But those are not their only air-droppable armor assets. Wonder if they've air-dropped a T-14 yet. Maybe on 02 August, we'll find out.
Posted on 04/04/2018 9:47:16 PM PDT by ameribbean expat
Especially is his *God of Battle*- massed artillery- is in the area. And make that double especially if tac air support is unavailable or impractical due to wx or urban collateral damage.
But those are not their only air-droppable armor assets. Wonder if they've air-dropped a T-14 yet. Maybe on 02 August, we'll find out.
Yup, because if you’re in Ivan’s city, Ivan really doesn’t care about collateral damage as long as you either die or go away. Messy, but highly effective.
Russia has a “heavy lift capability”. At one time, and maybe they still do, have the largest air cargo transport plane in the world.
They have been able to do both troop and supply missions to Egypt, Syria and Afghanistan pretty successfully, though there was no real air opposition to them.
Back in Oct. 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Gen. Sharon had a whole Egyptian army surrounded and was getting ready to pound them to ashes. The Soviets threatened to put their troops into Egypt to prevent this. This force of 3 Airborne Divisions were to be leapfrogged from Yugoslavia to Egypt.
In the face of this Kissinger forced Israel to leave the Egyptian Division alone because the US did not feel it could stop the Soviet invasion.
A truce was signed shortly after this stand-off.
The Soviet Antonov cargo carrier/troop transports are pretty good, and look like they were based on our C5A’s and C17’s (They probably stole the designs to them just like the Red Chinese have been doing the past 60 years).
Don’t forget that the Soviets airlifted several Cuban divisions to Angola in 1974-75 and that ensured a communist victory over Holden, Savimbi and the South Africa forces there.
Never underestimate the capabilities of your enemy.
Quite a lot better. The export T-72s the Iraqis had were not equipped with first line Russian sensors, computers, engines or armor. They were also lacking any of the Russian main line APS systems that were in service at the time - no Shtora, no Drozd, no Arena, not even Arena-E.
As for effectiveness - during the Chechen wars Russia fought, the very same Konkurs missiles gleefully shredding Turkey’s NATO frontline Leopard 2A5s in Syria failed to kill Russian tanks with APS. Chechens reported that unless a large mass saturation attack was mounted with multiple (minimum six, minimum number kept going up) simultaneous launches on the tank with the Konkurs missiles, the missiles would get to a certain range and then look like they ran into a force field as the tank’s APS system took them down.
Remember, this APS performance is against the same Konkurs missiles that are shredding Chobham armor in Syria with single shots. This is why the Army has suddenly filed a crash order for the Israeli Trophy APS after decades of waiting for the Raytheon vaporware Quickkill system.
Almost nobody exports full capability front line tanks to most client nations. Egypt bought a bunch of M1 Abrams tanks from us, for example, but they didn’t get the DU armor, the updated computers, the awesome first line multispectral imaging system, the network warfare upgrades or even the same radios. Same thing goes for the T-72s Russia sent to the Middle East for their clients.
The Russians do still have the largest cargo transport aircraft in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-225_Mriya
The US often contracted the operators of the AN-225 to move our stuff around the world.
Russia’s heavy lift capability is so bad that the US was contracting with Russia for aerial logistics support in Iraq and Afghanistan because our feckless Congress didn’t buy enough C-5s or C-17s and we didn’t have enough airlift capability.
Most all of our European partners used Russian or Ukranian airlifters to get to the theater or provide support at least in part.
It’s possible, due to the neglect during the Obama years and how bad our fleet is now, that the Russians *may* have a better functional capability than we do.
“Russia has a “heavy lift capability”. At one time, and maybe they still do, have the largest air cargo transport plane in the world.”
Actually, I think they built two of them. Not sure if they’re both flyable anymore though.
They only made one and a second was under construction but cancelled. The one they did build is not only still flyable but in regular use. They just upgraded the avionics and it’s in revenue service again.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1096664.shtml
However, the Chinese have decided to fund the completion of the second one and potentially produce more for themselves.
https://www.popsci.com/china-will-resurrect-worlds-largest-plane
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