22452

Please give military planners credit. I doubt that they going to go to the trouble of sending tanks to Ukraine only to see them sit in a maintenance shop because they need a part. British forces are expeditionary in nature, I’m certain there’s a complete maintenance “package” that they ship with each tank for NATO exercises in Europe.

22453

You need to reboot your sarcasm/irony detector :)

22454

Take it, like everything about this war with a grain of salt, but Wagner’s “victory” at Soledar may have gutted their forces, leaving them combat ineffective and in need of new convict troops. Interesting thread, if true:

22455

Looks like a new mobilization may be queuing up, as many as 500,000:

22456

I wasn’t responding to Aleks. I was responding to the link!

22457

It’s not the fact that there won’t be parts. It’s the amount of parts and the Ukranians ability to put the right parts in the right place at the right time to keep 10 tanks combat available. How many spare engines are going to be shipped over? How many spare gun barrels? How many of the thousands of things that allows a tank like the Challenger to operate at the level it does?

Tanks are incredibly fragile things to keep combat operational, needing constant attention and maintenance which requires a huge logistical train. Making the effort to provide that logistical chain pretty much from scratch for the sake of 10 tanks seems a huge effort that barely seems worth it.

22458

Again the worth of those ten tanls is not in their actual combat value. It’s political. Its giving the Germans an out, allowing them to point to the brits and say, see. They were first, we just followed their lead.

22459

I think part of the issue there is the UK just doesn’t have a lot of tanks it can give. There were only somewhere around 450 Challenger 2 tanks built,. The UK currently has around 230 operational tanks with another 150 or so on top of that. So I imagine they are thinking hard about what they might need in the near future, and what they can afford to give.

22460

Canada has 80 or so Leo 2s and if I were in charge I’d give most of them to Ukraine tbh (save a cadre strength unit for training)

22461

I posted about this somewhere upthread, but the crux of it is that they’re not making the logistical chain from scratch - Ukraine are already part of the standardised NATO supply system, which means the process for identifying and supplying the items already exists.

22462

You seem to assume the British Army has no idea what is required to keep their tanks operational on a long term basis. While it is proper to wonder if the UA will get enough training to maintain them, your concern as to whether the UK will supply enough parts seems unwarranted. Do you really think the UK is going to ship tanks that will be worthless in a month?

Hasn’t NATO supplied Ukraine with all sorts of Western vehicles - MRAPS, SP artillery, SP AAA, APC’s, Humvees, etc, none of which I have heard any word of them not being operable due to lack of parts. There’s no reason to believe tanks will be any different.

22463

Well I’ve seen speculation that the only reason why the UK is sending tanks is to force Germany to allow sending Leopards (either directly or letting Poland and others send them). As @vyshka mentions upthread there just aren’t that many Challengers in existence, there are a lot more Leopards available to send, but Germany won’t allow it until someone else sends Ukraine a Western tank. So the Challengers could be a token force to break the deadlock, not something that’s actually supposed to make a difference on the battlefield.

On the flipside, there are supposed to be 100+ Challenger 2’s which aren’t getting upgraded to Challenger 3’s, so you could look at all of those as extra and not considered needed by MOD.

So I think you can make arguments either way. Either 1) these Challengers aren’t really meant for combat, they are mean to give Germany a push/provide a fig leaf for Germany so that Germany isn’t the first major Western power to provide tanks or 2) UK is sending 10 Challenger 2’s now and may send some more from the stockpile that isn’t getting upgraded to Challenger 3’s if Ukraine proves capable of maintaining them and putting them to good use.

My understanding is that the Challenger 2 is at least defensively a better armored tank than the Leopard 2 variants Ukraine is likely to get, so I’m hoping this is the first of several shipments. But given that from what I understand no more Challengers are ever going to get built, I understand if UK isn’t able to send more.

22464

The Times is now reporting that the UK will send 14 Challenger 2s and 30 AS-90 155mm SPGs.

22465

I wouldn’t be that surprised that if Germany keeps trying to halt it, Poland just finds some volunteers to drive the things across the border.

“We drove them to the border as a show of support, but they got lost and ended up in Rava-Rus’ka along with all their supply train. Whoops.”

22466

In actuality, the 30 SPG’s are worth more than the tanks.

22467

Ukraine, the weapons lab of the West:

22468

I’m glad we’re sending more stuff, however, I agree that the howitzers are more important, sadly the 2A4 Leopards are outdated stuff, that isn’t really up to the task, they blew up just like the Russian ones in Syria…not sure about the challenger 2 though, either way, not game-changers sorry :(

The Bradleys however, are fucking awesome, please send 2000…

While not as quick as my predictions, I think this conflict is going to expand in scope and death, with far more fucking Russians on the front.

I suggest the following, please send cluster ammo to Ukraine, the ones that mine everywhere they touch, then mine all the approaches to Ukraine…for weeks… then fuck you Russia, and fuck Putin.

Oh, and almost forgot, dear France, in addition to Leclerc’s, can you send the Foreign Legion, like all of them to Ukraine? Love ya France.

22469

Apaches for Ukraine?

22470

Apaches are likely to be more effective than Hinds/Mi-8s lobbing unguided rockets in ballistic arcs.
Assuming they can avoid planes and AAA.

22471

the illegal ones??

better than anything the Russians have