The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces, opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against domination by Moscow.
Ukrainian troops, including specialized attack units armed with Western weapons and trained in NATO tactics, intensified their strikes on front-line positions in the country’s southeast on Wednesday night, according to four people in the country’s armed forces, beginning a significant push into Russian-occupied territory.
By “southeast” they mean “Zaporizhzhia,” where most observers have expected the main counteroffensive operational push to come.
Reasons for expressing some skepticism is the MSM source, but everyone has been expecting the counteroffensive to kick off for months. Another reason to assume the counter-offensive is real: Western armor has finally been definitively spotted among Ukrainian forces, including Leopard 2s, Bradleys and French AMX-10s.
“More worryingly was what we saw with the tactics of the armored group. Grouping vehicles closer together like that is just asking for trouble.” But Suchomimus notes we saw some stumbles like trhis at the beginning of the very successful Kherson offensive as well.
The US, and Ukraine are discussing sending 41 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) F/A-18A/B Hornet fighter jets to Ukraine, rather than scrapping them as planned.
Since the US recently granted permission for other Western allies to supply Kyiv with advanced fighter jets, Washington is open to the idea of gifting Ukraine retired RAAF F/A-18 fighter jets, Euromaidan Press reports.
Seventy-five F/A-18A/Bs were acquired by the RAAF from 1985 to replace the ageing Mirage III fighter which had been in service since 1963. The first two aircraft were produced in the US, with the remainder assembled in Australia at Government Aircraft Factories.
Giving them to Ukraine rather than scrapping them makes sense. Australia can’t use them, as they’re transitioning to F-35s, and the U.S. can’t use them since they’ve already transitioned both carrier-based and Marine F/A-18s to the much beefier F/A-18E/F Super-Hornets.
The F/A-18 was originally designed as a carrier plane, but several militaries around the world use them as all-purpose fighter aircraft.
Will Ukraine be able to make use of them? Sure! Just like the F-16s that Ukraine may get sometime, F/A-18A/Bs are reasonably modern fighter aircraft that can more than hold their own against any but the very most modern Russia jet fighters aircraft. (Maybe the Su-57 is better, just like it appears on paper; but a lot of Soviet and Russian gear that looks great on paper turns out to be crap.) One of the first rules of warfare is that you can’t beat something with nothing.
But, as with the F-16, it’s going to take a lot of training before even experienced fighter jet pilots would be cleared to fly F/A-18s in combat. Probably at least six months of type trying in simulators and tandem and solo flying. Maybe more, because Soviet/Russian jets are so different from U.S. jets, maybe less Because War. In any case, it will be too late to take part in the vaunted Spring Counteroffensive, which may or may not be going on right now.
But the way this war has dragged on, there’s a good chance Ukraine will still need them by 2024…
Russia is doing what it always does: Lying about its battlefield achievements. Recently they claimed to have taken out a Patriot missile defense system sent to Ukraine. YouTuber Suchomimus has looked into their claims by comparing them with several relevant satellite images of the site and determined: Not so much.
Update on “the May airstrike in which Russia claimed to have hit two Patriot SAM launchers: we’ve had some newly released satellite imagery which does show signs of damage at the air base in question. However, is not as it seems.”
Satellite images show that one of the two impact craters were present before the Patriot system was installed.
A time sequence shows that the other crater was not in any of the locations where newly dug emplacements showed where new Patriot equipment was stationed.
The U.S. admitted that a Patriot was damaged by the attack, very possibly from shrapnel, but that it was minor and quickly repaired. Satellite image analysis supports this claim.
“While these satellite images are interesting, and they do confirm an impact at the airport, they don’t show evidence of a destroyed Patriot.”
We’ve already covered why Russia’s T-14 Armata tank isn’t all that. Here’s a somewhat more balanced look from David Willey of The Tank Museum:
The first ten minutes covers the basics of Soviet tank design (the philosophy of favoring firepower over just about everything else, and how political rivalries led to various Soviet tank designs). Then he goes into the details of the Armata.
Much of the Armata comes from the abandoned T-95 project. “Although the T14 is looked at as new, it actually relies on systems and ideas from some much earlier projects.”
“The smoothbore 2A821M 125mm cannon is an upgrade from the weapon on the T-90. Russian sources claim its muzzle energy is far greater compared to the Rheinmetall 120mm gun.”
The unmanned turret means no need for a fume extractor.
Theoretical fire rate of 10-12 rounds a minute. I suspect this is highly optimistic and the fire rate is probably the slower one round every ten seconds we already covered.
“The new Vacuum One armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot round is fitted with a 90cm [900mm] long rod penetrator. That’s unusually long. It is said to be capable of penetrating one meter of rolled homogeneous armor at about 2000 meters.” That is quite long. The rod penetrator on the U.S. M829 APFSDS round is 684mm long. Western consensus seems to be that the Vacuum One and Vacuum Two penetrator cores are made of depleted uranium or tungsten.
“The A853 engine was a copy of a German x-shaped engine from the war years…the A853 was not however a reliable product, and from all reports it seems to have had major issues.”
When working, it theoretically has twice the horsepower of a T-72 engine and capable of reaching 56 miles and hour with a range of 500 kilometers.
“The T14 has new 70 centimeter diameter road wheels, and an electronically adjustable suspension system on at least the first two road wheels, and possibly the last ones, and [that’s] called an active suspension system but is fitted over a main torsion bar suspension. It also has rubber-blocked tracks.”
The Armata’s sealed crew compartment will have air conditioning, which was introduced in Russian tanks with the T-90M in 2016. (Starting with M1A2 SEPv2, the Abrams has cooling, but it’s mainly geared toward cooling the electronics.)
Digital screens with remote cameras.
“The gunner can see his target, but he can also choose through those screens a relevant ammunition type.”
“The chassis and turret are equipped with a ‘Malachit’ dual explosive reactive armor system, and on the front sides and the top there’s stealth coatings.” Assuming the ERA is actually there and not fake, as on so many captured and destroyed Russian tanks in Ukraine.
“The active protection system has a radar to detect and tract incoming anti-tank munitions it states a maximum speed of incoming interceptable target is 1700 meters a second, or Mach 5.” Let’s just say I have grave doubts that it actually works. The Pentagon went with Israel’s Trophy active protection system over Raytheon’s homegrown Quick Kill system for M1A2 SEPv3, and Raytheon is good at developing reliable, high tech weapons. Unlike Russia.
“The top of the vehicle is still vulnerable to top attack munitions.” So much for defense against Javelin. Which first entered service in 1996.
“However, on closer inspection a number of these technologies and features are not fitted to some of the vehicles. Some you can see there’s covers where the technology or that piece of equipment should be on others is fitted for, but not with.” And that was on parade demonstration vehicles before sanctions. Odds that Russia would have enough parts to fully equip high tech parts to all Armatas supposedly in Ukraine would appear to be slim.
Though reusing a lot of features from the abandoned T-95 project, “the new T14 tank is a radical departure in sense of its scale, its layout, its design features and technology from that era of evolutionary Soviet-designed vehicles.”
“Originally intended to replace all Russian army tanks, the Russian military had planned to acquire about 2,300 T-14s between 2015 and 2020…but by 2018, delays were announced until at least 2025. Subsequently announcements indicated the apparent cancellation of the main production run.” In between it announced it was going to build 100 of them, though that number may have included other armored vehicles using the same platform.
“The [Russian] Deputy Minister of Defense said, quote, there is currently no need to mass produce the Armata when it’s older predecessors, namely the latest variants of the T-72, remain effective against American, German, and French counterparts.” Here the Deputy Minister of Defense is engaged in a time-honored Russian rhetorical device known as “lying his ass off.”
“The gradual tightening of sanctions, and then with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the problem of sourcing the essential microelectronics has come to the fore. Russian industry has been critically dependent on foreign microelectronics and associated technologies. These are no longer available due to sanctions.”
“The sights from France and other components are no longer available.”
“Other issues come into play that affect the wider Russian defense industries. One is the perennial Russian problem of corruption. Since 2011, a staggering 72,000 officials have appeared before the course on corruption charges.”
“The mythic way many Russian military systems and products have been promoted and sold has met a crushing reality in Ukraine.”
Even though there may only be 20 test vehicles available, there is an expectation they will make appearance in the battle. A British ministry defense statement said, and I quote, any T-14 deployment is likely to be a high-risk decision for Russia. 11 years in development, the program has been dogged with delays reduction in planned Fleet size and reports of manufacturing problems. If Russia deploys a T-14 it will likely primarily be for propaganda purposes. Production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to
trust the vehicle in combat.
So even a balanced, objective analysis of the T-14 Armata isn’t particularly optimistic about its chances in combat.
This is some curious news. Evidently members of anti-Putin Russia militias the Russian Volunteers Corps or the Freedom for Russia Legion has evidently invaded the border town of Kazinka in Belgorod, Russia, with forces that evidently included at least one tank:
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said on Monday that a Ukrainian army ‘sabotage group’ had entered Russian territory in the Graivoron district, which borders Ukraine.
In a statement on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said that the Russian army and security forces were taking measures to repel the incursion.
Earlier, the Telegram channel Baza, which is linked to Russia’s security services, had published footage apparently showing a Ukrainian tank attacking a Russian border post.
It’s a curious story that probably deserves considerable caution in drawing conclusions. False flag operation? Ukraine-backed distraction designed to force Russia to draw troops away from other regions in advance of Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive? Who knows? It seems a bit of a sideshow at this point.
The one thing I wouldn’t expect is for this to be part of a broader anti-Putin uprising by Russians tired of the madness of his disasterous war. That would be too convenient, and we would be far more likely to see evidence of that in Chechnya or Moscow than along the Ukraine border.
That makes me feel that it’s more likely this is a false flag operation to give Putin the excuse to use tactical nukes on the pretext that Ukraine had captured some. But I’m a cynical sort…
Over the last several months, Russia would grind out costly gains in the fighting around Bakhmut, only to see Ukraine reverse most or all of those gains a few days or weeks later. This pattern repeated for month after month, with Russia slowly grinding out costly net gains of territory in and around Bakhmut, without ever completely taking the city.
A Ukrainian military unit said on Wednesday it had routed a Russian infantry brigade from frontline territory near Bakhmut, claiming to confirm an account by the head of Russia’s Wagner private army that the Russian forces had fled.
Later in the day, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, said Russian units in some parts of Bakhmut had retreated by up to 2 km (1.2 miles) as the result of counterattacks. He did not give details.
Wagner units have led a months-long Russian assault on the eastern city, but Ukrainian forces say the offensive is stalling.
Snip.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has repeatedly accused Moscow’s regular armed forces of failing to adequately support his men, said on Tuesday the Russian brigade had abandoned its positions.
“Our army is fleeing. The 72nd Brigade pissed away three square km this morning, where I had lost around 500 men,” Prigozhin said.
This follows up on Friday’s news that Wagner Group troops around Bakhmut had run out of ammo.
Suchomimus has a video that includes a hefty doses of both Azov head (I think Mykyta Nadtochiy) discussing the advances and Prigozhin complaining about it.
Significant news? I think so. Sector collapses in a front that Russia has poured so much equipment and manpower into can’t be good news for their war aims.
Is this Ukraine’s much-vaunted Spring Counteroffensive? I rather doubt it, though a full-scale front collapse would likely draw a significant investment of Ukrainian forces here.
Rather, I think this is a fixing attack, one designed to force Russia to keep all currently assigned troops in this sector to avoid surrendering gains, making it impossible to relocate them to areas of the front where the main action will actually fall.
A Soros-backed DA is stepping down, a Harvard prof lying about playing footsie with commies sentenced, and another Democratic fundraiser convicted of fraud. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Good news, everyone! Soros-backed St. Louis Democrat DA Kim Gardner has resigned.
On Thursday, a progressive prosecutor who was notoriously funded by far-left billionaire George Soros announced her resignation, after months of bipartisan pressure to do so.
Fox News reports that Kim Gardner, the Circuit Attorney for St. Louis, announced that her resignation will be effective June 1st. Gardner was one of the first prosecutors in the country to be bankrolled by Soros, who has since expanded his efforts to other major cities across the country. She was first elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, largely due to Soros’ financial backing. Prior to her resignation announcement, she had declared her intention to run for a third term in 2024.
After years of criticism for being soft on crime and siding with criminals over victims, Gardner faced a whole new wave of criticism from both parties over an incident in February: Teenage volleyball player Janae Edmonson, who was visiting St. Louis from Tennessee for a tournament, was hit by an out-of-control car while crossing the road; although Edmonson survived, she had to have both of her legs amputated.
The driver of the car was Daniel Riley, a man who was out on bond while awaiting trial for an armed robbery case. It was later revealed that Riley had violated the terms of bond dozens of times, but was never arrested. When the blame turned to Gardner for failing to keep him off the streets, she falsely claimed that her office had attempted to have Riley jailed once again, only to be denied by a judge; there are no records of her office filing any such motion or otherwise seeking the revocation of Riley’s bond.
Following the Edmonson incident, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-Mo.) filed a petition quo warranto, the process by which the state attorney general can fire a prosecutor who has been determined to be neglectful of her duties. Bailey claimed that as many as 12,000 criminal cases have been dismissed due to Gardner’s failures, with another 9,000 having been thrown out right before they were set to go to trial, due to Garnder’s office refusing to provide evidence and speedy trials for defendants.
After Gardner’s announcement, Bailey released a statement demanding that she vacate her office immediately, rather than wait for another month.
Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said he will pull his mercenaries out of the meat grinder that is the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 10, one day after Russia’s Victory Day Celebrations, which Russian president Vladimir Putin is expected to use to shore up support for the Russian invasion.
The Wagner Group, a well-known mercenary unit known to be one of Russia’s most competent fighting divisions, is leading the charge on Bakhmut, a city that that has gained outsized symbolic importance.
“I am withdrawing the Wagner PMC units from Bakhmut, because in the absence of ammunition they are doomed to senseless death,” Prigozhin said in full military fatigues and carrying an automatic weapon. The video he released showed him surrounded by masked Wagner fighters. Prigozhin also released a statement to the same effect.
His forces had no choice but to withdraw to rear bases to “lick the wounds,” said Prigozhin, as translated by the Washington Post. If Wagner goes through with the withdrawal, it would be viewed as catastrophic in terms of morale. The Russian invasion has ground to a standstill after large-scale Russian and Ukrainian offensives last year. Kyiv, which has been amassing ammunitions including tanks and fighter jets, is expected to launch a fresh counterattack in the very near future.
Prigozhin also launched a remarkable video tirade overnight on Telegram in which he displayed bodies of dozens of Wagner soldiers killed in Bakhmut. He angrily laid into the Russian Defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, for supplying Wagner with only 30 percent of the ammunition that’s needed.
The statement released today claimed that number was even lower, standing at 10 percent.
One caveat is that we’ve heard complaints from Prigozhin about his ammo supply before.
Russian soldiers dig trenches in horse graveyard in occupied Ukraine. Now they have anthrax.
“Biden CIA chief met with Epstein several times after financier convicted of child sex crime. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns had three meetings with Jeffrey Epstein in 2014, when the top spy official was deputy secretary of state and after Epstein was convicted of child sex exploitation.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Harvard chemistry professor sentenced for lying about ties to CCP…Former Harvard University Chemistry Department Chair Charles M. Lieber was sentenced Wednesday to time served and over $80,000 in fines for committing fraud and for failing to disclose his connections to the Chinese Communist Party.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
New Jersey Democratic campaign strategist James Devine was charged with election fraud for allegedly submitting more than 1,900 fake petitions to help secure a 2021 Democratic gubernatorial primary ballot spot for candidate Lisa McCormick, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced Tuesday.
Devine was McCormick’s campaign manager and sent the fake voter certifications to the New Jersey Secretary of State’s Division of Elections via email in April 2021, but the New Jersey Democratic State Committee challenged his attempt days later, arguing that all the forms featured same the style of signature and at least one of the named voters was deceased, Platkin said.
A judge subsequently took McCormick off the primary ballot, and Devine is now charged with third-degree offenses concerning nomination certificates or petitions, tampering with public records or information and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records.
LoRA updates are very cheap to produce (~$100) for the most popular model sizes. This means that almost anyone with an idea can generate one and distribute it. Training times under a day are the norm. At that pace, it doesn’t take long before the cumulative effect of all of these fine-tunings overcomes starting off at a size disadvantage. Indeed, in terms of engineer-hours, the pace of improvement from these models vastly outstrips what we can do with our largest variants, and the best are already largely indistinguishable from ChatGPT. Focusing on maintaining some of the largest models on the planet actually puts us at a disadvantage.
I didn’t mean to do two big “Russian fire” stories back-to-back, but this seems like potentially big news:
A fire broke out on the territory of the Motovilikha Plant defence holding in Perm, Russia.
Source: Kommersant citing Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation and Motovilikha Plant
Details: Photos of the fire were posted by Perm’s social networks. Smoke from the territory of the plant is visible from different locations in Perm.
The Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation stated that a report of a fire on the territory of PJSC Motovilikha Plants was received at 20:08. After arriving on location, it was established that the transformer booth was on fire. 37 people and 10 pieces of equipment from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia were involved in extinguishing the fire. The previous area of the fire was 10 square metres.
Quote: “Today, a fire broke out at the transformer substation on the territory of the enterprise. The fire was promptly contained by the specialists of the Ministry of Emergency Situations who went to the spot,” the press office of the PJSC Motovilikha Plant reported.
Frankly, those giant plums of smoke don’t look particularly contained.
The transformer station belongs to the VK-2 boiler house (MZ subsidiary – Teplo-M LLC). According to the media sources, the fire did not affect the power supply of the boiler house.
As Kommersant writes, PJSC Motovilikha Plant, Russia’s only manufacturer of multiple rocket launcher systems, has been in the tender process since 2018. At the time of its introduction, the company’s registered debt amounted to about RUB 17.6 billion. The production activity of mashholding is concentrated in its subsidiary structures: Special Design Bureau CJSC is engaged in the manufacture of weapons, and the rest of the production is carried out by Motovilikha – civil engineering, LLC. The PJSC property complex is put up for auction.
Could be shoddy Russian safety protocols. Could be sabotage from anti-war Russian partisans. Could be Ukraine action, though Perm is some 2,300 kilometers from Kiev. Could just be Uncle Ivan torching the place for some Goodfellas-esque debt erasure.
But whatever the cause, MLRS systems are a huge part of “the Russian Way of War,” and having their main factory offline is going to put a huge crimp in Russian field operations.
Busy Saturday, so enjoy a couple of Suchomimus videos about a Crimean oil refinery that Ukrainian drones made blow up real good.
Here’s footage of the refinery burning bright in the forests of the night:
“This video is showing a burning oil refinery in Depot at Kozaka Bay near Sevastopol Harbor in Crimea.”
“This took place at 4:30 AM, and it was said to be a UAV. Given the size of a blaze I would say it seems that multiple UAVs were used here.” Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that refined petroleum products are naturally very sploady and Russian safety standards and precautions suck harder than Kamala Harris.
And follow-up footage of the fire mostly controlled, but showing two oil storage tanks totally destroyed and several others damaged:
“This oil storage facility is one which supplied the Black Sea Fleet, so we’re going to have to wait and see if it’s loss will have an impact on operations from there.”
It remains an open question how much Russia has actually used its Black Sea Fleet since the sinking of Moskva over a year ago. Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention, or maybe not much news leaks out, but we don’t hear a lot about the black Sea Fleet playing a significant role in the conflict beyond occasionally participating in the missile wave attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
Also, one wonders how much gasoline and diesel is flowing into Crimea without the Kerch Strait Bridge back at full rail capacity. I see only one other oil refinery in all of Crimea, a tiny one near Voinka Boihka that could just be a storage facility. And given the lack of visible cars and trucks in Google map images, it may not even be active.
All the more reason to believe that a counterattack taking Melitopol would make Russian resupply of troops in Crimea exceptionally difficult…
Russia has begun using its new T-14 Armata battle tanks to fire on Ukrainian positions “but they have not yet participated in direct assault operations,” the RIA state news agency reported on Tuesday, quoting a source close the matter.
RIA said that the tanks have been fitted with extra protection on their flanks and crews have undergone “combat coordination” at training grounds in Ukraine.
The T-14 tank has an unmanned turret, with crew remotely controlling the armaments from “an isolated armoured capsule located in the front of the hull.”
The tanks have a maximum speed on the highway of 80 kilometres (50 miles) per hour, RIA reported.
In January, British military intelligence reported that Russian forces in Ukraine were reluctant to accept the first tranche of the tanks due to their “poor condition.”
It also said that any deployment of the T-14 would likely be “a high-risk decision” for Russia, and one taken primarily for propaganda purposes.
“Production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat,” the British military said.
“Eleven years in development, the programme has been dogged with delays, reduction in planned fleet size, and reports of manufacturing problems.”
Here’s a brief overview video:
The T-14 has had more than its share of developmental problems, and there are plenty of articles and videos detailing its shortcomings. Lazer Pig’s “The T-14 Armata tank sucks” is a long example of the genre.
If your interest level doesn’t support viewing a full hour of Armata-bashing, here are some takeaways:
“The T14 combines all the ultimate Russian technology previously introduced onto NATO tanks 25 years ago in a way that only a country trying to inflate the share prices of Raytheon would understand.” (Raytheon makes Javelin.)
“It does away with all the unnecessary ERA systems of the T90, which cannot protect the tank against missiles that were invented in the 80s, and instead replaces them with an active protection system that can almost defend the tank against missiles that were invented in the 90s.”
“An auto loader famous for jamming that now cannot be accessed and cleared when it does jam, is somehow heavier and slower than the tank it has replaced, and comes combined together in a package so expensive the company that made it immediately went bankrupt. The country that bought it cannot afford it and it has about as much export potential as English whiskey.”
“For a while, every idiot with even the vaguest sense of military interest was banging on about this tank as if Stalin had come back to life and had personally forged the hull from his own ball sack. And that all tanks across every nation in the world had just been rendered obsolete.”
Sections on repeated post-Soviet tank design failures, like the T-95 and Black Knight, and coverage of Russian brain drain, omitted.
The weird, Tiger-2 derived engine is unreliable.
The driver’s vision sucks.
No crew access to the turret internally.
The autoloader is slower than the manual fire rates on T-80s, T-72s and Abrams.
“The qualifying time for [an Abrams] loader to pass training is seven seconds, and the best crews claim they can reload in about four to five seconds. Meaning a good Abrams can fire twice before the T-14 has reloaded.”
“Ukrainian hackers found that most of the electronic systems on board, including the digital sights, the night vision, the infrared, were all in fact western imports. Most notably, these were last generation French optics from Leclerc MBTs left over from when they were all upgraded to ICONE in 2009.”
Current Russian tank optics are actually available to the general public. “They’re not even the best that are currently available. If you’ve got a spare five grand, you can go into any high-end spy gadget store and buy a drone that will give you better night vision and IR tracking capabilities than the latest generation of modern Russian tanks.”
China reportedly found out that none of the tank’s systems actually worked. “The soft kill defense systems were simply smoke screens, and the hard kill systems designed specifically to stop the Javelin and the TOW missile could not detect if either of these systems had been fired at the tank, and relied entirely on the crew being able to notice a missile traveling at the speed of sound flying towards them.”
“To top it off, there was no evidence of the supposed electronic warfare systems that could render guided missiles and mines inert.”
“Nothing in the Armata is new.”
The idea that western tanks need to catch up to the Armata is laughable. “By the time the Armata enters service, it will already be outdated.”
“Everything the Armata is has been done before, and in many cases has been done better.”
“Russia is not an equal to the United States and NATO, it’s an equal to North Korea, both technologically backwards nations.”
Will all those problems still be present when the Armata engages enemy armor in Ukraine? Some certainly will. I doubt Armata electronics or optics can compare to those on western vehicles, and I bet that its active protection package is miles behind Trophy (which I don’t think will be on any Ukrainian tanks anyway). But I do suspect they’ve had enough time to improve the reliability of the engine, and I’m guessing the armor and autoloader improvements will improve survivability for the tank crew.
Can the Armata take out Ukraine’s legacy Soviet tanks? Almost certainly. Can it take out Challenger 2s, Leopard 2s, and M1A2 Abrams? If it’s able to close in and get off the first shot, probably. But I’m guessing it will find the opportunities to do so few and far between.
