/k/ - Weapons

>>684862

Wasn’t age of recruitment 16 pre-WW1 and 2?

>>684938

More like kids lying about their age.

>>684937

I can see NATO getting their panties in a knot over Iran.

>>684939

>More like kids lying about their age.

Nevertheless. I find it amusing that I been seeing so many comments of guys saying lucky they are in their 30s. Before the Vietnam war men in their 30s use to be half if not most of the drafted.

>>684937

>I can see the UK and America pushing for NATO forces attacking.

Do you remember what happened before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. All that it takes to mobilise a large chunk of NATO (large enough to matter at least) is for the US president to get a bug up his ass and demand a coalition invasion.

>>684948

It worked only with Afghanistan.

With Iraq only UK and the europoors (so token companies really) went.

Since then UK made it extremely clear they won't participate in any kind of US adventure in the middle east, and since 2008 French and UK troops have been so slashed it's just impossible to deploy (France is borderline beyond capacity with the Sahel expeditions already).

NATO is the definition of paper tiger. It's a bunch of brasshats wanking on spreadsheets that think that making division-size kampfgruppe train together once a year is a great achievement… because no one can field a division.

>>684965

2 hours, 24 minutes, and 17 seconds after it should have started.

>>684962

Cold War NATO was not a paper tiger.

Even then, what's the point, there's no enemy to fight. Iran puffs up, but the moment a true conflict engage, they are just gonna fold and go back to gorilla warfare.

And western conventional forces do not know how to handle gorilla warfare/do not want to win.

If NATO does not want to win, it is better to not fight.

>>684988

>Cold War NATO was not a paper tiger.

Cold war NATO had 10 to 100 times the troops.

France alone in the cold war had around 1300 tanks (900 MBT, 400 light) and at least 1 million grunts (1.4 total IIRC).

If you remove the US you won't find that much soldiers and gear in the entirety of NATO today.

>>684998

And that's the problem.

Though if Europe wants to remake its military, it's not all that hard. Just need to bring out the old retired shit and upgrade them.

>>684998

It's true that Europe reduced stocks by 10 times over.

But…

America and Russia suffered a halving of their force. But even that is only on paper, the real modern tank forces are still 10:1 reduction it is just that the superpowers maintained their strength by maintaining old warfighting stocks.

For example America had 10,000 tanks in cold war, and now it has about 6,000. Half, right? Wrong, only 1,500 of those are newer variant M1A2s, the remainder are M1A1 which are basically cannon fodder to any foe armed with ATGM even sandniggers. Russia has 5400 operational tanks but most of them are obsolete T-72, only 1200 are T-90 and only about 50 are Armata the military keeps demanding changes to the armata which is forestalling a true production run so neither superpower has a real advantage.

>>685012

The problem is that the factories have shut down as well, the engineers are no longer permitted to work on this stuff in Europe. Since 1980. By now there are maybe 5 engineers and 100 technicians in all of europe capable of designing a tank, and they're all retired and uninterested in doing the work. There is no new generation of engineers capable of designing warfighting weapons, and no new generation of technicians capable of building them.

It would take 20 years minimum to return Europe to superpower status, the kind of repair that starts with no longer sabotaging reasoning skills of preschoolers. Then waiting for the new crop of chilluns to grow through every single step of education and maturity MINUS all the garbage like common core, and then hoping and praying the engineers who were 60 years old in the 90s aren't going to die before passing off their information to the new crop of guys. And if this isn't done soon, it will never be done, Europe will be africa tier technologically at least in terms of their martial abilities.

>>684962

but this time it was a UK boat stolen so they're obliged to react.

With the current inflation based "borrow and spend guys" economy and fiat currency everyone is super duper broke. Even countries that aren't doing as bad as others are still swimming in debt and with welfare states that are growing more expensive, the long term is getting worse all the time. Reducing the military is a means to cut the budget, if the other powers and rivals cut their forces you can save money, too, by cutting yours! Gut the military, and THEN watch as your debt and budget look worse and worse, now how do you go back to the military you USED to have when you are having trouble with your slashed mil spending current red ink budget?

Current States are all borrowing and spending on worthless crap, but also to say afloat. Where will the money for rebuilding come if you are already broke? Where is the manpower coming from when you have X amount of recruits already, and many conscripts are manchildren snowflakes who are either stick thin weaklings incapable of work or dough boy basketballs of fat that can't hardly move?

We can talk about tanks and hardware, but the money and manpower issue is something else to consider. Then again, if they are trying to "stimulate" the economy through spending, why not basic military spending to hire more soldiers and build a standing force? If they are going to throw the money away anyways, better to have soldiers paid to do something other than welfare.

>>685049

IMO they were only going for max kino.

I just realized

>they named their ship "bulk"

<but it isn't a bulk carrier

My autism

>>685017

>90s aren't going to die before passing off their information to the new crop of guys

That will never happen for all intents and purposes. The knowledge is lost forever for all intents and purposes. It's funny how people just take it for granted that knowledge is never lost, and it just passes on to the next generation automatically without anyone having to do anything (muh gubbermint will take care of it).

Just look at IT development. Nowadays, vast majority of developers don't have a clue how anything works on lower levels. And if you don't know how something even works, you can't fix it properly. People who knew how shit worked on lower levels are almost all now retired, or working for a few companies and getting mad dosh.

>>685056

>It's funny how people just take it for granted that knowledge is never lost,

Indeed, a lot of the american space race shit is basically lost tech at this point and any iterative development effort of anything (including but not limited to military equipment) in any industry is at risk of becoming lost tech when the production of that whatever is dropped. WhY? Because of the development method and insufficient documentation. Relevant people die, digital and physical documentation is lost or destroyed by insufficient record keeping.

I also have some doubts over modern classes of engineers, considering the academia. Anyone here know how things are done in, say, mechanical engineering education? Is it worth anything? I have heard that even uni engineers basically just learn everything on the job.

>>685056

Edited post to embed invidious. I know it's not perfect but it's better than directly embedding youtube

>>685015

The US doesn't have that many.

Russia has a LOT more.

The US built 5197 M1A1 for the US (of which a number are upgraded original M1, the remaining M1 were scrapped AFAIK. Around 2000 M1A1 were slotted for scrap too but I'm not sure if they went through with it).

The US has 10 tank brigades with 87 tanks each, including 3 of national guards and a few hundreds in operational reserve (not a thousand with 99% certainty). There is only 677 M1A2 in the US. No more no less. National guards are on M1A1.

Russia by the numbers has around 3500 in active units (active + reserve, it's almost twice that. The reserve that is "working" with a repair crew doing the maintenance on it for a day. Scrap metal that might be revitalized if it goes to a factory for a week it's north of 10 000).

It's a quarter of what the soviet had… but it's still 150 battalions worth (a Russian tank bat being 41+/-1).

People can't seem to wrap their head around the fact that Russia has been getting new tanks at the rate of 150-200 (closer to 300 on good years counting the upgrades) per year for around 15 years now.

Meaning that when you quote a number from 2011 (which is common, SIPRI Military Balance 2018 for example) you're missing at least a thousand.

There is around:

350 T-90A (twice more in reserve than in service. No clear reason why possibly for a rainy day?).

250 T-80U (largely used in coastal defense units under naval command but not only).

300 T-80BV (upgraded to M in progress 41 per year since 2018).

1300 T-72B3 (total numbers delivered, might have more in production).

200 T-72BA (soviet/90's era T-72B upgraded to "B3 standards", some have retained their french optronics blocs).

50? T-14 (in process, goal is to reach 200 armata chassis a year, so far it's 50 since 2018)

1,000 T-72B (largely use to arm or ream all the tank bat of units that didn't had any, VDV, Naval Infantry, mountain infantry that had T-62 tank bat, etc…)

Active reserve are older T-72B (around 1000), T-80U and BV (around 600), T-90 and T-90A (around 800) and an unknown number of T-62M (it's harder to tell as they require minimal care-taking and they shipped/prepared a lot for Syria too).

I can go into details if you don't believe me (things that Sipri or ISW are incapable of doing as all they do is C/c old news posts in English as no one that writes about Russia in western think tanks can even read vodka runes).

So first there are basically two size for tank battalions. 3 companies +1 (or 2) leader 4 companies +1 (or 2). We will go for 1 leader (which is the old school, new school is bat lead + deputy lead apparently).

Each company is 3 platoons, each with 3 tanks plus a company tank, so 10 tanks per tank company.

Motorized rifle brigades/regiments have 4 companies and one tank battalion (for 3 infantry) . Tank brigades/regiments have 3 tank battalion (for 1 infantry).

So a motorized rifle brigade/regiment has 41 tanks and a tank brigade/regiment has 93.

Difference between brigade and regiment is that regiments are parts of a division.

Divisions follow the 3+1/1+3 pattern too.

So a motorized rifle division is 216 tanks (1 tank regiment + 3 motorized regiments) and a tank division is 320 tanks.

So now that we know that we can look at the units one by one and deduce how many tanks they have.

Now of course there is lot of movement within Russians units and not all units are at full strength (as they're switching gear or base), you have also "light" units that are 1+2 or "heavy" units that can be 4+2, etc, etc… so it's not 100% accurate but by doing due diligence and looking up news about units and their website (gasp! russian units have newsfeed and personal sites? What year is this?) and what not you can still get a pretty damn accurate picture of who has what.

>>685091

Now in Russia there is 12 armies (1 of them is a tank army… which sounds exactly like what it is) and 4 army corps that are organized in geographical districts that would mute into "fronts" during a war. This is all very classic soviet doctrine.

Now in the Western Military District (ZVO) there is 3 armies: 1st Guard Tank Army (1 GV TA), the 20th Guard Army (20 GV OA), the 6th Army (6 OA).

And 1 Corps: the 11th Guard Army Corps (11 GV AK) which de facto under the Baltic Fleet command forming the Kaliningrad defense district when SHTF instead of being part of the Western Front (which is roughly the difference between an army and a corps. A corps is more or less on it's own). "Guard" used to mean elite and 100% ready formation today it has lost the military meaning, past the units own traditions (even if it retains the quality of a prestigious posting for an officer).

Now lets go up to down:

- In the north/north-west part of the ZVO, facing the balts you have the 6 OA. The 6 OA is on the small size with only 2 motorized brigades, the 138th guard motorized rifle brigade (138 GV OBMR) and the 25th motorized rifle brigade (25 OBMR). So 82 tanks.

-Further west in Kaliningrad in between the balts and the poles you have the 11 GV AK. The 11GV AK is also light (as there is limited reasonable parking space in the enclave) with only two separate motorized rifle brigade (OSMBR). The term separate means they are to be fully independent meaning they undoubtedly have their full complement of AA/artillery/MLRS/Sappers/EW support battalions/companies. Which doesn't concern us for today exercise (except that we can affirm that they have their full complement of tank for sure). That's the 7 and 79 GV OSMBR for 82 tanks. To which one must add two units that under the Baltic fleet command, the 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade. Historically they had PT-76 then for a while nothing but they're definitely re-got their tanks battalions (T-72B placeholders). So we can count 41 more.

-Now we get to the 20th Guard army which is the main backup of the Belorussian (which we should really count but we won't. Reminder that Belarus defense is fully integrated with Russia's) to face the Winged Plunger Holding menace. The 20 GV OA is a heavy one. Now it's not completely fully fledged fully stupid (yet) but it's still 2 Motorized divisions (144 GV DD & the 3 DD) and 1 Separate Tank Brigade (1 TSBR). Now good news so far they're still missing two regiments so so it's only 443 tanks (but what is planned is for it to get it's last regiments then add a tank division instead of a puny brigade, the goal is at least 525 short term, 752 long term. But don't worry we're only counting today).

-And then we have the strategic level force of the 1st Guard Tank Army, which as it's name hint, is very light and is not at all the battering ram that is gonna gape the EU asshole all the way to Lisbon. It's currently made of the 4 GV TD the 2 GV DD, the 6 STBR and the 27 GV OMBR (with the 6 STBR and 27 GV OMBR reforming from brigades as divisions in the near future). Now 2 GV DD doesn't have it's 4th regiment so far so it's, only… 629 tanks (short term 670, long term… clench your buttholes: 1072).

Basically the idea behind the recreation of the first guard tank army is to take head on either the US fleet or the combined French + German + Polish fleet.

Leo2/Leclercs might very well be better… but while they're busy playing knightly duels to determine who has best tonk and make people on the internet shut up, all the other NATO units will also encounter tanks and a T-72B VS a Stryker or a VAB with at best a .50cal on it, as old as it is, it's the T-72B that's gonna win.

And that's it for the western district 4 armies, we get a current total of 1277 tanks.

>>685092

Shit I forgot the types.

138 GV OBMR: T-72B3

25 OBMR: T-72B

144 GV DD: T-72B3

3 DD: T-72BA & T-72B3

1 TSBR: T-72B3

4 GV TD: T-80U

2 GV DD: T-72B3

6 TSBR: T-72B3

27 GV OMBR: T-72B3

7 GV OSMBR: T-72BA

79 GV OSMBR: T-72B3

336 GV MBR: T-72B

>>685098

Thank you for your autism.

>>685091

>>685092

>>685098

its aspergers, we have to cut the fin off

>>685052

kek

>>685091

>>685092

>>685098

As the Finn and the Canuck have said, thank you for your Frankish autism.

>>685056

>>685073

>tfw commies and muttscum are going to introduce a shitty version of the Mechanicum

Pure divine Aryan Karmic payback.

Europe is wisely refusing to release real patents because slavs and anerimutts can go get fucked

just like NATO

>>685091

>>685092

>>685098

I apologize for calling you a tankie before

>>684851

This move literally makes zero sense for Iran to be doing.

>>685091

>1,000 T-72B (largely use to arm or ream all the tank bat of units that didn't had any, VDV, Naval Infantry, mountain infantry that had T-62 tank bat, etc…)

Could you tell us about their mountain infantry? I take they figured out how to equip and use them in Afghanistan, and I imagine that it was recent enough for them to not forget those lessons. Considering that they have tanks, are they focused on holding the more important mountain towns and the roads between them?

>>685049

That helicopter pilot is a pussy.

>>685145

There are four mountain motorized rifle brigades.

The 33th and 34th that are in the 49th army,

the 8th guard in the 58th Army of the Southern military district (Caucasus).

And the 55th in the 41st army in the central military district (Tuva).

Now only the 8th guard has a tank battalion (but it's unclear whether or not it's still actually meant to be mountain brigade), I wouldn't count the others as having tank battalions, the 34th did used to have a tank company (for direct fire support rather than tank fighting) at some point but sources varies greatly (in some it's just a reserve, in some it's another brigade of the army that has extra companies and is supposed to assist should they need tank support and in some that all of them should get at a "fire support battalion", whatever that means as they all have AA and artillery so…).

For infantry they're "lighter" as they're on MT-LB APCs or newer Typhoon MRAPs (55 and 33) except the 8 that is rearming on BTR-82, for artillery they use the older (but lighter) 2S1.

In mountains the tanks are largely meant to be moving pillboxes, while in lot of situation they're at a disadvantage relief provide cover from artillery and airstrike. So you don't need many (or good ones) but one in the right place can do wonders.

I'm assuming here, there is very little written on current Russian mountain doctrine outside of the VDV heliborne tactics, as it's what we do with our AMX-10RC (and the Italians with Centauro).

The brigades in Tajikistan (which is also very mountainous) but aren't marked as mountain brigades also only have 1 or 2 tank company instead of a full battalion (4) (and being the QRF of the CSTO they're well equipped so I don't think it's a question of availability).

>>685073

I got masters in IT recently, and by my reckoning, results may vary. A lot. Not only do different countries teach different shit, even different universities have massive differences in what and how they teach. Except humanities which are all worthless, tbh (seriously. I know people who couldn't get fucking bachelors in STEM, but since they wanted to have a degree, they went and attended a bussiness faculty or whatever. Naturally, they graduated easily). Provided you pick a solid university, you will get comprehensive education. But it comes with a couple caveats.

First of all, a thing I noticed that seems to be common among universities, is that most of bachelors is has little to no use in the real world. It's all massive amounts of theory, with a couple classes teaching you shit that's been obsolete for decades. It created a certain bad mood among many students, and I myself felt that I might have wasted several years since I haven't learned anything of use. I suspect this is where "university is a waste of time" meme comes from. Then came masters, however, and the situation changed – instead, we learned a lot of very practical shit, and gradually found out that the useless shit we learned during bachelor's was not so useless after all, and that it is often necessary to really understand how shit works or that's it's preparation for more complex, significantly more useful topics. Of course, the folks that gave up after bachelors, too disillusioned to continue, never got to find that out.

Then you go and actually join the workforce, and of course find out you need to learn everything on the job (it's the same in basically every field), since the job uses diffent shit than you were taught about, but you find out that you can find a lot of parallels with the shit you WERE taught about, that the underlying logic is the same, and that after a a couple weeks when you get your bearings, you understand everything.

>>685167

>and that after a a couple weeks when you get your bearings, you understand everything.

That's amazing. No western company would allow this. Most would fire you within those couple weeks for not hitting the ground running and having complete mastery of their various proprietary (or at least uncommon) systems.

>>685073

idk how it is in the corporate world anymore since i've been military for a few years now, but I can say without a doubt that this is what it's like in the military when it comes to documenting networks and IT. to figure out how to do your job, you basically have to poke it until you either have a life-ending comsec incident on your hands, or finally figure out which virtual machine on your server does what and how (and, again, with what proprietary or at least uncommon software that you were expected to have complete mastery of as soon as you finished basic, let alone your first trades course)

>>685073

For the most part in mechanical engineering they just throw all the math the students might need at them and call it good. Experience with designing things is done independently or through internships, etc. It's all useful but people don't come out being good engineers. That reflect the legal side of engineers actually. There's a license that requires years of experience to be able to sign off on projects that require government approval. You're an "engineer" once you have it.

>>685167

>gave up after bachelors

>gave up

Very few people "give up" after bachelors, the university just advertises a Bachelors degree as a complete degree so thats all people plan for and get into.

This is what happened to me, I planned for four year degree, gathered enough money for it, and focused on that. Graduated with honors in comparative biology degree and $0 in my pocket because I planned it that way because the university registrar convinced me the bachelors degree was a complete degree.

I didnt go into work force by choice, I had 0 fucking money, and I soon found out my bachelors was equivalent to a high school diploma. In fact many employers considered the bachelors to be INFERIOR to a high school diploma.

Thats why no one gets a masters, we all run out of time or money or get obligations like sick parents or pregnant women to take care of.

I NEVER "gave up".

>>685186

>Thats why no one gets a masters, we all run out of time or money

MSc students get paid for their work though. Not much, but enough to get by, especially since Canadian student loans don't accrue interest while you're doing the degree.

>>685168

>That's amazing. No western company would allow this. Most would fire you within those couple weeks for not hitting the ground running and having complete mastery of their various proprietary (or at least uncommon) systems.

Really? How does any newb get the job, then? Over here, a learning period is a matter of course.

>>685186

Could be. Bachelors weren't even a thing here before the Eastern Block fell, so most people consider Bachelors to not be a real degree. So I aimed for masters right off the bat. We also give different titles based on whether your masters are in humanities (Mgr. - means magister) or STEM (Ing. - means engineer) meaning the shit state of humanities doesn't devaluate the STEM masters over here.

>In fact many employers considered the bachelors to be INFERIOR to a high school diploma.

Happens here too sometimes, because again, "inferior pseudo-title that just shows you tried but didn't have what it takes to get a real degree" (to quote shit I've heard from people over here). Seriously, anons, if you do decide to do college, don't stop with just bachelors. They're often just a staging ground for masters, where the real shit is taught, despite the university's advertising.

>>684938

Age of recruitment is still 16. It's just that you're required to have graduated high school in order to join so most people are 17/18 before they can join (and you're required to have your parent's permission if you're 17).

>>685211

>How does any newb get the job, then?

THEY DON'T

>>685211

>How does any newb get the job, then? Over here, a learning period is a matter of course

You either know someone who can help you out, or >>685215

>>684888

Trips confirm. Still, it's a start. If the neo-liberal "Left" could be memed all the way to full NazBol Gang it'd be a victory of sorts really.

>>685211

>Really? How does any newb get the job, then? Over here, a learning period is a matter of course.

Like >>685215 said, they don't. There's a recurring meme here among young people looking for work:

>Hiring young, energetic workers, fresh out of university. Must have at least 5 years experience with the job.

So unless you graduated top of your class or flat out started working in your area before you graduated, you're kind of fucked unless you get a masters, like you said, then people fight over you

>>685245

>not (((networking))) in university