rape is a tool that Russian and Soviet forces have used for decades to terrorize a local population, see Berlin, 1945
Interesting Article about the mistakes Putin is making in comparison to Hitler. https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/02/world/putin-invasion-mistakes-hitler-blake-cec/index.html DD
I think the real reason is simply their military was not purpose built. Hitler's military was purpose built so I disagree with the premise of the entire article not to mention the handwaving about tanks. People have been saying the age of the tank and manned airplanes were over since 1957.
I'm telling you that my friend wrote that her husband's friend who is a doctor says .... hmmmm. When one goes out of the way to distance the substance of their report while also trying to validate it by clarifying it's coming from a doctor, my brain tends to hurt.
There's video of mutilated / executed Ukrainians out there (gruesome enough that it won't be hitting the evening news). Doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination that rape is occurring as well.
Everything works in that conjunction..... Air superiority is next though as ground based weaponry are making it easier to take down air power. DD
When he said aircraft would be useless because of SAMs (like you) he sort of miscalculated that the aircraft would also be co developed. Russia is not losing tanks because tanks have been made obsolete. Ukraine has NATO intel, and command and control advantage.
I didn't say worthless, I said changing.....we are no longer in a massive land war in Asia where tanks would dominate. DD
We might be. Just because this and most previous conflicts have been asymmetrical doesn't mean that will always be the case. One of the major reasons Russia is failing is their military is setup for NATO equivalent weapons systems (SU-57, Subs, missiles, nuclear deterrent) and not for this. Ukraine since 2014 has been prepped and armed specifically for this. It's also much easier to train guys on handheld weapons systems than it is to run an aircraft carrier or submarine. Basically I feel like people are looking at dead tanks and helos and drawing the wrong conclusions.
Generally speaking, a combined arms doctrine is the best option. It is problematic to try to develop EVERYTHING though, because then you end up with a military budget like the US, and you still end up with mostly good stuff but even there you have to have some concessions to cost (like not building all F-22 level fighters).
The tank died once in the late fifties with the advent of effective HEAT and came back with the invention of CHOBAM (ceramic and steel laminated armor), explosive reactive armor, spaced armor, active protection and other stuff. Leopard I and AMX-30 both had significantly less armor than their predecessors, because shaped charge warheads took a momentary advantage, and French and German designers decided armor was futile and maneuverability was more important. The Soviet Union ended all heavy tank production with the T-10 for the same reason. It flipped back with the Abrams, the Leopard 2a4, Challenger and the Leclerc, which were all touted at one point or other as being impervious. It seems weapons designers have caught back up, but it's a constant back-and-forth.
Even as the PRC internationally declares neutrality internally the CCP is framing this as an ideological struggle of the Communist World versus the West. Including rehabilitating Stalin. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/asia/china-russia-ukraine.html Bristling Against the West, China Rallies Domestic Sympathy for Russia China’s Communist Party is mounting an ideological campaign aimed at officials and students. The message: The country will not turn its back on Russia. While Russian troops have battered Ukraine, officials in China have been meeting behind closed doors to study a Communist Party-produced documentary that extols President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a hero. The humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union, the video says, was the result of efforts by the United States to destroy its legitimacy. With swelling music and sunny scenes of present-day Moscow, the documentary praises Mr. Putin for restoring Stalin’s standing as a great wartime leader and for renewing patriotic pride in Russia’s past. To the world, China casts itself as a principled onlooker of the war in Ukraine, not picking sides, simply seeking peace. At home, though, the Chinese Communist Party is pushing a campaign that paints Russia as a long-suffering victim rather than an aggressor and defends China’s strong ties with Moscow as vital. Chinese universities have organized classes to give students a “correct understanding” of the war, often highlighting Russia’s grievances with the West. Party newspapers have run series of commentaries blaming the United States for the conflict. Around the country, the Communist Party has organized sessions for officials to watch and discuss the history documentary. The 101 minute-long video, which was completed last year, does not mention the war in Ukraine but argues that Russia is right to worry about neighbors that broke away from the Soviet Union. It describes Mr. Putin as cleansing Russia of the political toxins that killed the Soviet Union. “The most powerful weapon possessed by the West is, aside from nuclear weapons, the methods they use in ideological struggle,” says the documentary’s stern-voiced narrator, citing a Russian scholar. The documentary was marked for internal viewing — that is, for audiences chosen by party officials and not for general public release — but the video and script have recently surfaced online in China. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, it says, “some countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Transcaucasia have become forward positions for the West to contain and meddle in Russia.” China’s leaders have long used the Soviet collapse as a cautionary tale, but Mr. Xi has given that tale a more urgent, ominous spin. In doing so, he has embraced Mr. Putin as a fellow authoritarian lined up against Western dominance, demonstrating to the Chinese people that Mr. Xi has a partner in his cause. The documentary attributes the decline of the Soviet Union to political liberalization, especially what Beijing calls “historical nihilism,” or emphasizing the Communist Party’s mistakes and misdeeds. It accuses historians critical of the Soviet revolution of fabricating estimated death tolls by many millions for Stalin’s purges. Stalin, it argues, was a modernizing leader whose purges went too far but initially “were something of a necessity” given the threats to Soviet rule. It suggests that rock music and modern fashion were symptoms of the moral rot that later set in. “They’ve taken only one lesson from all of this, and that is you do not allow any freedom of expression,” said Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who studies Chinese and Soviet history, “because this kind of freedom inevitably leads to loss of political control and that creates chaos.” The documentary credits Mr. Putin with restoring Russia’s spirit. It shows Mr. Putin marching in a parade marking Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, and young Russians kissing a banner featuring his portrait. Previous leaders in Moscow — above all Mr. Gorbachev and Nikita S. Khrushchev — are portrayed as dupes, bewitched by the siren song of liberal reform and Western superiority. The documentary, “Historical Nihilism and the Soviet Collapse,” has been the centerpiece of a monthslong campaign aimed at party officials that has continued since Russia began its full assault on Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to reports on local government websites. Officials overseeing the screenings are often described in official notices as calling for cadres to maintain firm loyalty to Mr. Xi. “Loving a party and its leader is not a cult of personality,” Zheng Keyang, a former deputy director of the party’s Central Policy Research Office and a consultant on the documentary, said in a discussion about the documentary published by a pro-party website this month. Chinese leaders have been debating why the Soviet Union fell apart ever since it dissolved in 1991. More than his predecessors, Mr. Xi has blamed the Soviet Union’s breakup on lack of ideological spine and Western political subversion. “If you have the worldview that you see in this documentary, you could tell yourself the story that the Russians are facing a real threat from the West,” Joseph Torigian, an assistant professor at American University in Washington who studies elite politics in China and Russia, said in an interview. The study drive is aimed at instilling loyalty among cadres before a Chinese Communist Party congress late this year where Mr. Xi appears set to claim a third term. Political loyalty has become more crucial to Mr. Xi as Beijing tries to contain Covid outbreaks with stringent lockdowns, and manage a slowing economy. China’s foreign policy is under scrutiny, after some Chinese scholars posted essays criticizing Beijing’s refusal to condemn Mr. Putin. Many of the critical essays have been deleted and the party has pushed harder to defend its stance in recent weeks. Editorials in Communist Party newspapers have amplified the Chinese leadership’s argument that the real culprit in Ukraine is the United States and NATO, for undermining Russian security. “It was the United States that personally lit the fuse of the present conflagration between Russia and Ukraine,” stated one of a series of editorials in the Liberation Army Daily, the military’s main newspaper. Universities and colleges have organized indoctrination lectures for students, suggesting that officials are worried that young, educated Chinese may be receptive to the criticisms that Beijing has been too indulgent of Mr. Putin. Liu Zuokui, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told an audience of college students in eastern China that the war arose from “NATO’s eastward expansion that squeezed Russia’s space for survival,” an online summary of the lecture said. China, another speaker told physicists in Beijing, had to protect its strategic partnership with Russia from “intense shocks and impacts.” The party’s demands for conformity over the crisis will make it harder for any dissent to coalesce into a pushback against Mr. Xi. “There’s an ‘either we hang together or we hang separately’ attitude that comes into play,” Mr. Johnson, the former C.I.A. analyst, said of Chinese leaders. “If it’s a strong nationalist approach, then who in the party doesn’t want to be a good nationalist?”
US Tanks were pretty effective in Gulf War 1 and in the initial engagement in the Iraq invasion. Of course the US had overwhelming air superiority and were fighting a very demoralized Iraqi military. I'm not sure tanks are useless but certainly on their own they are very vulnerable. I think though even from the early days of tank warfare that was known that tanks without support are vulnerable. I still think the biggest lessons from this war are ones that have been known since ancient days. A highly motivated smaller force fighting on their home ground can be more effective than a demoralized and undisciplined larger force fighting on enemy territory. Also as Napolean said "logistics win wars."
