NATO return to Cold War force structure

[R011]

1 hour ago, Martineleca said:

Recently a new possible source has opened up, Turkmenistan has been drifting away from Russian influence for a long time now and are becoming a serious competitor on the gas market. They possess around 700 T-72UMG tanks that were actually upgraded by Ukrainian companies in the past, if the US can pull enough strings a few hundred of those vehicles could be purchased and later on sent to Ukraine.

If I were them, I'd only give them up if they could be replaced almost one for one with Western models.  They could find themselves among the next gay Jewish Nazi satanists liberated by Moscow.

[Huba]

With their geography? I'd rather trade them for an anti-ship missile battery.

[DB]

Turkmenistan for NATO!

[TrustMe]

I believe that Turkmenistan is allied with Turkey. They have a lot of joint exercises between them.

[FALightFighter]

2 hours ago, TrustMe said:

I believe that Turkmenistan is allied with Turkey. They have a lot of joint exercises between them.

I don't know if they are technically allied (as in, have a treaty), but Turkey is definitely influential in many of the -stans, especially where the population is ethnically Turkic of some flavor. I've even heard there there is some degree of mutual intelligibility between the various Turkic languages, but I'm not sure how far that really holds.

[bojan]

Abaout as much as German or Slavic or Romanic languages, yes for some words and grammar, but not in general.

[AttilaA]

Turkic languages have several branches. Turkmen belongs to Oghuz, together with Azerbaijani and Turkish. 

Azerbaijani and Turkish are mutually intelligible, and there is also some degree of mutual intelligibility between Azerbaijani and Turkmen, a bit less between Turkish and Turkmen.

Kazakh and Kyrgyz form Kypchak branch (together with bunch of Turkic languages within Russia, such as Tatar and Bashkir), while Uzbek with Uyghur form Karluk branch. Oghuz have low mutual intelligibility with those branches.

There is also the Siberian branches, even more distant.

Edited December 23, 2022 by AttilaA

[Martineleca]

11 hours ago, R011 said:

They could find themselves among the next gay Jewish Nazi satanists liberated by Moscow.

So much of Russia's offensive capability has already been obliterated in Ukraine that they couldn't even mass troops on the border with Kazakhstan as a show of force, let alone conduct an assault across the remote Caspian sea against fairly heavily armed militaries. Also any such move would likely put them in direct confrontation with the other regional power Turkey, whose combat potential is still very much intact.

[R011]

1 hour ago, Martineleca said:

So much of Russia's offensive capability has already been obliterated in Ukraine that they couldn't even mass troops on the border with Kazakhstan as a show of force, let alone conduct an assault across the remote Caspian sea against fairly heavily armed militaries. Also any such move would likely put them in direct confrontation with the other regional power Turkey, whose combat potential is still very much intact.

Turkey would go to war with Russia anymore than Poland will and for similar reasons.  And while Russia is busy now, that's not guaranteed to be the case forever.

[Martineleca]

20 hours ago, R011 said:

Turkey would go to war with Russia anymore than Poland will and for similar reasons.  And while Russia is busy now, that's not guaranteed to be the case forever.

Russia would not move against either of the central asian countries if security guarantees from Turkey were in place for them, just like they would not have attacked Ukraine if it was part of a military alliance. As for Poland, fact is that all of their mechanized formations were put on high alert during the first few weeks of the war and displayed a willingness to get involved if the defenses of Kyiv started to crumble, the massive rearmament program now underway indicates they are indeed preparing for such an eventuality in the future.

[glenn239]

6 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

Russia would not move against either of the central asian countries if security guarantees from Turkey were in place for them, just like they would not have attacked Ukraine if it was part of a military alliance. 

A Turkish guarantee in Central Asia is worth about as much as a cheque from Sam Bankman-Fried, and a NATO mission in Ukraine after 2014 might have prevented a Russian invasion in 2022, but war would still be inevitable after 2030.

 

[Martineleca]

On 12/24/2022 at 6:50 PM, glenn239 said:

A Turkish guarantee in Central Asia is worth about as much as a cheque from Sam Bankman-Fried, and a NATO mission in Ukraine after 2014 might have prevented a Russian invasion in 2022, but war would still be inevitable after 2030.

At this point Turkey has about as many functioning semi-modern MBTs as Russia does, a gap that will only widen as the Altay enters full rate production, the difference in APCs is also remarkably small, only in artillery do the Russians have a sizable advantage. There is no way they would bare their flank to Poland or Ukraine and focus the majority of its forces to the south, even if Turkey leaves NATO. Truth is that with all the well armed enemies Russia has created through its own actions recently, anything but complete reorganization of the army and a trillion dollars worth of new equipment would not be enough to bring them back to even partial parity. How this can be done with so many sanctions in place and collapsed energy revenues without Chinese industrial support to every sector of the economy, or outright stationing PLA troops alongside Russian ones in troubled regions I have no idea.

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, Martineleca said:

At this point Turkey has about as many functioning semi-modern MBTs as Russia does, a gap that will only widen as the Altay enters full rate production, the difference in APCs is also remarkably small, only in artillery do the Russians have a sizable advantage. There is no way they would bare their flank to Poland or Ukraine and focus the majority of its forces to the south, even if Turkey leaves NATO. Truth is that with all the well armed enemies Russia has created through its own actions recently, anything but complete reorganization of the army and a trillion dollars worth of new equipment would not be enough to bring them back to even partial parity. How this can be done with so many sanctions in place and collapsed energy revenues without Chinese industrial support to every sector of the economy, or outright stationing PLA troops alongside Russian ones in troubled regions I have no idea.

They could try for membership of NATO?

I said a long time ago, that Russia needed NATO even more than NATO needed it. Time has proven how wholly inadequate Russia's armed forces are for the 21st Century. Its very fortunate that its surrounded by people that, unlike its worst expectations, want to invade it, because right now it would be a cakewalk.

As far as China is concerned though, Id be increasingly wary if I was Russia. But thats just me.

[glenn239]

14 hours ago, Martineleca said:

At this point Turkey has about as many functioning semi-modern MBTs as Russia does, a gap that will only widen as the Altay enters full rate production,

I haven't seen anything anywhere on what the Russian MBT refurbishment/production rates are these days.  

 

[Martineleca]

10 hours ago, glenn239 said:

I haven't seen anything anywhere on what the Russian MBT refurbishment/production rates are these days. 

Well there are a lot of opposing opinions as to how many recoverable tanks the Russians actually have in their reserves, it is slowly becoming clear that more than half of their T-72 stock are total write offs, with many of the rest either having usable hulls or turrets. Some T-62s properly stored during Soviet times are in suprisingly good condition and it explains why the're becoming a larger percent of the active MBT force, had the Russian military been able to replace their losses purely through refurbishment, that on some days reached a couple dozen tanks, they would not have reduced their use to such a degree as they have in recent months.

[Stuart Galbraith]

If their refurbishment/production capacity was anything near good, they wouldnt be impressing people out of the prisons to go and work at Uralvagonzavod. It smacks of desperation, throwing wholly unskilled people at a problem and hope it goes away.

[Roman Alymov]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

If their refurbishment/production capacity was anything near good, they wouldnt be impressing people out of the prisons to go and work at Uralvagonzavod. It smacks of desperation, throwing wholly unskilled people at a problem and hope it goes away.

I'm affraid you totally misunderstand the problems of Russian employment market. We de-facto got zero unemployment here (every person with Russian citizenship could find at least some work, and if you are, for example, qualified welder or electrician - you could expect quite good salary). In this situation, almost all non-qualified manual work places are occupied by migrant workers from Central Asia.  But when it comes to "secret plants" with mil production (Uralvagonzavod is one of them)   - migrants are not an option, even if you just need them to swept the floor. They are not Russian citizens and will not get security clearance. Even Belorussians (who are in idea citizens of common Union state) could not even visit some plants - like i found out when trying to arrange the visit of or Museum deputy Director to one "space plant" in Moscow (irony is, he was good enough to be Executive Director of Patriot Park for some time in past). 

      So hiring inmates, who are Russian citizens, for basic manual works is quite logical solution.

[glenn239]

19 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

I'm affraid you totally misunderstand the problems of Russian employment market. 

Any information on the numbers of tanks refurbished or produced in Russia in 2022, WRT the poor state of T-72's in general that Martineleca outlines?

[Roman Alymov]

58 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Any information on the numbers of tanks refurbished or produced in Russia in 2022, WRT the poor state of T-72's in general that Martineleca outlines?

No way for me to know, i am just civilian in Moscow  But there is no doubt Western intelligence is able to calculate the tanks by sat photos etc, and since they are not showing this figures to indicate how laughtable they are and how Russia is going to loose the war, failure of Russian industry and so on - one could make conclusions.

[Martineleca]

3 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

But there is no doubt Western intelligence is able to calculate the tanks by sat photos etc, and since they are not showing this figures to indicate how laughtable they are and how Russia is going to loose the war, failure of Russian industry and so on - one could make conclusions.

Why then did Russian forces basically stop using tanks in their assaults on Bakhmut and elsewhere, holding them back for some future offensive or simply running out?

[Roman Alymov]

Just now, Martineleca said:

Why then did Russian forces basically stop using tanks in their assaults on Bakhmut and elsewhere, holding them back for some future offensive or simply running out?

No idea where you get this. Both sides are actively using tanks (mostly in heavy infantry support SPG role) in and around Bakhmut.

 

[Martineleca]

1 hour ago, Roman Alymov said:

No idea where you get this. Both sides are actively using tanks (mostly in heavy infantry support SPG role) in and around Bakhmut.

I meant that large convoys of MBTs moving around like up to a few months ago no longer appear to be forming, Prigozhin was screaming the other day that he's not getting enough armor support.

[Roman Alymov]

11 hours ago, Martineleca said:

I meant that large convoys of MBTs moving around like up to a few months ago no longer appear to be forming, Prigozhin was screaming the other day that he's not getting enough armor support.

No idea what Prigozhin was screaming about (he is mainly busy with Russian internal politics now, as for me - while in military affairs his line is "unlike Army, Wagner got all we need" pointing out on Army top brass failure to provide their units). Here is fresh report from Vagner tankers unit who suppoty infantry in Opytnoye in on-call SPG/assault gun mode, with fresh-looking T-90Ms (+interview with tank commander about tasks, tactics, his opinion about positive and negative sides of new tank etc.) https://t.me/wagnernew/5030

Edited December 30, 2022 by Roman Alymov

[Pavel Novak]

Might be interesting - Cz Army has posted numbers of weapons to 1st January 2023 so comparison to 2022:

2022/01/01 - 2023/01/01

Tanks: 116 - 82

Armored combat vehicles: 430 - 385

Artillery 100 mm and over: 179 - 172

Combat aircrafts: 39 - 39

Attack helicopters: 17 - 13

 

[glenn239]

6 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

No idea what Prigozhin was screaming about (he is mainly busy with Russian internal politics now, as for me - while in military affairs his line is "unlike Army, Wagner got all we need" pointing out on Army top brass failure to provide their units). Here is fresh report from Vagner tankers unit who suppoty infantry in Opytnoye in on-call SPG/assault gun mode, with fresh-looking T-90Ms (+interview with tank commander about tasks, tactics, his opinion about positive and negative sides of new tank etc.) https://t.me/wagnernew/5030

Media too big - could you summarize what the tank commander says he likes and dislikes about the T-90M?