 18 for every 100 males.
The demographic doom loop has not, it appears, diminished Mr Putin’s craving for conquest. But it is rapidly making Russia a smaller, worse-educated and poorer country, from which young people flee and where men die in their 60s. The invasion has been a human catastrophe—and not only for Ukrainians.

I can't remember where I read/heard it but a quote that stuck with me is "Russia's biggest export is women".
 
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