Hamas decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War by launching another war.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared “we are at war, and we will win it” early Saturday as the country’s air force began striking targets in Gaza in response to a surprise Hamas attack on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, involving more than 3,000 rockets and groups of terrorists descending on Israeli territory by land, sea, and even paraglider.
At least 40 Israelis have been killed in the fighting and at least 740 injured, the Israeli military said, and videos posted on social media appear to show Hamas taking civilian hostages. A militant group in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also claims to be holding a group of Israeli soldiers hostage.
As rockets rained down on central and southern Israel, the televisions began broadcasting footage of armed groups of Hamas terrorists pouring into towns across the country in pickup trucks, the Times of Israel reported. In response, the IDF deployed forces to the south, where troops began engaging with the Hamas invaders.
The Israeli Air Force also scrambled dozens of jets to strike four command centers and 17 military compounds in the Gaza strip, the air force announced on X. At least 198 Palestinians have been killed and 1,610 have been wounded in the retaliatory attacks, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The biggest difference between the real Yom Kippur War and Hamas’ farce is the size of of the opposition. In 1973, Israel was attacked by the armies of Egypt and Syria supported by forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, and Morocco, plus some random units from Cuba and North Korea, a coalition that theoretically could wipe Israel off the map. By contrast, Hamas is a terrorist organization that controls some 141 miles of square territory and survives on handouts from the UN, EU, Iran and Syria.
Israel has the most modern and technologically advanced army in the Middle East, and arguably the second most technologically advanced in the world. Their air force is entirely American-made, including F-35s.
The news that Hamas is using technicals is both interesting and obvious, as they’re a very cost-effective option. They’re not ideal for urban combat or stand-up fights, but if they can get out of the built-up area around Gaza and out into the flatter, more open terrain to the south they can do some damage as hit and run forces, at least until the Israeli Air Force can track them down. I assume Hamas has drones, because it’s 2023 and everyone has drones, plus their patron Iran makes some.
Enjoy some random combat footage, including what looks like a knocked-out Merkava tank.
We all know what the outcome of this conflict will be: Hamas will kill some Israeli civilians and a few IDF soldiers, and Israel will pound the snot out of Hamas and it’s command and control infrastructure, after which it will take Hamas a decade or so of payments from its sugar daddies to build up enough to do it all over again.
Hamas is a pustule that occasionally needs to be lanced, but little more.
Update: Yep, drones. IDF needs to go back to the makers of Trophy and ask why it didn’t stop a slow-moving, top-drop munition.
In yesterday’s LinkSwarm, I mentioned it was unclear whether IDF ground forces had actually entered Gaza or not. Well, it turns out there’s a reason for that. It was a ruse.
Just after midnight Friday the Israeli Defense Force spokesman released a carefully-worded statement, informing the press in Hebrew, Arabic, and English that “IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.”
The statement was technically accurate. Tanks, artillery and other IDF units that can accurately be described as “ground troops” indeed joined the Airforce in an attack on Gaza. Then again, it was also, perhaps deliberately so, a bit off the point.
Those ground forces conducted their attack from the Israeli side of the Gaza border. They did not cross into the Hamas-controlled strip, as in the last Gaza war, in 2014. At that time a major land invasion resulted in a high number of casualties, including many civilians. With that in mind, leading American editors ran ahead of what turned out to be the more important “ground troop” story.
One reason is that the IDF English-language spokesman, Jonathan Cornicus, went a bit further than the original statement, telling reporters of the New York Times, Washington Post, and wire services that troops indeed went into a Gaza enclave, telling them, “Yes. As it’s written in the statement: Indeed, ground forces are attacking in Gaza. That is that they are in the Strip,” according to the Times of Israel.
The Hebrew language IDF spokesman, Hidai Zilberman, later clarified that no troops infiltrated Gaza, but by then the headlines were out. As Liz Sly, a Washington Post reporter based in Beirut, dramatically tweeted, “Breaking: Israeli troops have crossed into Gaza, the Israeli military confirmed early Friday.”
Stories on the start of the IDF invasion in Gaza ran in major American outlets, emphasizing Israeli escalation in the war and pending horrors for Gaza civilians. Yet a day later, the tenor of the story changed. And as it turns out, the target media consumers for the spokesman’s original statement weren‘t knee jerk anti-Israel media reporters at all.
According to a story widely reported in Israel Friday, the IDF and its spokespersons conducted a carefully-constructed ruse to achieve a life-and-death military objective. It was aimed at Hamas’ strategy of employing a vast network of underground tunnels.
Heavily fortified facilities beneath Gaza’s cities (built, incidentally, with concrete supplied to the strip as international humanitarian assistance) serve as military headquarters, transportation routes, and, at times, attack venues to infiltrate Israel.
In an emergency, these tunnels serve also as a hiding place for Hamas military brass. Unlike most of Gaza’s civilian population, these commanders have a place to hide when attacked from the air. Arms and other major military assets, including Hamas’s most secret weapons, are also stored underground.
Once the story about a pending ground invasion led major world press outlets, Hamas bigwigs ran for safety under the ground, lest Israeli troops would find and kill them.
Except that Israeli intelligence apparently has had these underground facilities well-mapped. The IDF Air Force promptly started shelling the underground facilities. Air attacks first targeted tunnels’ entryways and exits, and later, apparently using American-made bunker-busting bombs, destroyed the tunnels, burying everything in them.
IDF sources are careful to say they’re still assessing the damage. Yet they hold out the hope that the Friday morning attack will prove to be a major “game changer” with a lasting effect on Hamas’s ability to attack Israel in the future.
What do Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez, and Stenny Hoyer have in common? At least two things. First, all three are Democrats who support Israel’s right to defend itself against the missile attacks launched by Hamas.
Second, all three are at least 67 years old. Schumer is 70, Menendez 67, and Hoyer 81.
Israel’s support from Democratic lawmakers is largely confined to old-timers. The new generation of congressional Dems is either ambivalent about Israel or, like the Squad, openly hostile to the Jewish State.
The Washington Post reports that “a new crop of younger lawmakers willing to challenge the party’s pro-Israel orthodoxy has put pressure on the Biden administration and congressional leaders amid polling showing growing skepticism among Democrats about Israeli actions.”
What polling data?
A Gallup poll in March found that the majority of Democrats now take the position that the United States should be applying more pressure to Israel to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The 53 percent opting for more pressure on the Israelis is up from 43 percent in 2018 and no more than 38 percent in the decade before that, marking a substantive change in Democrats’ perspective on U.S. policy,” the report found.
This shift in opinion among Democrats is reflected in Congress. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, says:
Congress is beginning to reflect the demographic changes in how the public views [the] Israeli-Palestinian issue. You’re seeing a much more diverse group on the Democratic side who reflect where the base of the Democratic Party is going from Black and Latino to young people and professional women. Their attitudes in polls are radically different than White middle-class Americans.
If one adds the many rank-and-file Democrats who still support Israel to the majority of Republicans who do, it adds up to a clear preference for the Israeli side of the conflict, rather than for the Hamas/Palestinian side. So this is a winning issue for the GOP, and probably will remain so for a good while.
The Democratic Party is now driven by victimhood identity politics, and Palestinians seem to make great victims no matter how many terror rockets they launch at civilians. Meanwhile, Jews (like Asians) have been retconned into being “super white” so those on the left can have an excuse to hate them…
An Israeli strike hit an office building in Gaza that housed both Hamas and the Associated Press. So they hit a building housing a small cadre of anti-American radicals. And also Hamas…
The Biden Recession blooms, Bibby bombs, Baltimore burns, inscrutable Flu Manchu somehow infects the vaccinated, and Canada’s institutional religious hostility inflicts its revenge on the pastor that defied them. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
If inflation wasn’t enough to remind you of Biden’s reboot of That 70’s Show, how about long gas lines? An east coast gas pipeline was shut down by ransomeware attack launched by a hacking group called DarkSide.
Rendered with the magic of dyslexia
We’re actually very fortunate that a for-profit gang carried out this hack, rather than a terrorist group or state actor.
Seeing some reports stating that Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, but seeing some Twitter commentary that, no, they haven’t entered, but that IDF artillery and tanks are pounding Hamas tunnels.
Two weeks ago Turkish forces launched a military assault in the Duhok region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Villagers were forced to ‘flee in terror’ from raining bombs. It was only the latest bombardment of the beleaguered Kurds by Turkey, NATO member and Western ally. It did not trend online. There were no noisy protests in London or New York. The Turks weren’t talked about in woke circles as crazed, bloodthirsty killers. Tweeters didn’t dream out loud about Turks burning in hell. The Onion didn’t do any close-to-the-bone satire about how Turkish soldiers just love killing children. No, the Duhok attack passed pretty much without comment.
But when Israel engages in military action, that’s a different story. Always. Every time. Anti-Israel fury in the West has intensified to an extraordinary degree following an escalation of violence in the Middle East in recent days. Protests were instant and inflammatory. Israeli flags were burned on the streets of London. Social media was awash with condemnation. ‘IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child’, tweeted The Onion, to tens of thousands of likes. Israel must be boycotted, isolated, cast out of the international community, leftists cried. Western politicians, including Keir Starmer, rushed to pass judgement. ‘What’s the difference?’, said a placard at a march in Washington, DC showing the Israeli flag next to the Nazi flag. The Jews are the Nazis now, you see. Ironic, isn’t it?
This is the question anti-Israel campaigners have never been able to answer: why do they treat Israel so differently to every other nation on Earth? Why is it child-killing bloodlust when Israel takes military action but not when Turkey or India do? Why must we rush to the streets to set light to the Israel flag but never the Saudi flag, despite Saudi Arabia’s unconscionable war on Yemen? Why is it only ‘wrong’ or at worst ‘horrific’ when Britain or America drop bombs in the Middle East but Nazism when Israel fires missiles into Gaza? Why do you merely oppose the military action of some states but you hate Israel, viscerally, publicly, loudly?
The judgement and treatment of Israel by a double standard is one of the most disturbing facets of global politics in the 21st century. That double standard has been glaringly evident over the past few days. Israel is now the only country on Earth that is expected to allow itself to be attacked. To sit back and do nothing as its citizens are pelted with rocks or rockets. How else do we explain so many people’s unwillingness to place the current events in any kind of context, including the context of an avowedly anti-Semitic Islamist movement – Hamas – firing hundreds of missiles into civilian areas in Israel? In this context, to rage solely against Israel, to curse its people and burn its flag because it has sent missiles to destroy Hamas’s firing positions in Gaza, is essentially to say: ‘Why won’t Israelis let themselves be killed?’
Last year, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei admitted for the first time that his country was supplying the Palestinian terrorist groups with weapons. “Iran realized Palestinian fighters’ only problem was lack of access to weapons,” Khamenei said in an online speech.
“With divine guidance and assistance, we planned, and the balance of power has been transformed in Palestine, and today the Gaza Strip can stand against the aggression of the Zionist enemy and defeat it.”
Khamenei went on to offer the reason why Iran was sending rockets, missiles and tons of explosives to the Gaza Strip: “The Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous tumor in the region. It will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”
Khamenei’s admission shows how the mullahs in Tehran have been lying to the West for many years. In 2011, Mohammad Khazaee, the Permanent Representative of Iran to the United Nations, sent a letter to the President of the United Nations Security Council in which he vehemently denied that Iran was smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip.
Baltimore was one of the first cities to try “de-policing.” How did that work out for it? Not so hot:
This experiment has been an abject failure. Since 2011, nearly 3,000 Baltimoreans have been murdered—one of every 200 city residents over that period. The annual homicide rate has climbed from 31 per 100,000 residents to 56—ten times the national rate. And 93 percent of the homicide victims of known race over this period were black.
Remarkably, Baltimore is reinforcing its de-policing strategy. State’s Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby no longer intends to prosecute various “low-level” crimes. Newly elected mayor Brandon Scott promises a five-year plan to cut the police budget. Both justify their policies by asserting that the bloodbath on city streets proves that policing itself “hasn’t worked”; they sell their acceleration of de-policing as a “fresh approach” and “re-imagining” of law enforcement.
The tried “broken windows” policing without understanding it:
The motivation for de-policing traces to the city’s botched response to an earlier crime epidemic in the 1990s, when it averaged 45 homicides per 100,000 population, up 55 percent from the previous decade. So in 1999 Baltimoreans elected a mayor, Martin O’Malley, who promised to apply New York’s successful crime-fighting approach, where homicides had plunged by two-thirds over the decade (to one-ninth Baltimore’s rate) thanks to an expanded police force and innovative, proactive policing strategies.
O’Malley’s first commissioner, NYPD veteran Ed Norris, initially showed promise. By 2002, Baltimore’s homicide rate was 20 percent below its 1999 level. As O’Malley pressed for more, however, relations soured, and Norris departed (and some financial shenanigans eventually earned him a stint in federal prison). His successor, Kevin Clark, another NYPD import, also became embroiled in personal and professional controversy; he was fired and succeeded by a Baltimore PD holdover. By the time O’Malley moved to the Maryland governor’s mansion in 2007, Baltimore’s homicide rate was back to its 1990s average.
The problem was not just turmoil among BPD leadership and meddling (or worse) by O’Malley, but a fatal misunderstanding of what had worked in New York. There, the broad spectrum of criminal activity was addressed efficiently and with community engagement. Detailed data helped guide resources to crime hot spots. Chief William J. Bratton implemented the Broken Windows theory-inspired community-policing methods pioneered by social scientists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, who understood how small manifestations of disorder could grow to larger ones. Minor offenses that made residents feel unsafe or hinted at acceptance of violence were addressed in order to improve quality of life, strengthen communities, and prevent serious crime.
In Baltimore, however, Broken Windows was misunderstood and misapplied. It mutated into a malignant variant, “zero tolerance” policing—and BPD conduct became not just intolerant but unfocused and excessive. As David Simon, a veteran Baltimore crime reporter and creator of HBO’s The Wire, summed things up, O’Malley “tossed the Fourth Amendment out a window and began using the police department to sweep the corners and rowhouse stoops and [per Norris] ‘lock up damn near everyone.’” That sometimes even included Wire crew members on their way home from a long day of filming.
True Broken Windows policing, in Kelling’s words, creates “a negotiated sense of order in a community” and involves collaboration between cops and residents. As one BPD vet put it, “You go to a community—before we come in, [we should ask], ‘What are the main things you all can’t stand?’ Everybody playing music at 11:30 at night, kids sitting on the corner, the prostitutes using the little park over there to work their trade. Now, ‘What don’t you care about?’ See the old guys sitting down at the corner playing cards every night? They could stay there all they want. . . . Then the police come in and do what the neighborhood wants. You just don’t go out and lock everybody up.” But, he concluded, “we went overboard.”
Then they adjusted:
O’Malley’s successor, Sheila Dixon (the city’s first female and third black mayor), defied her staff’s recommendations and named as commissioner Frederick Bealefeld, a BPD lifer with no college pedigree. “It was something in my gut that felt he was the best person,” Dixon explained. “I could just feel his passion.”
Bealefeld understood community policing better than the New York imports, addressing disorder and crime efficiently. He attended community meetings tirelessly to find out what residents wanted done; got cops out of their cars and walking patrols more often; invested in better training; and supported cops’ work with kids. Partnering with a savvy federal prosecutor, Rod Rosenstein, he targeted known dealers and shooters, emphasizing quality arrests—including of cops on the take. It worked. Even as arrest totals fell (to 70,000 by 2010), so did the homicide rate, to a low of 31 per 100,000 residents by 2011.
And then the Social Justice started:
Dixon had embezzled gift cards meant for the poor—petty corruption is a Baltimore tradition—and in 2010 was succeeded by Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. The Oberlin-educated former public defender was more liberal than Dixon, personally lukewarm to Bealefeld, and sympathetic to those embittered by O’Malley’s “zero tolerance” policies. And she faced budget problems. De-policing, then, seemed to tick all the right boxes—and, with the homicide rate at a 23-year low (though still almost seven times the national average), there would be little outcry against it.
First came some defunding, with a 2 percent pay cut to help address a recession-related budget pinch; cops’ contributions to their pension funds also were raised to help address shortfalls there. The new mayor’s first proposed budget actually cut the BPD’s request by 10 percent, though the difference eventually was split. Demoralized, experienced cops started retiring in numbers.
Rawlings-Blake did not replace them, and she trimmed staffed aggressively. BPD budgets had consistently authorized about 3,900 positions through the O’Malley and Dixon years. Rawlings-Blake took that down by 5 percent in her 2012 budget and another 6 percent in 2013. Bealefeld called the cuts “unconscionable” and retired. As he’d told the head of the police union at one point, “you can only beat down your horses for so long before they give up.”
So even before Freddie Gray died in police custody in 2015 and Baltimoreans rioted, the BPD had 460 fewer budgeted “horses” than under Mayor Dixon—with 300 fewer on patrol, conducting investigations, or targeting violent criminals. Not surprisingly, the homicide rate surged 20 percent by 2013. And after the city’s newly elected prosecutor, Mosby, criminally charged six uniformed officers in Gray’s death—though she failed to convict any—proactive policing essentially ceased. The city’s annual body count jumped and has remained tragically high since.
Speaking of defunding the police, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey admits that defunding the police was a huge mistake. If only the rest of the Minneapolis had realized this before all the deaths.
Just about everything they told us about transmission vectors for Mao Tze Lung was wrong:
Bars, gyms and restaurants. Those were just a few settings health experts warned could become hotbeds for COVID-19 spread as states began reopening in the spring and summer of 2020 following the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
Yet, public data analyzed by ABC News appears to tell a different story. The data from states across the country suggests specific outbreak settings (including bars, gyms, restaurants, nail salons, barbershops and stores — for the full list, see graphic below in story) only accounted for a small percentage, if any, of new outbreaks after the pandemic’s inital wave in 2020.
Snip.
Based on ABC News’ analysis of public data of all coronavirus cases in four states and D.C., the outbreak settings accounted for less than 5% of all COVID-19 cases in those states.
“World’s Most Vaccinated Nation Sees Active COVID Cases Double In Under A Week.” Mysterious uptick in the Seychelles.
Dave Hunt represented Clackamas County in the Oregon House of Representatives from 2003 through 2013. Hunt was the former Democratic Leader, Majority Leader, and Speaker of the House for the State of Oregon. As a legislator, Hunt the sponsor of a bill criminalizing sex trafficking in 2007. Hunt is currently a lobbyist working to influence the very chamber he left.
However, even more ironic in 2011, Dave Hunt use his position to support and vote for HB 2714. That bill created the crime of commercial sexual solicitation, the exact crime police used to charge Hunt when he was arrested and cited.
Sort of sounds like a garden variety prostitution solicitation charge. But if he’s one of the legislators to redefine that as “sex trafficking,” my sympathy is extremely limited.
NRA’s bankruptcy petition has been dismissed. Understandably, since it seemed a transparent ploy to begin with. It’s too bad Wayne LaPierre seems intent on dragging the NRA down with him…
Mark Sebu follows up on the Kentucky Ballistics explosion. Evidently it would haven taken 161,520 PI to shear the threads off the Sebu RN 50. Also, there were no pre-cuts on the sabot, suggesting it may indeed have been a counterfeit SLAP round that caused the explosion.
Not the Babylon Bee: O.J. Simpson backs Liz Cheney, accuses the Republican Party of “dishonesty.” I don’t feel I can adequately parody this real-life event, even though I should probably take a stab at it…
Top Gear/Grand Tour presenter James May found out that trickle charging a Tesla S’ main car battery didn’t charge the ordinary car battery, the one responsible for regular electric systems…like unlocking the hood latch to reach the same battery. Result: an hour of work just to reach the dead battery.
Speaking of impractical automotive accoutrements, here’s a Bugatti watch with a “working” W16 engine, yours for a mere $280,000…
Initial reports say the vehicle was empty, although a 19-year-old was seriously hurt, Israel’s ambulance service said.
According to Palestinian sources, the Israeli unit was about 3km (2 miles) inside the Gaza Strip, which borders Israel, when it fired at Nur Barakeh, a commander of the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’ military wing.
The incident is reported to have happened east of Khan Younis, in the south of the territory.
A gun battle erupted and Israeli tanks and aircraft opened fire in the area, witnesses said.
We have struck 20+ Hamas & Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets throughout Gaza, including:
Terror compounds Observation posts Rocket launching squad Additional terror targets
Terrorists in Gaza target Israeli civilians. We target terror.
Israel is developing a new, Artificial Intelligence-equipped version of its Merkava tank that is also designed to fight in cities.
Israel’s Armored Corps likens the Barak (“lightning”) to the Israeli Air Force getting the F-35 stealth fighter.
The Barak, an advanced version of the current Merkava 4 tank, is scheduled for deployment by 2021. “The Merkava Mk. 4 Barak will be the first tank to have a smart mission computer that will manage the tanks’ tasks,” according to an Israel Defense Forces announcement . “This advanced artificial intelligence will reduce the team members’ workload and help them more accurately locate and strike targets.”
In addition, the Barak will have upgraded sensors, networking with other tanks, and a Virtual Reality system embedded into the tank, which the crew can access via special helmets. The VR equipment will allow the crew to perceive the environment around the vehicle, as well as conduct virtual training and mission rehearsal inside their tank rather than having to travel to a special training center.
“The helmet is called Iron View, and it will allow the combat soldiers to see the outside environment from inside the combat vehicle,” said a senior Armored Corps officer. The Barak will have systems to warn the driver of obstacles, similar to those found on luxury automobiles, as well as an active protection system (presumably the Trophy anti-missile system), an IDF commander told Israel’s Walla news site. The tank will also have improved logistics that will enable it to carry out missions that are 30 percent longer than current operations.
Most interesting is the Barak’s new target. Tanks traditionally have been designed to fight other tanks, or provide support to infantry, on a regular battlefield. But the IDF has designed Barak for urban warfare, especially against insurgents such as Hamas. During Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 incursion into Gaza, Israeli troops found themselves embroiled in fierce street fighting — including Hamas fighters popping up from tunnels — on a confined battlefield where enemy combatants and civilians were mingled.
Snip.
The 65-ton Merkava is a unique design built around Israel’s needs, in particular the overriding desire to protect the crew from harm. The engine is in the front of the vehicle, which provides additional protection, while the rear has an armored compartment to carry up to eight infantry or three stretchers. The Merkava 4 is armed with a 120-millimeter cannon and the Trophy active protection system, which fires a barrage of shotgun-like shells to destroy incoming anti-tank rockets.
The Merkava’s rear door also facilities rapid resupply of cannon rounds, which the Israel found to be a particularly pressing need after many tanks ran out of ammo during the course of the Six Day War. The 120mm main cannon is a smoothbore, very similar to the Rheinmetall M256 120mm smoothbore cannon mounted on the M1A2.
Here’s a not-completely-useless video on it that pulls some of the VR clips from the IDF video linked from the National Interest piece:
Speaking of the M1A2, to counter a possible Chinese invasion, Taiwan is buying 100 of them to replace Taiwan’s aging tanks (presumably M48s and M60s) at a cost somewhere between $650 million and $1 billion.
“T-14’s got a three-man crew,” one specialist said, sitting behind the .50-caliber gun atop the Abrams. “All the crews in the hole, so it sounds pretty safe.”
The specialist zeroed in on the T-14’s autoloader.
“You looked around in here,” he said. “You see how sandy it is? You need something that’s going to work in all terrain.”
“Generally, I think the Russians like to build things that — like the AK, you can throw it through the mud and it’ll keep shooting,” the specialist said. “I feel like with the T-14, they got their eye off the ball, trying to be fancy.”
The specialist also said a crew member could load the cannon faster than existing mechanical autoloaders — so I asked what the point of an autoloader was.
“If the ammunition is so heavy, and so long — it’s a small turret here,” the specialist said. “The T-14 has gotten around that by having an entirely automated turret. What happens, though, if something goes wrong in the middle of battle, and somebody’s gonna have to get up in there, get out of their position? I don’t know.”
“Let’s say there’s a misfire,” another crew member interjected. “How much work would it take to get that machine open, get that breach open, and get down in there?”
I then asked what they thought about the idea that the T-14 could eventually be an unmanned tank .
“Maintenance-wise, an unmanned tank is going to be really difficult,” the specialist said. “All I do is maintain tanks … and these tanks still go down.”
Despite unveiling the tank in 2015, Russia has still not mass-produced the T-14 because of the high cost of the platform. Moscow initially said it would produce 2,300 T-14s by 2020 , but last year, it said it would make only 100 in that time.
Not sure I agree on the autoloader speed part. Industrial automation has gotten plenty fast, so there’s no reason a properly designed autoloader wouldn’t be faster than a human crew. Whether the Russians got it both fast and reliable enough for all-terrain combat situations is another matter…
And here’s a piece on how China’s Type 99 tank stacks up against American and Russian tanks:
China’s Type-99 combines a hull that closely resembles an elongated T-72 with a Western-style turret inspired in part by the German Leopard 2. First appearing as the Type 98 prototype tank in a National Day parade in a 1999, the vehicle was re-designated the Type 99 and entered service in 2001. At 57 tons, it comes in between the 70-ton Abrams and the 48-ton T-90 in terms of weight. Several upgrades, including the new Type 99A2 variant, boast advanced new technologies. Beijing fields nearly 500 Type 99s in sixteen armored battalions, and has produced 124 of the newer 99As so far. The type is not offered for export, though some of its technology is used in China’s VT4 export tank.
The Type 99 and the T-90 rely on a 125 millimeter cannons using carousel autoloaders descended from Soviet-era designs. This weapon proved underpowered verses Abrams and Challenger tanks in the Gulf War, but new improved tungsten ammunition leaves it capable of piercing the frontal armor of an Abrams at shorter combat ranges.
The new Type 99A2 comes with a longer barrel main gun, which in theory should impart higher muzzle velocity to sabot shells and improve their armor penetration and accuracy. It also boasts fancy new stabilizer technology.
Reportedly, China intends to eventually install a larger 140 millimeter gun on the Type 99, but early tests have cracked up the weapon. This, incidentally, mirrors Russia’s plans to up-gun its new T-14 Armata tank to a similar caliber weapon.
China has developed its own depleted uranium ammunition for its 125 millimeter gun, which it claims can penetrate the M1 up to ranges of 1.4 kilometers.
The Abrams uses a fourth crewmember to load the gun, which American tankers argue is more reliable, offers a higher rate of fire, and gives the tank a spare hand if one of the other crew members is incapacitated. However, the space needed to accommodate a fourth crew member makes the M1 larger and heavier.
The Type 99 and T-90 both can fire anti-tank missiles from the gun tube, while the Abrams cannot. (The Type 99 uses AT-11 Refleks missiles licensed from Russia). This could theoretically be useful for combat at very long ranges, or against low-flying helicopters. However, tank-launched missiles have existed for fifty years without seeing much use.
Effective sensors for spotting and aiming are arguably as decisive in tank engagements as firepower. Russia has made some strides in tank sights and thermal imagers in recent years, though the general sentiment is that Western sights and sensors remain superior. The T-90A does not carry Russia’s best hardware (some have been upgraded with French Catherine thermal sights), while the T-90MS has an improved Kalina targeting system.
China is known for its excellent electronics, and the Type 99A2 supposedly carries a new infrared tracking system that enables it hunt enemy tanks efficiently and is believed to be superior to the systems on the T-90A.
The Type 99 benefits both from composite armor, and Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA), bricks of explosives onto the tank that prematurely detonate incoming shells. The new Type 99A2 variant uses a multi-layered system thought to be similar to the Relikt ERA developed by Russia, which uses a radar to detonate the ERA before hostile shells impact. It is intended to defeat tandem-charge missiles capable of overcoming older-generation ERA.
The T-90A uses the older Kontakt-5 ERA, while the new T-90MS tanks serving in India sport the Relikt system. Though most effective against anti-tank missiles, both systems also diminish the penetrating power of tank shells.
The Type 99 also comes with a Laser Warning Receiver which warns the tank commander if his vehicle is being painted with hostile targeting lasers, affording the driver a chance to back away out of danger. Given all the videos from Syria and Yemen of tanks sitting obliviously as anti-tank missiles meander towards them (often taking 20 seconds or more to impact), this could significantly improve survivability.
The Type 99 also is believed to come with its own unique high-powered ‘dazzler’ laser designed to jam laser- and infrared-guided missiles, damage enemy sights, and blind the eyes of hostile gunners, possibly with a permanent effect. Fortunately, high-power tank-mounted dazzlers have never been used in combat before, so we have no idea how well they would work.
The Abram’s Rheinmetal 120 millimeter gun, equipped with politically-controversial M829 depleted-uranium rounds, can penetrate around 15-25% more armor. The U.S. now produces new generations of M829 rounds capable of piercing the advanced Kontakt and Relikt reactive armor systems developed by Russia (more on those below).
All interesting stuff, but the author loses me here:
The M1 Abrams lacks its own Laser Warning Receiver, Active Protection Systems or Explosive Reactive Armor, though it is conceivable future upgrades will incorporate some of these features.
The author’s observation that the Type 99 is faster and less gas-guzzling than the M1A2 is, alas, probably accurate.
Instead of retiring the T-80, Russia is upgrading it:
In 2017 the T-80BVM, a deep modernization of the T-80BV, was revealed to the public. This included the new standard Sosna-U thermal sight, a new Relikt explosive reactive armor (ERA) fit and a general overhaul of the chassis, bringing the T-80BV up to the standard of the T-72B3.
The T-80BVM is even superior to the T-72B3 in some aspects, as the ergonomics of the gunner’s station are said to be better than the B3 as the Sosna-U station is placed directly in front of the gunner as opposed to off to the side on the T-72B3. The superior characteristics of the T-80BVM have resulted in it being assigned to the elite 4th Guards Tank Division “Kantemirovskaya” instead of T-72 or T-90 variants.
Canada is having trouble find a good home for its retired Leopard C2 tanks. While I would be happy to take delivery of one, I suspect the cannon muzzle would stick out in the street, and I fear the tank’s weight would degrade my driveway. Plus there are all those pesky federal regulations… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Update: This is curious:
National Interest screwed up the byline here. I did not write the article on the Type 99. I couldn’t tell you who did.
An IDF statement said fighter jets had struck “dozens of military targets” belonging to Iran inside Syria. They included:
Intelligence sites associated with Iran and the “Radical Axis” – a term Israeli officials use to refer to an alliance between Iran, Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas
A logistics headquarters belonging to the Quds Force
A military logistics compound in Kiswah, a town south of Damascus
An Iranian military compound north of Damascus
Quds Force munition storage warehouses at Damascus International Airport
Intelligence systems and posts associated with the Quds Force
Observation and military posts and munition in the Golan demilitarised zone
The Iranian launcher from which the rockets were fired overnight
.
The IDF said it had also targeted several Syrian military air defence systems after they fired at the Israeli fighter jets despite an Israeli “warning”.
Meanwhile, Iran’s missile attack was reportedly a massive failure. “Four of its missiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system and the rest fell in Syrian territory.”
Let’s get the obligatory meme out of the way:
How real remains to be seen. It’s not remotely 1947, 1967, or 1973 real, or even Lebanon 2006 real. It’s probably more real right now than Bekaa Valley 1982 real, which was plenty real enough.
So, I dunno. A three, maybe?
Livemap shows the activity in the theater:
So what happens now? Does the situation escalate or deescalate? I suspect deescalate, mainly because Israel may have run out of Iranian targets in Syria to bomb…
A left-wing Irish documentary maker sets out to make a documentary about the plight of the Palestinians, but gets waylayed by those annoying facts, and instead decides to tell both sides of the story. Guess what? His friends aren’t interested. “The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.”
Israel and Hamas declare a ceasefire after four days of fighting. Honestly, maybe because I was traveling, or because I no longer feel the need to consult MSM news sources on a daily basis, I was actually unaware that there was slightly more violence than usual in the Middle East. The fact that Hamas cried uncle after a mere four days, despite the fact that Israel set it off by giving Hamas leader Zuhair al-Qaissi an express ticket to paradise, tells you that they must really have been getting their asses kicked by the IDF. Maybe Zuhair al-Qaissi really was important, or possibly Iran and Syria have had their hands too full to dole out the Qassam rockets with their customary generosity.
Terror compounds
