US/NATO Armed Forces vs Russian Armed Forces comparison

Maintaining a heavily armored turret in an arms race against the anti-armor has always been a losing proposition. Glad they finally saw the light. Sucks for the HNrrep loader though...

Everyone knows that Russia is 50 to 100 years behind the west.

I would love to see the US buy 10,000 F-35s, because in a real conflict with Russia fighter aircraft are not really going to play very much of a role, and the cost of operating 10,000 F-35s will burn their money faster than they can print it.

It makes them less capable, not more capable.

And it would take more than a new engine to fix that dog fighter... and I rather suspect hype about a next generation engine will be a pretext for charging more for this new engine too.... currently they are talking about the new F-35s costing 70-80 million each... but that is minus the 30 million dollar engine so the price hasn't changed... just the sales pitch...

They can´t print money forever. The inflation is already out of control and they can´t raise rates because he whole FIRE sector (60%+ of the whole economy) would implode immediately. The whole country (state, businesses, people) are deep into debt. After the next implosion of the western financial system the Dollar will be toast. No more borrowing till kingdom come.

Another important point: the country spend 500+ billion each year in the last 30+ years (a little less in the 90´s, much more in the last few years) and still most of their aircraft are 40+ years old. That tells you a lot how corrupt the system is. Most of the tanker aircraft are 60+, they have to spend 200+ billion alone in that field. With current prices they wont be able to replenish all this old birds.

Indeed... lack of accountability means there is no punishment for wasting tax payers money, or for mismanaging it.

Lots of money spent making the very rich richer, and no consideration as to whether this makes the US and the west safer... that money invested in education and healthcare and they could be a real super power on the top of its game, but their fight fire with fire attitude has left them morally and ethically corrupt and honestly more dangerous that the enemies they claim to want to save the world from.

And their communication is terrible... for many years they have been saying Russia is a bigger threat to the US and the west than ISIS... well ISIS does not have a formidable array of nuclear weapons and mature and capable delivery systems that would ensure they could be used effectively... so in a sense that is true, but constantly equating a country you actually should have no ideological issues with who wanted to join HATO and expand the EU into a union that expands from the Atlantic to the Pacific... is nothing like a head chopping group of terrorists wanting to create new countries in the Middle East in direct opposition to western meddling in that region.

As mentioned before when the Soviet Union collapsed the west lost all respect for Russia and the Russian studies field in the west was abandoned by the wests brightest and best, so you end up with hacks and dead end losers in the diplomatic roles who screw things up more than they understand... maybe western universities will rebuild their Russian studies departments with at least competent people and a bit of respect can return to relations... but I suspect that ship has almost sailed and Russia is more likely to be looking in other directions for cooperation, because cooperation with abuse and being dictated to is not a nice healthy environment to be working in.

In the desert the gas turbine gets plugged with sand.
On snow the thing is too heavy and the tracks don´t get enough grip.

M1 = only useful in show rooms ($$$)

Hole wrote:In the desert the gas turbine gets plugged with sand.
On snow the thing is too heavy and the tracks don´t get enough grip.

M1 = only useful in show rooms ($$$)

It is really a spectacular achievement. Weight + tracks should mean highly effective grip. It looks like the tracks spin up way too
fast which gives the slipping effect since the inertia of the heavy tank takes some time (seconds and fractions of seconds matter
here). So before the tank is moving much, the tracks have clogged with mud and are not gripping effectively. So some of the
fail in the above video is due to the tank operator pushing the throttle pedal too hard. Unless the thing has the wrong gear ratio
for the lowest gear.

That's an evasive manoeuvre.

The ground doesn't look frozen enough. Soft soil plus snow would easily turn to mud slush after a few churns by the tracks. You might need the dozer blade to scrape the topsoil off to expose just enough of the frozen soil beneath.

lyle6 wrote:The ground doesn't look frozen enough. Soft soil plus snow would easily turn to mud slush after a few churns by the tracks. You might need the dozer blade to scrape the topsoil off to expose just enough of the frozen soil beneath.

The treads can bite enough even into pure ice and climb such a slope. The problem appears to be the clogging of the treads via icy mud.
It is a design fail more likely than operator fail. The driver probably cannot take the hill at a slower speed. The tread design is probably
inadequate as well.

I have not seen video of similar climbing with T-72s or T-90s. So maybe it is not so funny.