this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Western-made armor is failing in Ukraine because it wasn't designed to sustain a conflict of this intensity, a military analyst told The Wall Street Journal.

Taras Chmut, a military analyst who's the head of the Come Back Alive Foundation, which has raised money to purchase and provide arms and equipment to Ukraine, said that "a lot of Western armor doesn't work here because it had been created not for an all-out war but for conflicts of low or medium intensity."

"If you throw it into a mass offensive, it just doesn't perform," he said.

Chmut went on to say Ukraine's Western allies should instead turn their attention to delivering simpler and cheaper systems, but in larger quantities, something Ukraine has repeatedly requested, the newspaper reported.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

"a lot of Western armor doesn't work here because it had been created not for an all-out war but for conflicts of low or medium intensity."

Interesting, I wonder which vehicles are they talking about. There are different types of vehicles. Heavier armors, of course, could sustain high intensity conflicts.

Anyhow, glad to see Russian sock puppets on this thread, with not an ounce or iota of knowledge of warfare, simping for Putin again. As people already pointed out, many of these Western vehicles are designed with combined arms working in tandem with air support, artillery and infantry in mind. But Ukraine has no air support because they lack these expensive and more sophisticated airplanes. Despite the limitations of Ukraine, Russia should still realise that Ukraine is the one making more advances than them in the past 18 months since the conflict started. One could argue that, if we are talking about which has the lesser effective and flimsier war machines, it looks like Russia has more of them.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The lack of air power is easily the biggest issue for Ukraine. NATO countries have made air superiority the central pillar of our strategic and tactical thinking since WW2, so it's hard for us to adjust our thinking to a conflict where air power is thoroughly limited. While Ukraine has done an excellent job of neutralizing Russian air power, that just leaves the whole thing at a costly stalemate.

That said, I'm not sure what Ukraine expects to get out of this request for cheaper, more plentiful vehicles. It's not like we can just design new IFVs for them in a matter of weeks. Maybe take existing designs and strip off any "unneeded" features? I don't know how far that gets you, but probably not very far.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Is air superiority really Natos primary strategy? Or is their coupling?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Air superiority means daytime bombing runs with B-52s. Not much can withstand that for any prolonged period.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I remember back when Kosovo happened, and the claim was that the entire war would be won from the air, without ever putting boots on the ground. Farcical, but people honestly seemed to believe it.

That was shortly after the Gulf War where air dominance was the cornerstone of the coalition approach. The war opened with an all out deluge of "precision" strike bombings (of varying degrees of precision) and air power continued to play a key role throughout.

Go back before that and you've got carpet bombing in Vietnam, and before that you've got Bomber Harris and "reap the whirlwind."

Air power is attractive because you can use a lot of money and technology, and very little manpower to make an outsized impact. That makes it very palatable to voters, so when you're an alliance of mostly democratic nations you can wield air power with very little outlay of political capital.

It's also clean and easy; there's nowhere to hide in the air. If you can show up with more and better planes than the other guy, you're basically guaranteed to dominate that theatre, and unlike naval power which more or less stops at the coastline, air power acts as a huge force multiplier to your actions on the ground. The US in particular loves air power because you basically just throw money at the problem and win every time.

With air superiority you can use tactical bombing and CAS to engage threats that your ground troops positively identify, while also giving precise spotting information to your artillery. Air and ground assets can work hand in glove to engage and destroy the enemy largely without ever having to directly engage them. The soldier on the ground becomes a pair of eyes for an A-10 or A-111. Every enemy tank, bunker or foxhole just becomes a new target for a maverick or paveway.

There are numerous problems with this strategy (we don't talk about the friendly fire stats for the A-10), but on the whole it provides a very politically effective way of engaging in ground wars, one that tends to be high on collateral and civilian damage, but low on friendly troop casualties, and that's what matters when you're a NATO country. As long as the boys aren't coming home in body bags, you can run up literally trillions of dollars in debt and no one will bat an eyelid.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Western armor isn't meant to be driven across the country into battle on the front lines. It's meant to operate in areas of air dominance where most defensive fortifications have been bombed well in advance. It's also designed to be able to attack and move with speed and accuracy, not charging forward.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (4 children)

So... Basically, it's not designed for use in a peer engagement?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (5 children)

They are designed for peer engagement under a different strategy than ww2 era doctrines where tanks provided cover for infantry.

An Abrams is designed to use it's superior range, accuracy and speed to take out medium hard targets. Similar to the Mongols horse archer strategy.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

no, it's because the core doctrine and design (at least of the leopard 1/2) is to use them in defensive battles against larger numbers of tanks - that was the entire NATO strategy in western Europe during the cold war, when all of that hardware was designed

not for rolling into unknown territory and getting hit by entrenched infantry AT, as Turkey discovered a few years ago

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

But... Isn't that LITERALLY the exact doctrine the Nazis used to design their Tigers and Panthers?

The same tanks that, by the end of the war, were both outclassed and outnumbered by Soviet and American designs?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Why would the Nazis design for defensive operations.

Meanwhile the purpose of the Bundeswehr was literally to stall the enemy at the border until an army arrives.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

NATO has no peers, so yes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

parts of that design difference is the size: western tanks are all larger silhouette, which they had to pay to have better accuracy at extreme ranges

afaik, they're made for defense in depth and retreating at their effective range while thinning out attacking tanks

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

The large silhouette is more of an armour/survivability thing rather than a FCS/accuracy thing

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (3 children)

They are talking specifically about tanks in the article. The armor on the tanks provided to Ukraine is allegedly not thought enough for mines, etc.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago

There isn't enough armour in the world to stop a few proper anti-tank mines or anti-tank missiles or anti-tank drones.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Yeah, that's what I wasn't following. MBTs are going to need repairs, no matter how heavily armored, when you run them over a minefield, hit them with anti tank missles or drones. APVs aren't designed to survive that, just to keep the occupants alive from something that would have turned them into a thick red mist.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Uh have they tried using anti mine systems to clear a path? I'm pretty sure western military doesn't just go charging forward crossing their fingers...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

For known minefields yes. For a regular road that might have one or two mines, no. Mine clearing is extremely slow. Even if you do it, someone might come in the night and plant more mines. The best you can do is keep an eye out for signs that mines have been planted.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

The Russians made the defensive mine fields more than double the width of any mine clearing explosive device. This means they can't quickly clear a section and move through without being sitting ducks.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

It was designed to make money for shareholders. Like every other piece of planned obsolescence trash that gets shit out now days.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

This isn't WW2, there's plenty of anti tank weaponry available. It's a lot cheaper than tanks and it's going to do what it's designed to do. Look how well tanks worked out for the Russians. Tanks are just not nearly as effective in modern warfare.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Basically it was designed for wiping out civilians in the off chance a few of them actually shoot back.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

This is a nice way of saying "Where in the name of cyka are those F-16s?”

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What about the 500 helmets we send from germany? I was told this is exactly what the Ukraine needed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I'm not sure if you are joking, but in this case armor does not mean body armor, but tanks.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Western-made armor is failing in Ukraine because it wasn't designed to sustain a conflict of this intensity, a military analyst told The Wall Street Journal.

Taras Chmut, a military analyst who's the head of the Come Back Alive Foundation, which has raised money to purchase and provide arms and equipment to Ukraine, said that "a lot of Western armor doesn't work here because it had been created not for an all-out war but for conflicts of low or medium intensity."

Despite Chmut's comments, some advanced Western systems Ukraine has received were conceived with the highest-intensity combat in mind — NATO going head-to-head with Soviet forces.

The US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Abrams main battle tanks were built specifically to counter Soviet ground forces.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly criticized Western allies for delays in the deliveries of weapons, saying earlier this month that slower arms shipments were hurting Ukraine's chances of success in its ongoing counteroffensive.

Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the German think tank European Resilience Initiative Center, previously told Insider that Ukraine was stepping up its domestic production in part because of concern that Western deliveries would not keep up with its military needs.


The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Are they saying that their tactics are the same as in WW2 and that's the West's fault?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Well we don't give them planes, do we?

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