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What you say is essentially correct though I would change "any terrain" to "most terrain", however, I was offering an opinion on this:
Which was in regard to "Tanks", not on the correct deployment of available forces by the Commander of an Armoured Brigade Combat Team or a portion thereof which is the type of unit your describing.
I agree with "most", but would broaden it to potentially "almost all". Then again, I am a former tanker.
Yeah, like the article says, "if a coup or fratricidal civil war breaks out in one of Moscow’s current or former beneficiaries, there’s good chances T-54 or T-55s are taking part." That doesn't speak well of the tank itself just the fact that it has rarely gone up against anything other than some peasant carrying an RPG. The T-72M's that the Iraqis had were slaughtered during the Gulf War so I wouldn't want to think what would happen to anyone driving the 54' and 55's against a sophisticated force.
True. All of the Russian tanks performed poorly 108 lost : 1 lost
"In early February 1991, two hundred USMC M60A1s of the 2nd Battalion drove north from Khafji, Saudi Arabia into Kuwait. In Kuwait they encountered an Iraqi force of T-54/55, Type 69, and T-72 tanks at Kuwait City International Airport. This was the largest tank battle for the Marines since World War II. The Marines won this battle, destroying almost nine dozen Iraqi tanks with only a single M60A1 lost. The defeat of the Iraqi force was not only humiliating to Iraq but also to the USSR’s arms export effort. This was in part due to the fact that some of the tanks destroyed were the newer T-72 which the Soviets claimed was superior to the M60. Despite the performance of the M60, the Marine Corps decided to replace it with the M1 Abrams in order to have the same tank as the US Army. The M60 was also fielded by Egypt but it is unknown if they saw any fighting"
From Wiki
25 years ago, I was a National Guard crewman on M-60 A3s. I dont have any combat experience.
I did the the standard jobs of loader and driver, and was selected as a gunner. But... my company commander liked me because I did very well on "call for fire training" using maps, azimuths etc. and could also handle radio nets. He then asked me to volunteer (or was it "volunteer"?) to be the loader on his track. I was on either his track, or the Xos for my enlistment.
True. All of the Russian tanks performed poorly 108 lost : 1 lost
"In early February 1991, two hundred USMC M60A1s of the 2nd Battalion drove north from Khafji, Saudi Arabia into Kuwait. In Kuwait they encountered an Iraqi force of T-54/55, Type 69, and T-72 tanks at Kuwait City International Airport. This was the largest tank battle for the Marines since World War II. The Marines won this battle, destroying almost nine dozen Iraqi tanks with only a single M60A1 lost. The defeat of the Iraqi force was not only humiliating to Iraq but also to the USSR’s arms export effort. This was in part due to the fact that some of the tanks destroyed were the newer T-72 which the Soviets claimed was superior to the M60. Despite the performance of the M60, the Marine Corps decided to replace it with the M1 Abrams in order to have the same tank as the US Army. The M60 was also fielded by Egypt but it is unknown if they saw any fighting"
From Wiki
T-72 claimed to be better then a M60? The Syrians claim to have fought the Israeli M60 companies on a relatively even level in Lebanon . Having been an A1 commander, basically the last of WWII technology even with the RISE Passive and reactive armor upgrades you were looking at crew and combined arms training being the difference. The Army A2 and3 with the laser range finder, thermal sights and computer should however give better range and night fighting advantages were basically transitional tanks adding next generation components to an old war horse. We were bailed out since modern sabot rounds fly so straight you can shoot battlesight in most situations as far as an A1 crew can see since it didn't have modern sighting systems
I recall during the first Gulf War one of the Chief of Staff Generals gave a briefing and when asked about all of the Iraqi tanks he quipped "I am a tanker and tanks need a lot of maintenance otherwise they are combat ineffective".[reminds me of a cavalryman talking about horses except use care for maintenance] I think some of these emerging countries with revolutionary issues have serviceability issues with their older tanks- firing mechanisms, rangefinders, engines, drivetrain, etc. Then there is crew serviceability as the original T-55 does not have air conditioning. Imagine that tank in Central Africa or The Desert!
Now I don't know if the M60 or the T-55 would be considered the AK-47 equivalent in the reliability factor but I do know US tank crews spend more time in maintenance training then on tactics and gunnery. And besides Israeli long range shooting training I don't know if any non NATO nation matches us in gunnery and nobody else had anything like the National Training Center at Fort Irwin.
Most tankers in history never had air conditioning. Only the post Gulf War very latest models have it. From the 1960s onward you had your chemical warfare filter systems and you could attach the hose to blow air through. It was the introduction of computers that would meltdown which brought A/C the crew was just a happy collateral effect..
Most tankers in history never had air conditioning. Only the post Gulf War very latest models have it. From the 1960s onward you had your chemical warfare filter systems and you could attach the hose to blow air through. It was the introduction of computers that would meltdown which brought A/C the crew was just a happy collateral effect..
Same with APC's.
The AMX-10Ps we used to have had no A/C and it was terrible, dehydration and heat stroke was a serious issue. It wasn't until we got the VBCI which has A/C that we had much confidence in the fact that when we got out we'd actually be able to do something other than throw up and collapse. You would have thought a country that spent most of the 60s & 70s sending it's infantry all over north and east Africa would have worked it out, but.... *gives stereotypical gallic shrug*.
The AMX-10Ps we used to have had no A/C and it was terrible, dehydration and heat stroke was a serious issue. It wasn't until we got the VBCI which has A/C that we had much confidence in the fact that when we got out we'd actually be able to do something other than throw up and collapse. You would have thought a country that spent most of the 60s & 70s sending it's infantry all over north and east Africa would have worked it out, but.... *gives stereotypical gallic shrug*.
Were you in the Foreign Legion?
I know that there is a Foreign Legion paratroop regiment in Corsica. Furthermore, your written English implies that you are a native speaker (advanced, but also flowing and not stilted)..... .
True. All of the Russian tanks performed poorly 108 lost : 1 lost
"In early February 1991, two hundred USMC M60A1s of the 2nd Battalion drove north from Khafji, Saudi Arabia into Kuwait. In Kuwait they encountered an Iraqi force of T-54/55, Type 69, and T-72 tanks at Kuwait City International Airport. This was the largest tank battle for the Marines since World War II. The Marines won this battle, destroying almost nine dozen Iraqi tanks with only a single M60A1 lost. The defeat of the Iraqi force was not only humiliating to Iraq but also to the USSR’s arms export effort. This was in part due to the fact that some of the tanks destroyed were the newer T-72 which the Soviets claimed was superior to the M60. Despite the performance of the M60, the Marine Corps decided to replace it with the M1 Abrams in order to have the same tank as the US Army. The M60 was also fielded by Egypt but it is unknown if they saw any fighting"
From Wiki
Any modern weapon is part of a weapon system that is designed to be used in accordance with a certain doctrine. It's hard to compare the individual weapons without comparing systems and doctrines. While the Soviets were more than happy to sell their tanks and airplanes to third world countries, they were never designed to fight the tanks and airplanes of the 1st world countries without everything else meeting the conditions of the Soviet military doctrine.
The Soviets well understood that they had relatively poorly trained conscript based army.
Their solution, just like in WW2, was to achieve an overwhelming numerical superiority with weapons of good enough quality, with a small core of well trained professional units armed with better quality weapons (the T-64 someone mentioned wasn't exported to Warsaw Pact not because it was bad, but because it was very expensive to manufacture and the Soviets couldn't make enough of them to equip their own core Guards units; the T-72 was a MBT for the regular conscript fodder).
In a case of a hypothetical large scale non-nuclear war in the Western Europe, there would be literally tens of thousands of Soviet tanks, accompanied by mechanized infantry, protected by thousands of airplanes (if you look at the structure of VVS, it seems to have been very heavily biased towards local air defense), with massive anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and mechanized artillery support.
This is what worked for them in WW2. A single Tiger with an elite German crew could've been far better than a single T-34 with a bunch of peasant conscripts, but it was dead meat against 5 T-34's. And the Soviets outproduced Germans 10:1.
The Iraqis had none of that, not even close to the same scale.
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What tank(S)? In combat? How long ago?
