Posted on 08/11/2013 5:49:31 AM PDT by Gorilla44
Russia has invited the U.S. to participate in a tank biathlon so that both nations may learn to play nice — with heavy artillery.
The invitation was apparently extended while Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Shoigu in Washington on Friday. The "two-on-two" talks were intended to relieve some of the tension between the two countries, so the suggestion of a little friendly competition — under fire — wasn't out of place.
Defense Minister Shoigu repeated the invitation during a Friday press conference, and according to Russia's , Shoigu says the U.S. agreed.
"'We've invited our American colleagues to participate ... and our invitation was accepted by US Secretary of Defense [Chuck] Hagel,' Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Saturday."
NPR can't confirm this — calls to the Department of Defense went unanswered Saturday — but if such an event does take place, Shoigu says it'll be sometime next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Putin can drive the Russian tank, and the Fairy King can drive the US tank.
That would be interesting.
“Is there a successor to Abrams out there?”
Oshkosh, AM General and Force Protection each spent 1.5 billion of their own money and developed force projection vehicles on 6 ton chassis. Those are the replacements.
The problem with the tank is its logistics and the difficulty of getting it to the battle unless you’re in Europe with roads or the desert. It was useless in Afghanistan. The tank’s voracious fuel appetite means that any offensive operation must have a long line of unarmored, unprotected tankers running behind it. With Hezbollah and Hamas getting RPV’s we can no longer be guaranteed absolute air supremacy. (They’re sometimes too small to see, but they could still, potentially, take out a tanker.)
Who cares if the military is unprepared for the next generation of combat, the important thing is that BHO looks great strutting accross Leno’s stage...
Imagine if a conflict broke out on the ‘gaming grounds’.
We had our tank biathlon in Iraq. As I recall,entire divisions of Iraqi Russian tanks were decimated in short order, some even by Bradley fighting vehicles.
Pointless.
Well, that will be just perfect next time we are attacked by the Afghanis.
Meanwhile, what is the plan for fighting a real army on some other battlefield? I suppose that isn’t supposed to happen any more and all tanks are obsolete?
How about a reenactment of the Battle of Kursk?
Hmmmmm, I was thinking, the odds would be more Russian Tanks vs fewer American Tanks. Maybe we could put in a German Crew, they wrote the book on fighting against greater numbers. Then again if you really want action, get a Polish crew, they’ll do it for fun.
Tanks? Tanks are 20th century warfare.
A smart bomb (aerial or ground launched) costs a smidgen of what a tricked-out tank costs. Bye bye tank.
Putin's into Judo and probably enjoys sparring quite a bit. This sounds like fun and is way better than duking it out for real.
Then we party hearty after and loser pays the bar tab. Sounds like a great weekend!
(Let's do it at their place. Those Russian girls don't look like tractors anymore.)
Armour and Vodka... what a combination, sounds like my kind of party! sorta like alcohol, tobacco and firearms 8^)
The Russkies are just having fun poking this effete Administration and showing them up for the weak pussies they are.
Of course, we know who always wins that d!ck measuring contest between the Dems and the feckless GOP. So at least we will have our "best" team in there.
If the Russians offered this, it means they’ve been preparing for some time. This isn’t some friendly little competition. This is about selling tanks around the world and knocking us. You notice they didn’t ask for this when Bush was President. The Russians will use “Ringer” crews and they will cheat. The Americans should require that the crews and vehicles be chosen from regular units the day before the competition. And your competitor chooses for you. We played by the rules for years in the CAT competition and never won. We finally made it a priority and then we cleaned up. The Russians, after DESERT STORM, really have nothing to lose in this. Their tanks are already viewed as being subpar. The Americans better play to win.
As a tank commander in Israeli Army with a combat experience and knowledge how to operate M60,Merkava,Centurion and T-62,I can advise you not to compare arab tank crews with Russian tank crews. Iraqi army operated old tanks with a minimally trained crews. Abrams is a very good tank but most of the gun battles in Iraq was long range fighting and against targets that, mostly, never fired back. Generally quality of the weapon and crew training is a major factor but when you face multiple targets that return fire, it’s not an easy task. Every tank have a weak point of entry, Abrams included.
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