...weapons of the war du jour.....

[Chillicothe]

I saw a post in another thread ( ' GOP who supports Putin' thread)....it was a rejoinder to the poster Tommy Tainant, who is supposedly from the UK. He frequently enough offers perceptive observations about issues that America is wrestling with.
Anyway, the discussion in that thread skewed towards UK support of Ukraine. And one poster, Wild Bill Kelsoe, offered the forum this assertion about UK weapons systems being sent to Ukraine.

"Hell, your country is selling fucking second rate weapons to Ukraine."

Well, that struck me as an odd assertion. An assertion from a poster who, to date, has not offered his bona fides on the efficacy of international weapons. And it was in contra-distinciton to an article that I read in the New York Times today. I offer that article here as an attempt to add nuance or context to the unsupported assertion by poster Kelsoe.

It is this article: (emphasis is by my avatar)

"Ukraine Is Wrecking Russian Tanks With a Gift From Britain"​

March 18, 2022, 4:52 p.m. ET3 hours ago
John Ismay

"In video after video taken in Ukraine, a puff of smoke and a brief flash of light signal that another clutch of Russian troops are about to die.

Sometimes it is only a split second before that light streaks to a tank or armored vehicle that suddenly erupts in smoke and flame, often bursting from within as ammunition inside explodes.
Rewinding these videos a bit often shows Ukrainian soldiers before the attack, patrolling to an ambush point with large green tubes carried on their backs — each one a gift from Britain. In perhaps 15 seconds, and sometimes even faster than that, the soldiers can unsling the weapon, unfold its aiming sight, release a safety catch and wait for their prey to appear.

The green tubes are called NLAWs, for Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons. They are the result of decades of weapons research dedicated to building small lightweight guided missiles that may have evened the balance of power in combat between the fearsome tank and the soldier.

Compared to the American-made Javelin antitank weapon, which has been hailed by officials at the Pentagon and the White House and sent to Ukraine by the thousands, the NLAW weighs about half as much, costs far less, can be easily discarded, and is optimized for use in the relatively short-range fights Ukrainian soldiers are getting into with the invading Russian forces.

The NLAW is a product of the Swedish company Saab and has been sold to a number of NATO countries — including Britain, which assembles the missiles at a factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the British Army. And although the British Army also has the Javelin, it began purchasing NLAWs about 10 years ago and has been sending them to Ukraine in ever greater numbers.
A British diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss defensive aid, said Britain had sent more than 4,200 NLAWs to Ukraine.
“We still assess it to be one of the best short-range defensive anti-tank weapons around,” the diplomat said.

Ukraine Is Wrecking Russian Tanks With a Gift From Britain (Published 2022)

The NLAW antitank missile weighs about half as much as an American-made Javelin, costs far less and can be easily discarded after use.

www.nytimes.com

------------------------------------------------

We make no judgement on Wild Bill Kelsoe's insight into military weapons.

 

[Wyatt earp]

No link

 

[1srelluc]

Well Kel-Tec is sending them 400 9mm S2K folding carbines.....I wonder how their excellent customer service for their shit that don't work half the time (unless you have skills) will work in a war zone 5k miles away.

Maybe High Point will step up to the plate next.

 

[fncceo]

Let's make things really interesting ...

 

[JGalt]

Well Kel-Tec is sending them 400 9mm S2K folding carbines.....I wonder how their excellent customer service for their shit that don't work half the time (unless you have skills) will work in a war zone 5k miles away.

Maybe High Point will step up to the plate next.

Not sure there, podner. George Zimmerman's Kel-Tec PF-9 worked pretty well.

 

[1srelluc]

Not sure there, podner. George Zimmerman's Kel-Tec PF-9 worked pretty well.

I've never owned a KT that I could not get to run just fine but then again I have "skills" that your average "volksstrum" conscripted Ukrainian fighter won't possess.

I had a P3AT that they sent me a updated cross-pin for but that's been it. Their P-32 is excellent.

 

[Wild Bill Kelsoe]

I saw a post in another thread ( ' GOP who supports Putin' thread)....it was a rejoinder to the poster Tommy Tainant, who is supposedly from the UK. He frequently enough offers perceptive observations about issues that America is wrestling with.
Anyway, the discussion in that thread skewed towards UK support of Ukraine. And one poster, Wild Bill Kelsoe, offered the forum this assertion about UK weapons systems being sent to Ukraine.



Well, that struck me as an odd assertion. An assertion from a poster who, to date, has not offered his bona fides on the efficacy of international weapons. And it was in contra-distinciton to an article that I read in the New York Times today. I offer that article here as an attempt to add nuance or context to the unsupported assertion by poster Kelsoe.

It is this article: (emphasis is by my avatar)

"Ukraine Is Wrecking Russian Tanks With a Gift From Britain"​

March 18, 2022, 4:52 p.m. ET3 hours ago
John Ismay

"In video after video taken in Ukraine, a puff of smoke and a brief flash of light signal that another clutch of Russian troops are about to die.

Sometimes it is only a split second before that light streaks to a tank or armored vehicle that suddenly erupts in smoke and flame, often bursting from within as ammunition inside explodes.
Rewinding these videos a bit often shows Ukrainian soldiers before the attack, patrolling to an ambush point with large green tubes carried on their backs — each one a gift from Britain. In perhaps 15 seconds, and sometimes even faster than that, the soldiers can unsling the weapon, unfold its aiming sight, release a safety catch and wait for their prey to appear.

The green tubes are called NLAWs, for Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons. They are the result of decades of weapons research dedicated to building small lightweight guided missiles that may have evened the balance of power in combat between the fearsome tank and the soldier.

Compared to the American-made Javelin antitank weapon, which has been hailed by officials at the Pentagon and the White House and sent to Ukraine by the thousands, the NLAW weighs about half as much, costs far less, can be easily discarded, and is optimized for use in the relatively short-range fights Ukrainian soldiers are getting into with the invading Russian forces.

The NLAW is a product of the Swedish company Saab and has been sold to a number of NATO countries — including Britain, which assembles the missiles at a factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the British Army. And although the British Army also has the Javelin, it began purchasing NLAWs about 10 years ago and has been sending them to Ukraine in ever greater numbers.
A British diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss defensive aid, said Britain had sent more than 4,200 NLAWs to Ukraine.
“We still assess it to be one of the best short-range defensive anti-tank weapons around,” the diplomat said.

Ukraine Is Wrecking Russian Tanks With a Gift From Britain (Published 2022)

The NLAW antitank missile weighs about half as much as an American-made Javelin, costs far less and can be easily discarded after use.

www.nytimes.com

------------------------------------------------

We make no judgement on Wild Bill Kelsoe's insight into military weapons.

Only because the Russians don't know what the hell they're doing

 

[Chillicothe]

For the things-that-go-boom wonks, here is a little more on the Brit tank-killer that was included late in that linked article.

I post it as an add-on because I suspect a few here don't have an active subscription to the New York Times and may not have been able to access all of the linked piece.

The following was part of that article:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Javelin and the NLAW, both of which an individual soldier can carry and fire, include features previously only seen in much larger and more cumbersome weapons, the kinds that usually have to be mounted on vehicles.

Both weapons can be fired directly at targets like enemy soldiers or a building, but when attacking vehicles they can also be programmed to hit from above — where a tank or armored personnel carrier has the least armor. The American weapon can pop up and then dive down to impact and explode, while the British missile flies a shorter path — crossing over its target and firing its charge downward.
The result, however, as shown in Ukraine is the same: an uncounted number of destroyed Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks.

The missiles have succeeded despite efforts to defeat them. The Russian military had said, and Pentagon leadership believed, that a defensive system on the newest T-90 tanks was capable of sensing and destroying anti-tank missiles like Javelins and NLAWs in flight. In an apparently new countermeasure, Russian troops are welding improvised cages of parallel steel bars atop tank turrets. Video evidence shows that both defenses, however, have failed.

​

---

The Javelin, which was designed toward the end of the Cold War, consists of two parts: a 15-pound reusable launcher that soldiers often use for reconnaissance and surveillance, given its suite of thermal cameras that can zoom in and out for finding targets, and a 33-pound disposable tube that contains the missile itself. The newer NLAW, by comparison, weighs just under 28 pounds and has no camera — just a simple sight to aim.
And while the Javelin can kill tanks from as far away as two and a half miles, its missile flies slower than the NLAW, which is most accurate for targets up to only about a half mile away. For moving targets, the Javelin can guide itself while in flight, thanks to a heat-seeker in the missile’s nose, whereas a soldier firing an NLAW simply points the weapon at a moving vehicle, engages the guidance system and tracks the target for a few seconds before firing. The missile then flies to a point where it predicts the target will be.
The capabilities of the two weapons make the Javelin more like a sniper rifle for taking out armored vehicles at extreme distances, the British diplomat said, while the NLAW is better for close-quarter battles and ambush scenarios.

Given that the Ukrainians are unable to fight Russian armor with tanks of their own, they must use different tactics, the diplomat said, adding that the Ukrainians have shown the will and the extraordinary nerve to get close to tanks and destroy them in these missile attacks.

“You need to know how to fight, and you need the means, but it’s the will — what’s in the heart of the Ukrainians to fight?” the diplomat said. “They’re fighting an existential threat and they’re not giving up. So we’ve given them, at their request as a sovereign nation, the tools to go and do this.”

 

[para bellum]

Russians have been using tanks without infantry support, and it hasn't worked out very well. About 2:1 in favor of Ukraine in terms of trucks and armor...

 

[Chillicothe]

Russians have been using tanks without infantry support.......

That's grim stuff, poster para bellum.

I've seen others that have similar dynamism, i.e., big hardware with explosions happening on their surfaces'; however, in the clip you offer there is the grimness of what looks like a dead body...in uniform...laying prone in the street just below the tank, and then the injured soldier, who I think emerged from the burning tank and is crawling in the grass just off the street.

Being a Russian tanker in Ukraine these days has got to be a fraught occupation. Affairs should be in order before strapping on the helmet and descending down the hatch. Javelins and these Brit-supplied NLAW's change the dynamic.

Or so it seems to me, a guy who has never been in a tank in his life.

 

[para bellum]

That's grim stuff, poster para bellum.

There is another that is even more graphic from that same attack. Lots of body parts laying around afterwards including the returning cosmonaut there at the end.

Putin has changed his strategy and is repositioning to hammer the cities with artillery and missiles. He's abandoned the idea of taking the cities, and is just going to pulverize them ala Grozny.

He can do that, but the civilian casualties are going to be in the tens of thousands, and it will just stiffen the resistance and make Russia even more of a pariah state than it already is.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

 

[Chillicothe]

From this morning's (3/20th) Washington Post:

"Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine could be headed toward a stalemate as heavy casualties and equipment losses take a toll on unprepared Russian forces that have failed so far to achieve any of their initial objectives, Western officials and military experts say.

The front lines have barely moved in more than a week. Russians are being killed or injured at the rate of up to 1,000 a day, according to Western intelligence estimates, and more, according to Ukrainian ones.

U.S. officials decline to make public predictions about the course of the war but say there are clear indications that the Russians are struggling to sustain the existing forces they have and are scrambling to find reinforcements and resolve their logistical difficulties.

Appeals to China for military assistance, a so far fruitless attempt to recruit Syrians and talk of bringing in reinforcements from other parts of Russia and the breakaway territory of South Ossetia in Georgia have not yet produced evidence that fresh troops are on the way, the officials say."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See article:

"Russia’s war for Ukraine could be headed toward stalemate​

Casualties, equipment losses and a lack of progress on the ground are taking an unsustainable toll, experts say"​

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/20/russia-ukraine-military-offensive/

 

[Chillicothe]

And the hits keep on coming.


This from today's (3/20th)...The Hill. (it is a synopsis of an opinion piece in the New York Times)
------------------------------------------------------

'A Ukrainian historian wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times on Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin made two major miscalculations when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine.
Yaroslav Hrytsak, a historian and professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University, wrote that "Russian aggression has been met with heroic Ukrainian resistance and united the West."

He referred to Putin as a "master tactician but inept strategist," and said he has made his most profound miscalculation by not anticipating a response from the West and Ukrainian resistance.

"First, he was hoping that, as had been the case with his war against Georgia, the West would tacitly swallow his aggression against Ukraine. A unified response from the West was not something he expected. Second, since in his mind Russians and Ukrainians were one nation, Mr. Putin believed Russian troops needed barely to enter Ukraine to be welcomed with flowers. This never materialized," he wrote.

Hrytsak wrote that despite Putin likely escalating the conflict further, "he is far from the military victory he sought."

He added that Putin believes "he is at war not with Ukraine but with the West in Ukrainian lands."

"It's essential to grasp this point. The only way to defeat him is to turn his belief — that Ukraine is fighting not alone but with the help of the West and as part of the West — into a waking nightmare," Hrytsak wrote.

According to Hrytsak, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, which saw the annexation of Crimea along with the capture of parts of the Donbas region under Russian-backed separatists, confirmed that the distinction between Ukrainians and Russians "lies not in language, religion or culture — here they are relatively close — but in political traditions."

"Simply put, a victorious democratic revolution is almost impossible in Russia, whereas a viable authoritarian government is almost impossible in Ukraine," he wrote.

 

[Tommy Tainant]

Grim reading for fans of authoritarian madmen.