One of the castings for the 747 main landing gear reportedly had a 4-year lead time :eek:.
Yes, those times can be reduced in a war emergency (and MBT castings are certainly less complex and material critical than a 747 landing gear), but agreed - 8 months is simply not going to happen.
Plus, the US isn't on a war footing...

Fair enough, everyday is a school day.
The Russian kit is basic, because the troops (conscripts) have very little training, the armaments industry somewhat lacks the West, not to mention the quality of metals and materials.
Tactics that the armoured vehicles were used for have been shown to be obsolete, (were never really much good against an in depth defensive force).

For the Ukrainians the use of direct fire heavy weapons gives them the accuracy and fire support they require to clear static defensive positions.
Abrams and Chally are fantastic in highly mobile manoeuvear warfare, this however is not where they are currently at, the weather and mud will likely turn this again into a slogging match.

These are going to come in handy with the dam, the river and heck even skirting around the new defence line the Russians have thrown up.

Given the mud, swamps and open flat farming areas, this might be the time to breakout some of those small combat hovercraft

IG

On November 2 an entire Russian battalion made up by newly mobilized conscripts from Voronezh was wiped out near Makiivka, Luhansk. The commanding officers ran away. Out of 570 only 41 survived.

As expected, they are cannon fodder.

Kherson’s abandoned city hall

The end of July 100 volunteers set off to war in Ukraine, November they returned home….. all 12 of them.

Following on to the cannon-fodder post above…

The grandiose claims about successful operations by Russians in Pavlivka and Uhledar direction have changed for "urgent appeals to the higher-ups to do something about it", as Sladkov cries about it in his latest post.


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....636b02b25f.png

Well, if it WAS on a war footing, it could accomplish something like this


in under two years - starting with bare fields and a workforce uneducated for the task at hand

### Warning: Aviation Content ###

More inaccurate propaganda! I very much doubt that 529, out of the 570, died! There will have been casualties but also quite probably many who simply surrendered or ran away.

Whatever the precise numbers, it seems unlikely that whoever remained would have been an effective fighting force. The earlier report of 12 remaining out of 100 ‘joyful’ volunteers is only slightly better statistically - and they, apparently, were volunteers rather than conscripts.

Amidst the ‘joyful’ reactions to reputed further RU losses, I have to remind myself that UKR is also losing lives they can ill afford.

Please let this slaughter stop … soon.

"...inaccurate propaganda.."?

The source is a Russian news site, not Ukrainian/other.

IG,maybe they(UKR) should think about those `Florida swamp airboats` and skidoos for operations when it gets wet/snowy.

The lead time with technology development is much higher today than it was in 1940. The period from 1940 through to about 1958 had the fastest rate of technical development in aviation history, and was fairly impressive for land warfare technologies, and the navy below waterline definitely developed massively from the 40's to the late 60's. From there on, the tech has continued to develop, but has a much longer lead time to develop evolutionary change, and revolutionary changes while variable in development time, are much longer than prior generations. I suspect that more than ever before the fight gets done with the gear on hand. The B-29 took 4 years to put in the field, the P-51, "100 days", how long did the B-2, F-35 take? C3I and weapons integration takes a heck of a long time, other than 3D printing fins to put on a hand grenade and buying COTS quadcopters.

Only one side can withdraw, the other is on home soil.

What is the likely hood that modern militaries will create some form of Drone regiment for deployment on the modern battlefield?
They seem to have caused considerable damage in this conflict and most armies seem to have focussed on the larger drones like the Predator.
Flooding the battlefield with these little drones could be a real pain in the butt for a modern army.

I think they are proving to be a real pain in the butt for the Russians. Whatever we thought before, I don’t think they can be considered a ‘modern army’ any more! However, this war does seem to be proving that low cost precision weapons can do a lot of damage to high value targets. Must be causing some serious re-thinking in the purchasing departments.

Drones are being used at multiple levels in the TAO. The MQ9/TB-2 type have their place, and require specialist skillsets at present. They provide reach, at a cost, and are vulnerable where there is any real air defence. The kamikazi drones give reach, but are not tactical without lots of effort in the back room. real time targeting is vulnerable to ECM and to kinetic defence weapons. The tactical quadcopters are inexpensive, and have been weaponised, this is still early in the innovation of offensive capability, but they are very disruptive when used as FO's for arty. Combined with terminal guided munitions or advanced arty fire directors, they are brutal. The tactical drones are changing what can and what can't be done in the field. The Ukrainians and even the Russians have shown that they can adapt rapidly in the tactical use, so as stated previously, their employment and defensive systems against the other teams similar systems is going to be an active field, and will have an effect to this type of old fashioned 1917 style warfare that the Russians seem bent on re-enacting. Training for integration of tactical drones is a change but not that big from prior art. Presumably there is a lot of new work happening in JTAC planning and training. A constraint about going all in with tactical drones as the answer to life and everything is that they are detectable, and can impact clandestine ops, so there is going to always be room for niche innovation in that area. L.O., low RCS, quiet drones would be worth a bit of effort, Maybe. Adding a home-on-jam with a det charge would be helpful.

Sure makes the guy in the trench have more headaches than before.

Well I said as much right at the beginning of this thread and was told that Rheinmetall would prove an adequate defense, with a video to "prove" it. The video did show five or six drones get blown out of the sky, but they were travelling at pretty much walking speed in a formation so tight, even I could have downed them.

I think drone deployment will be much different from that easy target. They'll be sent in swarms and not travel all at once, but leapfrog over each other one-at-a-time, and even take indirect routes to approach the target from different angles, maybe all at once and without warning. They might never have to get above the treetops so could remain invisible to humans. I think they'll also be able to loiter on the ground inop and silent for great stretches of time, listening for an activation command, or just waiting to "see" a potential target they can pounce on

In a way, they could become the new land mine