Did Ukraine Change your Mind about Russian Tanks? @TheChieftainsHatch
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In this video I ask Nicholas "The Chieftain" Moran if the Ukraine War changed his mind about Russian and Soviet tanks.
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I believe that the primary cause of the demise of so many Russian tank units is because of tactics. My opinion is that tanks in Ukraine should use their gun range advantage to pound various targets, while maintaining infantry support.
A T-62 is a great tank... for WW1!!!
The u.s. government was paying tribal leaders large sums to distribute evenly, which they didn't the little they did was just our cash every month to the tribal leaders. Shocked you missed that aspect, but literally know a guy who's unit had to drop of the sack of cash every month, and he said for people living in mud huts. Not sure where that money was going but it was to support the tribe.........
I think there is something I need clarify regard Chieftain opinion. Yes. He is absolutely correct that people should not joke from use of T-62 (especially modernized T-64 what is some aspects is better then T-72) and regard high-low quality strategy. But I feel he forget to clarify that Russians do not see own tanks as poor quality. They target this mid-tier category he considered as useless. Especially in zone of weapon sells. They selling point was good hard stats for low price. But in many cases other options were more affordable or good enough. Especially as T-72 line has critical flaw in auto-loader setup, what guarantee death of whole crew if penetrated. For that reason more competent military were phasing them out.
@@clintonreisig Yes. Russians basically didn't use infantry screens (or it was not leaving BMP and moving directly behind tanks) and rush tanks directly behind enemy line, into ATGM traps. But many people forget that most tanks were destroyed by artillery, not the ATGM's. Even before Russia start using own artillery in Phase 2. Ukrainians who use they tanks more carefully, has far lesser looses then Russians do.
This discussion makes tons of sense. “See first, shoot first, kill first” seems to apply regardless of the conflict or tech involved.
The purest distillation of ranged combat since the invention of the atlatl and the sling.
@@mrrodgers0 I argue way before that, like way back when we monke throw rock big muscle hand.
The vast majority of pilots shot down in ww2 never saw their attacker.
@@gregp7379 And the vast majority of tank kills in WWII went to whoever shot first.
During WW2, the British left most of their guns at Dunkirk. The result was a set of entirely new equipment. The 57mm Six Pounder Anti Tank Gun was a great example. It was a small field gun operated by three men that became the scourge of German armour. Their 88mm flak 88 was more powerful (devastating actually) but it needed a much bigger crew and was difficult to hide. The Six Pounder was used throughout the war entirely because it was easy to move and operate.
I want that on a t-shirt. "If you don't have a thermal imager, you're not worth the effort" - Chieftain 2022
Great idea....👍
Sounds like good dating advice. xD
Thats kind of genuis honestly! 😅 Like saying- "if you can't see how 'Hot' I am...you're not worth the effort." It has kind of a double meaning to it.
I wonder if one in 5 or one in 10 would make sense. "Shoot where I shoot".
This war is like some dystopian sci-fi where the big, elaborate systems can no longer be maintained or resupplied and there's a crazy mix of anything that can put out some hurt; from drones operated by a single soldier to WWII surplus machine guns, to Cold War tanks, to 1950s artillery.
My man calles the post-USSR scifi-dystopia 😂
@@quan-uo5wswell it ain’t like the British are ever going to be caught using MkIII SMLE’s or the US busting out M1 Garands in our next big conflicts
@@quan-uo5ws we live in wh40k, its okay (God-Emperor passed a law against Slaanesh recently)
@@AtticusKarpenterreading drivel like this makes me wish you were in this war so you could get this childish crap knocked out of your head
It is pretty wild when you look at the broader picture and realize there's barely trained barely armored men with mosin nagants fighting against remote controlled flying drones on one battlefield, and then put it in the broader context of the instigators, the force that started the attack is also throwing literal garbage at the problem. What moron came up with this war?
In short, modern optics can make any old weapon system into a asset on the battlefield. As long you are able to spot the enemy before they spot you signficiantly improves your odds of staying alive.
I don't think that works with a spear ;)
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Im sure if you have a good arm you'll be fine xD
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Well, even in that time range was always the number one superior trait.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualizedI prefer an acog on mine love it.
@@miriamweller812 Range is good, but always needs to be supplemented by other weapon systems for engagements with low LOS. Low LOS can never be avoided indefinitely. Right combo for the most situations you can reasonably expect to be in.
In regards to losses I think alot of people forget just how large this war is. Alot of equipment is going to be lost no matter what
Large doesn't automatically equal lots of equipment losses though, in relative terms. Look at the Gulf War and how little losses the Coalition had.
@@rayquaza1245 yes but the coalition had the latest equipment with air superiority and a month long air campaign. And if you're talking about round two chieftain has talked about the ied threat
@@chrisspencer6502 the air dominance wasn’t the reason 73 Eastings was so crushing, Iraqis were crushed because they made lots of mistakes on the ground, air dominance doesn’t mean you can’t scrap good
@@chrisspencer6502 Yea exactly... That shows you can have very low losses in a large conflict if you have superior tech, training, and planning.
@@chrisspencer6502 The answer is that the US military is far more capable than the Russian one
US Army combat vet, in Iraq and Afghanistan the thermals were Incredible! the detail we could get was amazing, could even see what was inside people's pockets at close range. We also used drones to scout ahead over 10yrs ago to great effect.
Yes those drones are REAL FAMOUS for avoiding "collateral damage".
@@JeanLucCaptain It's not the tool, it's the way it's used. Not even the pilots either, they didn't get to choose to pull the trigger, even if they themselves weren't fully convinced it was the mission's target.
Drones are the scouts of today
Yeah, we Amis always had the technological edge over any and all of the countries that we chose for "regime change". As a life long 50+ years wargammer, it makes for boring wargames but in actual battles there is no such thing as a desirable "fair fight". :) Yet again, as usual, we have a highly interesting show by both of these gentlemen. Don't miss a minute of it people.
@@karlheinzvonkroemann2217 As the old saying goes..."If you find yourself in a fair fight, you did something wrong."
I was in TOW when we changed thermal imagers. Went from the pixle nightmare the Chieften talked about, where you had a rough time identifying to a beautiful clear image. Old method was about the same as what he said, newer one it was just zoom in zoom out with excellent resolution. I used to tell people it was like switching from the old Atari game system straight to an X-box 360 with no imbetween adjustment. So missle drills changed a bit when it came to observation, as we could out spot and get PID before anyone else.
Around what year was that? I was an 0352 in the USMC between 2000-2007, but we had no thermal upgrades during that timeframe.
@@ironknee6879 Around 2007. I am Canadian, and as I understiod it, the US developed the better sight, but did not have a platform to match what they expected/had planned for it. Rather than spending a boat load of money on developing a new platform, they let Canada buy it, as we were already building a platform like they had in mind. So figured it was a win win for both countries if we used it on our new system, and the US could see the pros and cons without tossing cash down the toilet if the idea was a failure. The vehicle had mixed results. My opinion is the design was a good idea executed poorly.
It's always a pleasure listening to the Chieftain talking in a mature fashion about machinery like tanks in all their different shapes and forms. He never feels the need to attach any emotional favouritism to any particular piece of machinery, which is exactly the way I'm looking to learn about these vehicles.
He's very much biased toward american tanks
@@Angry-LynxMight have something to do with them working as advertised instead of using cardboard and propaganda in place of add-on armor.
One of the advantages of a thermal/FLIR sensor is that it is passive. Something like micro-millimeter wavelength radar is going to broadcast your position at a far greater range than what the sensor can see.
Yeah, basically no different then turning on IR illumination at night. Everyone running passive night vision is going too see you and know where you are. You might see the guy right in front of you, but the whole forest of people now knows. Or a sub going active sonar, its only a last resort I need too see kind of system. I basically see modern combat how I viewed sub combat. You need to be as silent as possible or you are dead. You need to be able to camouflage against visible spectrum light detection, thermal detection, radar detection. Emitting any active detection system is just waiting to die as this all progresses more.
While true, this is likely less of a worry on a ground unit than an aerial one. And tanks already have big IR signatures so... what it can see with IR, can see it the same way most of the time. IR does not provide range data for targeting, tanks usually use a laser ping... and many tanks have laser warning receivers that can point out the source of a laser-paint instantly. A radar ping from m.w.r. might be diffused enough only give a vague bearing. MWR also can see through IR/Visual countermeasures. Combined with the potential of sensor-fusion, or at least multisensor applications, it seems it might be useful. And if it has a few kilometers of range and gives accurate ranging data... it might allow tanks/ground vehicles to target drones and such more easily. At least detecting them to queue HMG/Mg fires on them.
@@lagtastic7511 thats why active detection systems on drones are best solution
Because you have the system doesn't mean it transmitting, you aren't going to run it active often. It'd be handled more like active sonar in a Submarine.
But that's assuming your opponent has that kind of sensor
I've used hand-held FLIRs in industrial settings. They're colour, with the colour scale being temperature. They can be configured so they automatically set their low and high bounds based on what's in the field of view. So they'll automatically make big bright yellow-white things out of whatever's warmest, regardless of whether it's a person or an engine. No bloom, no blind spots, just an automatic "here's the hot thing" setting. You can also program the bounds manually if you want, which you'd want to do if there's a lot of stuff on fire. All this in a thing that fits in your hand and costs a couple hundred bucks. They even have a bit of zoom. I'd imagine modern vehicle mounted FLIRs are somewhat more capable.
Much more capable in last 10 years, I also used them for industrial applications to check electrical installations, condition of machine bearings, thermal insulation and thermal conductivity, etc., etc. When we acquired a high resolution IR camera (monochromatic display not in color) and in a specific IR "window" we even could also look for anti-tank mines buried in the 1990s in the early morning before dawn or immediately after sunset, because the gradient of cooling/heating of the ground above the mine was different from the environment
Non-military thermal imagers are heavily downgraded due to ITAR and possibly some other regulations' requirements, particularly when it comes to refresh rate (9 Hz max IIRC). On top of that there's defenitely gonna be some additional image processing specific to military application, there migh be difference in specific designs depending on the market (cooled vs uncooled, different cooling system design, different IR band sensitivity etc). If memory serves, at least some UA tanks got uncooled imagers, which decreases their sensitivity but speeds up the startup compared to some RU cooled sensors. Edit: found the source for tank imager difference: kzhead.info/sun/jJSpgs-mr5iml3k/bejne.html in russian
@@theleva7 to my knowledge, the 9hz thing is actually due to cost as the fairly standard -20 to +400 9hz sensor costs $150 by itself while -20 to +550 9hz costs $350 and anything that touches the hz goes way up from there. I checked briefly and i can get a scanner at 25hz for $1300 or 40hz for $11500 (3600/16500 for -20/+550).
@@angrydragonslayer Thanks for clarification! I can't remember where I stumbled upon the bit about ITAR, but i did so a couple years ago, so the ITAR thing might've been the case a long time ago and had never been updated and I won't be going through the legislation unless threatened with significant bodily harm.
@@theleva7 flir did manage to get a US... Patent iirc that made it so nobody else could sell 720p/24 (or above) hz but that got overruled iirc I checked closer and i indeed only see 9hz from US manufacturers in a swedish shop so it might be correct that ITAR is limitting it. Bit hilarious given that the only visible correlation being that stuff above 9HZ is way more expensive in the US (the prices i mentioned before) while basically quartered in sweden
A good high-low people might be underestimating is a t-55 with the indirect fire instructions paired with thermal drones to find targets and correct fire from a distance keeping them away from anti tank assets for the most part. No longer an old tank, rather an old but accurate mobile artillery and it's already been paid for
This was rather good and definitely informative. I have a rather expensive thermal imager. This gave me new perspectives on its use.
On the Korean DMZ in 1989 we used the thermal sight from the Dragon to scan our guardpost sector. I watched one heat source for 10 minutes with growing apprehension until it finally turned sideways and I could tell it was a deer.
Ahhh, the Dragon. Many cold 2002-2003 FTX memorizes at that place. Also did training with the Skeleton Army, and managed to dine at the JSA base and see propaganda village a few times. The blue room was also an interesting visit. We even got verbally insulted by a NK guard. Fun times! ☺
If you didn't kill little desert sandal wearing kids, you're not a true marine. Hoorah 💪
I'm surprised the North Koreans didn't shoot it for dinner.
Wait, you were not on a GOP, but a GP inside the DMZ? That must have been quite an experience.
@@64wy4x8s the American sector had two guardposts inside the DMZ (Collier and Ouellette) and guard towers along the southern boundary of the Z. My platoon had guard tower duty during my company's rotation.
The RAF practised a high-low mix in the 90s with Tornado F3s and Hawks. The Hawks were small, subsonic, carried 2 Sidewinders and a 30mm only, with no radar. The Tornado provided detection, direction and coordination for the Hawks like an AWACS but would fight itself. Not used in combat, I believe, but reported as successful in training exercises against USN.
Reminds me of the flying wingman concept that’s all the rage in the proposed 6th gen fighters.
@@TheGoodluckjonny Yes - remains to be seen how robots perform in combat against human pilots. They can pull much more G of course...
@@AndrewJonWright They might be able to sustain higher G's, but a lot of the time the limiting factor for G's is the equipment under the wings, or the aircraft itself, not the pilot. And besides, they will never be able to achieve more G's than a missile is capable of.
@@Praetoras Current aircraft has structural limits designed according to the limits of the human pilot that's gonna seat on it. You don't spend time and resources designing an aircraft that can take 20 G's when the pilot can barely take 9. And experienced aircraft's designers' creativity is gonna be limited by their previous work on manned aircraft. I'd bet that for the time the unmanned designs we'll see will be fairly conservative, but 30 or 40 years from now we'll start seeing some insane shit that's gonna make rewatching terminator feel very uncomfortable.
Interesting. Of course counting the Tornado F3 as "high" is pretty debatable!
A modern military IR imager can give you an amazing picture, much like a night-vision camera, using local area contrast enhancements, or tweaked to show hot spots. You can read a book with one with the right fw and settings. They give the drivers "visual equivalent" tweaked units to allow nighttime/fog/etc driving. The fancier ones will even fuse lowlight, LWIR and SWIR together into one image (or mm RADAR?). Leaps and bounds ahead of what the M1A1 had.
I’ve been on a receiving end of a T-72 B3 HE shell. I would not be in a hurry to write those things off.
It has the HE content of 6' WW2 howitzer shells...
Makes a lot of sense, reaction time is the key, the fastest to engage or evade will be the survivor, people tend to underestimate legacy tanks, but when the upgrades are done right they are quite capable.
Yeah it's pretty comical to hear people talk shit on a t72 but even in the hands of someone like the Iraqis you don't want to be hit by that cannon. A fifty fifty chance to just die outright is scary no matter what. I will say it's very telling that Russia has definitely lagged behind but the Soviet themselves in the 80s where making some crazy plans for the future. In terms of tanks. Definitely a topic worth investigating. I think people forget how capable the Soviet union is when compared to it's single parts. Both Ukraine and Russia are miniscule compared to there Soviet era capabilities just within there sectors. I mean Ukraine used to be a vehicle production capital of the world. Kind of makes you think.
T55s, Type 59s, and T62s if equipped with thermal sights and ERA panels might be useful for infantry fire support, and if armed with auxiliary ATGMs they might be able to be used against tanks. The applique brow armor on T55 and T62 gives some protection against APFSDS but not much against ATGMs. However, their guns aren't competitive with T64 through T90 tanks with 125 mm guns. If your tanks have thermal sights but your enemy doesn't you can carry out night attacks against enemy tanks and pick them off without risking return fire. They would also be suitable for conversion to engineering vehicles, self-propelled artillery, recovery vehicles, and mine clearance.
I think that the world has known since 1991 that Soviet era tanks aren't much good. They were built for a mass , cascading , echeloned attack on a scale that is unimaginable today. The Russians themselves have tried to replace them with a new, high speck tank , the T14. Looks like they couldn't afford enough of them to make it worthwhile.
@@rogerpennel1798 If you take any tank for that era, even M-60, change the turret, the engine, transmission, insert composite materials in the hull (which is not that difficult), install ERA, upgrade the main gun, sights, install thermals, CCTV, and an maybe an active protection system, well, you got a really good tank and some countries actually do just that, the USSR itself did similar with the T-62, Turkey with M-60 and so on.
@@parkerlong2658 A 50% kill rate is nothing to brag about. In Desert Storm we were above 95 % at ranges we never even contemplated while training in Germany. Those shots from an Iraqi T-72 had a tendency to go anywhere except where they were aiming. Bore sighting and crew's maintaining their equipment is vital regardless of how old or modern it is.
"Do you know Perun? No? Well you should because he's pretty awesome" - direct quote from The Chieftan! (as I heard it) 😆👍
Very happy to hear of this too at 4:21. Master of PowerPoints, defence procurement and dry Aussie wit :)
That's some high and totally deserved recognition of the guy I watch every monday.
Perun falls for an immense amount of BS, because like many people, he tends to operate within the NATO bubble of worldview, and any information that is ambiguous is automatically biased towards whatever they want to believe... I just watched lecture by Ben Hodges, and whatever sprinkling of facts on the ground, every single one was twisted to be something entirely different to what a neutral observer would have concluded
I always enjoy your conversations with The Chieftain. Worth watching.
Sure changed my mind about German tanks...
Regarding the survivability of the T-72, which has been mocked often throughout the course of the war, Tankograd offers an interesting case study of counterexamples written pre-Ukraine; 'The T-72 has proven its worth in various conflicts when placed under competent command, but the lack of media coverage on the successes does not help its case. Even though many tanks have been destroyed, often irrecoverably, many more have survived such that the tank's ability to endure severe punishment simply cannot be considered low. To list one incident in Grozny, in the year 2000, a T-72B with the tail number 611 took 3 hits from Fagot anti-tank missiles and 6 hits from RPGs during 3 days of intense fighting and remained in battle with only minor damage. Most of the hits landed on the sides of the tank, with one rocket impacting the lower rear of the hull. Other cases involving older models such as the T-72A more often ended on a sadder note, but in general, it took several hits from anti-tank grenades and missiles to reduce the combat capacity of a T-72 and at least half a dozen hits on the weakened zones (sides, rear) are usually required for the ammunition to detonate or a fire to start in the tank. More examples come from a World of Weapons magazine article (March 2005 issue) on tank action in Grozny containing details on multiple T-72As lost in combat. The 131 Separate Motor Rifle Brigade (OMSBR) tasked with capturing the Grozny rail station sustained many casualties during combat, losing a total of 157 men, 22 tanks, 45 infantry fighting vehicles, 37 cars and all 6 of the Tunguska anti-aircraft systems operated by the air defence division attached to the brigade. While providing supporting fire, the tanks belonging to the brigade received multiple anti-tank grenades from every direction in return for each shot fired. One T-72A with the tail number 533 sustained four or five RPG grenade impacts on the engine compartment, and the tank caught fire. It eventually exploded, long after the crew escaped. Another T-72A, with the tail number 537, withstood six or seven hits from RPG grenades before suffering an ammunition explosion, killing its entire crew instantly. A third T-72A, with the tail number 531, sustained four hits from RPGs before its turret drive failed, and the tank was finally knocked out of action after an APFSDS round fired from 100 meters impacted the turret on the commander's side. A fire was started, but fortunately, the gunner (left hand side of the turret) was only heavily concussed because the bulky breech assembly of the cannon saved him from the spall and fragments entering the turret on the commander's side (right hand side of the turret). Both the gunner and driver were able to escape the tank before it eventually succumbed to the fire and exploded 20 minutes later. None of these tanks had reactive armour installed. In another example, a T-72B1 from the 276 Motor Rifle Brigade with the tail number 221 was penetrated twice in combat during the battle for the Grozny hospital in January 16, 1995. After repairs, it was damaged again on January 21, 1995 during combat near the building of the Council of Ministers where it was hit with five RPG grenades. Four of the hits were located on the sides of the hull, one of them on right side, on the fourth roadwheel, and the other three on the left side. The fifth hit was located on the turret, above the gun barrel. The autoloader was damaged by the turret strike, but the tank survived and was sent for an overhaul. More interesting examples can be found in the article "Танки Т-72 В Войнах И Локальных Конфликта" (T-72 Tank in Wars and Local Conflicts) by V. Moiseev and V. Murakhovsky and published in the "Arsenal of the Fatherland" magazine, issue 4, 2013. One of them is taken from an after-action report on the death of a tank commander in a T-72 after an attack by RPG-type weapons. The tank was a T-72B1 built in December 1985 in Uralvagonzavod. After being pulled into a repair facility, the tank was inspected and eight damage points were observed. Five of the hits were recorded on the hull, and of these, three were from RPG grenades impacting the sides of the tank in the areas protected by reactive armour, one was from an RPG grenade impacting the rubber side skirt of the tank in an area unprotected by reactive armour, and one was from a fragmentation grenade (possibly a VOG-17M) impacting the rear of the engine compartment. The remaining three hits were recorded on the turret, one on the front, one on the side, and one on the rear. It was noted that the tank was in a marching status prior to the attack, having the cannon locked in the travel position and the 12.7mm machine gun locked facing backwards. Also, the commander's hatch was ajar or opened completely, so that the death of the commander was most likely caused by the combined explosion of an anti-tank grenade and the reactive armour occurring outside the tank, given that the armour was not perforated. Overall, the tank remained combat capable despite receiving damage in the autoloader and in the stabilizer system, as the driver and the gunner were still alive at the end of the ordeal and the gun could still be fired using the manual controls. In general, photos of destroyed T-72 tanks cannot be said to be proof of the low survivability of the tank, but are instead often indicators of the sheer ferocity of the fight that led to its destruction.'
The humble RPG does not make me think of the T-72 as any tougher after reading that.
Fagot dates to 1970. RPGs even older. Obviously the T-72 can deal with those. Turns out that Ukraine is equipped with ATGMs that are a bit more advanced.
@@cv990a4 The point I'm making is regarding survivability, not penetrability. The misconception is regarding the post-penetration survivability of the T-72, which is much higher than many give it credit for
@@thegenericguy8309 probably quite different when you compare it to a missile that can strike from above or actual tank round
@Rico Thampaty About that Grozny example. In urban combat tank is a high-priority, visible and not relatively agile target. Streets of a city is armoured vehicle's biggest nightmare, I don't know if I wouldn't prefer being infantryman in that case
I don't think people realize that what's happening to Soviet/russian tanks can happen to any other tank
The turret going into suborbital space flight is a uniquely Russian/Soviet tank design thing.
Yeah...no,not really Sometimes? Yeah of course As commom as soviet designs? Nah
@@totallynottoaster1114 Nope, type in "destroyed leopard" into your google and see what pictures you get.
Auto loader, soviet tanks a western tank has Amoured bulk head, for the charges, manual loaded, it's the difference, western tanks Built on crew safety.
@@totallynottoaster1114 where as the western tanks completely fragment. your point? have you seen anyone killed from a flying turret. if not. your point is void.
Changed my mind about the leopards and challengers of the wild.
I'm so glad I'm subscribed to you, The Chieftain and Perun!
Chieftain always brings a simple explanation to the game. Thanks to Bernard for bringing it together.
And not in front of a flack tower. . .
@@dantreadwell7421 Flak.
@@bazzakeegan2243 D'OH! I choose to blame auto correct
Colonel Moran knows his business well, that's for sure. He's always worth a listen whenever he''s on KZhead. Especially with our Bernhard. Bernhard is also a very good commentator on modern warfare, which I consider to be world wars one and two especially. Anything including WW1 and WW2 is right their up his ally and militarily speaking I always seem to learn something from these two gentleman. Whether the Colonel is on with Bernhard or anybody else his contributions are always worh a listen. Vielen dank! Sie sind immer am besten :)
This was awesome. Always loved all your content, but your interview's are the best. Such a great interviewer. You're able to use your knowledge and understanding to ask both insightful questions + actually respond to them in a way that furthers the interview. More importantly though you actually let the guest speak and share their knowledge and expertise without stepping on their toes, or one-upping them, and letting them take the spotlight. WAY too many youtubers that do interviews end up forcing their way into getting all the attention in their vids (talking over the guests, interrupting, etc), which defeats the purpose of wanting to hear from the guest. Hope you do more of these :)
Thank you! Although I must add, that sometimes I also heavily interrupt my guest as well.
The way Chieftain described using a TI for acquisition reminded me of something an old instructor told me about using TI's, "If it's gotta go, it's gotta glow."
After reading James Hollands brothers in arms the parallels are there to see. So many tanks lost, the fear of not being able to stop handheld single shot weapons etc. We've just made it more efficient and are seeing it on phonescreens
the main issue is because Ukraine have so much anti air, Russia can't support armored with air force, which means armored and infantry have to support each other without air support. in Serbia NATO tried to destroy Serbias anti air defense, they had about 26 systems only and NATO air force couldnt suppress their air defense, they managed to destroy 3 in about 75 days. this stopped NATO invading with ground units, if NATO destroyed Serbias air defense like they expected to they would have invaded with ground troops but because they couldnt support their armored with strikers they just kept bombing Serbia from high altitudes. i use that example because it shows how difficult it is to suppress air defense which means you cannot use air force to support ground forces which in turn makes your ground forces much harder to advance with.
@@Writeous0ne The UN resolution that enabled NATO to bomb Serbia strictly banned a ground invasion beyond a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. One of the reasons was not to further enrage Russia as it strongly opposed NATO's intervention in the region. Even air operations were very limited and their flight paths were set by the UN security council. That information was relayed to the Serbs by the Russians, so they could use their ADA to maximum effect. How do you think old SA-6 could engage and shoot down an F-117? They knew it was coming, they knew where from and they used every radar in a 500-mile radius to score a 6 seconds long lock-on on an aircraft that has the same aerobatic capability of a garbage truck. Wild Weasel missions could have knocked out most of Serbia's air defenses in two days. They were just barred from doing it. Even today's vaunted S-300/400 struggle to keep up with IDF's 4th generation fighters bombing targets in and around Damascus day in and day out.
@@Gearparadummies i guess you're american. People always find a way to make excuses that present a better narrative 😂. Its extremely difficult to use air force when the opponent has anti air systems, its common knowledge. Thats why basically all succesful use of air force in modern warfare is against nations who dont have any. I guarantee you no air force today would attempt air superiority against a country who has air defense, at best they will fire cruise missiles from high altitude. Its just too risky and if you lose a a lot of jets in a small amount of time it just makes you look incompetent.
@@Writeous0ne Just stated the facts, buddy. As I always say, in war casualties are expected. If a force can make 3000 sorties a day for 50 days with 200 aircraft and suffers like 6 planes shot down, that force owns the skies.
@@Gearparadummies it's not facts, you just twist the information into a more favorable narrative. We learned a lot in the Serbia campaign, SEAD is extremely difficult. I am also a westerner but i consider myself more objective and realist. NATO had so many advantages against Serbia it was expected they would execute SEAD within days and have free range of the skies, bomb some targets and end the conflict. This was not the case, the air force had to resort to using high altitudes and long range missiles. Hundreds maybe 1,000+ civlians were killed in less than 3 months and US jets and a stealth jet were destroyed. Serbia wasn't a success of SEAD, it was a learning experience.
When the key to battle is being the one to shoot first, the unit that _can't see_ will always lose.
In the land of No-Scopes, the 2x man is king.
Absolutely agree 100% a thermal imager for a tank is a game changer, on on another level.
Saw a MOBAT at a museum with an Austin Champ wondering about that post war moment and noted one could mount the mobat in the back and still have another as a towed piece thinking how ambush fires might develop into a prepared sequence of fall back firing positions. Given that today weapons can be on simple remote mounts... the Hi-Lo mix mentioned can become very interesting
I remember using thermals to count the points on a buck at 11 kilometers in light foliage around 2007-2008. I imagine they've only gotten better since then.
Yeah nah, A large part of retrofitted tanks from Russia has consumer grade shit in them since they can't get their hands on anything else. Same shit when the Russians are using GPS instead of their own shittier version of it, This is also consumer grade and thus isnt accurate at all.
Former M60a3 tanker. Even back as far as the mid 80s the TTS was so good that we could see deer clearly running through the woods at a distance and up to say, 200 meters, details were good enough to decently lip read by. The gunnery controls we had back then are still miles past what typical Russian tanks are using now.
i made my own thermal that works just as well as current military. Took years to work out the bugs in the programming.
Absolute bullshit. Military thermals wouldn't be able to do that even today. Less than zero chance with commercial thermals. You're not picking up shite at 11 kilometres.
@@BeeTriggerBee right but what Ukraine is using is a hell of a lot better than what Russia is using.
A tale as old as time, the one who see's the enemy first shoots first. The one who shoots first has the advantage.
David Drake, the famous SF author who served in the Blackhorse in Vietnam, really understood this issue. His tanks, when he was writing in the 70s, had AI filtered data fusion from visual, IR and radar, plus APS. The system would highlight threats visually for the commander. And a central battery computer and radar could take control of the armament of a group of tanks for coordinated AA fire.
With a "machine gun" equivalent that could snipe artillery shells out of flight, and a main gun capable of sniping a satellite out of orbit.
So, basically, an f-35 on tracks. Which we will eventually see, since SA is king.
@@BoraHorzaGobuchul I don’t think that there was any attempt to make 100 ton tanks stealthy… And an f35 is a very poor air to air combatant. So probably more like a Typhoon with irst, etc.
@@TheGreatAmphibian F-35 is an excellent AA combatant, unless you think ACM is still king, RT-paid fighter mafia dude is sincere and competent, and did not in fact read the infamous "f-35 vs f-16 mock combat" report past the title. And I'm not speaking of stealth when applying the analogy to the tank. More about networking, state of the art sensors, "transparent hull", powerful fcs/comms suite.
@@BoraHorzaGobuchul You are using argument by assertion. Which means that you are an idiot. Again, the problem with the f35 isn’t dogfighting but poor BVR capability - because BVR still relies on energy state maintenance, which was a major reason for the f22 having lots of thrust - a lousy sortie rate, and stealth that isn’t really that stealthy.
As a retired mech infantryman who spent 15 yrs. on a M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle(driver, gunner and commander) having a thermal imager linked to your optics is a massive force multiplier. Using an armored vehicle without one in this day is suicide. You could see insects at night with these and that was back in 1992 when I enlisted.
In 2005 when I was an Abrams crew member in 1st armored division. The javelin had better night site than an m1 a1. And I watched tank commanders work a tank crew of 4 like "one"and run that tank like Rambo with a knife killing a whole platoon of tanks single handedly. It's not the equipment it's the crew that makes the tank. Modern tech only makes good crew better. Tech doesn't make good soldiers. good soldiers makes tech work.
The 2010 crow weapons platform sites blew both thermal sites for 2005 javelin and m1a1 out of the water. I bet you can't hide from a modern fully upgraded Abrams in 2022.
@@jgray7505 seeing as how russian thermals now are about as good as those 2005 Abrams assuming they didn't strip them out and sell them they are just kinda screwed on the modern battlefield.
Operator skills matter it’s why the Russians absolute dominate in tank on tank engagements.
In an attrition war like the current situation in Ukraine, good soldiers are hard to keep
A squirrel in the woods can't hide from the citv on a sep Abrams.
More analysis from chieftain on tank usage in Ukraine would be great.
I concur. If I remember correctly, there have been some Russian assaults that employed a mix of tanks and MICVs according to doctrine that still were not able to prevail against the Ukrainians. Perhaps the Russians had forgotten artillery preparation before the assault and /or ground attack aircraft employment. I’m guessing that the core issue with the Russian Army is training and doctrine, which doesn’t seem to have changed much since the 1940s. Example, still not much of an NCO corps of professionals, and still no “mission command” which the Germans have practiced, I think, at least as far back as WW1. It seems “This is how we have always done things” is going to eliminate both the Russian and Ukrainian civilizations as going concerns.
@@Glove513 Well this modern Russian army isn’t even close in comparison to the Soviet Army. Not in training or cohesion. Even the way they do conscription is completely different. Compare some of their offensives in Ukraine to Operation Bagration or other red army offensives from ww2. Where most armies have improved since ww2 or the Cold War, the Russians have gotten worse it seems. Let’s not forget that Ukraine takes a ton of losses, if not more than Russia. And makes plenty of mistakes. They also seem to lose pretty much every tank vs tank engagement I’ve seen video of. The Russians aren’t completely incompetent. If they were then this war wouldn’t need to be taken seriously. Underestimating your enemy can be a disaster which we just saw when Russia underestimated Ukraine.
@@Rokaize From what little I have heard and seen, I would agree that the Ukrainian Army is at least as screwed up as the Russian Army. They are making tons of mistakes and they seem to have no impulse to change the way they do things. We are almost a year since the invasion and there is still no infantry school and still no NCO academy. They have been fighting since 2014. I bet in one years time that Poland will be able to win a conventional war against Russia, Belarus and Ukraine combined, simply because they are willing to except and implement western doctrine and organizational structures.
@@Glove513 Well yeah true. The Soviet way of fighting pretty much requires huge numbers of men, vehicles and equipment. And for huge and rapid advances using their waved approach. Neither Ukraine or Russia has the technical know how or even the numbers to do this. The red army could do it, but that’s back when they had a huge and powerful army with a lot of veteran commanders from ww2. This current Russian army can’t even get its men to stop stealing and defrauding the government. And they constantly lie to themselves and each other about what their capabilities are. They have no where near the numbers of infantry or munitions. I do support Ukraine in this but the casualties they’ve taken in these offensives are just horrific. One reason they want tanks is to help with those offensives. Using hunvees and m113s as your armored spearhead doesn’t actually work. Which is what they’ve been doing. ATGMs are mostly a defensive weapon. So the Ukrainians aren’t exactly doing well when the Russians are defending with tanks. You need tanks especially on the offense. This war only makes that more obvious
@@Rokaize To your second point I have often wondered if the Russians and North Koreans have confused their annual military parades for real combat capability. I am thinking that China may be in the same boat but some of their equipment and structures look very western, which indicates a willingness to learn and adapt, and therefore prevail.
There's not a lot of tank v. tank combat going on in Ukraine. The imager allows seeing infantry who are the biggest threat.
9:30 the high/low tech mix is sounding a lot like 3 Shermans with a 75mm and one with a 17 pounder working together.
I read a thread by Mick Ryan earlier today about artillery and precision munitions that got me thinking in the same way as the Chieftain - a high/low mix. Precision munitions used to allow shaping the battlefield before the offensive and again in the first "few" hours of an offensive to allow break in/breakthrough/breakout, but most of the rest of the time just using dumb munitions with better spotting
It really depends on what you want to shoot at. And if you are supporting a breakthrough, precision munition might be a better idea since you don't want to accidentally light up your own troops.
Welcome to Russia military doctrine... Ukrainians can only hold cities since the Russians are unwilling to level them, Ukrainians can't hold any open terrain as drones do an immeasurable better job than hot air balloons did as spotters.
this is why i m very curious about how stuff like PT91 twardy will perform, given that most sources states that PT91 twardy got thermals (so, basically T72M1 with thermals and a erawa era kit) as i personally have the impression that they may perform far better than most basic/non upgraded T72s, due to thermal making them not totally blind.
pretty bad coz it just tuned up stock t 72 , both ukraine and russia have better parts only difference is how they using them (ww-- 1 trench defence with 3 tanks per 15 km vs ww2 tank swarm)
@@danielkuleshov5876 bigest issue with pt91 is its cannon, cause pt91 is upgraded t72m witch was export version of first t72 when russia was already building upgraded versions of t72 with better cannon, ammo as well is just old soviet stuff
Polish T-72Ms from reserved send to Ukraine are apparently liked by their crews, even though they are just barebones T-72s in good shape with thermals.
@@MM-ne6pk the cannon has no problem, one shot, knocking out all but the very latest Russian tanks, which are rare as hen's teeth. So, it's fine for the use case.
@@m1sz3lpl24 The Thermals were the big plus with Ukraine getting PT91s, as well as they would integrate very easily into the Ukrainian supply chain since they are a T72 variant 🙃
8:44 is probably one of the scariest lines for a light infantryman. We rely mainly on camouflage to survive heavy armour. Now there you are, in your properly dug fighting hole, complete with a roof for artillery splinters, camouflaged and all, and that tank 2000 meters out can just lob an HE shell pretty much on your forehead because there's pretty much no way to camouflage your heat signature. Scary stuff.
But before the tank can do that a £1k drone has just dropped a H.E shell on your turret hatch.. or even rammed your fuel tank. Big Badda Boom and the Tankie didn't even have the pleasure of seeing it coming before he got his personal invite to the BBQ ! I guess he got to bring a couple of "Friends" though (crew)
Pine needles, blankets, sleeping bags, decoy positions with tea lights, modern thermal netting. It takes more work but it works.
@@0utcastAussienonsense. A £1k drone can’t carry enough payload to scratch the paint.
Just because they can see you doesn’t mean they can hit you. Tanks guns still have a CEP to contend with.
@@coryhoggatt7691 I was astounded too but there are plenty of videos of them carrying RPG's
I saw a number of videos on telegram of these RPGs (Javelins or NLAWS cant remember) being fired from a close distance on these modern Russian tanks. In the few times I witnessed these videos, the Russian tank chugs along like nothing hit it.
I saw one of those. They're from the early days of the war when Ukraine was handing out missiles to anyone with a pulse, ie. untrained, but very motivated, soldiers who forgot about "minimum arming distance."
This has been a very interesting series of discussions on real battlefield tech, tactical and strategic realities and how the on ground units effect combat. This in particular was enlightening on what the real best tech is, sensors.
You can have the biggest gun in the room but, if you can't see me, I can stab you with a letter opener.
As always, if you can see a target before it sees you; you have a chance of getting off the first shot. The money needs to go to producing the smallest, most cost effective sensor tools possible. Retrofitting a modern sensor suite transforms an older platform. Ask the pilot of a Block 70 F-16 equipped with state of the art AESA radar how he feels about his chances in an airframe that started service over 40 years ago.
I'm reminded of the old Operation Think Tank QnA that Wargaming did years ago (hosted by The Chieftain no less). One thing that was brought up was that post WW2 the allies spent a lot of time researching all the factors involved in tank vs tank to try and find out what was the most important factor in determining the winner, with the aim of using that to direct their future tank designs and doctrines. After going through every AAR they could get their hands on it became apparent that the single biggest factor in determining the winner was literally who sees who first. If you see first, you generally shoot first and you're often in a better state of mind than your opponent that's just had a "significant emotional event" as the Chieftain is fond of saying.
When I was a 19K in the 11ACR we used the thermal viewer for vehicle ID exclusively day or night.
I always love watching these videos, it's a HUGE breath of fresh air. Listening to you two talk on topics like these. Instead of hearing the one sided blabbering, whining, and complaining on say War Thunder videos or a lot of other places as far as I know.
I never held soviet tanks in much high regard in the modern era, but i am of the opinion that a tank is still a tank no matter how bad they may be. Plus, it's hypocritical to harp on how bad soviet style tanks are when ukraine uses the same type of tanks as the Russians.
they use the same gear and one is attacking the Defensive has always an advantage if they are prepeared and fortified.
The tank is a mobile gun in the first place. Most of the time they fire at infrastructure and infantry. If the enemy has only rifles and two javelins for the whole company in a trench, it doesn't matter which tank if you fire from 3+ kilometers.
No Ukrainian tanks are completely different. Metallurgy and QC is quite different between Kleptocratic and Westernization. Please understand this.
@@mylesharvey6488 they’re literally soviet inherited tanks
@@joemamaobama6863 Soviet Era metallurgy is far superior to modern Kleptocratic metallurgy.
Somehow I did not realize until this point that the Chieften is an officer.
Great vid! Stay warm this winter!!!
I think what could be really interesting would be bringing back compact light tanks but with ATGMs and high tech optics. Something small, light weight and fast with a low silhouette outfitted with TOW missiles thermal optics and maybe covered in thermal masking camo netting would be terrifying on the modern battlefield.
get a Wiesel 🤣🤣🤣
@@nagmashot the Wiesel isn't far off. It would be better though if the TOW launcher was closer to the hull. That would give it a lower silhouette.
I really like these videos with experts. Informative, entertaining, and a good length of time to get what needs to be said. Hell, I can go for longer videos but I'm content.
As a young USAF Security Policeman, I was using Thorn EMI Hand Held Thermal Imagers at Clark AB Phillipines, 1988-90. The things were approximately the size of a combat boot box, and heavy, but they worked.
Regarding thermal imagers the level available even to the public is pretty impressive these days, something like a raptor by hikmicro has a sensor able to pick out face details even in thermal, a laser range finder and normal colour daylight mode, 1000m range with 4x digital zoom, I’m not saying it compares to systems in top of the line FCS but imagine the additional utility even for reconnaissance that gives to something as simple as a couple guys scouting things out in a jeep or pickup truck.
In come the Leopard tanks and lo and behold, they burn just like the Russian tanks! In fact I’ve heard Ukranians complain about how heavy western tanks are and they prefer the more agile soviet tanks.
I will say this, I worked on skids in the USMC, 05-10…even the old flir balls I first worked on, are far better than what you described Chieftain. We could tell if it was a person, and of they were holding a rifle, or rpg, things like that…at many km, once you got used to the system and picture. And once we got the newest versions of 08-10…when I was getting out, right before that….they are mind blowing, I’ll say that much. We were the first unit to test the britestar II’s, while deployed, in combat. newest flir ball in that time…they are insane, and huge step above the old ones. Great zoom and focus, lol. Among general improvements.
Even if it's a "low" tank, if it's the only tank in the area it's "high" enough.
It has certainly changed my perception of the Leopard 2AV series. It turned out to be a bit of a damp squib, rather than an authentic game changer.
It's not really the right weapon for the kind of combat the Ukrainians are needing to fight at the moment - and nor are the M1 Abrams or Challenger 2s so they wouldn't do any better in its place. Maybe if the Ukrainians breach the Russian defensive lines things may change be we aren't really seeing war of maneuver at the moment.
This war was a blessing for ripping of mith around western weapons.
@@f.miller801 western weapons are better, they just aren't invincible
like for real ohh western stuff sucks huh well lets look at the russia stuff LOL soo much better right F-ING commie bots @@icantthinkofaname4265
@@icantthinkofaname4265 aged like milk tbh.
Be interesting to hear a discussion between The Chieftain and Col Douglas Macgregor
If my basic understanding is correct, the "High-Low" mix is essentially Soviet Cold war doctrine; a stonking mass of 'low' tanks that will just swarm an Western tank formation, with the "High" there to be the equal-or-better opposition. And the Russian's do still kind of have that in the modernised T72s that they seem to have an almost endless supply of, with fewer, far more lethal T90's to make sure if a target MUST die, it will die. For me the problem is not the equipment, it's the tactics. In the west, combined arms has been practiced to death, but that's because efficient, fully integrated combined arms operations is hard, and Russia is kind of proving that. It seems they thought all they had to do was form their Battalion Tactical Groups, put on some scripted demos, write some suggestions and hey-presto, combined arms, who's for some vodka. The truth is far different, and Russian commanders have even failed basic logistical planning, never mind complex inter-service cooperation. In fact a few times I've wondered if a Soviet-era force would actually fair better in terms of basic military planning and implementation Also, love Perun getting a shout, his analysis is every bit as good as MHV's, who is my yardstick for these kind of things.
I dont think thats really true, soviet tank developments following the introduction of the T72 never seemed close to western MBTs. The T90 isnt really some super powerful tank, and its just a reasonably updated T72. So its more like a mid low or low low mix.
The late Cold War Soviet Army had T-64s, T-72s, and T-80s in their Tank Regiments, while older T-62s were the organic tank component to their Mechanized Regiments (Mechanized in this case refers to both BMP and BTR mounted Infantry), and even older T-55s equipped the Marine Regiments.
The problem Russia had, is that they thought all they had to do was send their tanks in and Ukraine would roll over. They were over confident and very wrong!
The only issue i have with Perun is that he is biased as fuck. I have a strong suspicion that he is actually ethnically from one of the anti Russian east European countries. Probably Poland, Slovakia or Czechia or maybe even Ukraine. Perun btw is a Slavic god.
"modernised T72s ...with fewer, far more lethal T90" T90s are certainly not "far more lethal" than T-72B3M (this is a "modernized T-72"), in fact they are not more lethal at all. If anything, they are somewhat LESS lethal. T-90 is the new marketing name for T-72B2, which is (well, supposed to be) a predecessor of T-73B3, which is a predecessor of T-72B3M. You are probably thinking about T-90M. Which is a little better tank than T-72B3M, but not more lethal either. Same caliber, slightly upgraded cannon. Similar if not the same sensor set.
...and this is why Chieftan is a Lt. Col; He knows stuff :)
I dunno mate, just being an officer doesn’t mean you know anything. I bet Chieftain can attest to that! Though he certainly does know his shit!
as he don´t do poiitics. it´s kind of supricing that their is anything after Lt.
@@StrangelyBrownNo1 it is difficult to make LTC on active duty without having most of your shit together (although it does happen). However, junior officers have a much higher concentration of dumbassery. Source: I was a dumbass junior officer.
I know it's an explosive topic, but I didn't realize that they were so flammable.
The thing with the Hi-Lo mix... you need some solid communication and coordination and it all boils down to training and how quickly you can coordinate everything. Ignore all the equipment and you still need good people that know what they're doing and can work well together. You really don't see any of that from a certain country.
There is also a factor that with Thermals, it will help a lot in spotting. As even T-72s outrange the Javelins IF it can spot the Javelin beforehand. With Thermals, it should do a lot of help in terms of spotting people like that and those waiting in the bushes with AT4s or Handhelds.
According to foreign volunteers who have left Ukraine, the Russians would bait Javelin teams with a Hunter-Killer capable tank facing the wrong way, as if the gunner and crew were monitoring a different area. Meanwhile, the commanders IR sight was pointed at where they suspected there of being Ukrainian troops. Once the Ukrainian Javelin team had sufficiently exposed themselves to get close enough, the tank crew would slew the turret and fire in a matter of seconds and obliterate the Javelin team. The tanks may have also had drone support in scouting. Javelins are also apparently far less effective than what the sales brochure claims. While it CAN one-shot a tank, apparently a lot of the time it does not. There is video of a BMP-1 taking a direct hit with a Javelin and, while clearly damaged, remaining combat capable and continuing to return fire. So one side is firing a weapon that MIGHT kill the tank while the tank will for sure be able to kill them.
Lucky for us and Ukraine that the Russians didn't modernized their tank fleet before the war. Like you said - if they would've outfitted their T72s with thermals, this could've been a very different war given that they are able to deploy huge amounts of them and Ukraine is a very infantry heavy army with small mobile units that mostly drives in lightly armored SUVs. They don't operate a lot of tanks and if they do; they don't bring them in in large battle groups.
@@DerDudelino You do realize that the most common T-72 the Russians had in service has thermals, right?
@@Crosshair84 Nice fantasy you have going on there, then there is reality and hundreds of Russian tanks being blown out by Javelin, AT4 and even cheap chinese drones.
@@Crosshair84interesting, I just saw the BMP take the hit. It was nasty but kept going which is impressive, definitely some dead men inside though
No. Not at all. I spent 12 years on the Abrams series of tanks and as a tanker I can tell you that we were very well aware of the capabilities of Russian tanks and that success in a meeting engagement for the most part would be due to the crew and what was being shot .. not the tank.
Exactly, you don't need thermal imagers, just a solid crew
@@BtappinHD a solid crew without thermals can’t see past 1 km. A shit crew with thermals can see you from 8km
@@joenuts5167 It was sarcasm against this guy's comment
@@BtappinHD Hello from Russia. We have thermal imagers on our tanks. You in the West are such morons to believe we don't have such an old technology.
@@user-rk9xe4is4c Dear Russia, my comment was sarcasm friend. The author of the comment said success was due to the crew, not the tank. So I sarcastically said, let's take away the thermal imagers and your crew will win, in an indirect way. I hope you understand.
I think it was the Chieftain who said in a video a while back, something to the effect of, "The vehicle that gets the first hit on target has the initiative." Thermals change the whole game.
Quantity has a quality all of its own, ask the Germans about that little detail.
@@jb-xc4oh Certainly, yet Russia doesn't have the numerical advantage on Ukraine that the Soviets had on the Germans...nor can they replenish their losses.
It definitely changed my mind about Western tanks, especially the Challenger 2. It showed up on the front, got ATGM'd by Kornet, both times throwing the turret (catastrophic ammo explosion) and killing the crew and was never seen again...
Hahahaha true
Where TF u get that info. Nothing throwed turret and there was very little info what really happened, how and why
@@Angry-Lynx i literally have photos and videos...tf u mean no evidence?
@@interpl6089 I remember seeing one burnt out back on 5th Sept but that one certainly hadn’t had its turret thrown, can you please provide a link to the one you saw I’m curious to see
@@gonotgone1 the turret on the challenger 2 was only thrown from the mounting...because of being too heavy....resting dislodged on the chassis as seen here: preview.redd.it/challenger-ii-destroyed-in-ukraine-showing-that-the-turret-v0-0h65jwkmc05c1.jpg?width=445&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b7f0626981e5a360dc3a7d663bfa3a7df360a9b i have my pictures and videos from Russian Telegram channels and thus i cannot find the original links...this is as close as i can get...
The good news for the infantry on both sides is they use static lines with defenses and you can equip thermal decoys, a candle in a clay jar in a shallow hole, to flood the zone with heat and aluminum foil & metal scrap to spoof millimetric radar. In that context the advantage goes to the side with the longer range, faster cross country movement and the ability to offer the enemy good surrender terms with hot food. That favors the Ukrainians as it favored the Americans in WW2. Tanks are not obsolete but tanks without proper infantry screen and the weapon reach for that infantry is the problem. Some of the BMP have a max weapon range of 1.8 km and are facing Stugna with a range of 2 to 3 km and drone coordinated mortars and artillery with a range of 10 to 25 km. Seeing the enemy and having something to hit them with are two different matters.
I wonder if either side has used Chinese lanterns yet as decoys. Those things from afar look like Hamas rockets.
It feels like part of what the Chieftain is getting at is that marginal advantages in firepower and armor are, in and of themselves, only decisive in edge cases or incredibly "fair" fights. It seems like a military that's looking at trying to reach for marginally better tanks is probably better advised to get some representation of the cutting edge tools into your force so that you don't get completely trounced on some aspect of the battlefield where you fail to have a presence. But otherwise they might better rely on non-technological advantages(e.g. volume, replaceability, uptime, logistical availability) to try and win the day rather than sinking your resources into the middle ground of marginal improvements that remain behind the bleeding edge.
The thermals on the sep are amazing. In the modern era thermals are your primary sight. Daylight was only used if I got a hotspot that looked weird.
The Low in the high low is also a lot of targets that take up enemy attention while the high maneuvers to a solution...
The issue is, we are bloody old, and the mid 80s were almost 40 years ago; the Subaru XT was a really modern car.
Yeah almost but not 40 years ago
My opinions on the original t72 were formed back in the '80s. I have not seen anything to date to change that opinion on the original t72. I agree 100% with the chieftain regarding technology. Depending on what you like versus what the other guy has could be a complete game changer. I would also add the quality of the vehicle, it's armaments and it's technology can be a game changer on its own. In the world of IT that I lived in for a long time, we had a saying, garbage in garbage out. With sensors regardless of whether they're radar or night imaging, thermal the quality of the optics and the hardware inside along with the imaging software will decide what you see. You could have the best software in the world driving that imaging system and lo and behold your optics are crap. Garbage in garbage out.
The T-72 entered production in 1971. The T-80 (upgraded T-64) was the tank being made in the 1980s. The Soviet Union was never interested in thermal optics and even today, the Russians seem to operate their vehicles mostly in the daytime.
The T72 is designed for a front-first shooting war in a field. Hence the thick front armor and low profile. The thing is, it’s not really a terrible platform if it was upgraded properly. Russian soldiers could start by not storing ammo all over the cabin, where it’s going to explode when the tank is hit.
@@orlock20 They operate them in the day, but the most common tank in Russian service (T-72b3 2000s variants) all have thermal imagers for the gunner, but no commanders panoramic.
@@orlock20 Soviet want thermal, but you cannot exactly make a mechanical thermal sight it is purely digital. Digital means you need good semiconductor. And guess what Soviet does not have access to? Good semiconductor technology. This extend to the present day. Where their most advance semiconductor based weapon system are rely on foreign supply. As far as not using tank at night, Soviet field integrated passive day night sight combo earlier than NATO. But Soviet did not keep up when NATO adopt thermal.
@@orlock20 T-80 was much different from T-64. It was actually a problem for us, because these three tanks don't have interchangable parts. About thermal optics you are wrong. There were experiments with Agava. We are producing thermal matrix and most of modern tanks are equipped with it.
Chieftain giving a shoutout to my man Perun on a military history visualized video... the circle is now complete.
i think a valid question is - if you're relying on sound to hear if a drone is nearby, do you think you'd be able to hear one over the sound of a tank?
Bernard and Nicholas... ...the absolute best "old married couple" on the internet.
Now I want to ask Chieftain about the viability of revisiting the idea of stealth tanks. Like the stealth leopard, hiding it's thermal signature and reducing dust, etc.
it's a matter of technological progress and price in the last 30 years, infantry weapons have advanced much more than tanks if I'm not mistaken, the tank company is 4 tanks? one tank company costs from $4-10 million on the other hand, you take a Toyota pick up that costs $25K and mount a launcher with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles on it and if it only carries 4 anti-tank 9M14 Malyutkas and two FIM-92 Stingers it can easily compete with tanks and helicopters for close support of troops at a much lower price, greater mobility and lower operating costs
not worth the effort its still a freaking tank and stealthy and 30 ton thick boy dont mix
The T-90M does have thermal blocking coatings, as well as thermal/optical camo netting on top of that, with various other anti-RPG tricks like those hanging chains also used on Merkava
Drone swarms and AI will make so much obsolete in 20, 30 years, that I don't think we should invest in 50 year platforms anymore. A tank only works when you have combined arms superiority. Artillery decimates them... no matter how stealth, a drone will spot them. Infrared camouflage is a good idea against smart munitions, but will only be a stopgap.
@@ryanj610 It's still easier to have a tank than a towed artillery piece... the 2s3m 2s19 etc and many of the smaller BMP/BMD based mortar launchers are all very versatile for dislodging infantry
Thanks for the video.
you should make a new video on this taking into account fp`v drones and possible advances on them, including the possibility of armored vehicles equipped with drone swarms, countermeasures etc
Thermal imagers and sighting in general is extremely valuable. Kinda makes Javelins not so outlandishly priced considering how prized just the sight for it is alone as you see guys using it by itself for sighting targets etc.
Javelins are trash regardless that they are expensive trash. Which to be fair isn't the Javelin fault it sucks so badly... it's "blaming a fish for being unable to climb a tree" kind of situation. An RPG-7 is way better at doing the job it's supposed to be doing which Javelins failed spectacularly at... a tank being destroyed. The Ukrainians burned through a 1/3 of the Judeo-American Empire stockpile of Javelins for little effect... Russian tanks were regularly returning having survived 4-6 strikes while amount of Javelins which got a tank kill were few and far between. ATGM are a failure from the concept phase... Infantry shouldn't be (and proven in practice can't) the ones destroying Armor. Artillery is for destroying Armor... Infantry with a RPG or equivalent can easily get a Movement Kill on a tank though & pin it place for Artillery to destroy it.
@I Dissent yes... that's the common reference for weapons/ammunition in storage ready for use. The Judeo-American Empire has what it considered a decent amount in regards to attacking underarmed goat herders in sandals as it's been doing for decades for its masters in Israel. Which in an actual peer conflict has proven just how inadequate the stockpiles of all weapons & ammunition are. Like how Russia is using more Artillery shells in a day than the Judeo-American Empire makes in a month for a limited regional conflict on their border.
@@nationalsocialism3504 surce???
@@fdsfggr source for what? Basic combat operations for over a century is that Artillery is for killing Armor not Infantry... still true to this day. It's why Javelins & NLAWs were always abandoned when they still had them... it's way too heavy to truly be "man portable" like RPGs (which is still a two man carry load as other Heavy weapons like Machine Guns... one man carries the weapon & the other carries ammo.) RPGs are great at getting Mobility Kills on Armor by attacking the tracks then Artillery can kill it easily once its pinned in place... while still being able to deal with APVs, ITTs, Technicals, or against fortified Infantry positions (actually why the NLAW is better than Javelins since its direct fire trajectory can be used in supporting an attack against fortified Infantry.) During the taking of Mariupol... videos of Russian tanks returning after suffering 5-7 hits from Javelins/NLAW were a daily occurrence on telegram channels. These were modernized T-72s not even the new T-90s or barely into production phase T-14s. Unless it hits perfectly on a target area about the size of a serving platter... it does basically fuck all since reactive armor invalidates it as the warhead is too small (hence why 152mm or 203mm Artillery Shells are needed since they have the necessary punch to overwhelm reactive armor then punch through the armor plate.)
@@fdsfggr as far as logistical supply issues & ammunition stockpile depletion rates then the "source" is RUSI (the two century old Royal military think tank that fucking Wellington himself started after defeating Napoleon at Waterloo to advise the English royal crown.) They put out a very detailed White Paper on the subject back in April which explicitly outlined how NATO was utterly incapable of waging Industrial Warfare since none of them were Industrial Societies anymore. RUSI recently put out a new White Paper in November updating just how catastrophically its gone over the previous 6 months... Ukraine has been reduced to a house of cards & once the Russian mobilized troops are finished training and brought to the frontline in March/April the whole thing is going to collapse as soon as Russian starts pushing forward. Russia is perfectly happy to bleed Ukraine white in places like Bakhmut and Adeveeka so no Ukrainian reserve troops can be stood up into Corps in the rear. Russia can drop high explosives on fortified positions all day every day making 100m advances... it costs Russia nothing but "dumb" ammunition to do & is comparatively super cheap to use 40 year old artillery shells that the Soviets paid for long ago.
The just casual "inshallah" chieftain threw in on getting in a modern tank after a decade was hilarious to me as a GWOT era Vet and long term middle east contractor
A T-62 is not a great tank for mobility warfare in modern day, but it's still a 115mm gun on tracks that is impervious to small and medium arms.
All this war taught me is that tanks aren’t as tough in general as I thought before this war….
People brag (jerk?) about frontal armor. Most of tank is not front and armor is somewhat or much weaker.. Too hard for fans of videogames.
Not thermal imagers are equal, some modern 2nd gen imaging systems come with a lot of software video algorithms that enhance known target signatures and objects of interest, making the high contrast tuning from 1st generation FLIR unnecessary. The latest 3rd gen stuff with enhancement technology is definitely amazing and super portable.
and the fact is russian thermals other than their very best are pretty close to first gen which is just sad and thats assuming they didn't pull it out and sell it.
As an Argentinian, thanks for clarifying in 4:24 that Peron was a dictator.
Perón wasnt a dictator, I dont like him either, but he was elected. He was authoritarian, but he didnt break the Constitution that I know of.
you can see snow covered tank tracks with thermal through snow for few days but that's more high ground or drone benefit.
Very interesting about the high-low mix. I guess many western military have done this with the MBT and infantry fighting vehicle like the CV90.
Nope, if you put whatever tanks in that battle, the results would be the same. No tank can withstand against ATGM, artillery, airpower superiorities. Like those Leopards are just practicing target for the Ka-52.
Another good video! Good questions with Nick providing reasonably informed answers. Also, as we have seen, even when the russians have been using T80s and T90s, their tactics limit their utility on this battlefield. All the Ukrainian forces need is to spot them with a UAS (with thermal imaging), and then the 152 and 155 arty can efficiently negate them.
Ukrainian artillery is not as sufficient as expected. Low numbers mean low fire missions which limit the effect on Russian infantry, vehicles e.t.c which means Russian counter battery fire will ultimately annihilate Ukrainian artillery
@@quinlanels9886 its low un number because it it is way more precise than the russians. A M777 howitzer with excalibur shells its a force to be reckoned with.
@@edubogota1 no, it's not "way more precise". M777 that came to Ukraine were not equipped with M1156 and were wearing out really fast.
@@edubogota1 no its not. Ukraine still uses mostly Soviet legacy artillery.
@@user-zv9do2cd4j at least they are more durable than russian artillery, the M777 is made of titanium.
the High / Low mix reminds me of the navy they made several low cost lightly armed ships for every larger more armed and more advnced vessel.
When i served in BAOR in the 80's on Chieftain, we were told if it all kicked off the kill ratio for us was 10 to 1, ten of theirs to one of ours. Good fun 😀
That's honestly wishful thinking. T80b, t-80bv, t-80u and t-64b and t-64bv where an overmatch for a lot of western tanks in early 80s. Mostly abraams, challengers and leopard2a3/4 could challenge them.
The problem is that this is theory, the real-life battles are much less forgiving and far more changing in nature to calculate the usefulness of the said tank(or any machine for that matter), in my opinion.
Back in the '80s when first introducing the thermal imager the US army took an M60 tank, in the winter out somewhere. Let it sit in the open for 24 hours, then buried it under snow for another 24 hours. After that they took another M60 tank equipped with a thermal imager and spotted the one in the snow without a problem. The technology has come a long way since then so yeah
Because metal changes temperature differently than snow any thermal imager will be able to perform the exact same trick. The difference is back in the day it would be a pixel wash out blur and now it will look like a clear high res image. Seeing the tank, no matter how long it's buried, is the magic of thermal physics. Even if it was exactly the same temperature as the snow below the margin of error of the imager waiting would reveal the tank as the snow changed temperature through the day more slowly than the metal of the tank did.
Hopefully The Chieftan & you will get a chance to sit in several modern tanks soon to see how they work. Not that likely, but it would have been nice.
The comments on these videos are always fascinating. Great community.
Having a tank is always better then not having one.
So Basically what Chieftain said is you want the Thermal equiped tanks, don't bother with a T-80U because wihle its base armour and ERA is good, it is inferior to a T-62 with Thermals, because it lacks that, in this sense however a T-62 is more advanced than the T-80U for combat, just less survivable to anything that is not an old Sabot, or most RPG rounds and simiar to front. the latter being more common (tank on tank being rare), but not likely to be seen in combat
You can't kill anything that you can't see. So the ability to see the enemy first is always No.1 priority.
t80U actualy is equiped with termals
I still can't believe they are sending any armored units out with no thermals. Damn amazing too me Also Chieftain really needs to get updated on just how far thermals have come. They are nothing like what he was using now. Just mid range handheld/weapon mounted for hunting can easily see out over a mile and you are making out the animal entirely. Its not just some blob on the screen anymore. Gets even better on vehicle mounted systems With that said, you can absolutely camouflage against thermals. Will be interesting watching the techniques be adopted on a larger scale over the years. As this war has really brought to light how you are basically dead without them to the world at large.
@@user-if3fj6uf3s not all, only a few, this is why they created the T-80UK, the first Thermals Russians made were expensive (for the USSR).
@@xsu-is7vq I agree, but that is the thing, Thermals is an advantage, not a "requirement", to see the enemy, the thing is that as the infantry (and tanks) cammuflage it becomes more of an requirement, but hey its possible that the advantage will be lost just by using more and more modern coats that makes thermal signature be lessened.
Anti tank weapon have changed a lot since the 80s and 70s when these tanks were made.