Originally Posted By Dominion21:

….
And the gun?  Haven’t the munitions been significantly upgraded?? Are we positive the 1 ‘s rounds just bounce off any part of a T-72?? ( doubt that’s true).

Originally Posted By stone-age:


People don't want Ukrainian kids stepping on the unexplored bomblets 5 years from now. It sounds like the things become land mines if they don't blow up when they hit. At least that's what I've heard.

Originally Posted By SoCalExile:

\uD83C\uDDFA\uD83C\uDDF8\uD83C\uDDFA\uD83C\uDDE6 60 Bradleys en route to #Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/m8bY4q2nAJ

Pierre Davide Borrelli  (@PierreDBorrelli) February 7, 2023

Originally Posted By Dominion21:



For context (older video; still a devastating round we should be sending to Ukraine)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IroOVamQZHQ

Originally Posted By Jack67:


I started looking into that the other day.  Not an expert but read the following:

TL,DR: 105mm development stopped, in most places,  in the early 90s; but by then could get performance on par with early 120mm ammo.  Wide variety out there.

There were plenty of different sabot rounds developed for it.  Technology relatively current to present 120mm ammo, just lacking in power factor and evolutionary tweaks made since those days. Should be more than adequate.  The Israelis continued developing rounds into the early/mid ‘00s. A pretty comprehensive list of rounds developed of all types is here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/105%C3%97617mmR#Ammunition

A while back I read a fair bit about tank-on-tank in DS and 2003, particular eye to ammo performance.  One thing that stuck out to me was the number of through-and-through hits with 120mm DU.  Here’s a link to the current GD 105mm tungsten round:

https://www.gd-ots.com/munitions/large-caliber-ammunition/105mm-c76a1/

It’s using a penetrator 80% the weight of the 120mm penetrator. Let’s assume the same V.  It’s likely going to be more than adequate, and have similar performance vs ERA (e.g., it will be defeated at a similar rate, where defeated).  This is the updated version of the “FP105” round listed in the first link, btw.  In general, it’s not going to be the gun/ammo in a 1A5 that is a limit, it will be the FCS and turret stabilization, etc.

Originally Posted By gentlemanfarmer:


A got the story on the FL polish shitbird guy. There is truth and some of the common western volunteer issues there. Guy is shitcanned or will be but I can't comment on specifics for a few weeks or so at least. Bottom line he was dirty but not not as bad as it sounds by WW3 standards but yes bad leadership in that one unit.

My previous comments about the crying and awol gwot guys referred to the dudes who ran after a few days or weeks or maybe month or two. They were not all Americans actually quiet a few were from other European places but plenty of Yanks. Many went awol with guns/armor etc after signing contracts. They also were responsible for getting a large cadre of very good English speaking officers killed by twittering and live-streaming their badasses on the gram. The Russians hit the leadership barracks mostly and hence the mass desertion, lack of leadership, etc. many Ukrainians heard about the attack, the speculated reason, the mass dissertion, with guns/armor ammo etc. and what do you expect. It did not foster a great environment of trust. It's easy to get paranoid when you are under the command of someone you don't understand, don't trust, and you have high expectations (that will be let down) because it was France 1940. The Germans didn't smash the maginot line, the went through neutral territory. Add the fact that at least a couple of the volunteers were double agents, spreading dissinformation like cannon fodder, you blokes are being sent to die rheeee. I give credit to the dudes who stayed the course and just trusted in god, that's all you got. Your word is bond so the running men can say whatever, the reality is something else. You say yes means yes. No means no, follow that principle and life will probably work out for you as planned. Being a malingerer or spreading dissinformation, you might as well have helped the Russians.  No one was cannon fodder. Yaroviv had the best trained cadre outside of the Donbass. That's where training to nato standards was done. The loss of SSGs and officers on the UA side was massive, they were giving you their best guys. You got the residual after a lot of good ones got vaporized.

I say all this having been steered away from the FL from the start. I'm not in comms with them, and it's all through assorted friends in Ukrainian units that have worked with some of the Eastern European/Eurasian parts of FL or had friends attached there.  I say this (having been nearbye during the great panick it wasn't pretty) and at least having enough language and friends in UA and experience living there to go native. So my perspective is biased towards the UA guys. To be clear there are effective badass FL units but their is what 5k now and like 35k in total joined. Casualties are much less as a whole than in most UA units. Out of those 35k I think 300 or so max have been 200/300 (just a guess). It's a shame because they could have been so much more if they'd just not had cell phones pinging, and used common sense in a war zone with ballistic missiles. I'm not sleeping in a building filled with soldiers there, ever ever. I would have gone outside and dug myself a worm hole to sleep in at Yaroviv. No way I'd have sat around shooting the shit in mass like that. No one prevented them from doing that.  That place has building no one knows about. Let so and so know we're going to sleep in the ammo bunkers or whatever, be here at 0600. No they clumped up and live streamed and called mom. Call mom before you go into barracks in war. Common sense. Anyway rant over. We can move on from that, and I salute the fallen from all nations.

Originally Posted By stone-age:


People don't want Ukrainian kids stepping on the unexplored bomblets 5 years from now. It sounds like the things become land mines if they don't blow up when they hit. At least that's what I've heard.

Originally Posted By Infantry26:
I think it's pretty obvious that ukraine did not get the best of what the gwot had to offer.  The guys that laid the wood from in places like karbala gap, fallujah and kunar are all like 35-60 years old now.  Nearly all of the foreign legion people I saw on YouTube were pretty clearly too young to have fought in gwot during much of the intense combat.

That said when you're stupid or desperate enough to recruit the tiktok battalions you should consider taking precautions like confiscating phones.  In my experience, the old gwot drill sergeants that did minor things like ensure the destruction of the Iraqi republican guard were smart enough to not allow cell phones in training and although their IQs may have been lower than the average Ukrainian janitor, they were also capable of teaching their soldiers about signals discipline.  It's a shame such a disorganized cluster fuck of an operation was set up in ukraine, by the Ukrainians.  It sounds like they paid dearly for their poorly implemented program and the average iq of the world plummeted like a russian missile into a Yavoriv barracks.

Originally Posted By fisherman:


I thought the Rs have already been using cluster munitions and worse (if that's possible). The landscape will be a mess UXO-wise whether the AFU has cluster munitions or not and they have made this request. We just need to give the AFU whatever they ask for and let them use that tech whatever way works best. And do it ASAP.

Honestly dread what may be headed their way in the next 60-90 days.

Originally Posted By Zam18th:
He's got an empty sack if he doesn't go to Kyiv.

??NBC: Biden expected to visit Poland to mark one year of Russia's war against Ukraine.

U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to travel to Poland to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The Kyiv Independent  (@KyivIndependent) February 7, 2023

Originally Posted By Jack67:


There are two different ways to get back all the Ukrainian territory. One is fighting for every inch of it. The other is taking Crimea and leveraging a withdrawal from the mainland occupied territory.   Taking Crimea first may short-circuit the need to fight bodily and bloodily through Lukansk and Donetsk.  It has a strategic value of outsize proportion because of Russia’s European trade routes.  Crimea is to Russian Black Sea trade as the UK is to northern European ports - you cannot have an Atlantic trade if UK is hostile to you.  In the missile age, Russia can’t use its most valuable port if a hostile power holds Crimea.

1/3 to 1/2 of all European Russia’s sea trade goes through ports controlled by Crimea - mostly Novorossiysk on the mainland coast, not through the Don River (Rostov) - though that is important, also.  Possession of Crimea can reduce that to near-zero.  Ukraine doesn’t have to launch an Iran-style war on neutral shipping, necessarily. They just have to damage a few Russian-flagged vessels once they have Crimea and commercial shipping will cease on its own.  Russia simply cannot allow that to happen - it’s an absolutely existential threat.

Another strong point is that Crimea is much more conducive to maneuver warfare topographically. It also has the advantage of having a sea flank as the front advances for security, vs getting deeper into a cauldron with risky flanks in Luhansk, etc.  This isn’t a certain strategy, but it’s an option if the Perekop Isthmus can be managed.