Originally Posted by
rattman
I spent a lot of time around Bushmasters and yeah you always used to think hey this is a decent sized thing. So the first thing I though when I saw this was holy cow are BTR's small
The reason is that the whole design concept is different. When the soviet era vehicles were designed the main deal was to make the cross section on everything as small as possible to decrease the targeting area, i.e. make it as low as possible to make it more difficult to be hit by the opponent. Therefore eg T64-T90 MBT's have the automated loader to remove the need for a loader (only 3 crew making required space smaller) and the carousel underneath the turret that causes such spectacular turret tossing performances. The same applies to IFV's, they were made very low compared to their western counterparts.
If a T72 and a Leo2 are side-by-side, standing on LEO you really are looking down to the T72. Same applies to that BTR-80 compared to eg Finnish PASI.
In todays battle field with modern top attacking ATGMs the soviet design philosophy has lost its relevance as the top is so vulnerable in all of those vehicles. If you like, the russian forces have a huge amount of vehicles but all of them are of obsolete design. They do move in different directions and go bang, killing civilians very effectively, but have a hard time when opposed by modern weapons. A bit like the Mosin-Nagant.
Things are going to get even more difficult for russkies, we are probably going to be in the situation in the very near future where the mech BTG's don't have modern sights and radios are of a vintage 70's type as the Russians have no means to modernize the vehicles they take out of storage. They've been there since the Soviet collapse, being cannibalised and parts being even sold to make a few rubles. While they should've modernized those 12000 MBT's they drank a lot of vodka on private yachts in the Mediterranean. The renewal capacity of Russia on MBT's pre-war was estimated at 100-200 units annually but now they don't have the parts, the men or the time to modernize anything. They didn't do it properly and all the modernized kit was already delivered to BTG's for training purposes. Those were the ones sent to Ukraine 24th Feb and have been very much annihilated in the war already. Where does this lead to?The upcoming mobiks don't have sufficient (or any, apparently) training and the vehicles they get really are from the 70s including comms, sights etc.... I'd hate to be a Russian mobik. No wonder those guys are running for the border and jumping on each others ankles.
At the same time Ukraine did modernize their T64's very extensively throughout the last 30 years. It still has the main issue with the autoloader, but they have brought just about everything else to the 21st century. A direct hit makes it a toaster but otherwise those are much more capable and especially much more joint operation capable than their Russian counterparts.