Some Iran War updates, Russo-Ukrainian War updates, Democrats, Trannies, and Tranny Democrat child sex offenders, a Democrat judge bonds out a would-be jihad mass murderer, Bible discussion turns a bus rider stabby, and gamers come out against AI “assistance.” Plus: Marlene Dietrich, show us your guns!
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Still having the occasional 429 error, but if I wait an hour, they seem to clear.
President Trump weighs boots on the ground options in Iran. In addition to the Marines, the storied 82nd Airborne Division is an option.
IRGC “Brigadier General Ali Mohammad Naeini killed in overnight strike.” “Naeini had been the public face of Iran’s military communications throughout the conflict.” Not anymore…
When co-host David Friedberg asked Fetterman point-blank, “Who do you think leads the Democratic Party today?” the Pennsylvania senator didn’t flinch. “Oh, we don’t have one,” he said. “I think the TDS, that’s the leader right now. You know, right now our party is governed by the TDS.”
Fetterman then described what that governance actually looks like in practice – a kind of loyalty test that runs in reverse. Opposition to Trump has become the organizing principle, the ideological north star. Agree with anything the other side does and you face consequences. “It’s made it virtually impossible, without being punished, as a Democrat, to agree something’s good, or ‘I agree with the other side,'” he said.
He then cited Operation Epic Fury – the U.S. military campaign against Iran – as the latest illustration of the problem. Fetterman said he is “literally the only Democrat […] in Congress, that I’ve come across that’s saying, ‘I think it’s a great thing to break and destroy the Iranian regime.’ I think it’s entirely appropriate to hold them accountable.”
Fetterman correctly pointed out that this is not a fringe or even partisan position, historically. Every Democrat who ran for president in recent memory vowed Iran would never get a nuclear weapon. Now that it’s actually happening, the party’s response has been mostly blind criticism of President Trump for finally taking action.
Fetterman previously accused Democrats of refusing to put “country over party” over the Iran strikes.
“The last two professional candidates for the Democratic Party all agreed that we can never allow Iran to acquire nuclear bombs, and that’s made that possible now. I think we can say, ‘Hey, that’s a great thing. That makes the world more safe, more secure and holds Iran accountable,’” he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity earlier this month, after 53 House Democrats voted against a resolution declaring that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism — something which isn’t remotely in doubt. “That’s almost 25% of Democrats in the House that can’t just call Iran the world’s biggest terrorism underwriter,” Fetterman added.
“Virtually every Democrat that I’m aware of says we can never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb, and they were a significant risk to America,” Fetterman continued. “I know why they [Democrats] don’t say that now because I’m aware that it is very damaging as a Democrat to just happen to agree with the president on anything. But, for me, that’s easy — country over party.”
Deep State functionaries seem unclear on tricky concepts like “chain of command” and “democracy.” “”US intel hid Chinese 2020 election meddling from Trump because they opposed his policies.” “Dr. Barry A. Zulauf, a member of the Senior National Intelligence Service reported that others in the intelligence community said ‘I don’t want my intelligence going to the White House where it will be used by that vulgarian in the Oval Office to support policies against China with which I personally disagree.'”
Analysts inside the U.S. intelligence community sought to conceal evidence of Chinese influence efforts from President Donald Trump during the 2020 election, with analysts saying they didn’t want their intel used by “that vulgarian in the Oval Office” to pursue policies toward China they personally disagreed with.
The revelation is found within a January 2021 report written by — and never before reported upon comments by — analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf, who conducted a review of the spy community’s handling of Russian versus Chinese meddling efforts during the 2020 election. Among his conclusions was that intelligence analysts downplayed China’s actions because they had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump and did not want to support the policies and priorities of the Trump administration toward China with which they “personally disagree.”
Just the News reported this week that the U.S. intelligence community has known since early 2020 that Beijing also gained access to American voter registration data and used that information to conduct opinion analysis related to the presidential election between Trump and then-former Vice President Joe Biden.
This is not the only piece of evidence pointing to Chinese government election influence efforts in the 2020 election. Although much about China’s activities in 2020 remains classified, Just the News conducted a thorough review of publicly-available intelligence assessments, federal indictments, foreign government warnings, and cybersecurity firm analyses.
There is credible evidence that Chinese government-linked cyber hackers and Chinese social media troll farms took aim at the U.S. presidential election in 2020 and sought to undercut Trump during his run against now-former President Biden. There are also indicators that Chinese intelligence and law enforcement agencies — China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and its Ministry of Public Security (MPS) — also played a role in 2020.
Republicans love America. Democrats’ love for America is contingent on a Democrat in the White House.
A man who was shot and killed by police in Dallas was part of Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s security detail, multiple sources reported on Friday.
According to CBS News, the individual in question was “known publicly as Mike King,” although he’d been using various aliases to gain employment.
He was also running a business that placed law enforcement officers in off-duty jobs — and was a figure present near Crockett at numerous campaign stops during her failed bid to gain the party’s Senate nomination, as photographic evidence showed.
King was fatally shot Wednesday after a standoff with a SWAT team in Dallas outside of Children’s Medical Center.
According to DFW Scanner, a site that chronicles crime reports from police scanners in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the suspect “barricaded himself in a vehicle at 1934 Medical District Drive.”
“Officers used tear gas in an effort to get the suspect out of the vehicle. He exited the vehicle armed with a gun, and pointed it at officers,” the report noted. “Officers opened fire and killed the suspect.”
Early reports indicated that he was a fugitive who was known to police and was under investigation for impersonation of a law enforcement officer.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Democrats just have a gift for hiring they best, don’t they?
“Reddit’s biggest trans moderator was just unmasked as convicted child sex abuser.” Branden “Brynn” Dunleavy. “The whistleblower, who waved the red flag, said he thinks this Branden and his crimes were deliberately shielded” by other Reddit moderators. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Monsterous: “Transgender ‘youth advocate’ was just charged with raping a BABY GIRL.” William Kelso Flournoy IV even filmed himself doing it. Hell’s too good for him.
The accusations come from two of the alleged victims themselves, one who was 12 when she said the sexual abuse started. The other alleged victim quoted in the piece was 13 when she says Chavez sexually abused her:
Ana Murguia remembers the day the man she had regarded as a hero called her house and summoned her to see him. She walked along a dirt trail, entered the rundown building, passed his secretary and stepped into his office.
He locked the door, as he always did when he called her, and told her how lonely he had been. He brought her onto the yoga mat that he often used in his office for meditation, kissed her and pulled her pants down. “Don’t tell anyone,” he told her afterward. “They’d get jealous.”
The man, Cesar Chavez, one of the most revered figures in the Latino civil rights movement, was 45. She was 13. Ms. Murguia said she was summoned for sexual encounters with him dozens of times over the next four years.
[…]
Ms. Murguia and Ms. [Debra] Rojas, both of whom are now 66, were the daughters of longtime organizers who had marched in rallies alongside Mr. Chavez. He used the privacy of his California office to frequently molest Ms. Murguia, she said. He had known her since she was 8 years old. She became so traumatized that she attempted to end her life multiple times by the age of 15.
How is it so many Democrat “community organizers” and “activists” turn out to be sexual predators? Those movements seem to draw them like flies to an open sewer…
Fallout: “Abbott Blocks Annual Cesar Chavez Observation in Texas.”
Samuel James Hall, a green card holder from Great Britain, appeared in federal court on a misdemeanor charge of voting by an alien. According to his defense attorney, James Alston, Hall has lived in the Houston area for several years but is not a U.S. citizen. Federal prosecutors allege he cast a ballot in Harris County during the 2024 General Election, voting in races for president, vice president, U.S. Senate, and the House of Representatives. The charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in federal prison. Hall posted bond and is free while his case moves through court.
“Former MD Anderson Researcher Pleads Guilty To Stealing Cancer Research for China.” “Harris County court records show that Yunhai Li pleaded guilty on March 6 to a state jail felony charge of attempted theft of trade secrets. He was recently sentenced to 364 days in the Harris County jail and received credit for 196 days already served, indicating a remaining time in jail of 168 days. Court records indicate Li, 35, is expected to be deported upon release.” (Previously.)
After paying Bari Weiss $150 million for The Free Press and hiring her to run their newsroom, CBS News announced a fresh round of layoffs on Friday which will affect over 60 jobs, or 6% of the news division, according to the NY Times.
“Certain parts of this newsroom need to get smaller in order for us to make room for the things that we need to build to remain competitive in the future,” said Weiss, who entered the scene last October, during a Friday newsroom-wide conference call.
The move follows roughly 100 layoffs last year, while ratings have continued to plummet under Weiss.
Today’s round includes the entirety of CBS News Radio – a century-old division that “served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927,” said network president Tom Cibrowski in a memo.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the average CBS Radio news listener age is around 85…
After decades of relying on Vietnam-era designs, the Army has approved the first offensive hand grenade to enter the service since 1968.
The new M111 Offensive Hand Grenade was approved for full material release this year, the Army announced Tuesday in a statement. The new grenade relies primarily on blast overpressure rather than fragmented inner pieces to incapacitate, making it better suited for close-quarters combat inside of buildings, bunkers and tunnels.
Full material release allows the Army to field the weapon across the force after testing has confirmed that it meets safety and performance requirements. The approval lets the Army move the grenade from development into production.
The Army’s standard M67 fragmentation grenade explodes shrapnel in all directions, making it risky for soldiers to use in tight spaces. Blast overpressure refers to the intense pressure wave created by an explosion.
“One of the key lessons learned from the door-to-door urban fighting in Iraq was the M67 grenade wasn’t always the right tool for the job. The risk of fratricide on the other side of the wall was too high,” said Col. Vince Morris, the Army’s project manager for Close Combat Systems, in the statement. But a weapon utilizing blast overpressure instead of fragmentation, he said, “can clear a room of enemy combatants quickly leaving nowhere to hide while ensuring the safety of friendly forces.”
The M111 is intended to replace the body and fuze of the Mk3A2 grenade series, which has an asbestos body that has restricted its use. Unlike the Mk3A2, the new weapon has a plastic casing that is consumed during detonation.
It also uses the same fuze system as the M67 grenade, allowing the service to streamline manufacturing.
With 310 meters in length and roughly 90 meters at the beam, the 80,000-tonne France Libre will dwarf its predecessor, the 42,000-tonne Charles de Gaulle, which has served as the Marine Nationale‘s sole carrier strike platform since 2001. Power will come from a pair of TechnicAtome K-22 pressurized water reactors, granting the vessel virtually unlimited range and endurance at speeds of up to 27 knots via three shaft lines. Crew complement (including air wing) is set to be about 2,000 sailors.
They’re targeting it to be ready for service in 2038.
Insane story out of Houston: “Armed Man Wearing Tactical Gear Arrested for Attempted Entry to Klein Elementary School.”
A 39-year-old man in tactical gear, armed with a handgun and taser, attempted entry to Zwink Elementary in Klein Independent School District (ISD) on March 10.
Kyle Chris lives four minutes away from the school and was arrested on the evening of March 11, more than 24 hours after the incident. He has a felony charge of unlawfully carrying a weapon in a prohibited place.
District officials say Chris was able to enter an initial set of front doors during a 15-second period after a parent entered and before the doors shut completely. Zwink Elementary’s double-door system kept Chris in the entrance and stopped him from entering the area of the school with access to students.
But the story gets even more insane: “Kyle Chris” turns out to be “Muhi Mohanad Najm” and Democrat Judge Lori Chambers Gray bonded him out for $75K.
Talking about the Bible on a bus in Austin? That’s a stabbing. Boy, Steve Adler’s decision to lure drug addicted transients to Austin, and Jose Garza’s determination to keep violent lunatics on the streets, just keep paying dividends.
Among the numerous things he predicted incorrectly:
In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death [from mass famine].
This was, of course, entirely false. It did not happen. It is hard to overstate how wrong this was. Indeed, after the communist-run Great Leap Forward famine in 1950s-1960s China, major famines have become a vanishing rarity on the global stage
Snip.
Elsewhere, in a comical essay that presented itself as being written from the future, Ehrlich claimed the U.S. population in 1999 would be around 22 million, the result of a famine-induced “Great Die-Off.”
There is a personality type that every institution eventually learns to fear. Not the whistleblower. Not the activist. Not the dissident. Those are legible threats. They want something. They have an agenda. They can be categorized, managed, countered, discredited.
The personality the institution cannot process is the person who corrects errors because they are errors.
Not because the correction serves their interests. Not because they are aligned against the people who made the error. Not because they are building a case or advancing a cause or positioning themselves for advantage. Because the error exists. Because it is wrong. Because someone published a number that is not the right number, and the wrong number is sitting there, propagating, being cited, being absorbed, being built upon, and nobody is fixing it.
This person will spend three hours writing a detailed correction of a statistical claim in a policy document that has nothing to do with their field, their career, their politics, or their life. They will do this for free. They will do it knowing that the correction will make them no friends and several enemies. They will do it on a Saturday. They will do it again the following Tuesday when they find another error in a different document.
If you ask them why, the answer is: because it’s wrong.
That answer is incomprehensible to most institutional actors. And the incomprehension is the beginning of the immune response.
It’s not our job to make sure nVidia’s fucking shit lands. It’s my job to identify when their shit has not landed and has, in fact, remained suspended in mid-air. It’s not a great metaphor. And I guess I say it’s not our job, but that’s not really true; they’re the entire economy. We all work for them, in a literal way. The rational play here is to suck as many dicks as possible, and to suck them on an industrial scale. We might suck a dick here, a dick there, but we need to be thinking about these firm rods like a Henry Ford or a Ray Croc. You better clap to keep this fucking fairy alive or your gramma is gonna have to live in a hedge like a witch.
I saw impressive environmental lighting for sure, but that’s not what punched people in the gut. All people did was respond viscerally to Grace Ashcroft. That’s not who she is. We had an uncanny valley, and now we have… I dunno. An “Eerie Mesa.” We don’t like that either. And when I say we don’t like it, I mean our bones don’t like it. There’s a Eurogamer article on nVidia’s response, which is to say that we don’t know everything and are thinking about it wrong, which is a great pitch. I talked to Gabe a couple years ago about how eventually nVidia would just… do it. Do it all, do the whole shebang. Expound mathemagically on base assets and shim the whole thing. I wish I’d said so at the time! I could link back to it, and simply deploy the Lemmy Face. In the meantime, it’s not clear to me that the developers I’m interested in are gonna feel like jacking this thing off until their game doesn’t look scary.
Speaking of people rejecting scary faces, Meta is closing down it’s virtual realty project after pouring $80 billion on it. Or saying they lost $80 billion so they can rake off the money somewhere else…
Mark Felton has a fun video up covering Marlene Dietrich’s guns she brought back after entertaining U.S. troops in Europe during World War II, including gifts from Omar Bradley and George S. Patton!
Dune Part 3 trailer drops. The difficulty here is that Parts 1 and 2 were made from Dune, which is a great novel, where this is made from Dune Messiah, which isn’t. Indeed, Dune Messiah takes place after Muad’Dib’s jihad has swept the galaxy, and it looks like there will be a lot more jihad in the movie than the book. I’m guessing this is the rare case where the movie may be better than the book.
U.S. forces pass the 5,500 targets mark, the regime starts emptying the bank accounts of citizens to stay afloat, China’s weapons are (still) garbage, more Iranian planes cratered on runways, a tanker burns off Iraq, Weekend at Mojtaba’s, and the idea that our troops in harm’s way might be eating well enrages the Democrat Media Complex.
CENTCOM operations briefing:
“Every day, we’re striking hard at Iranian ballistic missile and drones. To date, we have struck more than 5,500 targets inside Iran including more than 60 ships using a variety of precision weapon systems.”
“Since the first 24 hours of this campaign, Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks have dropped drastically but it’s worth pointing out that Iranian forces continue to deliberately target innocent civilians in Gulf countries while hiding behind their own people as they launch attacks from highly populated cities in Iran.”
“Our warfighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds, so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.
Note that YouTube’s auto-translate function renders Operation Epic Fury as “Operation Epicure,” so if you see that somewhere in any Iran reports, you know someone was asleep at the switch…
Iran’s attacks targeting radars and other missile defense equipment in the Gulf have not achieved the regime’s objective of degrading air defenses enough to reliably penetrate them. Interception rates of ballistic missiles have not changed significantly.
Iran likely seeks to preserve the option to threaten, disrupt, and selectively control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz without fully halting Iranian crude exports that still rely on the waterway by mining it heavily.
The combined force continues to target several key internal security sites in Tehran City and Kurdish-populated areas in northwestern Iran. An open-source intelligence (OSINT) analyst reported that the combined force struck several internal security sites in Marivan City, Kurdistan Province, which is about 10 miles east of the Iran-Iraq border in northwestern Iran. Marivan City and other mountainous cities in Kurdistan Province are hotspots for anti-regime protests and clashes between Iranian security forces and Kurdish anti-regime groups.
Russia is reportedly sharing advanced drone tactics with Iran to support Iranian attacks against US forces and assets in the Middle East, which highlights deepening cooperation between key US adversaries. The CNN report comes after three unspecified officials told the Washington Post on March 6 that Russia has provided Iran with the locations of US military assets, including warships and aircraft, since the war started on February 28.
China continues to supply Iran with precursors for solid fuel to support Iran’s ballistic missile program. An OSINT analyst reported on March 11 that the Iranian cargo vessel Barzin departed Gaolan Port in China, likely carrying a shipment of missile fuel precursors, and is now en route to Iran.
Some elements of Hezbollah’s political support appear to be fracturing due to Hezbollah’s participation in the war. Hezbollah ally, the Amal Movement, recently voted in favor of the Lebanese cabinet’s decision to ban Hezbollah’s military activity. The Amal Movement has been Hezbollah’s key political and strategic ally since 2005.
Not a lot new there if you’ve been following along here.
Has the regime run out of money and just started stealing?
The Iranian Mullah Regime cannot meet the payroll of the Regime Security Forces…
…so, it is stealing the next payroll from everyone else.
Food security issues started the last Iranian mass insurrection. The Mullah Regime just lit the short fuze for the next one. https://t.co/xIIQaxfTWe
Coalition air power continues to pound the greater Tehran area:
Iran got $5 billion in Chinese MilTech that proved absolutely worthless:
And it changes EVERYTHING about who's really fighting this war.
🚨 CHINA SECRETLY ARMED IRAN WITH $5 BILLION IN WEAPONS →EVERY SINGLE ONE FAILED 🚨
A secret oil-for-weapons deal between China and Iran has been exposed by Reuters. Beijing raided its own People's Liberation Army… pic.twitter.com/nesaOtWeKt
CHINA SECRETLY ARMED IRAN WITH $5 BILLION IN WEAPONS →EVERY SINGLE ONE FAILED 🚨
A secret oil-for-weapons deal between China and Iran has been exposed by Reuters. Beijing raided its own People’s Liberation Army inventory to fast-track delivery before the war started.
$5 BILLION. Pulled from China’s own military stockpile.
WHAT HAPPENED:
→ US-Israeli strikes destroyed the ENTIRE stockpile on DAY ONE
→ CM-302 missiles launched at US Navy – ZERO hits
→ Some malfunctioned mid-flight. Others intercepted by SM-3 and SM-6
→ 100% failure rate. Not a single US warship scratched.
💀 China’s “world’s best anti-ship missile” = couldn’t hit a destroyer
💀 CM-302 has NO data link, NO satellite guidance, NO active terminal tracking
💀 Once launched it flies BLIND — and the US Navy knew it
💀 $5 BILLION in Chinese weapons = DESTROYED in hours
⚠️ China denied the deal publicly. Reuters confirmed it.
⚠️ This violates the UN weapons embargo reimposed last September
⚠️ China pulled weapons from its OWN military – meaning its Pacific fleet is now WEAKER
They’re showing you Iran’s missile launches and calling it a threat.
They’re NOT showing you that China armed Iran with its best weapons → and they ALL failed against American destroyers.
You don’t secretly arm a country with $5 billion in weapons from your own military unless you’re betting on them winning. China bet everything on Iran. And lost.
Oil terminals at Iraqi ports on Thursday said they have suspended operations following attacks on tankers near its waters, according to Iraqi authorities cited by state media.
Farhan al-Fartousi, director general of the state-owned General Company for Ports of Iraq (GCPI), said was quoted by the Iraqi News Agency (INA) as saying, “The operation of oil ports has been suspended, commercial ports continue operations.”
Ships remain in the waiting area, and loading and unloading are ongoing at the North and South Um Qasr ports, the INA reported.
This decision, the news outlet reported, was taken after a tanker loaded with petroleum products – supplied by the Iraqi State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) to the Iraqi Oil Tankers Company, “was involved in an incident”.
Al-Fartousi said that the vessel was carrying a fuel supply tank in the Ship-to-Ship (STS) transfer area and was in the process of loading when it was hit by an explosion. He added that “one of the smaller tankers involved flies the Maltese flag.”
SOMO is Iraq’s national company responsible for marketing and exporting the country’s crude oil and fuel oil. Headquartered in Baghdad, it manages sales to international buyers.
As per the Iraqi News Agency, rescue teams from the company, in coordination with naval units in the SDS area, recovered 38 people, including one confirmed dead. Specialized firefighting tugs from Basra Oil Port were deployed to extinguish fires on both vessels, while search-and-rescue teams continue to look for missing crew members.
There’s video:
The US loses a KC-135 refueling tanker over Iraq, evidently due to an aerial collision with another friendly aircraft (which landed safely). Rescue efforts “ongoing.”
“An SAS base in Iraq was hit by a barrage of drones last night as top UK generals confirmed that Russia was ‘definitely’ helping Iran.”
I have to give leftists and Democrats some credit because they put in no effort to conceal their true feelings, objectives, or that their hatred for President Donald Trump blinds them.
They lost their minds when data showed that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spent a lot of money to improve the lives of the military.
They latched onto the $20 million spent on steaks, lobster tails, and crab legs.
How Pete Hegseth spent taxpayer funds:
$225 million for furniture
$15.1 million for ribeye steak
$6.9 million on lobster tail
$5.3 million for new Apple devices
$2 million for Alaskan king crab
$139,224 on donuts
$124,000 for ice cream machines
$98,329 for a grand piano
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) March 10, 2026
Snip.
Also, who is “they?”
Didn’t Congress allocate the money for the Defense Department?
What does the allocated money have to do with healthcare costs, SNAP, and other services that do not fall under the defense budget?
Am I missing something here? Doesn’t Congress have to approve the budgets? How did the “they” cut those costs?
If Congress doesn’t want the military to eat well, have treats, and have a better life while serving, then maybe don’t hand the department billions.
More on that subject via Stephen Green at Instapundit:
I've heard Democrats complain more loudly about our soldiers being well fed than about fraud in California or Minnesota. They sure do have their priorities. They seem to only be upset about the military spending because they'd prefer the lobster and steak to go to illegal aliens.
As usually, this is just what I was able to collect from various sources. If you think I’ve missed anything important, feel free to share it in comments below.
Tanks rarely feature in Hollywood movies about the Vietnam War (Full Metal Jacket is the only exception that comes to mind), so you might be forgiven for thinking they didn’t play any role in the conflict. In fact, several armored vehicles were used by American and AVRN forces quite effectively there, as covered in this video from the UK Tank Museum:
The main armored vehicles used were:
The M48 Patton Tank:
It was the US Marine Corps that insisted on bringing them to Vietnam. “Deep ditches and steep grades are no problem for the Patton 48.” The M48 A3 had 110mm of frontal armor, but probably more important for its service in Vietnam was the construction. It’s cast, not welded. And this proved invaluable. The communist forces regularly used improvised anti-tank mines, often made from unexploded US ordinance, and the curved underside of the M48 was effective at deflecting the blast of such devices.
On top of that, the M48’s 90mm main gun, plus 50 cal and M60 secondary armament could lay down a withering field of fire, either in support of infantry in the open or in perimeter defense. It didn’t take the US Marine Corps long to prove the M48’s worth. In Operation Starlight in August 1965, the Marines destroyed the first Vietcong regiment on the Vatang Peninsula. A report on the action stated that tanks were the difference between expected heavy casualties and the light casualties we actually took.
By 1966, operations like Hastings and Prairie proved that tanks and marines working in close cooperation was the best way to destroy VC strong points and slash enemy supply routes in wide aggressive sweeps. Despite some continuing reluctance from MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam], tanks were proving far more useful than previously thought.
Another major challenge in Vietnam was ambush. Communist forces would create killing zones up to a kilometer long stretching along key highways. They planted improvised mines to disable lead vehicles and anti-personnel mines and punji spikes at the side of the road to take out infantry dismounting from trapped and stationary vehicles. Once again, tanks proved themselves a huge asset in combating the problem. The M48s would place themselves front and rear of the convoy. The tanks at the rear would have their turrets facing after. If the convoy was attacked, the tanks could often ride through any initial blast or push damaged vehicles off the road, allowing the convoy to keep moving. The armor would then cloverleaf, swinging out from front and rear to envelop the enemy. If all went to plan, they could quickly turn the tables on the attackers as their firepower came into play.
Another counter ambush tactic was the thunderun. A pair of Pattons would take up position either side of the road with one track on the road surface and the other on the verge. They would then race ahead of the column, hosing down likely ambush sites. If they hit a mine, it seldom did more than throw a road wheel. And if they made it through unscathed, the route was considered safe for soft skin vehicles to follow.
As troop numbers grew, the army too began to deploy M48s in a fire support role. Either indirect fire, a substitute for artillery, or in a direct fire role using HE against enemy bunkers. In perimeter defense, tanks would be dug in behind an earth or sandbag berm, flanked by infantry and foxholes, and with a belt of overlapping trip flares, barbed wire, and claymore mines in front. From these defensive cocoons, the tanks could stand firm against human wave attacks, often with the help of one of the most controversial tank munitions ever devised: The beehive round.
The 90mm beehive or M580 AP anti-personal tracer to give it its full title was brutal. It contained 4,200 1/2 in., 5g razor sharp steel flechettes along with a time fuse and bursting charge. The crew would set the detonation range anywhere from 0 to 4,300 m. When the charge went off, the cloud of flechettes formed a 300 m long cone, a deadly swarm carving through jungle cover, wire imp placements, and attacking infantry with devastating effect. The nickname beehive came from a buzzing sound the flechettes made in flight. One M48 gunner described the round’s detonation as like God fired a shotgun.
The M113 ACAV
But the most numerous and arguably effective AFV on the Vietnam battlefield wasn’t a tank at all. It was this, the M113 armored personnel carrier. To the grunts on the ground, it was simply known as “tracks.” M113s were supplied to the South Vietnamese even before the US ground intervention began. And low on armor, the ARVN had to make use of whatever they could get their hands on.
Designed to be air portable, the M113 had aluminum armor. It weighed just 12 tons, had a top speed of 42 mph, was amphibious, had a crew of two, and it could carry up to 11 infantrymen. As an armored personnel carrier, the M113 was essentially a battle taxi designed to drop off its passengers and perhaps provide a bit of fire support from its pintle-mounted 50 cal. However, the ARVN hadn’t read the owner’s handbook. Rather than using M113s as APCs, they set about turning them into ersatz tanks. By adding extra M60 machine guns, recoilless rifles, and mortars.
We’ve seen similar upgrading and front-line use of M113s by Ukraine.
South Vietnamese troops used M113s in an armored assault role. To some extent, this worked. The M113’s mobility and amphibious capabilities were a godsend amongst the rivers, marshes, and rice patties. If a single vehicle couldn’t make it through, the ARVN created daisy chains, linking multiple M113s with steel hawsers. If one got stuck, the others would pull it out.
The problem was that 38 mm of aluminium wasn’t enough to keep out heavy machine guns, let alone RPGs. And with the earlier M113s that were supplied to the ARVN, they were petrol-driven, which meant that they burned a whole lot easier. Once they got over their initial fear of the Green Dragons, the VC realized that all they had to do was pepper the M113s with fire when they appeared and something bad was likely to happen to the ARVN on the inside. Multiple RPG hits would result in a penetration while the top cover gunners were horrendously exposed to small arms fire. In a single action Ap Bac on the 2nd of January 1963, 13 were killed.
With this experience, the vehicles were adapted with the creation of improvised weapon shields. Later formalized as one of the most iconic vehicles of the Vietnam War, the M113 AAV, the armored cavalry assault vehicle had extra belly armor to protect against mines, plus beefed up side armor. The 50 cal and the additional two M60s all had gun shields added to protect the crew. Suddenly, the battle taxis had real teeth, and the US forces started using them in an equally aggressive manner. Perfect for reconnaissance and mobility in the open terrain of the Mekong Delta and rubber plantation. The VC had nothing to match its firepower.
At Ap Bau Bang in March of 1967, the US First Infantry ambushed by Vietcong forces used AAVs in a wagon wheel formation, firing in all directions to break up enemy assaults. During the iconic siege of the Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh, the AAVs used their mobility and firepower to carve routes into the base, allowing infantry and engineer units to lift the blockade. Not bad for a little vehicle that was essentially modified on the hoof and operating way beyond its original combat purpose.
The M50 Ontos
But perhaps the strangest and in its niche most effective vehicle on the battlefields of Vietnam was the M50 Ontos. Ontos is the Greek word for thing, which is certainly less of a mouthful than its official title of Rifle Multiple 106mm Self-Propelled M50, but also an apt name for such an extraordinary looking vehicle.
It does indeed look pretty funky.
“The Marine Corps shows off its newest weapon. A speedy tank destroyer bristling with six powerful recoilless rifles, four smaller spotting rifles, and a machine gun. The Marines call it the Thing.”
The Ontos is small, only 12 1/2 ft long and lightweight at 9 1/2 tons, making it easy to move by air. Yet despite its diminutive size, the Ontos bristled with six M40 106 mm recoilless rifles with a 50 caliber spotting rifle on each side. They could fire a mixture of heat, HE or beehive rounds. For the three-man crew, the biggest challenge was reloading. The loader was holed up in the back of the Ontos and had to exit the vehicle through a hatch and reload the 106s from the outside. Not much fun in the heat of battle.
Despite this, the vehicle’s combination of mobility with ferocious firepower made them devastating in the right setting. Only 300 were built, but they punched way above their weight. In Hue City during the 1968 Tet Offensive, US Marines stood in awe as the Ontos weaved through the tightest urban environments, knocking out walls and cutting down entire squads of enemy soldiers. Such was the reputation of the Ontos that sometimes all that was required was for a 50 cal sighting rifle round to be fired into a building for the North Vietnamese to abandon the position. In the words of one veteran of Hue, “It was ugly, loud, and dangerous. Just what we needed.”
The Ontos would also play a significant role in killing an entirely different set of commies in the Dominican Civil War in 1965.
American M48s would go on to destroy North Vietnamese T-54s during the full-scale invasion of the south, but by then the American withdrawal meant the writing was on the wall for the ARVN…
For some reason, Vladimir Putin seems to think he can force NATO to back down from supporting Ukraine against his illegal war of territorial aggression by launching various provocations. Here’s a roundup of recent NATO country responses to Russia.
First up: Cappy Army on NATO beefing up it’s defensive line against Russia:
“NATO is racing to build a multi-billion dollar 2,000 mile long defensive line that stretches across the entire European continent.”
“There are several names for the new fortification depending on the section you’re standing at. In the Baltics, it’s officially known as the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line, which is a 500 mile long network of bunkers and fortified border zones.”
“The Eastern Flank Deterrence Line is not mainly physical barriers, because the distance is far too great. Instead, it’s a network of computer sensors to fill these physical gaps. It’s not designed to completely defeat a potential Russian conventional advance. It’s made to slow down and channel the enemy’s forces into these predetermined kill zones.”
“The Army and NATO’s focusing their efforts at the places deemed most vulnerable in the Baltics. Here they’re deploying a layered modular barrier system that runs 30 miles deep.” First they hit sensors lines, then get a dose of HIMARS and artillery, then drone swarms in the air and on the ground. “Estimates are these methods will have to kill or wound 70% of the attacking force to be successful.”
The length of the entire defensive line is roughly the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It’s designed this way to cover large sections of land that may not already have trenches pre-plotted artillery and mortar kill zone are linked to a network of sensors and then anything that makes it past that runs into rows of landmines, then physical obstacles, including anti-vehicle ditches and rows of concrete dragons teeth. These are strategically placed at the high-speed avenues of approach that lead directly to the Baltic state capitals.”
“The second line of defensive positions in the network is over 600 bunkers of distributed firing positions, trenches, and roadblocks. Infantry and anti-tank javelin teams fight from here.”
“The European Deterrence Initiative in the United States requested $2.9 billion from America in 2025 to deter Russia. Poland’s portion of the defensive line will cost over $50 billion with much of that funding coming from the EU. And the Baltics and Finland are spending a combined billions of dollars more as well.”
“Similar to the Cold War doctrine, [Baltic forces are] a kind of tripwire force here. Troops stationed here jokingly refer to themselves as tactical speed bumps.” The idea is to buy time until reinforcements arrive.”
“In Estonia, there’s only 127 miles from the border with Russia to the capital city.”
“The defining issue along the defensive wall is manpower. The shortage of manpower is what has shaped all of the decisions for how this fortification is being built. The Estonian army has roughly 6,000 active soldiers with a NATO force of 2,000 UK and French troops also deployed here. And if we look across the whole Baltics, we see that there’s roughly 29,000 active duty soldiers total here. This does not fully take into account reserve forces or air power advantages, but it outlines the basic tactical problem.”
In Poland the defensive line continues under the name Eastern Shield. “This runs from the Kalinigrad enclave down along Belarus and towards Slovakia, which is another 500 miles.”
“Poland’s Eastern Shield has an entirely different strategy than the Baltics. They expect to absorb the first hit and then fight a long, protracted war on their own soil if they have to. The shield here does not have the benefit of being built around geographic obstacles like in the Baltics. This is why you see full-length anti-tank ditches and multi-mile long trench systems laid out in depth.”
“The scale of the project is gigantic, with 8,000 combat engineers working to lay 10,000 concrete dragon’s teeth and over 800 miles of layered anti- vehicle barriers backed up by massive amounts of artillery. Terrain denial is the focus on this stretch.”
“Manpower and mass is less of a problem on this section of the front, because in Poland there’s 280,000 well-trained and equipped active forces with an additional 10,000 American soldiers already stationed there before reinforcements arrive.”
“The defining piece of this part of the puzzle is the anti-air assets, with 48 Patriot air defense launchers provide a protective umbrella for forces massing here.”
“The logistics backbone is being built here. Poland would be the transit region into the Baltics and much of the large stockpile of fuel and ammo are positioned here because they have the space.”
NATO has a more difficult problem defending Poland than the Warsaw Pact did when Moscow called the shots. “Today’s NATO and EU is an alliance of sovereign states that must coordinate instead of obey. This makes rapid unified action more difficult.”
“The US Army themselves acknowledge Russia has the advantage in manpower and equipment on this front, and that Russia can choose the time and place of the attack.” I sincerely doubt Russia has the equipment or manpower advantage now that Vlad’s Big Adventure has run through Soviet-era tank stockpiles and slaughtered Russian manpower to gain tiny slivers of Ukrainian territory.
A history of static defenses snipped and Cold War defensive realities snipped.
NATO General Chris Donahue: “The massive momentum problem that Russia poses to us, we’ve developed the capability to make sure that we can stop that mass and momentum problem.”
In their panic over Ukraine slowly destroy both their Black Sea fleet and their shadow fleet, Russia has managed to piss Turkey off:
“After Russian forces increased their activity and provocations over [the Black Sea] and NATO country’s airspace, Turkey was the first to act and shot down Russian surveillance drones without warning.”
“As more accidents followed, the Russians are now at risk of facing the Turkish wrath, getting all their trade cut off outright without any strikes needed.”
A Russian drone with transponder equipment was found on the ground in a Romanian forest. “With a wingspan of roughly 2 meters, Romanian authorities assessed that the device had been used to monitor NATO facilities or track military aid deliveries to Ukraine.”
“Three separate Russian drones violated Turkish airspace, pushing the country closer to decisive action. The first incident occurred when a Russian drone entered Turkish airspace from the Black Sea. Turkish air defense reacted swiftly and F-16 fighter jets intercepted the target, ultimately shooting it down with an M9X sidewinder missile.”
“The second incident was even more alarming when a Russian Orlan reconnaissance drone crashed near the city of Izmit just 50 kilometers from Istanbul.”
“The third case involved debris from a Russian Merlin reconnaissance drone discovered in western Turkey. The Merlin can remain airborne for up to 10 hours flying at altitudes of up to 5 kilometers and carrying advanced opto-electronic sensors. Its presence again pointed to sustained intelligence gathering activity rather than an isolated malfunction.”
“If Ankara were to sight repeated Russian drone incursions as a security threat, it could even restrict civilian Russian shipping through the Bosphorus in retaliation. The consequences would be severe as such a move would devastate Russia’s Black Sea trade and challenged the 1936 Montreux Convention, guaranteeing free passage for merchant vessels.”
“Russian drone operations continue, Ankara appears willing not only to shut down the sky over the Black Sea, but also to potentially escalate further and close the boss for us, making it clear that spying on NATO members in the region will carry real and costly consequences.”
“Russia’s shadow fleet is coming under mounting pressure in the Baltic, as interceptions increase and European states move more aggressively against sanctioned vessels. However, now Russia is responding by placing Wagner mercenaries on board these ships, bringing one of its most violent forces directly into Nato-monitored waters.”
“The European Union has just released a new sanctions package targeting forty-one additional shadow fleet vessels, bringing the total to more than six hundred ships now barred from European-linked ports, insurance, and services. These ships are losing access to harbors, maintenance, and technical certification, which forces Moscow to rely on improvised routes that squeeze through increasingly narrow corridors.”
“Beyond oil, these vessels also move sensitive cargo linked to Russia’s war effort, which makes each interception far more consequential than a financial loss alone, and as enforcement tightens, the risk shifts from paperwork violations to direct seizure.”
This shift became visible when Swedish authorities detained the Russian cargo vessel Adler after it entered Swedish waters with unresolved documentation issues. The ship’s owner is sanctioned for transporting materials linked to Russia’s weapons production, and when Adler suffered engine trouble in Swedish waters, the crew could not produce clean documentation. Swedish authorities boarded immediately, as the detention came amid growing reports that Russia has begun placing Wagner mercenaries on board shadow fleet vessels, raising the stakes for any inspection or boarding operation, and signaling that European states are no longer intimidated by the possibility of armed Russians on these vessels.”
“According to Danish maritime pilots, once Wagner personnel are on board, they often restrict access to the bridge and interfere with communication between captains and port authorities, and push for routing that avoids areas where inspections are common.”
“For Moscow, Wagner functions as a last-line enforcement tool. Their role is to ensure that vessels keep moving even when legal and operational risks become unacceptable by normal commercial standards. Crews bullied, beaten, or threatened by the mercenaries may even quietly signal nearby NATO ships for help, or attempt to sabotage equipment to force an emergency stop in Western waters, with the Adler’s crew possibly sabotaging the engine before they reached a Russian port, and Wagners would come on board. On top of that, owners of leased ships may object to hosting armed Russian soldiers, whose presence massively increases legal liability and operational danger.”
The case of Adler matters because it highlights how the shadow fleet is being used not only for oil, but for moving weapons and military-linked cargo. Western officials assess that a substantial portion of Russia’s imported ammunition components, explosives precursors, and sanctioned industrial equipment now arrives by sea, precisely because land routes and air transport are more exposed to interception. If vessels like Adler are increasingly detained or disrupted, Russia does not just lose revenue but risks bottlenecks in the supply chains that feed its weapons production.”
NATO hasn’t been backing down in the face of repeated Russian provocations. Putin is playing an increasingly weak hand badly.
Here’s a tab-clearing roundup of longer videos on the Russo-Ukrainian War, drones, tanks, etc. I’m not going to go point-by-point on everything covered here, just pull out a few of the more important bits.
First up: Perun does one of those “tier rankings” so popular on YouTube, this one about supposed “game changing” weapons in the war.
He ranks glide bombs, used heavily by the Russians, as one of 2025’s most effective weapons. “In 2025 there has been no month where the Ukrainians claim the Russians dropped fewer than 3,000 of these things, roughly 100 per day. In April that number was north of 5,000, getting close to the likes of 170 per day.” I had no idea the numbers were that high.
Also top tier: Drones. “Far from drones fading away as people found ways to counter them over time, I’d argue that drones have just become more dominant with every month that passes. Drone performance improved, their payloads became more dangerous, their operators more expert, the tactics of their use evolved, and the relevant production figures added progressively more zeros. To the point where, while in 2022 drones were a significant enabling element on the battlefield, in 2025 they are one of the most definitive elements. Back in February, RUSI assessed that Ukrainian drones now account for about 2/3 of Russian losses. But if you factor in their contributions to the use of other systems, providing reconnaissance for the infantry, spotting for the artillery and the air force, resupply for forward elements, and all the tasks the Ukrainians leverage UAS to do, I’d argue it goes well beyond even just that. And at the core of the military challenge here is the fact that drones are just very effective, very accessible, and hard to counter.” “So far I’d argue in Ukraine for example, small drones have evolved faster than the defenses intended to counter them.” He also covers the rise of fiber-optic drones. More on drones in another video below.
Also ranked very high: Ukraine’s passive acoustic drone detection systems, which are cheap and widely dispersed, and are key to guiding anti-drone kill teams deep behind the front lines to the right spots to take out drones.
Ukraine is also having a lot of success designing and manufacturing cheap interceptors to take out drones. “During one recent Russian attack, about 20% of all the incoming Russian UAVs were brought down by interceptor drones.”
Just about all the Russian wunderwaffen (like the Oreshnik missile) gets ranked pretty low. (He also wants to see more of Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missle, as he had only one confirmed strike on that. See below for more on that topic.)
Combat shotguns are making a return as anti-drone weapons, but they’re last-ditch options and not ideal.
Russia is still using turtle tanks (AKA “assault sheds”) as the leads for mechanized assault columns. They can soak up a lot of punishment and mount a lot of drone-jamming equipment, but are still getting taken out by skilled drone operators or artillery. “A lot of Russian shed-equipped vehicles now appear to dispense with the main gun.” They also look even more Mad Max now, with arrays of spikes and branches to further tangle drones. “This isn’t just an approach being used by armored vehicles, and also it is not just the Russians. Drones are a survivability problem for everyone.”
Next up: Nicholas Moran talks about what armies can do to counter the drone threat without shiny new anti-drone weapons. “Getting away from the M is US Army speak for talking about something other than equipment. The M stands for material and is one of the factors in DOTMLPF.” (Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leader Development and Education, Personnel, Facilities.)
“Drones have been around since World War II, but it’s only been ten years since the US military officially declared the small UAS as a significant threat. We are still very much in the early phases of integrating such drones into warfare. And nobody knows exactly where the chips are going to lie down when they complete their fall.”
“We’re now some five years on from what quite a few would consider the first war in which drones were highly influential and three years into a major large power conflict. So, I think we can at least have a couple of trends observed by now, which are forming.”
“We see lots of videos of drones killing things which are selectively released often from equipment which inherently has inbuilt cameras. The 60 to 80% of drone strikes which don’t kill their target normally aren’t released as there’s not much propaganda benefit to doing so. Artillery shells don’t have cameras and an ISR drone footage of an artillery strike is not really particularly dramatic anymore.”
“The whole truth does not come from videos. The big killers in war today are the same that they’ve always been. Mines, then artillery. Not for nothing are we seeing the largest minefields in history, or a shortage of artillery ammunition and tubes.”
“Now, to be fair, in early 2025, drones were being estimated to have caused more Russian casualties than artillery, but that was also during a period of shortage of indirect fire assets in Ukraine. At the same time, both armies on the front lines of Ukraine have dispersed to incredible amounts by 20th century standards. Not for fear of a small drone with an explosive charge, which frankly really doesn’t care if you dispersed or not, but because they don’t want to be a tempting clustered target for artillery or SRBMS.”
“Infantry is still king or queen. Ultimately, to take and hold ground, someone with hand grenades and a rifle, maybe with a stabby thing on the end, is going to have to close with and destroy the enemy supported by everything else in the inventory. And it’s going to be someone in the dugout with their own grenades and rifles, supported by everything else in the inventory, trying to stop them.”
“Drones are also not great at killing tanks. As one general put it, the only place more dangerous than being in a tank in the Ukraine battle area is not being in a tank in the Ukraine battle area.” More on this below as well.
“There there are always exceptions, but the vast majority of tanks which have been destroyed by drones have first been immobilized by something else, such as mines, artillery, ATGM, cannon fire, whatever. The response times for kinetic drones right now are just too long to have practical effect unless they happen to be in the right place and they don’t show up in mass. Then when the tank is immobilized by these other assets, the drone can come at its leisure and try to hit the stationary or abandoned tank which likely has the hatch still open as nobody bailing out after a hit is going to be standing on the top of the tank trying to close the hatch in an ongoing battle. And if something happens to that drone, which historically is quite likely, another drone can be sent and another and another.”
“Some disabled tanks have had a score of drones try to destroy them. Still didn’t work until finally one drone might show up, which actually does the job. Now, yes, an argument can be made that this is still beneficial on a pure dollar value basis, but it also comes with a slew of caveats related to anything from the availability of recovery assets through to the lack of anything more important for those drone operators to be doing that particular moment in time.”
“Some Ukrainian crews have simply given up counting how many times their tanks have been hit by drones. The best Ukrainian units are reporting a 40% hit rate with their FPVs. Typical units won’t be that good, and that’s flying one drone at a time over the course of hours. Hardly something suitable when a major battle starts, but perfectly suited for the current static warfare environment that we see. Now, that’s the hit rate, not the kill rate.”
“They are also not capable of all weather operations, at least the flying ones. Many are just too small. And when it gets to nighttime, for obvious reasons, the drones used are a little bit more expensive. If an enemy attacks in a storm, you want to have something other than quadcopters to rely upon for your defense. What drones have also failed to do is change the nature of war. The principles of war have not changed. The fundamentals of the offense or the defense have not changed.”
“Drones come and kill things, hardware. Then jammers come to get them to lose control, hardware. Then fiber optic cables come to reduce the vulnerability to jamming hardware. Then kill systems like cannons come. Hardware.”
But we don’t fight with things, we fight with formations that use things.
“A drone may not be able to easily kill a tank but it certainly has a reasonable effect on a bunker, on somebody riding an ATV, or on a supply truck for that tank.”
“I believe the claim is that DJI are making a drone a second and they are being used by both sides in Ukraine. The leader being the Mavic 3.” For more information on that, see here.
“As of early last year, 10,000 drones a month were being expended. And the chances are that that figure is well higher now. The things are being expended like ammunition and a low proportion of them are self-exploding. Most are being shot down, forced down, or crash.”
“Currently, the pendulum is swung in favor of the offensive use of drones. And well, defense is playing catch-up. As it currently stands, the dollar exchange is pretty much in favor of the drone.”
“Using a $200,000 stinger to drop a $10,000 surveillance drone is economically questionable, even if it has to be done. Because if you don’t do that, that $10,000 surveillance drone is going to call in a target for a $400,000 ballistic missile, which will then drop on your $2 million brigade headquarters if you don’t expend a $3 million Patriot missile to kill it. As a result, kill mechanisms need to get cheaper, and the drones need to be forced to become more expensive. And both are happening again.”
“Things like DJIs are civilian grade. They’re not equipped to handle electronic attack. The change and counter change in EM spectrum right now is its own battle which is apparently going on four-week cycles. But if you want to equip the drone so that loss of signal doesn’t immediately result in loss of drone or worse that the drone doesn’t just get hijacked, other measures need to be taken. Be it some form of self-targeting, the use of fiber optics, which leads to its own set of limitations and expense.”
“Then there is resistance to hard kill electronic systems. Currently, microwave weapons are the leading contenders. A single microwave can quickly and efficiently fry the electronics of a whole bunch of drones at once for not much cost.”
“Systems have been demonstrated that are in effect remote weapon stations such as you’ll find on top of a Stryker, or you can put in the back of a pickup truck. They are capable of autonomously detecting, identifying, tracking, and engaging small UAS with a short burst.”
“The reality is the drone swarms don’t work for the simple reason that they take up too much jammable bandwidth talking to each other or controllers. And there aren’t enough operators with enough magazine depth to make a go of it by coordinating conventional operations.”
“Drones may end up flying in packages. Bandwidth concerns may limit the feasibility of true automated swarming.” Better AI may help solve that problem.
“One of the organizational problems or doctrinal problems that the army needs to work on, and this will apply to all armies, is how do you set up the layered network so that the most efficient system is used to engage the best target. So, just because you can shoot down a bomber drone with a Coyote doesn’t mean it’s the best move. Maybe it’s worth letting him get a lot closer to be shot down with a caliber 50 or a microwave.”
“The intent is that ground troops will always make first contact with the enemy by use of a drone or UGV. Now, there are advantages to both. I still haven’t seen the front line of robots in official doctrine, but I still think it’s coming.”
The army is already experimenting with self-driving road vehicles for logistics.
Some of the lessons the Ukrainians have learned may not be appropriate for the more modern and well-equipped U.S. armed forces. ” To kill Orlan and the like at altitude, the Ukrainians have been resorting to things like mothership drones and balloon lifted drones. The US has an air force capable of dominating at 15,000 ft and an F-35 or F-15 with a couple of APKWs hydropods would be a reasonably cost-effective and more responsive way of dealing with the problem. The US has satellite or airborne recon abilities which may take care of tasks that other nations may need drones for. Just how good is an F-35’s radar? Can it detect a number of drones and then hand off to a cheaper system to engage? Or maybe it can illuminate for passive radar purposes without being at risk itself.”
“If we are dramatically reducing our command post sizes, increasing dispersion, massively increasing our air defense EW components, reintroducing air guards, or telling people to break out their ET tools like in the old days, then it’s very obviously demonstrating the case that the US has understood that we need to change things.”
“Remember the [Hans] von Seeckt appraisals after World War I? Nearly four years of terrible trench warfare followed the German attempt at maneuver warfare. After chewing on the matter a bit, the German response about 1921 was the key is still maneuver warfare. And they were right.”
“The trend appears to be that we’re going to use automation to further enable what we’re doing, not change what we’re doing. Is the how, not the what.”
“The characteristics of the offense remain concentration, audacity, tempo, and surprise.”
LazerPig takes aim at what he calls Hurr Durr Drone Syndrome (HDDS), including the idea that drones have made tanks obsolete. He goes into more detail about how the ability of drones to take out tanks is considerably overstated, noting that “cheap” drones capable of taking out tanks aren’t really cheap any more.
(Note: LazerPig had to reupload this video due to a copyright strike, so there’s a chance some of the below is no longer in this version.)
“Symptoms of HDDS include flashy clickbait titles that proclaim any new technology from tanks to jets is doomed, because why spend billions of dollars on a weapon system if a 20 buck drone can take it out?”
“It makes casual references to the ever-increasing loss of Western tanks on the Ukrainian front. Makes grandiose gestures that inflate the actual capability of small FPV drones and surreptitiously, usually just by not knowing any better, parrot Russian propaganda that all Western tanks are too big and too heavy.”
“It ignores the actual opinions of Ukrainian tank crews and fails to take into account that of the 95 Western tanks that have been lost on the Ukrainian front, very few of those were actually taken out by drones. And of that 95, 73 were highly outdated models that have either since been replaced or are in the process of being replaced. Out of those 73, 71 were models built before 1990, and 21 of those were tanks designed in the 1960s.”
“Even under the less than ideal conditions Ukraine fights in, with a comedic list of tanks from various periods and in various states of repair, at the time of recording, for every one Western tank they have lost, 43.7 Russian tanks have been destroyed.”
He says those $20 commercial drones are useless for combat. “The simplest of drones currently on the Ukrainian front cost in excess of $400 to make each. And that is with volunteers, 3D printers, and importing the cheapest made parts from TEMU. And these factories don’t run at a profit. They absorb the full cost through donations, not selling the drones to the military.”
“In the UK, a vast number of drone factories were set up in the hopes of cashing in on the drone military craze. And most of them have failed to expand beyond a single office, 3D printers, small teams of eager 20somes, and a dream. simply because, well…
“Firstly, the actual cost of setting up mass production is far greater than first anticipated, especially when one realizes that it’s not just drone parts they’d need, but camera equipment, night vision, thermals, long-range battery packs, and radio equipment capable of resisting interference, triangulation, and interception, most of which is beyond the capability of these companies.”
“All of this is how a $400 drone becomes a $10,000 drone. Even then, those $400 drones carry about enough munitions to kill a person or knock out light vehicles or generally unarmored targets.”
“In some of these interviews, they have talked about how tanks generally survive multiple hits from drones because the Russians don’t always have access to the heavier munitions required to take them out. Those are considerably more expensive, harder to produce, and considerably more rare, allowing those tanks to race into drone hotspots, take out their target, and withdraw before those munitions arrive.”
“A good example of one of those munitions is the famous Russian Lancet. In a full-time war economy, one of these costs around $20,000 to manufacture, or to put that in perspective, the cost of five artillery shells. This is of course assuming Russia is telling the truth when it gives these numbers up and aren’t just calculating the cost of materials and not including labor setup or the cost of the launcher.”
“The thing about the Lancet is it’s a drone in name only. It’s technically a loitering munition which have been around for quite some time. Every country has been developing them for the past 10 years and some of those were given to Ukraine.”
Just about every country that produces tanks is working on loitering munitions versions for tanks to launch.
“The Switchblade, currently in use by both the US and Ukrainian Army, costs around $60,000 per unit, with the more dedicated anti-tank version costing somewhere in the region of $100,000 per
unit.”
He says he had to delete a long rant about the difference between the Lancet and the Switchblade. “What you need to know is the Switchblade can be carried by one soldier in a backpack, thrown on the ground, and then fired like a mortar within seconds. It’s got infrared as standard. It can do a whole bunch of really clever things like guide other Switchblades onto targets or coordinate with other drones and have multiple Switchblades hit multiple different targets simultaneously, you know, to lower the chances of your enemy going, ‘Oh no, a drone.’ And then doing something really wild like taking cover.”
“The Lancet does none of that. It’s basically just a TV missile on a catapult.”
Cheap drones started out effective until units adapted. “As they develop new systems or techniques or tactics against this cheap weapon, then that system is going to gradually become less effective over time and therefore must evolve to remain potent. The Lancet has gone through multiple versions, each time trying to increase its lethality or counter the defenses Ukraine has developed specifically against it.”
“The Lancet, though it is estimated at costing roughly $20,000 to manufacture via various Russian reports. It was offered at export at $32,000 back when it was only seeing use in Syria. And now it’s no longer offered for export. And that $20,000 number has never been updated as the weapon has grown in complexity…the reality is we don’t know how much it actually costs.”
“It has more than likely now matched the Switchblade in terms of cost.”
We don’t know how effective Lancet is because our information comes from Russian propaganda websites, and Russia has claimed Lancet tank kills on western tanks that were clearly taken out by other means.
“In the later stages of 2022, in response to Ukraine’s increased counterbattery effectiveness, the Russians began pulling hordes of towed artillery out of storage, some of which dated as far back as the Second World War. Yet with the limited ability to retain these units in service due to excessive barrel wear or move them around after they had been fired through the loss of transport vehicles, Russia’s artillery dominance has finally began to wane. And as a result, systems like the Lancet have been forced into this role. The irony here being that a $20,000 drone system, is now doing the work of an artillery shell, which the Russians once bragged they could make for under $1,500.”
“Both sides are potentially lacking the equipment that would have traditionally performed that job and are falling back onto cheaply-made drones to fill the gap.”
HDDS also ignores all the anti-drone technology developed in the last three years.
“In spite of the existence of heavy drone-based munitions that can take out tanks, Ukraine still uses tanks quite a lot.”
One correction: LazerPig says the cope cage were deployed in response to Ukraine’s use of drones, but mentions actually date to the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022.
“In the first days, Lancets were being used on mass, the Russians would be forced to stop jamming the frequency that the Lancet was being used in. The Ukrainians would simply cycle through frequencies, find the one that wasn’t being jammed, and then jam it themselves, causing the lancets to just fall out of the sky.” The technical difficulties involved here make me wonder if this is a “just so” story.
“In a response, the Russians are now forced to turn off their jamming systems when firing a Lancet to prevent the Ukrainians from figuring out the frequency.”
Counter-jammer technology is not something you find on a $400 drone.
“You might think the best defense against [jamming] is to simply have the drone change frequencies, and you’d be right. But changing frequencies isn’t as easy as pressing a button or changing a dial. In fact, in many cases, the aerial assembly has to be completely ripped off and replaced with one with a newer frequency. Hence why a lot of drones [are] shipped without an aerial, allowing the receiving unit to add their own as needed.”
“Sometimes the drone automatically picking one that is not actively being jammed is quite expensive. And another reason why things like the Switchblade are more expensive than the Lancet. But that’s the old idiom, you get what you pay for.”
“Putting soldiers lives at risk with cheaper equipment that might not always work is the lesson the US military has learned the hard way. Ask any US veteran and they will happily bitch to you about any number of equipment problems based entirely on that topic, often for several hours without ever stopping for breath. It’s quite impressive.”
The response to drone jamming has been the advent of fiber-optic drones. “These drones have caused all kinds of hell for both sides, to the point where parts of the front lines are littered in webs of fiber optic.”
The response to fiber optics has been barbed wire and more cages. “In the front lines of both sides, supply routes are now covered in large arc structures, a cope cage supreme, if you will, that prevent drones attacking convoys and supply trucks. And both sides will typically spend days or often weeks trying to find holes or discreetly make holes in these nets and then have several drones lie in weight across the road ambushing any vehicles they find.”
“This has led to Ukraine up armoring everything from medevac to supply trucks in order to minimize the damage caused by these ambush drones. In much the same way US and British forces in Iraq were forced to up armor their patrol vehicles owing to the threat of IEDs.”
“Ukraine’s best counter to drones remains, and has surprisingly remained, old radar-guided anti-air systems from the Cold War.” Most drones are not remotely stealthy.
“Mobile anti-air systems like the Gepard have proven exceedingly effective at taking them down. Meaning to avoid systems like this, drones have to fly low to the ground, which makes finding targets considerably harder.”
Countries are also developing electronic warfare and laser systems to take out drones. “Where these systems fit into our current doctrine is still being written. And where these things are now technologically will be considerably different in a few years time. Ultimately, these weapons will need mounting onto something. And why can’t that something be a tank? Laser tanks are finally here.”
“It is not the biggest army that wins. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
A lot of this is true, but I’m wondering if the atomized nature of the Ukrainian front isn’t a big factor against cheap drones here. I imagine smaller, cheaper drones with only a few pounds of explosives might be considerably more useful in an urban combat environment that limits jamming and countermeasures. There’s also, I think, a drone class heavier than the lightest drones but lighter than Lancet or Switchblades that could still be racking up mobility kills against tanks and other armored vehicles in such an environment.
Next up: Megaprojects Simon Whistler breaks down Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile.
“If the missile you’re launching at the enemy is easy to take down because it’s not very fast or stealthy, the least you can do is pack it with so many explosives, you basically guarantee complete destruction if just one of them breaks through the enemy lines. And this at least is the basic logic behind the FP5 Flamingo, Ukraine’s new heavy hitter missile.”
“Experts, both domestic and foreign, hailed its arrival. But they warn against obsessive optimism. Because while the Flamingo packs a hell of a punch, it also leaves a lot to be desired.”
“The missile “is constructed mostly of recycled ordinance and aircraft parts.”
“The Flamingo excels in two key areas: warhead capacity and range. The missile is armed with a 1.15 ton or 2500lb warhead, which is just a comically large amount of explosive material for a single missile. For comparison, the BGM 109 Tomahawk land attack missile, which is a reliable American long-range missile, packs about 450 kilos or 1,000 lb of explosives, and the Flamingo comes with 2.5 times that.”
“The engine used with the Flamingo is believed to be the AI-25. This engine is comparably much larger than engines on similar missiles, and it’s used with several aircraft, including Turkey’s combat drone, the Bayraktar. The use of a large engine, one that measures 3.3 m in length and 62 cm in diameter with a weight of over 350 kilos or 770 lb, allows the engineers to skip miniature turbo jets and turbo fans. These propulsion systems are usually preferred for long-range cruise missiles, but they’re really expensive, unlike the AI-25.”
“The AI-25 was incredibly available for Fire Point to purchase in huge numbers from stockpiles. Officials said that they found thousands of these engines at dumps and landfills around Ukraine, in a very practical and literal showcase of the adage, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’ Fire Point did not restore these engines to full usage, which would allow them a maximum flight time of 10 hours, but only enough power for the Flamingo to go for 4 hours. They replaced the titanium parts with cheaper materials to save both time and money, and engines that were deemed too damaged were used for spare parts.”
“The biggest advantage of such a powerful engine, which is usually used with much heavier aircraft, is the incredible range of this missile, which is reported to be 3,000 km or about 1,850 miles. This is almost double the range of the block five Tomahawk missile mentioned earlier, and it’s more than enough to strike Russia anywhere in the European part of the country.” Though he notes that claim hasn’t been verified yet.
“The missile travels at speeds about 900 km or 560 mph, which is comparable to the speeds of western missiles.”
“The Flamingo does not have a complex visual guidance system, such as terrain contour matching systems or digital scene matching area correlation systems, which are very common with Western missiles, which are also, of course, a lot more expensive. It does, however, use satellite navigation to guide itself toward the target.”
“The Flamingo uses a jamming resistant controller reception pattern antenna layout, which kind of feels like word salad, doesn’t it? But what it means is that the antenna layout is designed to resist radio jamming and spoofing, keeping the missile on its course.”
“However, the Flamingo lacks any technology to hide from radar, which makes it extremely unstealthy.” But it’s fiberglass construction is less visible on radar than metal.
“Similar to how the A-10 Warthog is an aircraft built around a 30mm rotary cannon, the FP5’s airframe is built around its massive warhead.”
“At first glance, it might remind you of the V1, but the Flamingo is much larger at a length of between 12 and 14m and a wingspan of six.”
He notes the missile’s vulnerability to Russian fighter aircraft, but given how heavily those are overtaxed, I wonder how much they can “fly cap” over the vast distances of Russian airspace, especially after the further dispersion away from Ukraine following successful drone attacks on Russian airbases.
Skipping the history of Ukraine development/acquisition of long range strike platforms.
“After the official unveiling on August the 17th, 2025, production rolled out at a rate of about 50 missiles a month, and Fire Point announced that they plan to increase production to seven missiles a day by the end of the year.”
“The majority of the missile is created from already existing components that can be put together in a factory that’s relatively safe. Even if the factory were to be destroyed, the Flamingo is so easy to put together, the entire manufacturing process can be moved as long as the warheads and the engines are kept safe.”
“And Ukraine’s not alone in this task either. To help streamline production, Denmark announced that a Fire Point subsidiary would start solid fuel production in Denmark by the end of the year.”
“At the time of recording, there is only a single documented use of Flamingo missiles by Ukraine. And their effectiveness is, to quote the Chernobyl TV show, not great, not terrible. Three missiles is a nice reference. Not great, not terrible.”
“Three missiles were launched in a poorly defended target in northern Crimea, and yet only two arrived on site, proving the Flamingo is fairly easy to shoot down. One of the missiles that actually arrived missed the target by about 100-200 meters. The second missile, however, caused significant damage to the building, also damaging six hovercraft despite landing between 15 and 40 meters away from the target.”
“This shows that there are still a lot of kinks for Fire Point to work through to perfect these missiles. The claimed accuracy of the Flamingo is 14 meters, but neither of the two missiles hit within that mark. However, the missile that hit the closest still managed to cause enough damage to deem it a successful strike, showing that the massive warhead can compensate for the lack of accuracy.”
Skipping over his analysis of which Russian air defense systems can shoot it down, since there’s ample evidence of numerous Russian systems letting a wide range of drones and missiles through without shooting them down.
Also skipping over his analysis of the Ukraine campaign against Russian oil infrastructure, as that’s been well documented here. But: “To add insult to injury, the FB5 Flamingo makes the drones used in those attacks look like firecrackers.”
“With this in mind, it’s almost guaranteed that Ukraine won’t be mindlessly launching flamingos at Russia, but will instead carefully plan the flight routes to maximize their effectiveness.”
The Flamingo currently takes a lengthy 20 minutes to set up and launch.
“Valerie Romanenko, a leading aviation expert and researcher with the Ukrainian State Museum of Aviation, says that upon exploding, the Flamingo will destroy any production plant. The facility will be impossible to rebuild because the explosion will result in complete destruction, leaving behind itself a 20 meter crater.”
Large Russian oil facilities are, naturally, likely to be targets.
“It’s interesting how all of the news outlets used Novosibirsk as the designation point of the Flamingo’s range capabilities, because Novosibirsk just happens to be close to Biysk, the home of the Biysk Oleum plant. The Biysk Oleum plant is Russia’s largest producer of military grade explosives and artillery shells. Every month, Russia supplies its forces with about 120,000 artillery shells. And normally, these shells are produced in Nizhny Novagrod, which is about 1,300 km away by road from Ukrainian borders, which means that the shipments are well within the reach of Ukrainian weapon systems. Because of this, Moscow decided to move their production to the Biysk Oleum plant, thinking that production there would be safe.”
“Cue the Flamingo: A huge missile that could in theory destroy the entire plant with one strike and a 3,000 km range. The is just outside of the Flamingo’s range by a few hundred km. But both Ukrainian and Russian forces are well aware that the Flamingo is a huge threat for this production plant.”
“The Biysk Oleum plant isn’t the only arms manufacturing factory at risk. Shahhead drones, which Russia has adopted from Iran, are produced in Yelabuga and Izhevsk factories which are well within range for the FB5. And the same can be said for the Oreshnik missile factory in Votkinsk.”
“Ukraine, for its part, obtains the capability to destroy virtually any defense industrial facility on the Russian territory. This entails a fundamental change in the balance of power.”
The usual new weapon system caveats apply.
As I’ve stated before, one of the first targets for a long-range drone with a large warhead (assuming they can make the targeting more accurate) should be the Omsk Transiberian railway bridge over the Irtysh river, some 2500km from Ukraine. As far as I can tell, that’s the only rail line in Russia that connects Moscow with Russia’s far eastern territories, and is presumably a key supply gateway to China. Russia could reroute some traffic through Kazakhstan’s rail network (which runs on the same Soviet 1,520 gauge rails), but I imagine there would be considerable pain in rerouting things that way. Plus the sort of floating bridges needed to repair that span seem to be in short supply.
Anyway, I though all of those videos had interesting points to make, even though that’s a lot of video to watch (or texts to read).
“Rather than being a point and shoot offensive weapon, Leonidas is meant to provide defensive area coverage, creating less a contiguous force field in the surrounding area and more an area of denial where no unfriendly drone system can operate.”
“The core of the Leonidas system is its use of high power microwave energy fired in beams that create an electromagnetic pulse or EMP.”
“EMPs are nothing new in modern warfare, and their effects are well known, primarily their ability to disable electronic systems.”
“But rather than, say, the natural EMPs that come from lightning strikes, or the uncontrolled EMPs that result from the detonation of nuclear weapons, the EMPs that come from the Leonidas system are able to be channeled precisely.”
“Cutting in a wide beam, they can fry anything in their path neutralizing say an oncoming drone swarm all at once, orthey can focus on precise individual targets, sniping drones out of the sky one by one as soon as they violate perimeters.”
“Using specialized transistors rather than traditional magnetrons to generate its microwave beam, Leonidas is considered more compact than would otherwise be expected for a weapon of this kind, and at a relatively low cost of energy expenditure.”
“It can focus a beam for a relatively long duration of time, or fire off shots in Rapid succession relying on a digitally beamformed antenna that beam is kept tight and highly precise, such that it’s unlikely that nearby friendly drones will be impacted when the beam is targeted against a single foe.”
“Leonidas can fire very rapidly without overheating, and its effect on a target is near instantaneous, rather than needing to train the beam on the target for any length of time. It doesn’t require reloading, and its voltage is low enough that humans nearby aren’t in danger from its emissions.” All of this sounds almost too good to be true.
“It’s efficient, it’s easily transported, and by all indications it’s highly effective against the consumer grade drone technology that the US military is so worried about. Any drone of that sort that comes into Leonidas’s protective bubble will be fried, regardless of the specific internal electronics.”
It too can fit on a Stryker. It can also fit in the back of a pickup truck “without too much trouble.”
“The system has been adapted into an aerial attachment pot, giving it the option to be fitted onto a heavy lift drone of its own and defend in midair.”
“It’s just as successful in stopping fully autonomous drones that don’t require active operator control in order to function.”
Can also take out sea drones.
Designed to be modular and upgradeable.
“The ground-based version is ready for testing. In January of 2023, the U.S. cut the Epirus corporation a check for $66 million after it beat out six different competitors, with the expectation that the check would be used to develop four prototypes as soon as possible. 14 months later, all four prototypes have been delivered and for about half a year now, they’ve been in the hands of the US government.” Some are reportedly being tested in the middle east.
Called Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2, the U.S. program will include a range of technologies—guided-missile interceptors, high-energy lasers and high-power microwave blasters—to shoot down multiple threats and provide a layered defense against weapons such as drone swarms. Each of these technologies is already in development and being readied for troops over the next two years.
IFPC’s high-power microwave component should be ready for operational use as soon as next summer. In January the Army tapped a Los Angeles–based company called Epirus to build four prototype microwave systems as one layer of its planned IFPC. These prototypes are versions of Epirus’s Leonidas system. Each one sits on a wheeled trailer that can be detached for remote operation and has a square panel that rests on a gimbal so it can pivot 360 degrees. This panel is packed with software-controlled radio frequency amplifiers that tailor the energy and frequency of the microwave blast.
“The Leonidas design incorporates a lot of lessons identified coming out of Ukraine and a lot of forecasting into what we think a fight in the Western Pacific might look like,” says Aaron Barruga, vice president of federal growth at Epirus.
Leonidas’ HPM prototype passed muster with Army evaluators in early November, and testing is underway as the Army develops tactics, techniques and procedures for the system’s operational use. The goal is to put the four prototype high-power microwave weapons into the hands of operationally deployed units—possibly in the Middle East—next summer.
All of this sounds a bit too good to be true. Designing microwave ICs means dealing with mixed signal and analog design, and analog is something of a dark art. RF engineers are in high demand and pricey when you find them. Various microwave weapons have been announced over the years, and none seem to have made it to volume production.
Or, more specifically, why they decided to do the M1A3 rather than than M1A2SEP4. And the main reason is weight.
“This list of proposed capabilities for the new design that include:
An autoloader
New main gun new turret
Hypersonic gun launched missiles that maneuver in midair
The ability to pair with robots
Masking capabilities to reduce thermal and electromagnetic signatures
AI systems that detect incoming fire and prioritize return fire
Hybrid electric drivetrain
Reduction of crew from 4 to 3.
Reduction of weight from 75 tons down to sub 60 tons.
But the coolest thing is it’ll likely get a brand new sleek hull for the first time in 30 years.”
“US Army leadership [is] reversing course on decades of tank design philosophy to do a last minute complete overhaul from the ground up based on new lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.”
The gun-launched anti-tank guided missile is something the army has worked off and on for a long time. The Soviet’s had one, but mainly because their main guns were inaccurate at longer ranges. U.S. had a prototype ATGM that hit a T-72 at 8,600 meters. “But the Army never invested in it to go full rate production. Part of the reason for this might be because it’s also true that tank-launched ATGMs have a smaller warhead and they don’t perform as well against modern composite armor compared to the 1970s.”
So why does the army want it now? Line of sight studies in Latvia and Lithuania (i.e, the border with Russia) shows a whole lot of areas where it would be useful.
Tank optics are also a lot better now.
The new XM 360 cannon uses the same 120mm diameter, but save a full ton of weight by using composites, and delivers the same 17 megajoules of energy to the target as a conventional 140mm cannon, thanks to more efficient plasma ignition.
The Russo-Ukrainian War reveals a much more deadly threat environment for tanks. Drones are a huge threat.
“They’re going to link the new cannon to a remote-controlled, optionally manned turret by switching to an autoloader and making the turret interior smaller. That’s a lot less volume that has to be protected by heavy armor, which equates to a lot less tons of armor.” When we last checked with western tankers looking at the T-14s autoloader some six years ago, they were skeptical of both smaller crews (“all we do is maintain tanks, and they still break down”) and autoloaders (Abrams tank crews currently put shots on target faster than Russian crews with autoloaders). But since then, the Russo-Ukraine War happened and technology galloped furiously, and presumably higher crew survivability will make the tradeoff worthwhile.
M1A3 almost certainly wouldn’t have the cassette design that gives the T-72 its turret toss reputation. “Newly designed autoloading tanks can have all of their ammo secured behind a bulkhead blast shield and can work with blowout panels to prevent detonation from cooking the crew.”
“We’ve also seen from combat in Ukraine that the Abrams engine deck with it air intakes and radiators is a popular target point for drone swarms, so the army is looking at unique ways to keep the engine better protected from above without sacrificing cooling performance.”
“The new M1A3 Abrams tank would also upgrade from that puny 50 caliber machine gun to possibly the 30mm chain gun remote weapon station. The big advantage there is that it could fire specially made 30mikemikes that provide air burst capability for shooting down drones.” That sounds both awesome and the makings of an extremely complex turret with multiple automatic-feed weapon systems.
“We have to remember that systems enhancement packages was always supposed to be a stopgap temporary band-aid solution for the Abrams, because the service thought that they would do with that until a full replacement vehicle was chosen that’s how we ended up with like a dozen different variants of Abrams tanks with various levels of advanced features in the early 2000s.”
“The main difference between the M1A1 and A2 is its electronics. However, with this new M1A3, it’s now likely to have a whole brand new hull and turret. There’s conflicting reports on that, but I can’t see any other way that we get the kind of weight reductions that they’re looking for without a whole new hull.”
“The first version of the Abrams tank weighed 54 tons. The SEPV4 that was cancelled was on track to weigh over 75 tons. Add in a mine plow and it was going to break the scales at 83 tons.”
In May this year, an expert analysis board came to some sobering conclusions. “The M1A2SEP3 and 4 upgrades will improve effectiveness, but not restore dominance. Near transparency in all domains will significantly increase the lethality our forces will experience. We will continue to have to fight outnumbered, exacerbated by a low MBT operational readiness rate and aging fleet.”
“Lessons learned in Ukraine is that tanks are sometimes dead meat if they’re too heavy. They get stuck in the mud, they’re too slow not nimble enough to fire and then escape from drones that are searching for them.”
That same Latvian-Lithuanian study showed lots of no-go zones for Abrams due to their weight in muddy conditions. “From a tactical perspective a defending Force could easily mine trafficable routes, destroy bridges to complicate Abram’s combat operations during the wet season and funnel them into choke points.”
“The study recommends new band tracks to lower the ground pressure to help fix that problem along with the lighter weight.”
SEPV3’s heavier weight lowered operational range from 300 miles down to 264.
He references the role of tank in the army’s current FM3-0 Operations Guide, which you can read at the link.
Transcom says that SEPV3 is too heavy to transport for a lot of roles.
Meantime between failure for current tanks is 200 miles, which does seem worrisome.
“It will likely have the hybrid electric drivetrain that reduces fuel consumption by 50%.” He calls it the Prius of tanks, but it’s not ugly enough for that.
More stealth.
More active protection.
“The future of armored warfare, the way the army envisions it, is that they’ll be preparing for a major change to tank tactics unlike anything we’ve seen since the introduction of the Abrams in 1980 …they all seem to believe that the future will be a combination of manned and unmanned platforms that are integrated with aerial UAVs. The M1A3 is the first step in that direction.”
A major Abrams redesign was probably slightly overdue anyway, but the torrents of real-world information coming out of the Russo-Ukrainian War forced their hand to make more radical changes.
Israel’s Iran strike is shrouded in mystery, California is shockingly “permissive” on sex trafficking children, Warhammer goes woke, and a new Doom speed-running record. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Senior US military sources:The target of the Israeli strike was an Iranian military base in Isfahan near Natanz, not the nuclear facilities themselves. “The Israelis hit what they intended to strike,” The targets within this strike included Iranian air defense systems at the air base including those used to protect their nearby nuclear facilities. It was a message to the Iranians, “We can reach out and touch you.” The Russian made air defense systems were shown to be ineffective. There was one target but multiple strikes within that target. The Israelis used missiles and unmanned aircraft – in other words no manned aircraft (F35’s or others) were used as part of this strike
Both Israeli and Iranian sources are being cagey about what actually was hit. Right now it’s looking like it was a very limited strike, almost just a “See? We can hit them if we want to” strike to satisfy the Biden Administration’s endless calls for “restraint” while they continue to pound Hamas into a fine red paste. But it does offer a certain amount of support for the Kayfabe theory of Middle East politics…
The penalty for the equivalent of child trafficking in “progressive,” “forward-thinking,” “compassionate” California is a maximum penalty of a year in jail, and a minimum of two days in jail, plus a $10,000 fine which may or may not be paid depending on sentencing details.
Plenty has been said in recent years about soft-on-crime policies in states led by Democrats, and with good reason. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that political movements that believe the execution of preborn children is morally and legally permissible would also enforce such loose penalties for child endangerment and exploitation. But this seems, even for liberals, unconscionable.
Thankfully, it’s not that way everywhere. Other states with right-leaning leadership handle child predation, shall we say, “differently.”
But California especially loves setting sex offenders free if they’re illegal aliens.
It turns out that Katherine Maher is no ordinary ascendant progressive media executive. No, this woman’s social-media history reveals her to be the Kwisatz Haderach of white wokeness, presumably bred through generations of careful genetic selection to be the supernaturally perfect embodiment of Affluent White Female Liberalism. (As many have noted, she not only acts but looks like Titania McGrath.) It’s vaguely unreal: If there was a trendy progressive take floating around on Twitter and popular within media circles, then you can reliably bet she was there to voice it in the most preeningly insulting way possible.
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, who also offers lots of choice Chris Rufo commentary on tweets from Maher.)
“Texas Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne (R-TX-24) has taken out a full-page advertisement in the New York Post in an effort to recruit law enforcement from New York City, encouraging them to ‘escape New York and move to Texas. Sadly, the corrupt and crumbling Empire State is so purposefully anti-law and order, that you should no longer put your careers and lives in the hands of politicians who couldn’t care less about you or your families,’ the advertisement states.”
I’ll take “Headlines You Don’t Want To Read At Breakfast” for $400: “New York Suffers Record Rise in Potentially Deadly Disease Caused by Rat Urine. New York City has seen a record jump in the number of human leptospirosis, a disease caused by rat urine that can cause kidney damage, liver failure, and even death.”
“A far-left extremist that firebombed a pro-life office in Wisconsin in 2022 has been sentenced to 7.5 years in federal prison, along with three years of supervised release and a $32,000 fine.”
Republicans aim to use ballot initiatives to overturn unpopular Democratic Party policies. “Republicans in Washington are moving to get three major ballot initiatives passed. These measures will repeal Democrat-passed policies that are becoming unpopular among locals. The three changes would repeal the state’s sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, end an attempt to ban natural gas, and a change to the laws to strip squatters of their rights.”
You’ll need to click Show More for this one:
i remember in feb and march of 2020 being astonished by this lockdown idea and loudly yowling "do you have any idea what shutting down the world for 2 weeks would do to global supply chains and economic function?"
Has Warhammer gone woke? “I can’t help thinking that you finally started to bow to pressure from ‘Modern Audiences,’ and you were almost certainly encouraged to do this by a sudden infusion of investment money from BlackRock.”
The moment you make any concession, no matter how tiny, you’ve already given the game away. You’ve made it known that you’re prepared to bow down to their demands if they put enough pressure on you. And so, inevitably, their demands are never going to end. They’ll literally never be happy because there’s always going to be some other thing, some other piece of problematic lore, some other rule or exclusionary detail that has to be altered to comply with their constantly evolving demands, and all in the name of inclusion and diversity.
Because these people don’t care about your hobby, they don’t care about integrating into a community of like-minded individuals. All they care about is that the community bends and reshapes itself to suit them, until eventually they bend it so much that it breaks. People like that are complete and utter poison for any hobby, any fandom, any franchise. All they ever manage to do is stir up conflict, resentment and division, driving people away and turning fans against the very company that tries to pander to them, because their very reason for existing is to undermine and destroy the thing they claim that they’re trying to save.
And if you’ve got any common sense whatsoever or any love for the fandom that you’re so passionate about, you’ll think very carefully before bending the knee to them.
To observe Veterans Day, here’s a Mark Felton piece on World War II veterans who not only became celebrities, but are still alive:
They are:
American actor William Daniels, most famous for St. Elsewhere and the voice of KITT in Knight Rider, but the roles I enjoyed him most for were in 1776 (playing John Adams) and The President’s Analyst, plus an appearance in Kolchak: The Night Stalker as that week’s Police Lieutenant Who Is Fed Up With Kolchak’s Crazy Questions. “Born in 1927, Daniels enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1945 and was stationed in Italy just after the war working as a DJ in an army radio station. William Daniels is currently 96 years.”
American low budget movie king Roger Corman. Most famous for cheap science fiction films and pretty good Edgar Allen Poe adaptations in the 1960s (I just watched The Raven this Halloween season, and it has Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Jack Nicholson). But my favorite Corman film is The Intruder, which features William Shatner as a racist rabble-rouser in the South during desegregation, and which was filmed in the South during desegregation. The low budget is evident, but Shatner just burns off the screen. “Born in 1926, he enlisted in the V12 Navy College training program and served in the US Navy between 1944 and 1946. Roger Corman is currently 97 years old.”
Stanley Baxter, a British actor and comedian I am unfamiliar with.
He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and began as a child actor on BBC radio’s Children’s Hour initially recruited as a Bevin Boy, that is a conscripted mine worker, towards the end of the war he was recruited into the Seaforth Highlanders, and with this unit went to India and then to the war in Burma. Being promoted to Corporal and acting as a headquarters company typist, he then wrangled a transfer to the British Army’s Combined Services Entertainment Unit, serving alongside other future British stars such as Kenneth Williams, actor Peter Vaughan, and director John Slesinger. For his war services, Baxter received the 1939 to 45 star, the Burma star, and the usual War medals. He is currently 97 years old.
American comedy legend Mel Brooks, justifiably famous for Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, but also co-creator of Get Smart.
Born Melvin Kinsky in 1926, the son of Jewish immigrants to New York City, he started out as a drummer and comedy act with Sid Caesar before the war. In 1944, while in college, Brooks was sent to the US Army specialist training program at the Virginia Military Institute, and later inducted into the US Army. He received basic training as a radio operator and was sent to Europe in February 1945. He served in the campaigns following the Battle of the Bulge as a combat engineer with the 1104 Combat Engineer Battalion, and was part of teams clearing German booby traps and abandoned ordinance in towns in Western Germany, his specialism being the location of landmines. His unit also placed the first Bailey bridge over the Ruhr river, and would go on to build several bridges across the Rhine, serving through to May 1945 when they reached the Harz mountains following the end of World War II. Brooks joined special services as a comic, being promoted to Corporal, and ran the US Army’s entertainments in Wiesbaden in Germany. Brooks was himself honorably discharged in June 1946 as a Corporal. Mel Brooks is currently 97 years old.
Canadian Director Normal Jewison, most famous for In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck, but my favorite film of his is the original Rollerball.
Born in 1926 in Toronto of British immigrant parents, Jewison served in the Royal Canadian Navy between 1944 and 45. He was a signaler aboard a Canadian corvette escorting merchant ships up the East Coast from Maine to Newfoundland, from where the freighters and tankers would gathered to cross the Atlantic to Britain. Though German U-boats remained a serious threat until war’s end, he never saw any action, his only contact with the enemy being escorting German uboatman who had surrendered in May 1945. For his war service, Jewison received the 1939 to 45 star, the defense medal, the Canadian volunteer service medal and the war medal. Norman Jewison is currently 97 years old.
American acting and comedy legend Dick Van Dyke, famous for The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Poppins, etc.
Born in 1925 in West Plains, Missouri, he left school in his senior year to enlist in the United States Army Air Force, hoping to train as a pilot. But being underweight, Van Dyke instead became an army radio announcer, then transferred, like Mel Brooks, to the special services as a troop entertainer. Van Dyke did not serve overseas, and was discharged with the rank of Staff Sergeant in 1946, receiving the army Good Conduct Medal. Dick Van Dyke is currently 97 years old.
American actor Mike Nussbaum, with roles in Men in Black (the alien that owns the cat), Fatal Attraction, Field of Dreams, and House of Games. “Born to a Jewish family in Chicago in 1923 he served in the US Army in Europe in World War II. Assigned to General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s message center, which he headed and famously dispatched the official notification of Germany’s surrender in May 1945. Mike Nussbaum is 99 years old.
American TV producer and director Norman Lear, of All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons etc. fame, and was also a producer on The Princess Bride. (And speaking of Dick Van Dyke, Lear also produced and directed a movie he was in called Cold Turkey that I remember thinking was hilarious at the time, but I was pretty young…)
Born in New Haven Connecticut to Russian and Ukrainian Jewish parents, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Force in September 1942. He served in the Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator and air gunner aboard Boeing B-17 flying Fortresses, completing 52 combat missions and reaching the rank of Technical Sergeant. His service earned, him amongst other honors, the Air Medal with Four Oakleaf Clusters, and he was discharged in 1945. Norman Lear is currently 101 years old.
Lear’s liberal politics are not to my taste, but we thank him, and all the other gentlemen on this list, for their service.
A fair amount of tank news has built up in the hopper over the last month or so (some, but not all, related to the Russo-Ukraine War), so let’s do a roundup.
The U.S. Army has announced that it’s not doing an M1A2SEPv4, and instead will produced the M1E3.
The U.S. Army is scrapping its current upgrade plans for the Abrams main battle tank and pursuing a more significant modernization effort to increase its mobility and survivability on the battlefield, the service announced in a statement Wednesday.
The Army will end its M1A2 System Enhancement Package version 4 program, and instead develop the M1E3 Abrams focused on challenges the tank is likely to face on the battlefield of 2040 and beyond, the service said. The service was supposed to receive the M1A2 SEPv4 version this past spring.
The SEPv4 will not go into production as planned, Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told Defense News in a Sept. 6 interview at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We’re essentially going to invest those resources into the [research and] development on this new upgraded Abrams,” he said. “[I]t’s really threat-based, it’s everything that we’re seeing right now, even recently in Ukraine in terms of a native active protection system, lighter weight, more survivability, and of course reduced logistical burdens as well for the Army.”
The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in the statement. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protections for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”
Ukraine’s military will have the chance to put the M1 Abrams to the test when it receives the tanks later this month. The country is fighting off a Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago.
The M1E3 Abrams will “include the best features” of the M1A2 SEPv4 and will be compliant with modular open-systems architecture standards, according to the statement, which will allow for faster and more efficient technology upgrades. “This will enable the Army and its commercial partners to design a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding and more easy to upgrade in the future.”
“We appreciate that future battlefields pose new challenges to the tank as we study recent and ongoing conflicts,” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. “We must optimize the Abrams’ mobility and survivability to allow the tank to continue to close with and destroy the enemy as the apex predator on future battlefields.”
Norman, who took over the team last fall, spent seven months prior to his current job in Poland with the 1st Infantry Division. He told Defense News last year that the division worked with Poles, Lithuanians and other European partners on the eastern flank to observe happenings in Ukraine.
Weight is a major inhibitor of mobility, Norman said last fall. “We are consistently looking at ways to drive down the main battle tank’s weight to increase our operational mobility and ensure we can present multiple dilemmas to the adversary by being unpredictable in where we can go and how we can get there.”
General Dynamic Land Systems, which manufactures the Abrams tank, brought what it called AbramsX to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2022. AbramsX is a technology demonstrator with reduced weight and the same range as the current tank with 50% less fuel consumption, the American firm told Defense News ahead of the show.
The AbramsX has a hybrid power pack that enables a silent watch capability and “some silent mobility,” which means it can run certain systems on the vehicle without running loud engines.
The tank also has an embedded artificial intelligence capability that enables “lethality, survivability, mobility and manned/unmanned teaming,” GDLS said.
The Army did not detail what the new version might include, but GDLS is using AbramsX to define what is possible in terms of weight reduction, improved survivability and a more efficient logistics tail.
The Army awarded GDLS a contract in August 2017 to develop the SEPv4 version of the tank with a plan then to make a production decision in fiscal 2023, followed by fielding to the first brigade in fiscal 2025.
The keystone technology of the SEPv4 version consisted of a third-generation forward-looking infrared camera and a full-sight upgrade including improved target discrimination.
“I think the investment in subsystem technologies in the v4 will actually carry over into the upgraded ECP [Engineering Change Proposal] program for Abrams,” Camarillo said. “However, the plan is to have robust competition at the subsystem level for a lot of what the new ECP will call for, so we’re going to look for best-of-breed tech in a lot of different areas,” such as active protection systems and lighter weight materials.
For instance, the Army has kitted out the tank with Trophy active protection systems as an interim solution to increase survivability. The Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems develops the Trophy. But since the system is not integrated into the design of the vehicle, it adds significant weight, sacrificing mobility.
The Army plans to produce the M1A2 SEPv3 at a reduced rate until it can transition the M1E3 into production.
Which looks to be 2030.
Nicholas Moran looks at what this might or might not mean in practical terms, with an emphasis on what it doesn’t say:
“We have about 10 years that the SEPv3 is the latest and greatest.”
“They are actually going to backfill some of the v4 modernizations to the v3.”
“‘The Abrams tank can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight and we need to reduce its logistical footprint.’…There’s two parts to that one sentence that have a lot of digging into.”
“The Abrams started at 55 tons…now the v3 is 72 1/2 tons. If you add the Trophy APS, that’s an additional two and a half tons on its own. Then you put the reactive armor tiles on the side. Oh! Let’s put a mine plow on the front. Now your M1 is breaking 83 tons.”
One way to shed weight is with a smaller turret, like the Abrams X.
“What it doesn’t say in here, and what they’re not saying, is just how much weight are they trying to shed. Because if you’re trying to shed five to ten tons, that’s one thing. If you’re trying to shed 20 to 30 tons, then that’s something else entirely.”
The Abrams is essentially an analog tank which has had digital systems bolted onto it. “the upgrades that we have paid for our tanks have not been integrated upgrades from basically the ground up.” We’ve bolted on integrations modules, each of which adds weight.
“You can probably shave a few tons without touching the form factor of the M1A2 one bit.”
“Rip out the guts. Rip out all the electrics, all the electronics, and replace it from something that is designed and programmed from the ground up to be completely integrated.”
Replace the M256 cannon with the XM360, “which, as far as I know, does work. You install that you’ve shaved a ton off already.”
Replace the turret hydraulics with electrics.
Swap out copper wiring for fiber optics.
“So getting it from this current 73 tons down to, oh, let’s say 65 tons, probably isn’t all that hard.”
“If you want to take off more weight, you’re gonna have to look at a more radical redesign.” Like an unmanned turret.
If you mean fuel efficiency, you can pull out the current gas turbine engine and replace it, either a more efficient turbine or something else.
“The Army has spent a lot of money paying Cummins to develop the Advanced Combat Engine. This is an opposed module, opposed piston modular engine, and it can be configured for 750 horsepower. I believe it’s just a six cylinder version to the 12 cylinder or piston version, which is a 1500 horsepower, the same as a turbine the same as modern MTU. It would make some sense that the Army is going to look very hard at this.” The AEC is a bit funky, with two pistons per cylinder working together to compress the gas. They claim it offers about 25% fuel economy and a similar reduction in waste heat.
They might also look at a hybrid power train.
You can also save logistical weight in spare parts. “If you were to rip the guts out of the tank and start from scratch, you can probably come up with a maintenance and logistics system for maintenance which is much more refined and efficient.”
“‘The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection from soldiers built from within instead of adding on.'”
“This has apparently been in the works for the better part of three years now. In 2020, the director of operational test and evaluation put out his annual report, and when it gets to the M1A2v3 section, it basically says ‘Guys, this is getting a little bit out of hand. The tank is a tad heavy.'”
“The Army understands that they’re pretty much at the limit.”
All this is being done now because Ukraine finally made them pay attention to things that had already been identified as problems but not addressed. “Something like the Ukraine conflict is a little bit of a kick in the pants, and it’s probably going to attract somebody’s attention and say ‘OK, yeah, this is what we need to do it.”
Trophy adds so much weight because you need to balance the turret. Redesigning the turret from the ground up solves that issue.
Modular open systems architecture standards: “The backbone, the central nervous system of these things, is a new version that’s compatible across vehicles.”
Chris Copson of The Tank Museum offers up an assessment of the use of tanks in Ukraine’s summer offensive (posted September 29).
“One commentator has been dubbing it ‘Schrodinger’s summer offensive.’ Is it or isn’t it, and it appears to be currently tentative at best.”
“We’re also seeing the tank struggling to assert influence in what has increasingly become a slog dominated by artillery.”
“Putin’s special military operation saw the Russian army fought to a standstill, and they’d suffered huge losses in men and material. But they’re still in possession a swathe of Ukrainian territory running through the Eastern Donbas right the way down to the coast of the Black Sea.”
“Russian forces have fallen back into a defensive posture behind layered defenses minefields, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.”
“Ukrainian response has been probing attacks in greater or lesser strength, and they’re starting to use some of their Western supplied military equipment to attempt to break through before the Autumn rains, and the rasputitsa, the roadless time, puts an end to the campaigning season.”
“Zelensky fought for supplies of modern Western military material, and, after quite a bit of hesitancy, it’s begun to arrive.”
“So far there’s been enough, we think, to equip up to 15 Ukrainian brigades, and each of those is going to be around about 3,000 personnel and about 200 vehicles of all types.”
He covers the trickle of Challenger 2s, Leopard 2s, Abrams, etc., and the capabilities of each, which we’ve already covered here.
“In the early stages of the invasion, February and March 2022, Russian tank losses have been estimated at anything from between 460 and 680 from a total inventory around about 2,700 in BTs. Both of those figures are estimates from Western or Ukrainian sources and they’re now putting the figure well over a thousand.”
“An awful lot of these losses seem to be in tanks and AFVs either stuck bellied out through poor driving, or run out of fuel. That’s just poor logistics.”
Russian tank units lack enough infantry support to protect their armored columns from Ukrainian anti-tank units.
“We’re starting to see images of Ukrainian Leopard 2s and Bradleys knocked out by mines or artillery in attempts to breach Russian layered defenses.”
Ukraine’s western tanks have much higher repairability than T-72s. “Western MBTs [are] designed so that an ammunition or propellant explosion actually vents to the outside, and this tends to maintain damaged vehicle’s integrity and make it repairable, as well as increasing the likelihood of crew survival.”
Damaged Leopard 2s are already being repaired.
“Because Russian industry is under the cosh, a shortage of chips and high-tech components, and that is because of the western embargo. The solution their general staff has come up with is to pull tanks out of storage, and this includes some very elderly models indeed. Some of the estimated 2,800 T-55s which comes into service.” Cold War designs.
“Commissioning tanks after decades in store is a huge undertaking. It’s not just a question of charge in the batteries, it’s more like a total rebuild.”
“They’re not likely to be in peak condition,” but might be OK in static defensive roles.
“There is evidence that at least one has been used as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.”
“Against tanks like Challenger, Leopard or Abrams in an open country tank engagement, it’s fairly obvious they wouldn’t make the grade.”
Keeping all the different western tanks supplied and running is going to be a huge challenge to Ukraine. “A range of different and very unfamiliar, in some cases artillery pieces, trucks, logistic vehicles. Now the range is huge. Finding trained mechanics and procuring a huge range of spares. It’s going to be a colossal headache.”
“Artillery is really of central importance to the Russian, and before that the Soviet, way of war. And it’s the primary lethality in deep and close battles. Now perhaps 70% percent of Ukrainian casualties so far are being caused by Russian artillery.”
“At present a [Russian] brigade grouping is assigned a brigade artillery group, BRAG, and that’s two battalions of self-propelled howitzers and a battalion of multi-barreled rocket launchers. Use is made of forward observers, unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery location radars to identify targets.”
“At its most effective this uses the Strelets reconnaissance fire system to pair tactical intelligence and reconnaissance assets with precision strike artillery, and that gives you real-time targeting [Reckify?] uses the 2K25 Krasnapol 152mm laser guided round, which is able to inflict accurate strikes.” But it doesn’t work so well with cloud cover.
“We’ve also heard quite a lot about the Lancet range of loitering munitions for precision targeting. The Lancet-3 drone has a 40 minute flight time and it counts a 3kg warhead.” Oryx credits over 100 kills to Lancets. “These mostly have been self-propelled artillery, but also tanks.”
“With the constant presence of surveillance drones and satellite intel, it is getting just about impossible to hide anything on the modern battlefield.”
“The main take-home from the current conflict, and this might be stating the blindingly obvious, is that the battlefield is a very open place these days, and tank tactics have to evolve to take this into account.”
One thing we haven’t seen much of recently: Russian air power.
“There seems to be some progress around Robotyne, and the Challenger 2, Maurder and Stryker IFVs of the 82nd Air Landing brigade have been deployed to bolster 47th Brigade. And there seems to be some penetration of the Russian air defenses. Ukrainian offensive has broken through the first of three defensive lines, but the progress is really slow, because you’ve got minefields, dragon’s teeth and anti-tank ditches, and the Russian forces are very well dug in.”
The Uralvagonzavod factory in Omsk, in Siberia, hasn’t manufactured a new T-80 hull since 1991. And work on the T-80’s GTD-1250 turbine, at the Kaluga plant, likewise has idled in the decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse.
No, for nearly 30 years the Russian army has replenished its T-80 fleet with old, refurbished hulls and engines. Those hulls and engines obviously are beginning to run out as Russian tank losses in Ukraine exceed 2,000. For context, there were only around 3,000 active tanks in the entire Russian armed forces when Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022.
Uralvagonzavod produces just a few dozen new T-72B3s and T-90Ms every month: far too few to make good monthly tank losses averaging a hundred or more. That’s why, in the summer of 2022, the Kremlin began pulling out of storage hundreds of 1960s-vintage T-62s and ‘50s-vintage T-54s and T-55s.
But the T-62s and T-54/55s, as well as only slightly less ancient war-reserve T-72 Urals and T-80Bs, are a stopgap. Some get fresh optics and add-on armor; many don’t. To sustain the war effort into year three, year four or year five, the Russian armed forces need new tanks. Lots of them.
Thus it was unsurprising when, two weeks ago, Alexander Potapov, CEO of Uralvagonzavod, announced his firm would resume producing 46-ton, three-person T-80s “from scratch.”
It’s a huge undertaking. While the Omsk factory still has the main T-80 tooling lying around somewhere, it must also reactive hundreds of suppliers in order to produce the tens of thousands of components it takes to assemble a T-80. That includes the gas-turbine engine.
During the T-80’s initial production run between 1975 and 2001, Kaluga built thousands of 1,000-horsepower GTD-1000 and 1,250-horsepower GTD-1250s for the type. A thousand or more horses is a lot of power for a 46-ton tank: a Ukrainian-made T-64BV weighs 42 tons but has a comparatively anemic 850-horsepower diesel engine.
The T-80’s excess power explains its high speed—44 miles per hour—and commensurately high fuel consumption, which limits its range to no more than 300 miles. Why then would Kaluga bother with a new 1,500-horsepower turbine?
As long as certain Russian forces—airborne and marine regiments, for example—value speed over fuel-efficiency, it makes sense they’d want even more power for their new-build T-80s. A 1,500-horsepower engine also would give a next-generation T-80 lots of growth potential. Uralvagonzavod could pile on tons of additional armor without weighing down the tank.
A few quick thoughts:
This hardly expresses confidence in the future of the T-14 Armata, does it now? (Speaking of which, they withdraw it from service in Ukraine, evidently without engaging any enemy tanks in anything but an indirect fire role (assuming they weren’t lying about that as well.))
If they’re struggling to produce just a few new T-72B3s and T-90Ms, why would producing T80s be any easier?
Russia announces a whole lot of things that never come to pass. In many ways its their default mode when announcing MilTech Wunderaffen.
Restarting a production line that’s been idle 30 years isn’t just difficult, it’s damn near impossible. At lot of the people who had the knowledge of how to actually build the things have probably died, and Soviet-era schematics are not an adequate substitute.
I’m pretty sure they have the capabilities to build the heavy equipment parts. The modern electronics? Not so much.
Like a lot of Russian announcements since the beginning of Vlad’s Big Adventure, this is probably a bluff to overall the gullible. I’m sure the Russians intend to restart production of T-80s, but I wouldn’t count on doing it very soon, or producing terribly many.
