Enough tank news has come down the pike to do a roundup. So let’s dig in:
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have reportedly deployed Abrams main battle tanks to the frontline near Avdiivka, where some of the most intense battles on the frontlines are currently taking place.
Russian forces have been making continuous efforts to capture this critical city and have been amassing substantial reserves, launching near-daily attacks.
Military analyst Damian Ratka claims that the tank shown in the broadcast on Ukrainian TV is an M1A2SEPv2 of the U.S. Armed Forces, which was likely filmed at one of the training grounds in Poland where Ukrainian crews were undergoing training at the time.
President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, confirmed the arrival of the first batch of 31 Abrams tanks on September 25, 2023. These initial tanks belong to the M1A1 Situational Awareness (SA) version, with approximately 650 units deployed within the U.S. Army.
The blowout panels might indicate that the crew survived.
Pakistan’s Heavy Industries Taxila (HIT) held the roll-out ceremony of the inaugural serial production batch of the Haider Main Battle Tank.
Attended by Pakistan Army Chief of Staff General Asim Munir, the ceremony highlighted the unveiling of the Haider MBT, a third-generation tank designed and built entirely in Pakistan.
Based on the Chinese VT4 platform, the Haider boasts a formidable arsenal, including a 125mm Smoothbore gun capable of firing various types of ammunition, such as Armor Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot and Anti-Tank Guided Missiles.
Augmenting its firepower, the tank features a secondary armament comprising a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun and a remotely operated weapon station armed with a 12.7mm heavy machine gun.
The Haider is equipped with an advanced fire control system, integrating a range of sensors and targeting devices to optimize accuracy and lethality on the battlefield.
Powered by a turbocharged electronically-controlled Diesel engine generating 1,200 hp, coupled with a hydro-mechanical automatic transmission, the Haider achieves exceptional mobility, boasting a maximum road speed of 70 km/h and an impressive cruising range of 500 km.
The VT-4 is a pretty modern T-90 derived tank, including composite armor, but it’s an export model. It’s probably pretty good, but not up to the standards of Abrams, Challenger or Leopard 2, especially for fire control and other electronics.
In that context, even the low noise/low thermal signature electric motor makes sense.
- “Sherman was a well-built, reliable tank that arrived in numbers when it was most desperately needed. It was relatively inexpensive, for a tank it was quite easy to maintain, and there were some sophisticated features, things like the stabilized gun, and also, and this is quite remarkable, a relatively effective comms kit.”
- “It’s often criticized for its tank-vs.-tank performance, but that’s not really what it was originally designed to do, even though it found itself in that position quite often. But the fact remains it could still hold its own against the majority of enemy armor.”
Tags: Asim Munir, Avdiivka, Bovington Tank Museum, Damian Ratka, Haider tank, Heavy Industries Taxila, M1A1, M1A2, Military, Pakistan, Ripsaw tank, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Sherman tank, Suchomimus, tanks, Ukraine, Vickers A1E1 Independent, VT-4 tank
The 47th Independent Mechanized Brigade, Magura, has lost four M1 Abrams and one M1150 ABV based on an Abrams chassis/turret over the last two weeks. The first three Abrams were lost to rocket fire and drones. An old Russian T72B3 got the drop on the fourth Abrams and lit it up with a perfect Station 3 Low House Skeet shot at 1,100 meters. The M1150 ABV was shot with multiple RPG29 tandem charges while it was attempting to recover the second M1 Abrams lost. Russian Ghoul drones eventually destroyed both carcasses.
It appears that the 47th Independent has been withdrawn from combat sometime over the last two days.
Meh. They’re doing what tanks do, which is get destroyed. There’s nothing particularly special about the M1 Abrams, although I’ll freely acknowledge that you don’t run them the way you run Soviet-style ones. Even some US commanders have issues with that… I have clear memories of the NTC where the Blue Force commander was treating his tanks as if they were mobile pillboxes, instead of using them the way God and George Patton meant them to be.
The real question is, did the crews survive? And, if they did, did they learn anything from their mistakes?
I’m unsure that the old concepts of speed and shock action really apply, any more. With full drone surveillance, you’re going to have a lot of trouble getting the opportunity to run your tanks through the gaps, and with the continuous-line of Russian or Ukrainian defenses, none of these old ideas about tanks and shock action really work out very well. You have to be able to get the damn things in behind the enemy defenses for that to work, and… Well, that just may not be possible, these days.
I’d still rather be in an M1 or a Challenger than anything coming out of a Russian tank plant. Better odds of survival, less chance of going into low orbit with the turret… Propellant burns hot and fast, and once those loaders go up, you’re either out of the tank or you’re on fire. You may be both, in short order…
“The real question is, did the crews survive? And, if they did, did they learn anything from their mistakes?”
Look at the hatches. No one wastes the time to close hatches after scrambling out of a disabled tank under fire.
You’re not quite as bright as you think you are, Mr. 10X25mm.
A mobility-kill tank, which that M1 could very well be, being as we don’t know why it was stopped, is often abandoned in place by the crew. Said crew typically does what it is trained to do, which in the case of Ukrainian tanks, should mean that they’d have closed the hatches while unassing said tank–A salutary preventative against having grenades dropped in open hatches. American M1 tank crews are trained to do just that, rather than leave everything open to the elements.
The hatches being closed really means nothing, because the scenario I just laid out could just as easily be what happened, as opposed to your fantasy of the crew being immolated in the tank.
I’ll note that there are a couple of things you’ve missed, with all your vast knowledge of armor operations: One, the turret position with the gun straight ahead, which is the exact position that the turret needs to be in for the driver to exit his position. Odds are good that the tank was not under fire when that was performed, because a.) crew often are firing back at the enemy firing at them, and b.) few have the presence of mind to do that. The fact that the turret is in that position rather speaks to this being a tank that either broke down or suffered a mobility kill, then was hit by a drone after the crew abandoned it and waited for recovery. It is incredibly unlikely that this was a “combat catastrophic” kill, under fire, because if it were, the turret would be facing the enemy, and there would be signs and portents on the frontal armor that said tank had been taking actual, y’know… Fire. Not present in the video, far more likely that this was a mobility kill followed by a drone strike performed on a stationary tank awaiting recovery. Hell, it still might be recovered… The ammo compartment going up isn’t exactly a full kill on the vehicle; we recovered numerous vehicles with more damage than this one, and repaired them in-theater while I was in Iraq. All depends on just how much damage was really done to things like the vehicle electronics, and even that’s potentially field-repairable. I saw an M1 that backed over an IED, suffered an engine fire as a result, cooked off the ammo compartments, and they had it back up and running within about a month. From what the maintenance guys told me, the majority of the subsystems are modular, and all they had to do was cannibalize another hull for the electrical harness, clean out the compartment, and they were in business again.
Not to mention, the blow-off panels could have gone off, and the crew might well still be inside said tank, alive and unharmed. That’s rather the point of the blow-off system, you know…
Again, you’re crippled by your utter lack of a background in armor operations. You’ve never worked around these vehicles in the field, or in combat, so your assumptions are based on a vast fund of ignorance and suppositions that you cannot even comprehend the depth of.
So, in as few words as possible, kindly shut the fuck up. Grownups are talking. One’s who’ve actually, y’know… Been on tanks, around tanks, and in tanks on an operational basis.
I realize that an experienced combat veteran with your exalted I.Q. would wrestle with a 100 pound hatch on a burning tank rather than seek safety, but most of us less experienced and mentally gifted would get out of Dodge before the tank erupts.
“Gentleman, you can’t fight in here! This is the war room!”
The misinterpretation of obvious data… Performed by the unknowledgeable? Par for the course.
Me? If I don’t know shit about what is being discussed, I shut up. This is the essential difference between the wise and the falsely “bright”.
Tank operations are fairly simple, if you’ve ever been around them. That tank in the imagery? The gun is at 12 o’clock, with the gun apparently elevated. That’s one of the usual SOP positions for the tank turret when the driver needs to get out of his hatch. The turret basket is accessible to the driver when the gun is at 5 or 6 o’clock, and that’s when he needs to get out of the tank for admin reasons. Usually, he locks his hatch from the inside, gets out of the tank, and then they lock the loaders and commander’s hatch.
When abandoning the tank, you train to shut the hatches… Unlike the Soviet/Russian standard, which apparently is to leave everything open for anyone to drop in incendiaries and grenades.
From the visual evidence? The abandoned M1 was abandoned by the crew in good order, they left the tank with hatches closed in order to prevent any more damage being done by someone with drones.
When you pontificate on things you know nothing about, all you do is discredit everything else you say. That tank wasn’t a catastrophic kill; more than likely, looking at it? Mobility kill and then some damage done from either a strike on the rear turret or drones. Likely, were we to have more information on the incident, it would be more obvious even to laymen.
Do remember that Mr. 10X25mm was expounding on “depleted uranium poisoning” as a causative factor in that Russian T-90 going all random and running into a building… Later imagery from that engagement showed the crew out running in apparent good health, after said tank ran into a building.
As an aside… Depleted uranium is a long-term health hazard, not something that acts immediately and causes disorientation as part of its symptoms. That crew did precisely what I said it did… Reacted as though they’d had their gongs well-rung, and abandoned their tank under fire from those Bradleys.
Here’s a quick hint for you, Mr. 10X25… You don’t know as much as you think you do, and whatever “brilliance” you’ve got in other areas? This ain’t one where you know jack or shit. All you’re doing is showing your rather massively fat ass, when you pontificate on these things.
Which is typical of your self-ascribed class, sadly.
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