@ all.

Yes, all good points. Clark's contention is that these advantages were marginal. The mistakes of leadership in the Red Army were COLOSSAL in the first six months (see, Budenny, First Marshal). Why then provide the Werhmacht with a 'spotless' campaign, as he calls it, but hobble the Russians with all their defects to say who 'should' have won. It's really a great read, for those interested in this piece of history. Truly the most vast and brutal war ever fought, and lots of interesting insights. He argues how much of the common wisdom since then was due to the Generalstab's efforts to excuse their own acts and blame Hitler, or the winter etc. The great irony is how often Hitler was right and literally thwarted by the 'Eastern Generals' - at least until he lost hold of his sanity in the war's latter stages. Clark contends that, absent any help from the Western allies, the Soviets would have at least fought Germany to a standstill. Stalingrad was won before any second front was open or before any substantial supply could have an impact (PQ17, for example, occurred in July, 1942 - the U-Boat campaign was at the height of it's success, just at the beginning of the Stalingrad campaign). The Western Front altered the duration, but not the ultimate outcome, of the war. Anyway, that's his thesis, and it's really well written. I'm sure those of you responding would enjoy the read.

And fwiw, this is in no way a defense of Hitler or National Socialism! I just never realized the true scope of the war in the East, nor the unbelievable determination of the Russian soldier, before reading this. The Nazis were stuck by this in the war's first days, and it was a harbinger of what was to come. There's a great story in there of of farm or something at Brest-Litovsk that held out for weeks at the opening of the war. It still exists and has the names of the Russian soldiers who defended it to the last carved on its walls. Amazing stuff. My take away: do NOT invade Russia!

"Jata" wrote..

Keep parroting the CCTV and Communist party line

You continue to think I believe what I post and that it is my opinion.

I cannot do anymore if you ignore what I write and then repeat the same lie over and over.

Moving on:

When I have a conversation with someone, in English, and most people only DO repeat the party line, it's useful for everyone else (those who did not live in China), to know exactly what the vast details of that entails.

In addition, and you would know this or should having lived in country for 6 years, vast amounts of 'The Party Line' is actually pre-1949, pre-1911, is from general Chinese attitudes, and not 'The Party Line' created by the CCP.

But you knew that and just forgot to mention it, even though you lived in China for 6 years.

Right?

If you knew the history as you claim, and if you lived in China for 6 years this is an insight you DAMN well should have picked up on, you would never have omitted such a point.

"sushi" wrote..

And don't give me the "just the messenger" BS.

If you were actually just the messenger, you'd tell us what the Chinese think and then compare it to reality. Since you virtually NEVER do that, you're just parroting back propaganda. Your posts would actually have considerable value if you would point out the problems that are created by Chinese mis-perceptions. But that just isn't on your agenda.

Nonsense and here we have more of your delusions.

"My agenda is this:" wrote..

I post what the Chinese think and compare that to reality from their point of view, how they would see it, how they see it in the media, TV, newspapers, so then you can compare it to what you know and your point of view.

So you can compare their reality to yours.

What you do from then on, that is your job.

Get to thinking, get to analysing.

You think my agenda is to be a party mouthpiece and propaganda arm to brainwash you.

For the Nth time your assessment is 100% in error.

Quote:

Your posts would actually have considerable value if you would point out the problems that are created by Chinese mis-perceptions.

That's your job.

I want you to then think about it and take what YOU know and believe and compare.

Certainly I have NO idea what is in your head when you continue to assert what my agenda is, even when I tell you that you are just wrong.

You have a terminal case of:
"He's a COMMIE Mouthpiece! Freak the **** out!.

When my personal politics and beliefs are to the RIGHT of yours and I intentionally removed what I THINK or I FEEL when I post.

SINCE YOU ARE COMPLETELY CLOSED MINDED IN OUR CONVERSATIONS, AND YOU CANNOT READ FOR COMPREHENSION, I WILL SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU.

Quote:

I disagree, personally, with everything I have posted from the Chinese point of view.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Creditcalmass wrote..

People often forget the fact that the Germans came VERY close to winning on the eastern front...especially in 41.

The Wehrmacht took so many prisoners that it is hard to believe. Of course, Psycho Joe declared war on the Russian prisoners - even his own son...

Sushi wrote..

The single most decisive factor was an incredibly mundane fact that would otherwise be a trivial footnote in history. Russia used an entirely different rail gauge than the rest of Europe. They used 2 meter broad gauge rail rather than standard gauge rail.

But the implications were enormous. The Germans could not use their own rolling stock and locomotives or those captured elsewhere in Europe to supply their troops in the East. Once they crossed into the pre-war Soviet borders, they could only use captured Russian trains and cars. As if that weren't bad enough, they had to unload the standard-gauge trains and reload them on broad-guage at that point as well.

Yep. The General Staff should have had a plan for this. It's one of the best lessons in logistics around.

Quote:

Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.

Quote:

So you can compare their reality to yours.

What you do from then on, that is your job.

Get to thinking, get to analysing.

You think my agenda is to be a party mouthpiece and propaganda arm to brainwash you.

For the Nth time your assessment is 100% in error.

You are obviously delusional and have internalized the propaganda to a degree where you don't even recognize it.

There isn't "their reality" and "our reality" - there is only ONE REALITY with differing perceptions. And that reality is the same for everyone. Only perception can differ. It's obvious that you are backtracking and crawfishing after getting busted yet again.

The problem with the Chinese is that they are so delusional they are incapable of rationally analyzing inputs when they conflict with the propaganda. Just as you constantly refuse to recognize reality and repeat the delusional perception as if it is the same thing. Then you try to use weasel words to cover your tracks.

Since you are just spouting BS at least you are starting to acknowledge that it's my job to correct you. I will continue to do so. Maybe you can quit bitching about it.

Quote:

I post what the Chinese think and compare that to reality from their point of view, how they would see it, how they see it in the media, TV, newspapers, so then you can compare it to what you know and your point of view.

Since that is ALL you post, you've just admitted that you are nothing but a mouthpiece for that propaganda. Also it's delusional to use an oxymoron like "reality from their point of view." Either it's reality or it's not.

Quote:

You are obviously delusional and have internalized the propaganda to a degree where you don't even recognize it.

There isn't "their reality" and "our reality" - there is only ONE REALITY with differing perceptions. And that reality is the same for everyone. Only perception can differ. It's obvious that you are backtracking and crawfishing after getting busted yet again.

Can't you read?

This following paragraph is my personal opinion:

Quote:

I disagree, personally, with everything I have posted from the Chinese point of view.

"Sushi" wrote..

you've just admitted that you are nothing but a mouthpiece for that propaganda.

WHICH YOU DON'T SEE OR HEAR because you do not have access to 60 CCTV channels all day long. That's why I post it - so you know what is in the media here that is not repeated in your media.

I am done. No more posts about what I see or observe here.
You and Jata can post what you see as you walk around China on a daily basis. /sarc

I did this as FAVOR to TF, and all you have done is chase me off. This is WORK and I would not repost what I see and conclude otherwise, if I did not think it would enlighten those not in China to see the local media.

So, you are ungrateful and hostile.
Therefore, I stop.

Okinawa?? F that. My father fought there. It's ours. We gave it back to Japan to look after for us.

Quote:

Okinawa?? F that. My father fought there. It's ours. We gave it back to Japan to look after for us.

I would offer my insights as to the Chinese perspective wrt islands near Japan, but Jata and Sushi know better.

Maybe you could ask them.

Asi

Quote:

That's simply not true. "Good enough" isn't good enough on this. Quantity does have a quality of it's own, but our tanks are so overwhelming against ANYTHING that's not using a similar level of technology that you're basically talking about target practice, not a battle. We can shoot on the move and hit anything we can see.

Fire control system on the US tanks are second to none..


HOWEVER>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The Russians supplied some new tech which absolutely ****ing center-punches the Abrahms.....and it's shoulder launched.

I don't have the time right now but hunt around and you'll see pics of what the new mystery weapon can do to the Abrahms. One neat hole through the armour about an inch and a half in dia....but the ****ing molten spall that is inside the tank will incinerate anything living inside.

sushi:

Quote:

There isn't "their reality" and "our reality" - there is only ONE REALITY with differing perceptions. And that reality is the same for everyone. Only perception can differ.

A heartfelt applaud to you Sushi. Most all folks do not recognize this fact. We could (SHOULD) start a thread sometime in the Bar....about perception.

Duc: That's what an RPG does. It's just a shaped charge. Several tanks have been taken out with them in afghanistan and iraq but it pretty much takes a lucky hit to get through.

Active armor is about the only thing that could stop one that was specifically designed to punch through and then a second hit in the same spot would anyway.

Tanks are hard to kill - but they won't ever be invulnerable.

Quote:

A heartfelt applaud to you Sushi. Most all folks do not recognize this fact. We could (SHOULD) start a thread sometime in the Bar....about perception.

I would post about the incorrect perception, ignorance and lack of historical context most Westerners have when discussing China, but Jata and Sushi know best.

Perhaps you could ask them.

Sour grapes.

"I would offer my insights as to the Chinese perspective wrt islands near Japan, but Jata and Sushi know better."

Perfect example of what I said in my last post. How do you portend to tell us what all 1.3 billion Chinese people think Ben? How big is your circle? Have you ever worked in Kunming,Shenyang,Chengdu,WuHu, Wuhan,Harbin, etc. I have worked and done business in all of these places and in 6 years never found that "everyone" believed everything from CCTV and surely not the Communist party. There are less than 100 million people who are actual members of the party. Millions of Chinese have left China and many many more want to leave as indicated in multiple surveys. They don't trust their government. Yet every post from you is "Chinese people think...blah...blah.blah"

I am humble enough to know that after 6 years of living and working in China, there is still a lot to learn. Asians in general and Chinese in particular seem to play it very close to the vest. They are always vague and obtuse for a reason. Seems like you read a lot of history but China like everywhere else has changed a lot. There is a lot of information, in spite of censorship, that the people have learned since they have opened up to the world. Your Chinese contacts may feel a certain way but that doesn't mean everyone in China feels that way.

Don't change your posts on my account. I rarely pay any attention to them. You don't seem like a guy who takes advice very well, but maybe tone down the arrogance about 6 notches. As somebody recently said, there are a lot of smart people in the world, you're not the only one.

In response to "Fire control system on the US tanks are second to none.." and previous posts asserting the superiority of the M1 Abrams and that "no one comes close" etcetera.

Ummm... no, basically. Already the first version of the Russian T-90, called T-90A withstood 7 hits with M89A2 120mm sabot rounds. From 250 meters. That's why the Indian Army said "we want to buy them", and then proceeded to do exactly that. They now employ a modified version of the T-90, referred to as T-90S Bhishma, basically an upgraded T-90S.

The latest generation T-90MS (MC in Russian) Tagil has all the stuff Asimov mentioned about information sharing (called IVIS) between tanks. The Russians have had information sharing between cruise missiles since the 1980's, so it's not like this is something new to them... heh...

It's fire control enables it fire on the move just as well - if not better since the system is latest generation - as any American or other Western tank. It can also fire laser-guided ATGM's with a range of 6-8 kilometers. Night vision, yep, a newer version than the Abrams has, too. Both the machine guns, a 7,62mm coaxial and a 12,7mm Kord can be fired from inside the hull, with remote controls (goes without saying for the coaxial of course).

The armour composition on the Tagil is far newer and according to some experts it is also better than the Chobham stuff. And on the outside of the armour we find bolted on Relikt-7, the world's best reactive armour, capable of defeating HE/HEAT/HESH rounds, and severely degrading or defeating APFSDS rounds.

We add on to that an electromagnetic mine detonator in the front, as well as Shtora-type passive ATGM countermeasures (jammers) and active ATGM counters for shooting down incoming missile and RPG-type rounds.

We add to this new and very powerful 125mm main gun rounds. Before getting into them, let me just say that the ammo available for the T-90 at the time the armour tests were carried out in India, would have no problem of penetrating an M1 at 250 meters. The latest APFSDS rounds for the T-90 achieve very high penetration capabilites, enough to punch through M1/Leo2/Chally 2/Merkava 4 at ranges below 1500 meters. IF the **** would hit the fan, Ivan has also developed Depleted Uranium 125mm rounds. Their penetration capability essentially assures destruction of any non-ERA equipped Western tank up to around 2500 meters given a clean hit, according to experts (no one speaking publicly has the classified data). Please note that the M89A2 and M89A3-penetrators for the M1 are already DU, and, as mentioned above, a T-90 turret withstood around half a dozen such rounds from 250 meters, a range which is considered to be almost point-blank when it comes to modern armor warfare.

In addition to that, the Russians, as well as the British, have recently developed very powerful HESH-rounds, which are exceedingly powerful against even ceramic composite armours. You need good reactive and/or insanely thick armour to be assured of a high degree of defence against such rounds. The Brits found that out the hard way when they destroyed one of their Chally's in a friendly fire incident using such ammo.

All this comes in a package around 60% the volume of an M1 Abrams, and at only 47 tonnes compared to the bloated almost 70 tonnes of the M1 and its German, British and Israeli counterparts. A rather unmentioned fact of Western armour is its relative immobility. See Iraq where the M1 is road or packed desert confined. Logistically, they are easier to transport than the heavier Western "pillboxes", and have diesel engines instead of the "infantry scorching" jet engines on the Abrams.

The price per unit is around 40% the cost of an Abrams, if memory serves me correctly.

Oh, and any references to how T-72's, T-55's and T-64's did during Desert Storm will be dismissed out of hand by me. They were somewhat of age and so-called "monkey models" (which is even a semi-official term in the Russian military industrial complex), deliberately lower-quality export versions.

The Chinese tanks are not as good as the Russian tanks are, but they should not be underestimated or thought of as "Desert Storm"-type opposition.

The RPG-29 has achieved penetration of the frontal arc of the Challenger 2. The RPG-28 is heavier than that, rated for another 150mm penetration of steel equivalents.

In addition, there is the RPG-32/33/34's, some of them are co-developed with Jordan.

Quote:

Have you ever worked in Kunming, Shenyang, Chengdu, WuHu, Wuhan,Harbin,

Like so many on line who post about China, you post from a big city perspective.
99% of what anyone sees on China online is written by people in Shanghai and Beijing. You are no exception.

Where have I been in China?:
Kunming, Lanzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Xi'an and every tier 2, 3 and 4 city in between. Scores of tiny villages.

I will waste no more time.

You know more than I, so you tell everyone what China is like. /sarc

Kamath: While you obviously know more about it than me, I was including the new soviet tanks too.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but if I'm not mistaken, the vast majority of the chinese tanks are either old soviet models or native built copies of them.

Ben
Either **** or get off the pot. This threaten to leave and keep posting behavior is childish and perfectly in line with the rest of your passive-aggressive reptoire. The attention whoring "look at me, I'm going to take my ball and go home" stuff is just embarassing. Either do or do not, there is no try.

When people contradict you, you accuse them of being ignorant of China and Asia. When anyone criticizes you, you whine like a little bitch. Yet you're so incredibly smug when criticizing others. I'm sure you feel justified and can't see the hypocricy in that. You like to dish it out so either learn to take the critiques or go home and cry. I don't care which one you choose.

Since you want to get into a dick-measuring contest over credentials, I'll play along. I grew up in Hawaii and later California in a Japanese-American family with many Chinese neighbors. I hold a degree in Asian History and served for years in US Army intelligence - with plenty of time in Korea. We did a lot of work on the PLA even though the DPRK was our main target. I have experience planning and executing a large-scale unit movement and associated logistics (battalion staff for the 7th Infantry Division's move from Ft. Ord, CA to Ft. Lewis, WA). I speak both Japanese and Korean though no longer fluently. My Mandarin is very basic - maybe 500 word vocabulary. When I was at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA studying Korean I used to hang out with much more senior officers at the Naval Postgraduate School down the hill. We used to game out many different simulations. I was only allowed to participate because my position in MI gave me a sufficiently high clearance despite being junior in rank and because they valued my input.

I doubt you have a better grasp of Chinese history than me. I'm certain you have a much weaker grasp of the region as a whole. You appear to have no military experience and little grasp of the most important concepts. You're good at repeating what you hear but you're terrible at placing into context or analyzing the implications beyond the immediate attitude and behavior of a single participant in a multi-player game.

What's a M89A2?

Is that some type of car?

M89A2:

I will never post another word on China again to TF.

The other members who live in China (oh wait...) can tell you what the pov from the Chinese media is, but Jata and Sushi - who both insist they know better but do not post the insights that I do, nor do they have access to 60 channels of CCTV, nor do they watch the shows on a daily basis to report back to you, nor do they see the content of the Chinese-language commercials, soap operas, movies, dramas, newspapers, hand delivered ads, broadsheets, nor do they speak to Chinese people every hour of everyday.

Just like 99% of what is conveyed on your local cable channel is not online and has to be seen first hand in the local USA media market, so do you need to be in China to get the full flavor of what is on their media.

You want to learn anything about China, ask Jata and Sushi.

I am done trying to help you avoid becoming the next empire in decline.

Ben: I think you're being silly and overly dramatic. But that's something I've accused you of before, so I guess it's nothing new.

I'll miss your posts. More than you know.

Rjazz wow.

Okay, any tank you can hit with 7 of those is pretty solid.

bob

K. question:
Do they ram the tank or does the someone throw them?

I saw in the Top TickerForum view that Bobby has replied, and Asimov and Sushihorn seem to be talking to China-Ben. It is wonderfully soothing and comforting that I cannot see either of their clueless replies and fantasies about American military might and Chinese World Dominance. Neither nations are of course to be disrespected, but I can do without baseless cheerleading.

Regarding Chinese armour of their best ZTZ-series, it is inferior to Western and Russian armour, but the ratings on the main gun and ammo in terms of steel equivalents says that below around 1000 meters, it has a very good chance of achieving frontal arc or turret penetration on any non-ERA-equipped MBT. In fact, from the stats I have, frontal arcs on many Western MBT's including the Abrams will probably be vulnerable up to around 1750 meters or more. The biggest drawback of the ZTZ-series is that for being a new tank, it is too lightly armoured for the latest generation tank rounds from both the West/Israel and Russia. The latest 120mm APFSDS rounds the Abrams uses can destroy any ZTZ-series tank from around 2500 meters or more. The Chinese tanks of the ZTZ-series AFAIK are equipped with some degree of night vision and TI. I cannot speak for IVIS-equipment in any of them, don't know.

I forgot to mention that the T-90 Tagil has been equipped with latest generation thermal imaging too, so it is on par or perhaps slightly superior to most Western TI sights.

As always, it is matter of quantity of the good new models in the tank fleet. For instance, Russia operates quite few T-90's in total, fewer still of the new Tagil-model, whilst having enormous quantities of T-64's, T-72's and T-80's.

The Russian approach to tank development has for years been one of modularity. For instance, you can fully upgrade a not-too-old-generation T-72 into the T-72BM, by adding some armor blocks, ERA, switching a few sensors, and in some cases giving it a new main gun. The result is then something of a T-90-Lite, a very capable tank. The same process is applicable to the T-64's and T-80's, all of which are being upgraded with better ERA, sensors, guns, and armour packages. They have something like 22000 tanks in what are called "active reserves"...

The T-64, T-72, T-80 and T-90 all use the same 125mm 2A46 gun, though at somewhat different revisions, which means that some of the gun versions won't perform well with some of the newer ammo. This is a MAJOR supply advantage, however, because you don't need so many different calibers.

Here's where the Chinese have a problem to work out. Their current tank fleet uses too many calibers, complicating supply operations. The ZTZ-series uses a Chinese copy of the 125mm 2A46. But many of their older tanks which are fielded in far greater quantities use calibers ranging from 100/105mm to 115mm to 125mm.