“… The report when they loaded the ship was 600 (that’s right 10x the minimum) got loaded in January.
Compared to the 5000 or so manufactured and in storage, it’s not a huge number. Combat losses of less than 10 Bradleys out of 60 is 15%, but out of 600 it’s not even 1%.”
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The ONLY statistic that matters is the number/percentage lost of those that are actually deployed into combat.
The ONLY statistic that matters is the number/percentage lost of those that are actually deployed into combat.
The problem is that this is a new kind of war. When you move, everyone sees it. Drones guide artillery down an drones kill. Moving heavy equipment like armor, without air superiority, leads to huge loss rates. In this scenario, if you’re in missile, artillery, drone, or aircraft range, you’re in combat. These will lead to new expected loss rates, something that will be hard to compare. I think the Russians already figured it out, but not yet the Ukrainians. 100 years later, and back to trenches. Napalm, fuel air bombs, cluster munitions, supposedly made trenches obsolete. Think aircraft.
When you retrospectively look at the closing years of WWI, and the beginning of WWII, the difference was movement. However, was it tanks or tank movement? The later depended heavily on air superiority. Without the ground attack aircraft, Stuka then others, would it have looked like WW1 with better tanks?
NATO tactics without air superiority may not be effective now, no matter how good the tanks/APC’s. Ukrainians are going to die to prove it though.