A couple of weeks ago, I posted a piece on how Russia was pulling ancient T-55s out of storage to send to Ukraine. In the interest of balance and fairness (to my readers, not to Russia), here’s a video on how Ukraine fielding their own upgraded T-55s.
“Ukraine has also had to look to the past, the distant past, for compatible tanks. The Ukrainians are fielding, since last autumn, a design of tank dating from over 70 years ago, the venerable T-55.”
“The 28 vehicles that the Ukrainians brought into service last autumn are a radically improved version of this model of tank called the M-55S obtained from Slovenia.”
“Taking standard T-55s into battle in 2023 would not be advisable. The 40-ton tank has a semi-stabilized 100mm d10 gun, a 500 horsepower diesel engine, and steel armor of a maximum thickness of just 200mm, meaning even old RPGs can knock them out. The gun site requires a semi-infrared spotlight that betrays the tank’s position, instant death on the modern battlefield.”
“The type also soldiers on in many armies around the world, particularly in the Third World, where T-55s saw action recently in the 2014-20 Libyan Civil War, the Yemeni Civil War from 2015 to present…and the Tigray War in Ethiopia, which ended last year.”
“Via Israel, [Slovenia] was able to heavily modernize its existing T-55s into something that is still fairly capable in 2023.”
“The old Soviet gun was replaced with the British Royal Ordnance L7 105mm rifled gun…Although the L7 is getting on in years it is still highly effective, and plenty of ammunition abounds for them.”
The tanks also received new fire control systems, incorporating a laser rangefinder and second generation night vision, a digital ballistic computer, new rubber metal tracks, an upgraded diesel engine increasing horsepower from 500 to 800, giving a maximum speed of 50 kph, and of course the tank is covered in reactive armor bricks, changing the entire look of the old tank and drastically increasing its ability to survive on the modern battlefield.
Even without knowing exactly what upgrades Russia is performing on its own T-55s, I feel safe in assuming that Israeli tech > Russian tech.
“No one is sensibly suggesting that the upgraded T-55s could deal with modern tanks deployed by Russia, but they will be lethal against all other non-tank armored vehicles the Russians deploy. And of course they can also fire high explosive rounds, which would be excellent support for Ukrainian infantry.”
As the plucky underdog in the fight, it’s no surprise that Ukraine is fielding older, upgraded tank designs as a stopgap (or supplement) until more modern western tanks can be fielded. The surprise is that Russia, with it’s reputed 12,500 or so tanks when the conflict began, having to resort to pulling out T-55s to send to Ukraine. So much of Russia’s equipment has been so poorly maintained that it’s difficult to tell how much might remain operational. And day by day, poor Russian tactic and Ukrainian precision weapons continue to whittle that number down…
The Russians have always had feet of clay when it comes to anything requiring an acknowledgement of reality.
A Russian officer has to know, in absolute terms, that he works within a fundamentally corrupt system. He has to observe, unless he is blind, what goes on all around him.
Yet… They still keep making these grandiose plans as though none of that corruption exists. “Oh, yes, we’ll have 100,000 men advancing on Kyiv…”, yet he has to know about all the corruption in regards to “ghost soldiers”; he likely does it himself. He has to know, because he’s taken part in similar fiddles, that spare parts, supplies, fuel, food… Everything he needs, to wage war, is likely being sold somewhere on the black market. Yet, that same officer keeps on making plans as though none of this was going on.
They participate in all these things, yet they behave and plan as though they’re the only ones doing it.
A rational person would acknowledge the corruption, and plan around it. They don’t, which points to a peculiar sort of collective insanity spread across the Russian military. You keep seeing these instances where they’re telling everyone these amazing lies, even to themselves, and they’re doing it with a straight face.
This is the legacy of generations of living under a socialist regime, much like the one the liberals here in the US are wanting to put us under. If someone can look you in the eye and claim that a man is a woman, insisting that you chant the cant along with them…? That’s how you wind up with the modern Russia. The truth was so alien to them, for so long, that they can’t even recognize when they’re lying to themselves..
Most modern Americans look at this and say “Wow… How can they do that…?”, and yet… We’re heading down that same road, herded along by the same sort of creatures.
One of the many criticisms leveled against the Russians in this conflict with Ukraine has been the primitive state of their logistics systems. They don’t use materials handling equipment and palletization, resulting in everything having to be man-handled at nearly every point along the supply chain.
This isn’t at all accidental. They want their supply chains run like this because if they palletize and containerize, that makes theft and diversion instantly visible. It’s not that they don’t know better, it’s that they know that if they modernize, they’re taking opportunities out of the hands of their fellow officers for theft and diversion.
They use all sorts of excuses for it, like “If we use nothing but manpower, then we can unload anywhere!! Store anywhere!!! It’s so smart!!!!”, but the reality is that the pilferage and theft that would be disabled by modern logistics systems would cripple all their little fiddles. They could have modernized anywhere along the line, but… Nope. Nobody would cooperate, because they knew that if they modernized, all that graft went away.
To put it another way, the thousands of more modern, and thus filled with more black marketable equipment, “deep reserve” ex-Soviet T-72 and T-62 were evidently found to be so stripped that the ancient “even deeper reserve” T-55s were in more functional condition. 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s vintage gear, engines, and ancillaries just did not have any black market demand, so the stuff in those T-55s was left unharvested by troops with hungry kids at home.
That’d be a good summation. That, and the fact that the older gear was put into storage before corruption got as bad as it is now, and because it was out-of-date when such things became commonplace, the stuff was obsolete.
I’d also suspect that the newer stuff was not only higher-value for sales, but that it was the lower-hanging fruit. You’d have little trouble selling a T-72 sight on the international market, but who the hell is going to buy one off a T-55? You’d take forever to find yourself a buyer, and then how much are they likely going to be able to pay you?
Guys in the Technical Intelligence field were telling me that there was virtually an eBay affair for Soviet gear that they were filling their heart’s desires with. You’d put up a bid for what you wanted, and along would come someone who’d offer it to you for the right amount, and would even ship it. I can’t remember the exact details, but one guy was trying to settle an argument about some intercom feature on the BMP-2, and he wound up buying an as-new version of what he needed from someone in Russia that sent it to him via DHL… All for less than a couple hundred bucks.
The best explanation of what Russian Army was planning to do with T54/55 I saw on Internet is that they’re repurposed for fix defensive position along the defensive lines that Russian have been building (100KM+ behind the current contested line). They’re literal sitting duck if send into combat, but as a fixed gun, they’re better than nothing.
Here’s some further ideas. There is an arms dealer in Belgium who has over 100 Leo 1A5’s as well as recovery vehicles. This is enough to arm at least a brigade. The Leo 1A5 is effective against T62’s and T55/55’s. Also, the US has a couple of thousand M60a3’s in inventory. Give ALL those to Ukraine.
The fact that Russia is pulling T54/55’s out of storage as well as T62’s means that they can’t put enough T72’s into service. Leo 1A5’s and M60A3’s are more than capable enough of taking down pretty much anything the Russians have left…as well as ALL IFV’s and APC’s the Russians are using.
Also, the Ukrainians are buying the New German Panther II tank from Rhinemetal…that alone is far superior to anything the Russians can possibly put into production any time soon. The T14 Armata is no where near ready for service, which is why it won’t ever been seen on a battle front any time soon.
I dunno… Personally, I think this has a good chance of being over by the time the Ukrainians are likely to get those Panther II tanks. Russia’s only real hope at this time is that something happens to crash the world economic system before their own economy blows up, or that some deus ex machina shows up.
My guess is that about the time we hit the 500,000 mark, casualty-wise? There’s going to be a sudden outbreak of sanity in the oligarchy, and Putin will be out. Typically, that’s what happens with failed Russian wars.
What’s bizarre to note is that they’ve compressed more casualties into less time than anyone else, and its for a campaign and theater that should have been well within their weight limit. Russia is basically destroying its armed forces and expending all of its carefully-hoarded resources from the last few decades of false prosperity. They fell into the classic mistake of a resource-based economy, and basically spent the money they had coming in from the oil and other resources they were extracting to make a thin layer of oligarchs wealthy while doing nothing for their people or economy. They came out of the Cold War with the most dominant space industry, but what did they do with it? Pissed it away. They could have taken steps to fix their demographic issues; what did they do? The exact opposite.
Russian leadership has this attitude that it has unlimited manpower, and that it can do whatever it likes to the Russian people, without care or concern. That’s about to blow back on them massively, because all of the deaths in Ukraine represent demographic bills that will never be repaid.
You could see it back in the ’90s, when all those Russian women were emigrating out, becoming mail-order brides, trafficked sex slaves, and all the rest. The Russian government of that era didn’t care, didn’t take steps to protect them. Instead, they actively worked to enable all of that, as if there were some endless fountain of manpower somewhere. They’re doing the exact same thing in Ukraine, and the bills for that will be coming due.
It’s interesting how many one-child families you see in Russia, how many “only sons”. It’s a marker for what’s going on, and how blind the leadership is to what they’re doing.
Demography is destiny. You ain’t got no demography, you ain’t got no future. Stalin slaughtered most of 21st Century Russia’s potential back in the 20th; they’re basically dealing with the same sort of aftermath that regions conquered by the Mongols had to, and if you do the requisite historical reading, what you’ll find is that entire geographic areas of Eurasia are still not capable of supporting the pre-Mongol populations that they had. Russia is going to wind up the same way, the poor damn fools.
Putin is the worst thing that’s happened to Russia since Stalin. And, they seem to love him for it, so there’s a co-dependency there that removes a lot of my sympathy for Russia.
Gotta remember: The most-used phrase by Russian historians? “And, then it got worse…”
As if that “getting worse” were just some accident of fate. It isn’t; they keep doing it to themselves.
[…] abuse, and Chinese agency to promote Cuba as ‘priority’ tourist destination BattleSwarm: Ukraine Also Updating T-55s, also, Weird Guns Used in the Russo-Ukrainian War Behind The Black: Update on MOXIE’s two years […]
The Russians have always had feet of clay when it comes to anything requiring an acknowledgement of reality.
A Russian officer has to know, in absolute terms, that he works within a fundamentally corrupt system. He has to observe, unless he is blind, what goes on all around him.
Yet… They still keep making these grandiose plans as though none of that corruption exists. “Oh, yes, we’ll have 100,000 men advancing on Kyiv…”, yet he has to know about all the corruption in regards to “ghost soldiers”; he likely does it himself. He has to know, because he’s taken part in similar fiddles, that spare parts, supplies, fuel, food… Everything he needs, to wage war, is likely being sold somewhere on the black market. Yet, that same officer keeps on making plans as though none of this was going on.
They participate in all these things, yet they behave and plan as though they’re the only ones doing it.
A rational person would acknowledge the corruption, and plan around it. They don’t, which points to a peculiar sort of collective insanity spread across the Russian military. You keep seeing these instances where they’re telling everyone these amazing lies, even to themselves, and they’re doing it with a straight face.
This is the legacy of generations of living under a socialist regime, much like the one the liberals here in the US are wanting to put us under. If someone can look you in the eye and claim that a man is a woman, insisting that you chant the cant along with them…? That’s how you wind up with the modern Russia. The truth was so alien to them, for so long, that they can’t even recognize when they’re lying to themselves..
Most modern Americans look at this and say “Wow… How can they do that…?”, and yet… We’re heading down that same road, herded along by the same sort of creatures.
A data point RE: Soviet/Russian logistics:
https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1642155824230412289
One of the many criticisms leveled against the Russians in this conflict with Ukraine has been the primitive state of their logistics systems. They don’t use materials handling equipment and palletization, resulting in everything having to be man-handled at nearly every point along the supply chain.
This isn’t at all accidental. They want their supply chains run like this because if they palletize and containerize, that makes theft and diversion instantly visible. It’s not that they don’t know better, it’s that they know that if they modernize, they’re taking opportunities out of the hands of their fellow officers for theft and diversion.
They use all sorts of excuses for it, like “If we use nothing but manpower, then we can unload anywhere!! Store anywhere!!! It’s so smart!!!!”, but the reality is that the pilferage and theft that would be disabled by modern logistics systems would cripple all their little fiddles. They could have modernized anywhere along the line, but… Nope. Nobody would cooperate, because they knew that if they modernized, all that graft went away.
To put it another way, the thousands of more modern, and thus filled with more black marketable equipment, “deep reserve” ex-Soviet T-72 and T-62 were evidently found to be so stripped that the ancient “even deeper reserve” T-55s were in more functional condition. 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s vintage gear, engines, and ancillaries just did not have any black market demand, so the stuff in those T-55s was left unharvested by troops with hungry kids at home.
@FM,
That’d be a good summation. That, and the fact that the older gear was put into storage before corruption got as bad as it is now, and because it was out-of-date when such things became commonplace, the stuff was obsolete.
I’d also suspect that the newer stuff was not only higher-value for sales, but that it was the lower-hanging fruit. You’d have little trouble selling a T-72 sight on the international market, but who the hell is going to buy one off a T-55? You’d take forever to find yourself a buyer, and then how much are they likely going to be able to pay you?
Guys in the Technical Intelligence field were telling me that there was virtually an eBay affair for Soviet gear that they were filling their heart’s desires with. You’d put up a bid for what you wanted, and along would come someone who’d offer it to you for the right amount, and would even ship it. I can’t remember the exact details, but one guy was trying to settle an argument about some intercom feature on the BMP-2, and he wound up buying an as-new version of what he needed from someone in Russia that sent it to him via DHL… All for less than a couple hundred bucks.
The best explanation of what Russian Army was planning to do with T54/55 I saw on Internet is that they’re repurposed for fix defensive position along the defensive lines that Russian have been building (100KM+ behind the current contested line). They’re literal sitting duck if send into combat, but as a fixed gun, they’re better than nothing.
Here’s some further ideas. There is an arms dealer in Belgium who has over 100 Leo 1A5’s as well as recovery vehicles. This is enough to arm at least a brigade. The Leo 1A5 is effective against T62’s and T55/55’s. Also, the US has a couple of thousand M60a3’s in inventory. Give ALL those to Ukraine.
The fact that Russia is pulling T54/55’s out of storage as well as T62’s means that they can’t put enough T72’s into service. Leo 1A5’s and M60A3’s are more than capable enough of taking down pretty much anything the Russians have left…as well as ALL IFV’s and APC’s the Russians are using.
Also, the Ukrainians are buying the New German Panther II tank from Rhinemetal…that alone is far superior to anything the Russians can possibly put into production any time soon. The T14 Armata is no where near ready for service, which is why it won’t ever been seen on a battle front any time soon.
I dunno… Personally, I think this has a good chance of being over by the time the Ukrainians are likely to get those Panther II tanks. Russia’s only real hope at this time is that something happens to crash the world economic system before their own economy blows up, or that some deus ex machina shows up.
My guess is that about the time we hit the 500,000 mark, casualty-wise? There’s going to be a sudden outbreak of sanity in the oligarchy, and Putin will be out. Typically, that’s what happens with failed Russian wars.
What’s bizarre to note is that they’ve compressed more casualties into less time than anyone else, and its for a campaign and theater that should have been well within their weight limit. Russia is basically destroying its armed forces and expending all of its carefully-hoarded resources from the last few decades of false prosperity. They fell into the classic mistake of a resource-based economy, and basically spent the money they had coming in from the oil and other resources they were extracting to make a thin layer of oligarchs wealthy while doing nothing for their people or economy. They came out of the Cold War with the most dominant space industry, but what did they do with it? Pissed it away. They could have taken steps to fix their demographic issues; what did they do? The exact opposite.
Russian leadership has this attitude that it has unlimited manpower, and that it can do whatever it likes to the Russian people, without care or concern. That’s about to blow back on them massively, because all of the deaths in Ukraine represent demographic bills that will never be repaid.
You could see it back in the ’90s, when all those Russian women were emigrating out, becoming mail-order brides, trafficked sex slaves, and all the rest. The Russian government of that era didn’t care, didn’t take steps to protect them. Instead, they actively worked to enable all of that, as if there were some endless fountain of manpower somewhere. They’re doing the exact same thing in Ukraine, and the bills for that will be coming due.
It’s interesting how many one-child families you see in Russia, how many “only sons”. It’s a marker for what’s going on, and how blind the leadership is to what they’re doing.
Demography is destiny. You ain’t got no demography, you ain’t got no future. Stalin slaughtered most of 21st Century Russia’s potential back in the 20th; they’re basically dealing with the same sort of aftermath that regions conquered by the Mongols had to, and if you do the requisite historical reading, what you’ll find is that entire geographic areas of Eurasia are still not capable of supporting the pre-Mongol populations that they had. Russia is going to wind up the same way, the poor damn fools.
Putin is the worst thing that’s happened to Russia since Stalin. And, they seem to love him for it, so there’s a co-dependency there that removes a lot of my sympathy for Russia.
Gotta remember: The most-used phrase by Russian historians? “And, then it got worse…”
As if that “getting worse” were just some accident of fate. It isn’t; they keep doing it to themselves.
[…] abuse, and Chinese agency to promote Cuba as ‘priority’ tourist destination BattleSwarm: Ukraine Also Updating T-55s, also, Weird Guns Used in the Russo-Ukrainian War Behind The Black: Update on MOXIE’s two years […]