News came through yesterday that the Fake President will now send M3 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles to the Banderites in the 404th UkReich. I have to admit, I greeted the news with considerable amusement, because it is difficult to think of a better way for the USSA to demonstrate to everyone just how useless its support for the neo-Nazis running 404 really is.

On the surface, the news looks good for the Banderites:

US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have confirmed reports that they will donate infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine. The news comes a day after France announced that if would send Western-designed ‘light tanks’ to Kiev.

According to a joint statement released by the White House and German Chancellery on Thursday evening, “the United States intends to supply Ukraine with Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and Germany intends to provide Ukraine with Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles.”

“Both countries plan to train Ukrainian forces on the respective systems,” the statement continued. 

It remains unclear how many of each type of vehicle will be sent to Ukraine and when they will be delivered.

Earlier on Thursday, Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported that such an announcement was imminent, and that Berlin’s decision to ship the Marders to Ukraine had been made in coordination with the US and France. 

France announced on Wednesday that it would send an undisclosed number of its own AMX-10 armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine, with a government spokesman declaring that “it is the first time that Western-designed tanks are supplied to the Ukrainian armed forces.”

Although the Bradley, Marder, and AMX-10 vehicles are sometimes referred to as “light tanks,” the former two are more commonly called infantry fighting vehicles, and the latter armored fighting vehicles. No NATO countries have suggested that they plan on supplying Ukraine with western-built main battle tanks, and an unnamed American official on Wednesday explicitly ruled out the transfer of the US M1 Abrams tanks to Kiev, according to the Washington Post.

So essentially, three NATO nations are sending three different types of light tank to 404 – where, inevitably, they will be ploinked, HARD, by Russian artillery and anti-tank missiles.

The problems start the moment you look into the details.

I know nothing whatsoever about the AMX-10 “light tanks”, but this, apparently, is what they look like:

Jeebus. That thing looks like a kit-car, not an actual tank.

According to Captain Wikipedia, they weigh in at about 16 tonnes in their original form, and go up to 23 tonnes when up-armoured. They take a crew of 4 and have a 105mm main gun and a 7.62mm machine gun. They are primarily a scouting vehicle, designed to scoot around quickly on the battlefield, spot trouble, suppress it if they can, and then get the hell out until the ACTUAL tanks arrive on the battlefield.

All I can say is, looking at that thing reminds me of an old joke:

How many gears does a French tank have?

Ten – one forward, nine reverse.

(This is extremely uncharitable to the Frogs and their storied legacy of warfighting, at least prior to WWII, but then, I don’t much like the Frogs, so that’s fine. Also, that joke applies more or less equally well to the Eyeties.)

What about the Marder IFV? Again, I don’t have a clue. I have it on good authority from my Telegram channel‘s resident Kraut (we actually have more than one, but the others are lurkers) that, back in the 1970s, when the Marder entered service, but today it is obsolete relative to the much newer, and much more lethal, BMP IFVs and BTR APCs that the Russians use.

I cannot speak intelligently, at all, to either the French or German options. I can, however, say something useful about the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Have you ever read Col. James Burton‘s book, The Pentagon Wars? The author was one of Col. John Boyd‘s “acolytes” and a key member of the “Reform Movement” within the Pentagon – one of a merry band of insurgents who fought hard against the Pentaloon bureaucracy to demand weapons systems that actually, y’know, WORKED and were cost-effective.

It is thanks to this generation of rebels, consisting of men like Col. Burton, Pierre Sprey, Col. Riccioni, and a few others, that the three best aircraft the US produced during the Cold War, came to be. Those would be the extremely potent F-15 Eagle, the rapier-like F-16 Viper (or Fighting Falcon), and the butt-ugly-but-terrifyingly-effective A-10 Warthog.

Unfortunately, the Military Reform Movement petered out as its members retired, aged out, moved on to other things, and simply got tired of tilting at immovable windmills. The reality is, the Pentaloons are too powerful and massive a force of stupidity and foolishness to be moved out of the way.

There is no end to the list of idiotic projects the Pentaloons signed off upon and brought to fruition. I have written THOUSANDS of words about the litany of stupidity that is the F-35 Joint Strike Flying Piano, and that is certainly the worst example that I can find – though you can easily come up with plenty more.

The Ford-class carrier, at US$13 BILLION per unit, is now effectively useless against dinky little Russian cruisers and even missile boats armed with 3M22 Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic ship-launched missiles. The Columbia-class SSBNs cost US$9 BILLION each and the first one will take ELEVEN YEARS to build – while the Russians can build roughly 7 Borei-A-class submarines for the same price, which are better armed, more dangerous, and more effective. The Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine costs US$3 billion per unit – at which cost the Russians can manufacture three Yasen’-class boats that can carry a wider range of armaments.

You could go on and on and bloody on. The US military-industrial complex is all about spending vast sums of money on overengineered, badly designed, ridiculously expensive, platinum-plated Swiss Army Knives that do everything except sing and dance – and therefore, don’t actually do anything at all.

For the US Army, there are few better examples of this trend toward idiotic spending patterns than the Bradly Fighting Vehicle.

The clip below is from the direct-to-video adaptation of Col. Burton’s book. That film is a brilliant piece of satirical black comedy. I warn you, though, if you ever worked in the dot-mil complex, this clip will likely give you a stroke and/or trigger your PTSD, as it did with one of my friends:

The Bradley is a tank that cannot really take on other tanks – especially not the latest generation of Russian T-90M Proryv and T-14 Armata platforms, which mount missiles that substantially outrange the Bradley’s own TOWs, and whose armour can easily shrug off the 25mm cannon (actually a chain gun) mounted on the thing.

Also, the Bradley is a scout vehicle, which is far too large, tall, heavy, and slow to be a scout. It weighs in at nearly 30 tonnes when fully loaded and outfitted, which makes it too heavy to be a scout but not nearly heavy enough to be an actual tank.

And, on top of all of that, the Bradley cannot do what it was originally DESIGNED to do – ferry troops into battle. The original point of the Bradley was to replace the aluminium coffin that was (and is) the M113. In its first design iteration, that is precisely what the Bradley did.

But then, the Pentaloons got their talons into the programme, and the result is the weird kludge that you see today.

So let’s cut to the chase. Will any of these Western weapons systems make any difference in the 404 War against the Banderite UkReich?

For that, we turn to everyone’s other favourite bald YOOTOOBER:

The tl;dw version is:

NO.

Just so people are aware of how ridiculous the situation is getting with respect to American aid to the 404th UkReich, here is (apparently) the full list of aid in the very latest, US$3B, package of arms and munitions going to Banderastan:

• 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles
• 500 TOW anti-tank missiles for the Brads
• 250,000 25mm rounds, also for the Brads
• 100 M113 BTRs (aluminium coffins on wheels, really)
• 15 MRAPs (mine-resistant troop carriers, more or less)
• 138 HMMWV (i.e. big-ass jeeps)
• 18 155mm self-propelled howitzers
• 18 tractors
• 70,000 155mm artillery shells (this will last the Ukies less than a month, at their current usage rates)
• 500 155mm Excalibur shells (which is nowhere near enough, and the Russians also have their own Krasnopol laser- and GPS-guided equivalents)
• 1,200 155-mm projectiles of remote anti-tank mine systems (RAAM)
• 36 105mm towed howitzers
• 95,000 105mm artillery shells
• 10,000 120 mm mortar shells
• HIMARS ammunition (of which the Banderites are running out quickly)
• RIM-7 Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missiles (won’t make a bucket of spit’s worth of difference)
• 4,000 unguided Zuni rockets (the hohols are running out of aircraft to launch those rockets)
• About 2,000 anti-tank missiles (probably Javelins, which have been quite useless thus far)
• Sniper rifles machine guns and ammo

Will any of this make ANY difference to the overall outcome of the war?

Again – NO.

The Russians are comprehensively destroying the Banderites throughout 404. They have, as of today, entered the centre of Soledar, northeast of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), and there is a strong possibility this will create a domino-effect crisis, whereby multiple remaining Ukrainian settlements collapse and the Ukrainian troops stationed there flee because they will be encircled if they stay.

The Ukrainians are unable to break through Russian lines – which are being heavily and comprehensively reinforced with newly mobilised troops. General Electric (Surovikin) is overseeing the construction of extremely heavy and powerful layered defences throughout the formerly Ukrainian regions of Zaporozh’ye and Kherson.

And NONE of the arms supplies provided by the US address the severe deficiencies in heavy armour, air power, and logistics that the 404th UkReich actually faces right now.

This latest set of arms deliveries will merely prolong the agony, forcing Ukraine to fight down to the last hohol, while making zero difference to the overall end result of the war.

The awful irony of all of this is that Gen. Omar Bradley, a man who fought with great distinction in WWII, was known for his care for his men, and for his maturity and wisdom as a commander. He was the last of the generation of five-star generals that truly understood the awful realities of combined-arms warfare. He wanted his descendants to live in a world of peace, without confrontations between nuclear-armed superpowers.

I have no doubt he would be horrified by the treaded kludge that bears his name – and would be even more appalled by the spectacularly stupid way in which the new Empire of Lies is using Ukraine to wage war on Russia.