| Author | Message | ||
     Aesquire |
But that's assuming you rule the sky. That's not a given. Who owns the airspace over Russia and Ukraine? Nobody. Sure, for this short time, small drones tend to get through because there's no defenses yet fielded against them. Next year? But you can't fly a Sukhoi or a F-16 over the thousand+ kilometers of front line and kill tanks like a WW2 Stuka ace. Between the traditional SAMs and the man portable ones, nobody has air superiority, just denial. You can say with equal fervor that airplanes are as dead as tanks. And be just as wrong. Sure, I don't want to be in a tank in an urban environment where partisans can throw Molotov cocktails on me from balconies, much less RPGs, but I don't want to be in a Toyota pickup surrounded by angry folk, either. And my chances of survival in a tank are much higher. I'm not promising that we'll always have tanks, though it's likely, imho. After all, nobody builds Battleships today. Homing missiles in WW2 changed everything. But I know the DARPA folk are testing anti drone guns today, and the Israelis already field anti-missile defenses, as do others. It will suck to be a pigeon in a world of auto mode Metalstorm drone defenses! Body armor was said to be dead when guns dominated the battlefield. That breast & back plate with the cannon ball hole in the museum! Yet every modern Army issues it today, because it enhances survival chances. Ditto tanks. Bang for the buck and near zero training? "Technicals!" Toyota pickups with a machine gun rule. But, a sophisticated sensor system and accurate gun kills them with ease. And if you're building that expensive gear, you'll put it in an armored vehicle. It's always been true the top of the line weapon system can kill anything peer on the field. And it's always been true that a group of peasants can drag that down if they're brave and motivated. But not without cost. In the 14th century it was a guy in plate armor, today, tanks, and both can kill peasants with ease. | ||
| Hootowl |
Whether you rule the sky is irrelevant to the point of the usefulness of tanks. Their tanks are dead if you do, and yours are dead if you do not. A tank is an expensive target with no realistic engagement opportunities with the thing it was designed to counter - enemy tanks. Only an idiot would deploy ground forces where they do not have air superiority, and if you do have it, wiping out enemy armor is easy from the air. Why use tanks? | ||
| Tpehak |
This is what the Ukrainian nazi do, they deploy all those expensive targets for the Russian drones and aviation Joe Biden gave them using our money and lost them. | ||
| Crusty |
Let them kill each other off. God will sort them out. | ||
| Aesquire |
Their tanks are dead if you do, and yours are dead if you do not. A tank is an expensive target with no realistic engagement opportunities with the thing it was designed to counter - enemy tanks. But tanks are very good at killing tanks. Even better at killing trucks & APCs and the roughly 5"+ cannon most have kills people in groups, in buildings, a mile away just fine, plus typically multiple machine guns. ( the U.S. M1 current variants are well known to have an extremely accurate coaxial gun. Using the main gun sight, it's a sniper that carries it's bulletproof bunker with it. ) And beehive rounds are huge shotgun shells with tungsten cylinders that go through concrete walls. IR vision systems help determine who sees who first at night, and whoever sees the enemy first wins in combat for longer than I've been alive. Longer than English is a language. There's plenty of engagement opportunity. No body has uncontested air superiority in Europe today. Sure, a Sukhoi can kill a tank, if it survives flying over the units it's searching for. You could be right that the age of the Tank dominating the battlefield is coming to an end. But it's not F-16s killing tanks in Europe today where Vladimir sends conscripts from Eastern Russia to die. It's man portable anti tank missiles and mines and drones. Which is why tanks need infantry to protect them, as they in turn protect infantry from machine gun nests, & other fighting vehicles, which has been true since the first tanks in WW1. You'd have a better argument that manned aircraft over the battlefield are obsolete. The ancestors of the Sci-fi Bolos are being tested now. Initially it's a flock of minitank robots run as force multiplier for a manned tank. Automatic perimeter patrols and scouting. But, again, if you're right that the paradigm has shifted making tanks obsolete, that shift isn't complete. Artillery is still the killing weapon today, both cannons and missiles. And if you're defending or attacking, your tank crews are still more likely to survive being shelled than crunchies in a ditch. https://m.youtube.com/@TheChieftainsHatch/videos Is the tank dead? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lI7T650RTT8 Ultimately it's a matter of opinion. You might be right, or wrong. My opinion is we have new anti drone and seagull weapons in the pipeline, and that they will mount them on armored vehicles, since that's the most survivable platform in a world with mass artillery. It's not currently possible to build a super tank that can kill airplanes and other tanks and vehicles, do everything, and still be light enough to cross bridges in Europe and the third world. Think of it like body armor. My 14th century plate armor in my living room won't stop rifle fire. Still better than a t-shirt against artillery splinters and pretty darn good against a bayonet. But it's pre-gunpowder armor. The Modern stuff won't stop heavy machine gun fire. But I point out the M2 .50 machine gun was designed to kill tanks, bunkers with machine guns, etc. It wasn't until the second generation of WW2 tanks that a .50 wasn't a big threat. The Modern stuff worn by cops and soldiers does a great job of enhancing survival. But it doesn't make you invulnerable. And it's useless against anti vehicle weapons, you just can't carry enough mass. When lasers become a common threat, Kevlar won't stop them. But they make anti-papperazi scarves for celebrities, and I expect that layered anti laser body armor will be common using similar tech. And an anti tank laser ( probably mounted on a tank to protect the delicate parts behind armor ) will still turn a guy in any probable armor, into an expanding cloud of gore. ( As will the heavy machine gun it will carry ) We live in interesting times. | ||
| Aesquire |
And, frankly, because I enjoy the weird and obscure... A weapon so crazy and imbalanced that the Army said no, & the Marines said gimme! Eggshells with sledgehammers! My retired Marine buddy tells me that his favorite example is a Mule with a 106 recoilless rifle. 6? Only the Marines. Small enough to carry on a landing craft, or a transport plane, run through alleys, and kill Anything on the battlefield, including stone fortresses. | ||
| Hootowl |
Many things are good at killing tanks. Tanks are just more vulnerable. It is why the Army developed the fighting vehicle. Tanks are expensive overkill deployed where we already have air superiority (since we do not send ground forces to places we have not established that). And at that point they are not needed. Enemy armor is much more safely destroyed from the air. Tanks are relics from WW1 and 2. The aircraft changed everything. | ||
| Crusty |
I'm just curious; what do tanks have to do with Science, climate or Global cooling? | ||
| Tpehak |
Drones and hypersonic missiles already changed everything. (Message edited by TPEHAK on September 13, 2023) | ||
| Aesquire |
Tanks, the most technology in a box that moves on land is certainly science. Also war, but so are rockets, kinetic weapons, and dead horses catapulted over a city wall. Physics and microbiology! | ||
| Hootowl |
Not to mention psychology. | ||
| Aesquire |
What makes the Armata T-14 interesting is not that it's in a family of vehicles intended to replace all the old stuff, and greatly simplify the supply and repair chain. That's been tried before, and it hasn't worked as an across the service thing, but has had partial success, but mostly as vehicles built on an existing and near obsolete chassis, like the Sherman & M113. The "everything chassis" is usually too heavy for most of the needs, and too light to be a heavy recovery vehicle. And every army today has someone who remembers that the Tiger could only be towed by another Tiger. Too heavy for existing recovery vehicles. And it towed lousy, since the Tiger's great weakness was the transmission. Not only did you need to risk losing 2 Tigers to bring back a broken one, it often became 4-5... Nobody wants to explain making that procurement error again. The T-14s innovation is the unmanned turret. It's been considered the future best move, for decades, but the idea is really unpopular with crews, and until you have high resolution cameras and screens, just wouldn't work. You couldn't see well enough. The first to see the enemy usually wins. I compare it to the Swedish S-tank, with no turret. I think the Swedes ended up putting a dozer blade on almost all in service ones, to make a quick fighting position. The "S" lasted a long time, but iirc never really got into combat, and nobody followed the idea so it didn't become a trend. Possibly too much a "special for our circumstances" design, a hilly woods tank that would probably be a poor choice in a desert. Heck of a concept, though. 3 man crew, commander, driver/gunner, loader/driver. And the SOP was "set up an ambush hide, fast, aimed down the only approach, hit hard, and Run Away. Lather, rinse, repeat. The loader/driver in back could drive backwards about as fast as the normal driver could forward. That concept might come back. In an unnamed turret design, with mostly screen vision, other than nausea, could easily have high speed reverse mode. The Russian designers still have old school vision blocks as backup for when the ( presumably mostly imported ) electronics fail. Smart move, imho. It remains to be seen if the T-14 ever gets into mass production, and how it does in the real world. The production issue is very political, both international sanctions related, and Russian Internal. I wish the problem of bad decisions to cancel or buy weapons because the Leader had opinions/friends/was bribed was only a Ruskie problem. But it was endemic in Nazi Germany, and even here in the U.S. really expensive programs get messed up when a particular politician decides there's no need for X because there's never going to be a need/war/old type conflict again. ( see B-1 bomber and President Carter ) | ||
| Aesquire |
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/09/13/ c40-cities-you-might-not-have-heard-of-them-but-th ey-are-coming-for-you-n577666 I'm considering writing a detective thriller novel where the villain uses lists like the C40 to plan serial killings and leave fake clues behind to put blame on a group they're prejudiced against. I've got the outline, but it's still a madlibs version & I have not decided which intersectional victims group my hero, villain, and target of false blame is, yet. | ||
| Tpehak |
North Korea is going to assist Russia with mass production so it is not an issue. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://pjmedia.com/columns/miltharris/2023/09/13/ boston-now-has-two-green-monsters-n1726869 Climate Crisis, definition: a lie to take power and money from your enemies. Enemies, definition: those not Loyal to your Party. Also, Citizens who question your theft and giving taxpayer money to people who bribe you. It all makes sense if you remember that they lie about everything. Equity means their rich donors get richer. X Crisis means imaginary boogeyman that their actions to pretend to fight means their rich donors get richer. Social Justice means violating the Constitution to make sure their crimes and injustices are making their rich donors get richer... You might see a pattern. The end game is absolute power for The absolute corrupt, so they can make sure their rich friends get richer. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/09/the -daily-chart-who-has-the-metals.php | ||
| Aesquire |
Continuing from Media thread. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Renshaw Good but a long multi part article. http://www.panshin.com/critics/Renshaw/notassmart/ notassmart1.html For Heinlein fans. http://www.panshin.com/critics/Renshaw/renshaw.htm I don't have eiditic memory, to my childhood dismay. And I ran into the "reading machine" only in High School, where I fiddled with it to turn off the gate function and flash the entire line of print ( just one line, unfortunately ) and quickly cranked it up to max speed, ( 1000 words per minute ) which made the teacher yell at me to quit screwing around. It wasn't a real tachistoscope, but close. I often have joked about being handed the book, How To Read Better And Faster, with the quip, "I skimmed it". But it's absolutely true. I started slogging through it as a challenge, and once introduced to "paragraph at a glance" reading discovered it was easy, ( though I seldom do entire pages at a glance ) and once introduced to "skimming" finished the book in one sitting. I got "in trouble" in high school , accused of cheating on a "standardized reading exam" by finishing it ( a quick multiple choice test ) in a fraction of the time and 100% comprehension score. Obviously, according to the "teacher" ( a vice principal unhappy at doing actual labor during the test week, and it showed ) I MUST have cheated! I've never been good at tolerating perceived injustice, so I kicked up a fuss at the accusation. ( plus it affected placement, and that Pi$$ed me off being threatened to be put in the really boring dumb and criminal kid classes ) So it escalated to yelling and the calling of parents. ( I absolutely refused to back down and even then could infuriate adults with inappropriate observation. The vice principal could be heard screaming from the main office, in another wing ) My Mom was busy with her teaching job at the grade school, but my Father was home and showed up already truly torqued off. ( at Me, for causing trouble, and Cheating on a test? Doom! ) After listening to the Principal and Vice principal ( who was by that time in Full Fury and spitting ) My Dad just grabbed a random book off the Principal's book shelf, asked if he'd read it? Got an indignant, "of course!" , asked me if I had read it? "Uh, no." Flipped to a random page, told me to read it, ( a book on child psychology ) which took about 20 seconds, while the putative adults fumed. He then asked me to tell them what it said. I did, then went on to disagree with some aspect, and my Father stopped me with a quiet, "enough". Dad then "explained" that it wasn't my fault I was smarter than the vice principal, that any future allegations of cheating would be addressed by lawyers, any punishment would Result in a lawsuit and charges, and why the Hell wasn't I in Advanced Placement classes? and he'd be back in town next week to go over my new lesson plan with the Principal since the vice was going to have nothing whatsoever to do with His Son's education. Yeah, the vice principal never talked to me after that but by golly everyone knew how he felt about my family. 5 years later my kid Sister ran over him like a freight train and complained to Mom that it was hard following me in school. ( she's smarter than me ) | ||
| Aesquire |
https://sonyinteractive.com/en/innovation/platform -experience-technology/blog/the-science-of-agency/ I've had the gaming persona as a "Vault Hunter" which basically means a ruthless killing machine. As a pretend adult, I understand that even if I had a rifle that shot purple plasma skulls IRL, I wouldn't use it to accomplish my daily task list. I mean, morals, eh? But they're doing amazing things with story in games that you get to be an actor in a drama. Early days, yet. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/di6aN1-lywY | ||
| Aesquire |
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/09/19 /why-mgm-in-vegas-is-losing-millions-of-dollars-pe r-day-right-now-n2628592 If ever you pay the Denegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. | ||
| Hootowl |
Paying the ransom should be illegal. It only encourages more of the same. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-opposite-of-dj-vu -exists-and-its-even-more-uncanny | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/09/bid en-accelerate-the-climate-crisis.php Freudian slip. | ||
| Hootowl |
Interesting. That happened to me with the word carrot. Good to know it is not just me.  | ||
| Aesquire |
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown /2023/09/21/prince-william-and-the-end-of-the-worl d-n1728649 So that pedo island and ranch client list they won't let you see... | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/m an-amazon-erased | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.advrider.com/all-bmw-internal-combusti on-motos-are-currently-do-not-sell/ Emission control issues? If it's a parts supplier thing, there's no recall, yet. I can see wanting to avoid the expense of a recall, thus holding inventory to fix before sale? Something odd here. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=55959 PTSD therapy, couples therapy, both show significant improvement with the right medication. Just because the CIA used it as an experimental weapon against unwilling victims doesn't mean it's not useful when used by Not-Evil therapists. I'm not saying it's a panacea, or for everyone. Nope! One size fits all is a lie of socializated medicine and fools. Sorry for the redundancy. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://nypost.com/2023/09/25/even-bill-gates-is-b acktracking-the-airs-gone-out-of-the-climate-crisi s-balloon/ | ||
| Aesquire |
https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/china-sta te-hackers-are-camping-out-in-cisco-routers-us-and -japan-warn/ Best to not buy Chinese electronics. |
