Putin urges increased protection for the fleet against long-range missiles, after Ukraine eliminates another missile ship in Sevastopol, forcing Moscow to move the fleet to mainland Russia.
Tanks are different, it is more or less normal they blow up from time to time, a destroyer not so much. Like an AWACS for example, should never get picked out of the sky.
Great anyways that russia is losing both in ridiculously high numbers.
UK MoD estimated earlier this year that Russia had about 6 serviceable A-50 airframes; the US alone has 21 E-3s, while France operates 4, and NATO collectively operates another 18 - and that doesn’t factor in other newer and more advanced AWACS platforms.
Russia lost over 10% of their operable AWACS fleet by losing one plane. Russia is HUGE. Their AEW assets were absurdly stretched before, and now they will be even moreso. Any losses they incur will degrade their overall strategic AEW capacity in a very real fashion.
That is the meme, but when I talk to military people they point out Russian incompetence. They do not believe NATO ships are that vulnerable. Ukraine is using a lot of tanks, but because they are using them according to good military doctrine they are not taking nearly as many losses. Note that Ukraine and Russia both got their tank instructions from the old Soviet playbook not a NATO book (though Ukraine as had NATO training as well), there is nothing about using a tank well Russia shouldn’t know, but they are failing to follow their own book on how to use tanks.
On the tank side, some planned updates/replacements for the Abrams were very suddenly canned and went back to the drawing board. The DoD didn’t say why, but a good guess is that they saw how things were going for tanks vs drones in Ukraine, and decided that these new designs would be obsolete before they’re built.
They do not believe NATO ships are that vulnerable
Oh they are, so a shit ton is being done for anti missile, anti submarine, now anti flying drone, should be anti jet ski drone, anti submarine drone, etc.
Also a lot of the late Soviet Union military technology came from Ukraine, plus their military were also trained in the same kind of school of thought as Russia and still know it.
So it makes sense that, when push came to shove, the Ukranians would fast come up with asymetric war solutions against Russia, that Russia wouldn’t be as fast in effectivelly countering them and Ukraine would be quicker at developing new or adjusted solutions once Russia found a counter (or, more generally, that Ukraine would remain ahead of Russian in the cycle were each side develops a counter to the other side’s counters).
Had Russia’s initial blietzkrieg attack worked, it would’ve been a different story, but at this stage it makes sense that Ukraine has the technological edge, not just in the weaponry it gets from the West but also in their own weapons development, especially now that it has much better AA to protect the installations far away from the frontlines working on weapons tech.
Sure pointing to Russian incompetence is easy. I would like to see how NATO ships fare in a training exercise against a pack of 10 Magura V’s. I’ll bet they will find it is much harder than they thought.
These things are so low in the water they dissapears between the waves for radar and other tracking systems, they can move slow to get close and be within the outer defense layers before they are spotted. And now they even come with deployable mines, grad missiles or even anti air missiles.
So would I. Those in the military who are talking give me the impression they have done tests and while the results are classified (thus I don’t know what the truth is) they have counter measures (which again are classified so I don’t know what they might be)
Yeah, this definitely feels like a doctrine and training problem. I can’t even imagine a scenario where the US or NATO lost half of any platform like that. Pearl Harbor, maybe? I remember how huge a deal it was when we found out our body armor and APCs sucked in 2001, and that was nothing like losing every missile ship.
It’s not that simple. If it was the American military wouldn’t be effective because manpads, javelins, and torpedos would have taken out all the aircraft, tanks and ships.
The military is a fighting unit and protects itself very well. At least, it does it it’s working right. When you have a military being destroyed by a vault interior opponent, it’s because they are fucking to their military…or someone is trying to occupy Afghanistan.
Has a modern military ever gone up against an enemy using lots of small cheap drones though? I’m sure they have plans in place, just can’t recall if they’ve ever really been tested, aside from Russia with the results we see.
This shift happened in the 1930’s. Land based naval bombers prevented the Germans from operating surface ships anywhere near the English coast. Japanese carriers routinely ferried bombers to support naval landings. And of course the US built their entire Pacific fleet around carriers.
A landmass isn’t anything more than a giant, unsinkable, carrier in naval strategy.
And US aircraft carriers have an honestly embarrassing amount of firepower, completely disregarding the jets. There’s a reason that they haven’t been sunk by anyone other than the USN since Midway. Apparently we have sunk several carriers since WWII, one with a nuke. It survived the first nuke, but the second sunk her. Though the Independence survived both nukes.
These tactics are new, but the story is the same it has been for centuries. Huge armies devastated by a new tactic, a new weapon, a new defense. Chariots, heavy armor, crossbows, guns, star fortresses, machine guns, aircraft, now drones.
Tanks aren’t about to go out of style, though. The goal is to not let anti-tank weapons in range of your tanks - as it has been since WWII, just moreso as time goes on. Maybe ditto for ships that aren’t Soviet rustbuckets crewed with drunks, although I think even that is in question these days.
Also, funny enough, the average weapon is getting more complicated and expensive as time goes on. At least for the West, a skilled soldier continues to cost more than whatever they operate, so survivability is worth it even if it means less volume.
This is a whole paradigm shift, and it’s not new.
So you have a billion dollar aircraft carrier. How many million dollar missiles can you shoot at it before it sinks? Generally, it’s not a thousand.
Same deal all down the line. A tank is fantastically more expensive than an antitank rocket.
Just the way the world works. You can iterate and improve a small munition way faster than a huge ship.
Tanks are different, it is more or less normal they blow up from time to time, a destroyer not so much. Like an AWACS for example, should never get picked out of the sky.
Great anyways that russia is losing both in ridiculously high numbers.
Even still, there’s a difference between losing one AWACS and losing all of them.
Well, yes and no. Fleet size matters.
UK MoD estimated earlier this year that Russia had about 6 serviceable A-50 airframes; the US alone has 21 E-3s, while France operates 4, and NATO collectively operates another 18 - and that doesn’t factor in other newer and more advanced AWACS platforms.
Russia lost over 10% of their operable AWACS fleet by losing one plane. Russia is HUGE. Their AEW assets were absurdly stretched before, and now they will be even moreso. Any losses they incur will degrade their overall strategic AEW capacity in a very real fashion.
That is the meme, but when I talk to military people they point out Russian incompetence. They do not believe NATO ships are that vulnerable. Ukraine is using a lot of tanks, but because they are using them according to good military doctrine they are not taking nearly as many losses. Note that Ukraine and Russia both got their tank instructions from the old Soviet playbook not a NATO book (though Ukraine as had NATO training as well), there is nothing about using a tank well Russia shouldn’t know, but they are failing to follow their own book on how to use tanks.
On the tank side, some planned updates/replacements for the Abrams were very suddenly canned and went back to the drawing board. The DoD didn’t say why, but a good guess is that they saw how things were going for tanks vs drones in Ukraine, and decided that these new designs would be obsolete before they’re built.
You may bet your bollix that tank designers are earning really good overtime at the moment.
something tells me drone and EW designers are pulling even more OT than the tank guys.
Oh they are, so a shit ton is being done for anti missile, anti submarine, now anti flying drone, should be anti jet ski drone, anti submarine drone, etc.
Also a lot of the late Soviet Union military technology came from Ukraine, plus their military were also trained in the same kind of school of thought as Russia and still know it.
So it makes sense that, when push came to shove, the Ukranians would fast come up with asymetric war solutions against Russia, that Russia wouldn’t be as fast in effectivelly countering them and Ukraine would be quicker at developing new or adjusted solutions once Russia found a counter (or, more generally, that Ukraine would remain ahead of Russian in the cycle were each side develops a counter to the other side’s counters).
Had Russia’s initial blietzkrieg attack worked, it would’ve been a different story, but at this stage it makes sense that Ukraine has the technological edge, not just in the weaponry it gets from the West but also in their own weapons development, especially now that it has much better AA to protect the installations far away from the frontlines working on weapons tech.
Sure pointing to Russian incompetence is easy. I would like to see how NATO ships fare in a training exercise against a pack of 10 Magura V’s. I’ll bet they will find it is much harder than they thought.
These things are so low in the water they dissapears between the waves for radar and other tracking systems, they can move slow to get close and be within the outer defense layers before they are spotted. And now they even come with deployable mines, grad missiles or even anti air missiles.
So would I. Those in the military who are talking give me the impression they have done tests and while the results are classified (thus I don’t know what the truth is) they have counter measures (which again are classified so I don’t know what they might be)
Yeah, this definitely feels like a doctrine and training problem. I can’t even imagine a scenario where the US or NATO lost half of any platform like that. Pearl Harbor, maybe? I remember how huge a deal it was when we found out our body armor and APCs sucked in 2001, and that was nothing like losing every missile ship.
To be fair we knew they sucked. Which is why we were working to get them replaced for the iraq war on an emergency basis.
It’s not that simple. If it was the American military wouldn’t be effective because manpads, javelins, and torpedos would have taken out all the aircraft, tanks and ships.
The military is a fighting unit and protects itself very well. At least, it does it it’s working right. When you have a military being destroyed by a vault interior opponent, it’s because they are fucking to their military…or someone is trying to occupy Afghanistan.
Has a modern military ever gone up against an enemy using lots of small cheap drones though? I’m sure they have plans in place, just can’t recall if they’ve ever really been tested, aside from Russia with the results we see.
USA did it in 1991, day one of Desert Storm
Ah, the classic blunder!
This shift happened in the 1930’s. Land based naval bombers prevented the Germans from operating surface ships anywhere near the English coast. Japanese carriers routinely ferried bombers to support naval landings. And of course the US built their entire Pacific fleet around carriers.
A landmass isn’t anything more than a giant, unsinkable, carrier in naval strategy.
For Russia’s aircraft carrier? Zero. That thing was always catching fire and had to be towed everywhere.
And US aircraft carriers have an honestly embarrassing amount of firepower, completely disregarding the jets. There’s a reason that they haven’t been sunk by anyone other than the USN since Midway. Apparently we have sunk several carriers since WWII, one with a nuke. It survived the first nuke, but the second sunk her. Though the Independence survived both nukes.
Got me confused. Are you saying these tactics are new or not? I vote for new, mostly, kinda, but both at once. Sorta.
These tactics are new, but the story is the same it has been for centuries. Huge armies devastated by a new tactic, a new weapon, a new defense. Chariots, heavy armor, crossbows, guns, star fortresses, machine guns, aircraft, now drones.
Tanks aren’t about to go out of style, though. The goal is to not let anti-tank weapons in range of your tanks - as it has been since WWII, just moreso as time goes on. Maybe ditto for ships that aren’t Soviet rustbuckets crewed with drunks, although I think even that is in question these days.
Also, funny enough, the average weapon is getting more complicated and expensive as time goes on. At least for the West, a skilled soldier continues to cost more than whatever they operate, so survivability is worth it even if it means less volume.