It's pretty clear for the moment, the fastest way for Ukraine to get SERIOUS numbers of tanks is to build Ukrainian tanks inside the West itself.
Bypass all this political bullshit bottle-necking Western tank supply to Ukraine.
It's pretty clear for the moment, the fastest way for Ukraine to get SERIOUS numbers of tanks is to build Ukrainian tanks inside the West itself.
Bypass all this political bullshit bottle-necking Western tank supply to Ukraine.
Divine intervention
the biggest problem would probably be to produce powerpack, in other words it's not going to happen
Well what was the fricking point of the Abrams if we can barely export it to anyone, lol? It's apparently "too complicated".
Post-script: At the minimum, we need to make a simpler design that the Ukrainians can actually handle. But it would be simpler to base it on designs that the Ukrainians understand.
The point of the Abrams is that the engine is a plug and play part that can be easily replaced wholesale in the field in just a few hours. Work on the engines is actually to take place far from the front or even stateside, the complicated nature of the engine is irrelevant to the frontline personnel if they have a steady supply of rebuilt engines. This works if you’re a massive empire with near unlimited resources, it does not work if you have a small army and budget or a camo patterned jobs programs filled with pregnant women and transsexuals. It’s an elegant weapon system that absolutely made sense in its own time but was designed to be used as part of an army that no longer exists. Such a shame.
Iraqis took Mosul with it and they are arabs. I think ukies could make it work.
Perhaps, the problem is spare parts however. The Honeywell AGT1500 is pretty expensive and may not necessarily be a 1:1 transition even for crews familiar with the T80 powerplant. Iraqis are a bit of a complicated thing to explain, their best units would easily match the upper tier Ukrainian units, however their lower units are pretty pathetic in terms of capability.
It’s not exactly that they are genuinely stupid, they have been handcuffed by other factors for a long time. (Not that there aren’t some genuine üntermensch mixed in there too, but that applies to Europeans and “Europeans” too)
https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars
>It’s not exactly that they are genuinely stupid,
They are.
A millennium of religiously supported incest would ruin any race.
Have you ever interacted with any of them? My university had many of them, international students that were basically invited from those countries for our highly specialized engineering programs. They were as the article I linked described.
>Have you ever interacted with any of them?
Yes.
>engineering students invited for highly specialised programs
Anon, you're judging them by their upper 0.01%.
And I'm sure even they seemed a bit moronic to you in some cases if you have any ability to judge people.
Maybe, despite my racism, I still try to give individuals the benefit of the doubt.
I had the essay in mind. What I meant was that on the larger scale the Iraqis were able to make it work despite being an arab military. The choices here are no tanks or make the Abrams work and people are making it seem that the Abrams is impossible to maintain unless your America which historically isn't the case. (This could all be solved by trading Abrams for ex PACT stock but...)
I think the simplest answer is probably the most logical, sending Abrams into Ukraine is likely to shatter its reputation regardless of whether it performs well. This would undeniably be bad optics for anyone participating in the deal regardless of whether it actually achieves the intended goal. I would compare this to the early war period with the NLAW or the Javelin, where they would have had the exact same effect on almost every current service AFV globally but it was still presented as some sort of humiliation of the Russians. The facts literally don’t matter in this war and the whole thing is about optics because that’s what the entire modern political world is about.
The economy is entirely about optics, numbers reflect perception rather than the other way around.
Policy is determined based on optics rather than solutions.
It’s a systemic issue that is a direct result of the availability of information and the short attention span of modern man. You will be deposed by your subordinates if your optics get bad. The only exceptions are regime figureheads that are themselves symbolic of the system, and even then the winds of change may be bringing that to an end soon too.
moron we have depots all over Europe that can maintain Abrams lmao, are you 12 or something?
I feel like you missed the point of my post because yours doesn’t actually detract from what I said or stand in contradiction to it. What’s your point exactly?
Then we'd better build the fricking depots for the Ukrainians.
Excuses, excuses, excuses for not sending the tank to it.
>It’s an elegant weapon system
It really isn't.
But any issue it has could be fixed for the Ukrainians with American support.
>Germans always overcomplicate things
>like their leopard, which is easily maintained, usable by conscripts and far spread
>not like the simple Abrams in America, which is rugged, simple, reliable and easily usable by any nation.
>that's why we can't send it to Ukraine
Call me weird, but something's off.
Making them not that good, meaning there will be losses, which contractors fear.
They should send the Type 10, which requires no less than 8 PhDs to maintain it's Gundanium armor and super computer systems. The only true 4th gen tank.
We'd never get Japan to send tanks to Ukraine, lol.
I know. Israel either. But the Type 10 and Eitan are cool as frick and both should go.
If I was a billionaire I'd fund it all, just for the joy of watching. Add in some Merkavas too and even some Chinese assets to see how they perform. The Type 99 with all upgrades is formidable on paper, especially compared to what they are down to using.
Yes, I am aware that is a Type 96. And the most formidable thing about the 99 is that they built so fricking many so quickly and have them in good order since they aren't that old (in theory). But it has some cool shit, like the laser guided ATGM that is fired out of the 125mm gun.
I unironically want to see Chinese-made tanks save Ukraine, for the sheer irony factor, lol.
>They should send the Type 10, which requires no less than 8 PhDs to maintain it's Gundanium armor and super computer systems. The only true 4th gen tank.
Except its armor is hideous even on the Japanese standards. 5 wheels is just not enough. I think up armored Type 90 should've been adequate enough to match Leclerc or K2.
The point? to replace the M60 series of tanks with a composite armor MBT.
Ended up being expensive,heavy and really good at blowing up tanks at long range(like all German gunned tanks)
And we didn't bother to make a simpler, cheaper, non-gas hungry design for export that most countries COULD use?
The new engines are on par with diesel engine in that regard and it's been an overblown issue for a while now.
So can we give the Abrams to Ukraine or not?
We act like we can't. That puts us right back to building tanks to Ukraine once again, as ridiculous as that would be.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/top-us-officials-dont-want-give-ukraine-tanks-rcna66753
>So can we give the Abrams to Ukraine or not?
>can
Yes, the US has the greatest active and stored force of tanks
>will
No, bleeding out European partners is nearly as useful in this case as bleeding out Russian stocks is.
Oh frick it. Let's bribe some governments into handing over Chinese export tanks.
Then send Ukraine tanks exported from China. Or fricking South Korea.
I'm sick of this shit.
>NATO countries donate their Leo2s to Ukraine.
>US backfills those countries with Abrams.
Ukraine gets tanks and NATO gets purged of useless traitorous shitbag Germany's bullshit. Win-win.
Sounds good to me. Let's do it already.
Stop waiting on fricking Germany to be anything but fricking useless and cowardly.
Putin's wienerholster seems to be more of a German projection at any rate.
We did Anon. We exported M60s with upgraded optics and thermals with better armor. We offered up upgrade kits for them too (total rebuild as well)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60-2000
It turns out an Abrams instead of a M60 on steroids with an Abrams turret sells better.
Also gas turbines aren't that fuel hungry when on road march, they're fuel hungry when idling or used in overwatch to power the tank so the batteries don't deplete, which ended up being resolved by installing an APU.
That's the easiest part actually, they are exported so their mass-production is readily available
We apparently have two Ukrainian tanks in America, and we talk to Ukrainians all the time. It's not impossible to get something running.
The factory in kharkiv has been heavily damaged + a lot of the steel in used in armoured vehicles came from Mariupol
I didnt read the full post
>build Ukrainian tanks in the west
Literally never going to happen.
THEN send the Abrams to Ukraine and stop stalling, so we are not reduced to ridiculous "loopholes" involving non-Western tank designs.
Sending Abrams to ukraine would mean less Leopards are sent and less Abrams would remain to fill up European stocks once Leopards are used up in Ukraine.
Why would Biden throw away a golden opportunity to flood Europe with American tanks after the war if everybody is focusing on Scholz?
>inb4 muh ukranian children are dying
Sloppy Joe doesn't care.
>Can't send Abrams
>Can't send Leopard
>Can't build simpler tank
What. The. Frick.
Ugh. Maybe we could slap together some Technicals in a fricking garage?!
>>Can't send Abrams
>>Can't send Leopard
We can and probably will. The point is to bleed Russia out slowly. To boil the frog you must slowly turn up the heat to prevent it from jumping out. Leos or Abrams will be sent in ~6 months.
It's been a year. We've bled Russia enough.
has the us gov tried contacting the Thai to buy their T-84? thailand got a contract before 2014 from the original 200 tanks
We'll need to offer Abrams to get the T-84 Oplot-Ts from them.
Honestly is the goddamn VT-4 worth anything?
My exasperation with Germany and the US has reached the point I'm actually considering CHINESE tanks.
>My exasperation with Germany and the US has reached the point I'm actually considering CHINESE tanks.
Germany sending just 30 tanks would cripple 1-2 generations of tank recruits because they couldn't get enough training in according to pic related.
I'm sure that's not foremost on Scholz mind, but it's one of the many problems America doesn't have.
Honestly I want America to send Abrams to put Germany on the damn spot.
Corner these cowards.
On which spot? Pic related remains the case. Going by GDP in relation to donations puts Germany ahead of the US. Try not to fall for propaganda too much.
Sending Leos or not is probably more dependent on getting a European coalition of Leo users willing to do it together. America could announce Abrams deliveries right now, but currently only Poland, Finland and Germany would send anything and Poland has also added the condition of a broad range of donor countries doing it too.
The Netherlands have suggested willingness to send money and buy Leo's for Ukraine, but they can't really send much because they got rid of their own as far as I know.
So we're currently at 2 yes, 1 eventually and 1 country willing to financially support the endeavour. The Greeks probably want to keep their own because of the turks nearby, which leaves the scandis. Spain tried to send some and quickly realized it has none, hopefully they've worked on changing that since then.
Portugal has like 37 tanks so they can't really spare any.
Maybe some can be bought back from third worlders. Didn't Indonesia get some?
Various third world countries have tanks that Ukraine could use.
Time to go shopping.
Concur. Embarrass Germany.
Germany has already been embarrassed by having their pipeline blown up. That may be a contributing factor for their being uncooperative.
Most people don’t under that the economy is net zero. There is a finite number of workers doing work at any given time, and any effort being wasted on bullshit reduces the amount of real work being done. Every trans story hour, every pre-shift safety meeting, every bs inclusivity training session is reducing the number of resources available for anything worth doing. The reason nobody is doing anything is because they are scrambling to find the right people with the right skill sets to actually do it, and they also need to be able to find workable stand-ins to play the backup for their critical duties while they’re occupied with whatever new stuff they need to do. This is an issue in my part of the world right now where there’s tons of work that needs to be done but too few competent enough to actually do it right, so it constantly falls apart and needs to be redone until the right person can come and fix it more permanently, this often results in far greater expense than if the right guy showed up the first time too, but he is usually too busy so we pay know-nothings to plug the holes until he gets around to it. For reference my client is the one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world and provides communications services to NORAD.
What if we flip the situation on its head, just for speculation’s sake. What if the Russians aren’t the only ones that have been lying about their tank reserves. I repeatedly read articles about whistle blowers claiming that the US has an even lower readiness level than is being publicized, but it is being covered up as a matter of national security. Once you’ve experienced army life it changes your perspective on the whole beast a little bit, the “not my frickin problem” mindset is completely pervasive at every level. Financially and logistically speaking, with all the political programs, social programs, and retention issues facing the US, why would we expect their equipment to have fared better than their personnel? It simply doesn’t follow. The few units still attempting to maintain readiness and still performing deployments are going to burn through stockpiles at the same or higher levels than before and the logistical backend will struggle to replace it. Do that for a decade and you get an undocumented shortage of everything that manifests itself as a spurt of new seemingly nonsensical “next gen” procurements that could easily obfuscate how bad things really are.
It’s just some food for thought.
It is possible we're hiding how bad our tanks have been maintained.
BUT we should just pressure other countries to send tanks to Ukraine besides worthless GERMANY.
South Korea, for example.
I'll laugh my head off when South Korea plunges headfirst into the fray, sells Ukraine a ton of tanks, and makes us all look like weak fools.
They couldn't even get their HIMARS copy to work or a real autoloader for their SPG. I doubt they want the world to see how their tank performs in a real war.
What about the Al-Khalid?
Its engines were designed in UKRAINE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khalid_tank
The Malyshev Tractor plant is probably trashed at this point.
SERIOUS answer then:
The obstacle is with Moskals bombarding Ukraine with cruise missiles, ESPECIALLY considering that the factory which makes those tanks is in Kharkiv and that's damn close to the russian border. The plant in Lviv is not tooled up for production, it handles only upgrade and servicing of existing tanks.
Give Ukraine a proper air defense systems so that they get 95%+ interception rate AND make sure their energy grid is all repaired, fully operational AND make sure they have enough materials [remember that shit has to be hauled via rail to Ukraine, rather than using sea transport right now] then they can restart tank production.
Factories got hit so no go for KMDB designs presently. You'd need to relocate the factories to the West of Ukraine or practically put them in Poland. Furthermore those early strikes killed some of the skilled technicians at Malyshev which likely hurt far more due to the relative difficulty of replacing humans versus machinery that can be imported.
What about "Technical"-ing tanks together? Do some modifications to basic Ukrainian tanks to make them more lethal on the battlefield.
aren't there 1000's of M60's/Leon's in storage? Just dump them in ukrain with some ammo and let them figure it out
Could probably even upgrade them to some degree.
Let's do it already! Send something!
yeah, but that's more money