Hopefully Germany concluded that it's a lot better to send the Leopards directly to Ukraine. Thailand currently only has a score of 29/100 from Freedom House...
Don't know when the Ukrainian tank deal was made with Thailand. Hopefully it happened back when Thailand was
a lot more democratic...
See the Freedom in the World 2022 score and learn about democracy and freedom in Thailand.
freedomhouse.org
Germany doesn't have a lot of Leopards sitting around unused. The bulk of the Leopards they built are in the armies of allied countries.
A year ago the only two countries with large numbers of tanks in storage were the United States and Russia. Russia has mobilized most of the tanks they could repair at this point. If they are mobilizing T-55s, that means their newer tanks in reserve are either activated or determined to be unusable. The unusable tanks have probably been parted out.
There were stories last spring that thieves had stripped out anything of value from a large number of tanks in storage. Most had electronics and optics stolen. Some even had the engine taken. There were also stories from people calling home that their unit were getting tanks without a working main gun or a turret that was stuck in one position.
Anyone want to make a prediction on what Russia does next? No change in posture, further conscription soon, etc?
Getting harder for Putin. He does not want to draw more of his population into his war, particularly city folks like in Moscow and St. Petersburg where many so far have been largely able to escape reality. But if he wants any chance to mitigate his coming losses with the Ukrainian counteroffensive likely the spring and into the rest of the year, he would have to increase conscription/mobilization.
Even then Russian soldiers will remain poorly prepared/equipped. The current and potential resources in the West are much deeper.
The installation of AA systems in Moscow is an indication that Putin is nervous.
Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App
Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App
Since the 1860s whenever Russia has lost a war, there has been unrest. In some cases it led to reforms, in other cases it led to the government falling and being replaced. This is the biggest war Russia has been in since 1945 and they are losing. One potential fracture line is that the ethnic minorities in the remote provinces have been taking the bulk of the casualties in this war. That is causing a lot of the people in those provinces to be unhappy with Moscow.
Politically Putin is under stress from two sides. On one side are the warhawks who think Russia is losing because Putin didn't put Russia 100% on a war footing from the start and if Russia was completely committed to the war it can't lose (they're wrong). The other side are those who are angry with him for starting this war in the first place. This faction have a more realistic view of the situation and see that the whole war was a huge mistake of epic proportions.
Successful coups always involve the military, so Putin is hedging his bets against a military coup. There is less he can do if Russian republics decide to break away from Moscow and form their own country. The normal reaction by Moscow would be to send in the army, which they did in Chechnya. But the army has been shattered in the last year. They are not going to be capable to putting down a rebellion in Siberia.
Russia will probably try to mobilize more people, but the war is becoming increasingly unpopular, especially in the less cosmopolitan parts of the country. Additionally the 300K they mobilized late last year put a massive strain on them. They don't have trainers anymore so the ones who are getting training are being sent to Belarus. The rest were thrown into combat with no training. They traded 100K lives for a small village of 10,0000 pre-war. That's not a strategy that can continue. They don't have enough people in Russia to throw away lives like that.
Additionally they are struggling very hard to equip these troops. They lack uniforms, boots, facilities to house them while preparing them for combat. Most just got a rifle and a couple of clips of ammunition and nothing more. They are creating pure infantry units with no support weapons. Even light infantry units usually have attached heavy weapons sections with heavy machine guns, mortars, etc. Individual light infantry carry anti tank rockets, grenade launchers, grenades, etc. These mobiks are getting nothing more than a rifle and some ammunition. Not even much ammunition.
I expect the mobilized troops that were held back for training are getting a bit more, but I also expect that what they are getting is poorer than the units had going into combat last February.
Intercepted calls have many mobiks in Donbas complaining that they are getting almost no supplies. They are getting very little food and some have said they are drinking water out of puddles. They also aren't getting simple entrenching tools like shovels so they can't dig in to protect themselves from artillery. Every army of the last 120 years has automatically dug in when stationary in a combat zone. They get out their shovels and dig foxholes.
Another common complaint is the mobiks have no leadership. Many have said the only officer they have seen is a high up officer who orders them to some spot and they have no leadership below that level. No junior officers and no NCOs. Just a bunch of basic conscripts with no food, no water, and no support.
Russia simply doesn't have the supplies to mobilize all that many more troops. They also don't have the officers or NCOs to support an expansion of the army. They can call up every man between the ages of 16 and 50, but they won't get uniforms and the best they are going to get for weapons are sharpened sticks with maybe the occasional pitchfork. They can essentially muster a medieval army with pike squares. Great against cavalry, but useless on a modern battlefield.
The damage done to the Russian army is going to be generational if Russia survives. They inherited a large Soviet stockpile of weapons and ammunition that has been largely squandered. They were pretty corrupt and had a lot of problems going into the war, but they had institutions they kind of kept them coherent for the first few months of the war, but their officer corps has been decimated, their training regime has been wiped out, their equipment stores are gone, and the army has been gutted.
Their industry is still there. It's badly stressed due to shortages of many materials they need, but it's still able to make the basics like artillery ammunition, though probably not much more than pre-war levels. They don't have the means to expand production by much. They can keep a somewhat low level of artillery ammunition going to the artillery guns until they completely wear out and fall apart and they can keep a trickle of rifle ammunition going to the infantry until their guns wear out or they get killed and their rifles taken by the Ukrainians. But it's a basic, subsistence level of supply, both in quality and quantity.
I found it , also 8 tank recovery vehicles. Not m1s but they will be m1a x? Through procurement contracts. Not coming out of USA stocks. Either new out of factory or from an allied country looking to sell.
The M1s haven't moved in decades so they are going to take a lot of work to get moving again. If they are new production, the US is building a bunch of new Abrams for Poland. Some of that order might get diverted to Ukraine. For fuel supply purposes the Ukrainians should be getting Abrams with the APUs.
If an ally is looking to donate some tanks, it would be an opportunity for Egypt to win some brownie points on the world stage. Saudi Arabia probably doesn't want to give up any of theirs and Iraq's Abrams are probably trashed at this point.
Another thing with the Abrams is that it is very loud and very distinctive. The Russians will be able to hear them coming and know what it is. The advantage of the Leopard is it sounds a lot like a T-64.
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