Posted on 02/10/2016 5:00:39 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
The T-90 tank, among the newest pieces of military hardware to enter into service with the Russian armed forces, is having a baptism by fire on battlefields in Syria. Turkish and Iranian media first reported the presence of Russian T-90 ‘Vladimir’ tanks in Syria, after which sources in the Russian Defence Ministry confirmed their presence.
Turkish pro-government newspaper Yeni Åžafak cited a local commander called Mahmut Hasan as saying that they “had been attacked by more than 80 T-72 and T-90 tanks.â€
Syrian government troops are reported to have recaptured the towns of Nubul and al-Zahraa to the north of Aleppo. Their effort is to establish control over “the security zone†between the towns of Azaz and Jarabulus on the Syrian border.
Iranian news agency Fars, meanwhile reported on February 2 that the Syrian army was using T-90 tanks near Aleppo. It said T-90 tanks had been deployed near the town of Khan Tuman to the south of Aleppo after the Syrian army recaptured it in December.
“Capitalizing on the superiority offered by T-90 tanks, Syrian government troops and their allies encircled the important towns of Khan Tuman and al-Qarasi near the Aleppo-Damascus road,†a military source said.
A joint offensive by the Syrian army, national self-defence forces and Iraqi servicemen began on 1st February, resulting in the liberation of the villages of Hardatnin, Duwayr al-Zaytoun and Tal al-Jabin.
Russian news agency RNS on February 5 cited sources in the Russian Defence Ministry as saying that a large batch of Russian T-90A tanks, earlier in service with the Russian armed forces, had been delivered to Syria in late 2015.
Syrian servicemen had received necessary training at Russian training ranges, the news agency said. It added that the T-90A tanks supplied to Syria were first used by the Syrian army near Aleppo, supporting the advance of the Syrian army’s assault groups, said RNS.
The Russian T-90A tank, which entered into service in 2004, is an upgraded version of the T-90 model, known as ‘Vladimir,’ built in the 1980-90s on the base of the T-72B tank. It was named ‘Vladimir’ in honour of the tank’s chief designer, Vladimir Potkin.
The T-90A’s distinctive features are its engine, the turret and thermal imaging equipment. The tank has third-generation explosive reactive armour, that ensures protection against the 120-mm Ðœ829Ð2 and DM43A1 high-velocity de-calibrated ammunition used by Ðœ1 Abrams and Leopard-2 tanks.
Alexei Ramm, a military observer for the Military-Industrial Courier newspaper, said the terrain features make it possible to “make full use of these tanks near Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs, but the main efforts are now focused in two areas: Aleppo and to its north, in Latakia.â€
(Russian T-90A tanks in action in Syria can also be seen in video footage posted online by the Syrian news agency SANA.)
Trump: Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, so, you know. There's a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. Lot of killing going on, a lot of stupidity, and that's the way it is.
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Trump: Vladimir Putin's praise is 'a great honor'...It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond ,"
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
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"I think that I would probably get along with him [Putin] very well."
--Donald Trump, CBS' Face The Nation, Oct 2015
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Meanwhile (among many other things) ...
How Russia arms America's southern neighbors
Ioan Grillo
May 9, 2014
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Russia's push into Ukraine has put many on edge. But less known is that Russia is also strengthening its military links south of the Rio Grande and re-establishing itself as a power in the region. ..."
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140508/russian-arms-military-trade-latin-america
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Russia Boosts Arms, Training for Leftist Latin Militaries
Moscow defense minister inks deals with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua for joint exercises
BY: Bill Gertz
February 20, 2015
Russia agreed to provide military training for three leftist regimes in Latin America and increase military visits and exercises following a visit last week to the region by Moscow's Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Pentagon officials said. ..."
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-boosts-arms-training-for-leftist-latin-militaries/
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Russia Ramping Up Military Drills to Cold War Levels, NATO Says
Feb 5, 2016 - FoxNews.com
Russia has stepped up its military maneuvers to a level unseen since the height of the Cold War, according to a new report released by NATO Thursday.
Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance's secretary general and author of the report, noted that Moscow has conducted at least 18 large-scale exercises over the past three years, "some of which have involved more than 100,000 troops."
Those exercises included several simulated nuclear attacks against NATO allies and partner nations ..."
Nice Tank.
Go Vlad
For a country that we keep being told are on their heels, ready to drop, they sure seem capable of developing some DAMN GOOD WEAPONS.
But, thankfully, and more importantly, Sandra Fluke will get her condoms.
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"The term 'useful idiots' has been attributed to Lenin, as a description of those mindless people in the Western democracies who would always find ways to excuse whatever the Soviet Union did. Columnist Mona Charen's new book Useful Idiots shows that such people are still with us.
Long after the Soviet Union's horrors had become too widely known around the world for their sympathizers in the West to be able to get away with whitewashing the USSR, new Communist dictatorships arose to become the new objects of the affections of the Western intelligentsia and of like-minded people in the media and in politics. ..."
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2003/05/20/useful_idiots
"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html
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"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...
"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'..."
"The more I see and read about Mr. Putin, in power since 1999, and his 'managed democracy,' the more apprehensive I become about the future of Russia and the safety of its neighbors.
If Putin believes that the dissolution of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states represents the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,' then it follows that Putin might well believe he should do something to repair the loss..."
http://web.archive.org/web/20090415000000*/http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
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"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.
http://www.thetrumpet.com/article/11102.30640.0.0/asia/moscow-puts-the-soviet-squeeze-on-neighbor-nations
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"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism's crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."
Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg
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"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.
"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"
Best you all worry about the Tsar and Tsarina (ValJar)at 1600 Pa. Ave. There is the real danger.
And yet, I will not weep as Russia mows down Jihadis and pisses off the Turks.
Putin is probably in more alignment with the Russian Empire than with the USSR. As an ideology, communism and socialism has more of a presence in the US and western Europe than Russia.
The Turks have caused quite a bit of mischief with the West; just ask the Greeks, the Byzantines, the Armenians.
I’m more worried about 1.8 billion Muslims than I am about 150 million Russians.
The 90 is just an upgrade of the 72, similar to the way the M-60 was an upgrade of the M-48 for the US. I want to see the Armata hit the field.
Interesting what you can do when you are focused.
But we have 'potholes to fill' and 'po' people to feed' and obamaphones and....and...and...
But, this will be a much bigger improvement than the M-60 was over the M-48. The new advances certainly are not in running gear and simply thicker armour. The advances in tank technology is much like the advances in automobiles the past decades - a new auto looks pretty much like one from the early 2000’s: you can tell their is a difference, but if you didn’t know better, you would be hard-pressed to say which was the new model. On the inside and how they perform, though, the differences are amazing. If this new reactive armour is effective, and the targeting systems work as advertised, this model of an older tank will be a big advance.
Thanks for the post Sukhoi-30mki for the post. Informative, like usual.
Oldplayer
One such was a Russian, working for a directional drilling company. I asked him what he thought of Stalin. He unapologetically said Stalin was a "Great man" who had 'saved mother Russia from the Nazis: a strong man who kept Russia great.'
The company hand's ancestors were Ukranian, and the Russian didn't last long on our location.
However, the conversation was enlightening, and an insight into the definition of 'hero'.
For those raised under the subsequent government, those who emplaced or maintained that government will likely be taught as and thought of as "Heroes". The children who follow will believe in the 'heroes' who made that government.
Those of us on the outside will look at the horrorshow and think differently. It is the ultimate extrapolation of 'it's okay when we do it., and the ultimate confirmation of "The victors will be the judges, the vanquished, the accused."
What matters is not who did what, but who wrote the history books and how they characterize it.
As impressive as the T-90 is, wait til you see the T-14 Armata ... it has a 3 man crew inside a titanium armored compartment - entry hatch is inches thick - unmanned turret, fully serviceable in war zone by crew. Only delays in production will be fancy electronics going awry during testing. And will be very quiet. Due 2018. And is part of a family of 3 vehicles using the same tracked chassis.
One T-90 driver reported taking 7 rpg hits and one tow hit with no damage ... main gun effective up to 2,700 meters, autoloader - 8 rounds/pm even moving; 40 round mag; autoloader uses 22, rest loaded manually.
Some links
Mustafa is dead two seconds after he fires his Metis M missile ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aTVRYCeNwg
Footage from the Russian tank operations (T90 & T-72s upgraded) in Aleppo, Syria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbTCtURggb8
That part of it is of course great. The problem lies when that task is complete, if it ever is (Russia needs the instability as a cover for their expansionism). Russia will then set up strategic positions throughout the region. They are on the move to restore their (evil) empire, in large part thanks to Obama's deliberate weakening of our military and the near-treasonous missile defense and nuke deals he made with Putin. I suspect he has been intentionally weak going after ISIS for the specific purpose of giving Putin the excuse to move in and basically grab control of the region. This despite all of the smoke & mirror BS.
Both Putin and Obama pose serious threats to the US and our allies. Both want to sink us as a global superpower.
I’ve always thought that the Russians did tanks and helicopters well. It’s nice to see them used for a purpose other than the one I always feared, back in the days when America used to be free and Russia used to be communist.
Only six years ago, President Vladimir Putin visited the Polish port of Gdansk, birthplace of the Solidarity movement that threw off Soviet domination, and reassured his Eastern European neighbors that Russia had only friendly intentions.
Putin spoke harshly that day of the notorious World War II-era pact that former Soviet leader Josef Stalin had signed with Adolf Hitler -- an agreement that cleared the way for the Nazi occupation of Poland and Soviet domination of the Baltics -- calling it a "collusion to solve one's problems at others' expense."
But Putin's view of history appears to have undergone a startling transformation. Last month, the Russian leader praised the 1939 nonaggression accord with Hitler as a clever maneuver that forestalled war with Germany. Stalin's 29-year reign, generally seen by Russians in recent years as a dark and bloody chapter in the nation's history, has lately been applauded by Putin and his supporters as the foundation on which the great Soviet superpower was built.
Across a resurgent Russia, Stalin lives again, at least in the minds and hearts of Russian nationalists who see Putin as heir to the former dictator's model of iron-fisted rule.
Recent tributes celebrate Stalin's military command acumen and geopolitical prowess. His ruthless repression of enemies, real and imagined, has been brushed aside by today's Kremlin leader as the cost to be paid for defeating the Nazis.
As Putin has sought to recover territory lost in the 1991 Soviet breakup, his Stalinesque claim to a right to a "sphere of influence" has allowed him to legitimize the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and declare an obligation to defend Russians and Russian speakers beyond his nation's borders.
On May 9, the 70th anniversary of the Allied war victory was marked and Stalin's image was put on display with glorifying war films, T-shirts, billboards and posters. Framed portraits of the mustachioed generalissimo were carried by marchers in Red Square's Victory Day parade and in the million-strong civic procession that followed to honor all who fell in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.
Putin's embrace of Stalin's power-play tactics is applauded by many Russians and other former Soviet citizens as the sort of decisive leadership they longed for while watching communism collapse around them. To the proponents of a reinvigorated Russia, reformist Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, are seen as having submitted Russia to Western domination.
Over the last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has presented dictator Josef Stalin's bloody 29-year reign as the foundation on which the Soviet superpower was built.
Stalin lives again, at least in minds and hearts.
Stalin "kept us all together, there was a friendship of nations, and without him everything fell apart," said Suliko Megrelidze, a 79-year-old native of Stalin's Georgian birthplace who sells dried fruit and spices at a farmers market. "We need someone like him if we want peace and freedom from those fascists in Europe and America."
Such sentiments are no longer confined to those with actual memories of the Stalin era. A poll this spring by the independent Levada Center found 39% of respondents had a positive opinion of Stalin. As to the millions killed, 45% of those surveyed agreed that the deaths could be justified for the greater accomplishments of winning the war, building modern industries and growing to eventually give their U.S. nemesis a battle for supremacy in the arms race and conquering outer space.
The share of Russians who look back approvingly has been increasing steadily in recent years, and the segment of those who tell pollsters they have no opinion on his place in their history has shot up even more sharply, said Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the Levada Center.
He points to this year's massive Victory Day events as the Kremlin's message to ungrateful neighbors that they owe their peace and prosperity to the wartime deaths of more than 20 million Soviet citizens.
"The figure of Stalin is being justified through the war," Volkov said. "There is an attitude now that, yes, there were repressions and, yes, there were huge losses, but we won the war after all."
Victory exonerated Stalin's excesses, just as it does Putin's "strongman" posture toward neighbors and former Soviet subjects now outside the Russian Federation's borders, Volkov said.
Stalin's standing among his countrymen has waxed and waned with the political upheavals that have wracked the Soviet Union and Russia. He was so dominant a figure in Soviet citizens' lives by the time of his death on March 5, 1953, that hundreds of thousands poured into the streets of Moscow in a chaotic outbreak of mourning when word of his passing reached a public taught to believe that life was impossible without Stalin -- the Bolshevik nom de guerre he adopted, signifying "man of steel."
Nikita Khrushchev, who finally prevailed in attaining the leadership after five years of Kremlin infighting, began a campaign of de-Stalinization in 1961, moving Stalin's embalmed remains from public display next to Vladimir Lenin's to a less prominent grave near the Kremlin wall. Stalingrad, the hero city that symbolized the Soviets' watershed battle to turn back the Nazis, was renamed Volgograd, and statues and busts were removed, and streets, institutes and schools were renamed.
But the erasure of Stalin's name and likeness served also to stifle discussion of his vast crimes: Siberian exile or death sentences for political opponents, collectivization of agriculture during which millions starved, deportation of minorities and property seizures that impoverished generations. It wasn't until Gorbachev came to power in 1985 that a candid recounting of his era was attempted.
Even Putin, earlier in his presidency, fell in line with the collective spirit of criticism of Stalin’s errors. During the visit to Poland in 2009, a year after he had sent troops to seize territory in sovereign Georgia, Putin appeared to reassure Russia's nervous neighbors that the nonaggression pact that paved the way for war and division 70 years earlier was to be remembered as immoral.
The Aug. 23, 1939, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact's secret protocols doomed Poland to Nazi occupation a week later and gave the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania to the Soviet Union. Millions of citizens of those betrayed territories died at Stalin's hand, in political purges, summary executions and slave labor camps.
The scope of Stalin's brutality remains a topic of heated debate. Late Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn once claimed in an interview that as many as 110 million died from the dictator's vast array of repressions between 1921 and 1959, including prisoners who succumbed long after Stalin's reign. Historian Viktor Zemkov, at the other extreme, puts the number of deaths attributable to Stalin at 1.4 million.
"The estimates of 110 million to 1.4 million speak for themselves -- a hundredfold disagreement," said Dmitry Lyskov, a state television talk-show host who mounted a failed campaign four years ago to put Stalin's visage on city buses to commemorate Victory Day.
The Russian Military-Historical Society, established by Putin in 2012, announced this year that a new Stalin museum was to open in May in the village of Khoroshevo, 140 miles northeast of Moscow. Stalin spent the night of Aug. 4, 1943, in a small wooden home there, the closest he came to visiting frontline Soviet troops during the four-year fight to defeat Germany.
The sanitized exhibits recounting Stalin's contributions to the war effort and postwar recovery were ready by the planned May 9 holiday. But the opening was postponed amid local opposition led by the Tver regional leader of Memorial, a group dedicated to shedding light on Russia's totalitarian era.
Yan Rachinsky, a leader of Memorial's Moscow chapter, calls the museum "ridiculous," and Stalin's single night there irrelevant to the war victory two years later.
The stillborn museum was one of several official efforts to honor Stalin this year: A statue was erected in the southern city of Lipetsk, and splashed with red paint the night it was unveiled. A bronze likeness of the dictator was put up to mark the February anniversary of his 1945 meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta, a Black Sea resort now inaccessible to most of the world as only Russian aviation serves the contested Crimean peninsula.
Stalin has weathered more than six decades of historical revisions to maintain his standing as a rival to the West, "which is the context in which he interests Putin," said Nikolai Svanidze, a writer and historian whose grandfathers died in Stalin's political purges.
"Just as Stalin defeated the West 70 years ago by capturing half of Europe," Svanidze said, "we are defeating the West again today. Crimea is our Berlin, our Reichstag, and there is no way it will be restored to Ukraine in the foreseeable future."
Svanidze also predicts there will be no more credible elections as long as Putin chooses to stay in power. That, he said, is another parallel with Stalin's lifetime sinecure as Soviet leader.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-stalin-model-20150611-story.html
I’d like to see the T-90 deflect a DU round from an Abrams.
If it’s based on a T-72 the crew must still be surrounded by live ammo.
Looks like things may be moving in opposite directions politically now.
Their SUs are really neat and look something like a Klingon Warbird. Very predatory looking.
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