Picture of the Day - "Progress" in Iraq / Update

[mg 42]

QUOTE

What we were spared. There are a few minor advantages of indirect occupation. Even if some idiots advocated the destruction of Casa Poporului (a well known robber-baron ex-architect turned into oilman for instance, or a perpetual shaved skull (by mother’s nature will) owner, known for being an expert in everything, admittedly only for a brief moment at the beginning of 1990 ), we were spared that humiliation.

some years ago there was an international urban planning competition in order to solve the problem of the people's house.
the solution I liked the most was to dig it in and transform it into a green hill with only the top of the house standing out as a monument. :keep:
I think another solution eventually won, by a german architect. But the solution was never implemented ( lack of money....and of culture , I guess)

[inahurry]

QED - Lots of idiots everywhere, fortunately always a minority, Germans in this case. On the contrary, solid culture and common sense prevailed even if there was no danger to be otherwise, marginal exhibitions of frustration happen but are soon forgotten.

[Chandernagore]

Is there still any "progress" in Irak ? How close (or far) are we to the bug-out phase ?

Among the latest developments we have :

-Bush more or less admitting that there was no casus belli (no WMD). Nice, so I guess we are facing an involuntary war crime by the US intelligence services ?

-Bush more or less trying to prevent democratic elections in Irak, which is kind of weird, given the supposed mission.

- Civil war slowly pointing up at the horizon, that Bush is powerless to do anything about

- Bush facing an electoral opponent who didn't run away from his duties when the nation called him to serve. Ouch. Can money alone really buy the presidency ? The world is staring in awe & shock :shock:

[Dan Po]

QUOTE

QUOTE Well, the tank driver may have been stupid.......but Man, oh Man!, what a great tank the M1A1/M1A2 is.  Impressive! I don't think the driver was stupid in this case, and the tank was not stupid either but it lost it's turret which flew through the air after it hit a mine. ....A US "Abrams" MBT was completely destroyed by a landmine on October 27 45 miles north of Baghdad. Two crew were killed. The explosion ripped through the bottom of the tank and threw the turret clear of the tank's body. - I don't think the west has that much experience in building tanks, = don't forget that Sherman tanks were some of the worst and ugliest tanks of ww2. I think the top tankmakers in the world are Russian, Germans, Israel, French, English, and then the US. The Abrams is very fuel-inneficient and mechanically unreliable. They need lots of maintenance. There is no super tank in this world, - each tank is particularly suited to the specifil environment - but the all around best tank (an many will agree with me) is the Leopard II .

Im agree with you herr maresal :cheers: . Leopard II is the best and somehow it reminds me about Tiger s.

[Dan Po]

QUOTE

QUOTE I know the M1 is far from perfect (1 mile to the gallon  ), but it is one hell of a tank. Have you ever seen and been on one? It is truly intimidating, a beast. I would love to see the combat experienced U.S. armored divisions go up against the world's so called best tanks. Spoke kile a true American. Now, I think you're right when you say that Abrams M1A1 is a good tank. It did pove usefull in the limited war situatios it saw action and is indeed a scary machine. Only the fact that the US Army uses it proves that it has some qualitys, your army is known to use only good technology, no matter the price, it's normal when it has a rich echonomy behind. But I must also underline a few things that can be weak points for this tank. And I don't mean its fuel consumption, I'm sure your army can afford it. The fact that it is hard to mantain in combat shape (mechanically) is more important. In a war like the one in Irak, US forces were able to deploy their forces with all the supplyes and logistics they needed. And the campaign was well organised and planned, plus the enemy was not a very disciplined army, was easy to disorientate. I think the limitations of the M1 will become obvious if it will ever be involved in a major conflict that is taking place in an area that does not allow a good deplyment of supplyes and takes more than a few weeks. A M1 can probably destroy 10 T-72s when it's deployed and supplyed proprly, but a T-72 can fight with a lot of malfunctions and need little mantaining to fight and not least it's many times cheaper (so the enemy might have thousands, grately outnumbering the US troops). A Russian tank can be resonably fixed without much technical knowledge or equippment and has a reliable engine. It can burn low quality fuel if needed and does not rely on much electronics to fight. I hope you won't be offended by this, but I believe that the American armed forces are exagerating the advantage of the high-tech equippment. Who else would build a plane that costs 1 bilion dollars apiece? (I mean the B1 bomber) It looks like an UFO and it's almost perfect, but there are how many? 5? 10? The Russians in sted built thousands of less powerfull planes at the same price. In Yugoslavia you've deployed the ultra-high-tech undetectable F111 stealth that can't be shot down by any missile. But the Serbs shoot one down with the AAA cannons, WW2 flack technology. In the same war, America used the cutting-age unmanned spy aircraft (that funny looking robots) that flyes too low to be detected and targeted by RADAR. But the Serbs saw it with their own eyes and shoot it down with the kalashnikov. I wonder haw good the M1 will be against some fanatic pioneers that don't have AT rockets or better tanks, but burn it down with Molotov cocktails. :twisted:

What about Merkava ?

[dead-cat]

i think fuel consumption IS a big factor. especially when you're operating the tank on another continent. i recently read in the New York times (i think) that it costs 43$ to ship 1 gallon of fuel to Iraq.

AFAIK the T72 suffers mainly from a poor targetting system, other than that it's a cheap MBT alternative you go for quantity vs. quality.

regarding the low tech approach of killing high-tech equpiment, some time ago we had a discussion about the LOSAT system on another thread.

a german newspaper published some time ago an article about austrian airforce detecting F-111 during the campaign in Yugoslavia.

i've seen a study about aircraft technology development some time ago, claiming that, if the costs involved continue to raise at the current rate, by 2070 the richest countries will be able to afford 1 single airplane.

[Victor]

The age of propeller driven combat aircraft may very well be returning. Fighting against guerillas in remote areas does not require high-tech aircraft that need a lot of maintenance and more complicated procedures to operate. A propeller driven aircraft like a Tucano or a Pilatus model, armored and armed to its teeth, with only the minimum of technology, costs up to 5 million USD.

[Chandernagore]

They took Verger, a crack French attorney to defend Saddam in court.

Verger I can understand.

But God Almighty why choose a French ex-communist :question:

The guy knows his job. He's going to slice into the American venture like knife through butter. It can only result in further US-European tensions as the Bush admin realize Verger is going to push badly where it hurts : the (lack of) legitimity of the whole affair.

[Florin]

QUOTE

I don't believe you know what you are talking about Der Maresal. Just because one M1 gets taken out by a mine the U.S. can't make good tanks? If I remember correctly, thousands of T-55s, T-62s, & T-72s were completely destroyed for the loss of only four M1s in 1991. The Russian's perhaps aren't the best tank builders?

The Alliance in 1991 war had a complete aerial supremacy.
Most of the "thousands" tanks you mentioned were knocked out from the air, by smart missiles - airplane carried or self-carried.
By making the quote you made above, you simply are not fair.
The same thing for Normandy, in June-July 1944: very often a Tiger knocked out 3...10 Shermans, then it was knocked out from the air, by British or American airplanes.
Maybe an environment where the presence in the air was reasonable equal was the Battle of Kursk. In such an environment we may disregard the "air force" factor, and assume the losses on ground merely to the ground forces.

[Chandernagore]

Remember the DU discussions ? It seems we were not that far of the track.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid...4/04/05/1356248

[Florin]

QUOTE

Remember the DU discussions ?

Thank you for the link.
The following is an extras from there:

....Depleted Uranium is considered to be the most effective anti-tank weapon ever devised. .....

I am not so sure about the above statement, even though I am not a professional expert.
However, I do not want to derail from the subject. The target of your link is if DU is/was used in Iraq or it wasn't, and not how efficient it is.

[mabadesc]

Let's not forget that the largest tank battle since World War II took place during Gulf War I, on Feb. 28, 1991.
That particular day, roughly 200 Iraki tanks (T-72 and T-55) were destroyed by coalition tanks supported by helicopters. Coalition losses = 0.
Coalition equipment destroyed = 1 tank which caught on fire because it was too close to an Iraki tank who exploded.

Total armored equipment lost during Gulf War I:

Irak:
Tanks: 4000 out of 4230 available
APC: 1856 out 2870

Coalition:
Tanks: 4 out 3360
APC: 9 out of 4050

(source: cryan.com/war)

The numbers speak for themselves... :roll:

Someone feel free to post Gulf War II losses....I don't have the time...

[Chandernagore]

I wouldn't call that a tank battle. Available info indicates that most Irakis tanks were emplaced and not mobile, acting more like AT or artillery in direct fire. A tank battle can hardly develop when one side has total air superiority over the battleground.

So the numbers certainly speak but they tell another story :wink:

[mabadesc]

Maybe so, Chander, but that's what it's being referred to by the majority of the sites I checked: as a major tank battle.

Sorry it doesn't fit the image you may have of a "textbook tank battle", but on a battlefield, things don't happen by the textbook.

[Chandernagore]

QUOTE

Sorry it doesn't fit the image you may have of a \"textbook tank battle\", but on a battlefield, things don't happen by the textbook.

Well... really, you make it a textbook battle, not me.

When the British bombed the Tirpitz in the Alten fjord from the sky, it was not refered to as the biggest battleship duel of the Atlantic.

What I mean is that the end score is the result of a lot of factors, only a few can be attributed to what you refer to as a "tank battle".