As any fule kno by now – or at least, one who has been paying attention – the much-vaunted German Leopard 2A6 tanks are now burning on the steppes of Ukraine. The Khreat Khokholite Khumvee Khounteroffensive khommenced last Sunday, but so far, it appears to have accomplished very little of note, at the loss of thousands (plural) of men, and dozens if not hundreds of vehicles.
This is nothing short of a military disaster we see unfolding before us. As I have repeatedly pointed out, Ukraine has now lost, no kidding, no bullshit, THREE ARMIES to Russian artillery and meat-grinder tactics (which were, let’s be clear, highly effective). NATO is feeding its most effective and capable proxy feet-first into a woodchipper, turning men into fragments of bloody meat and charred bone, and machines into twisted hunks of scrap metal.
Worse still, it is destroying whatever is left of a once-proud and once-decent people. And I’m not actually referring to the Ukies here – for, let us be honest, they brought this on themselves by agreeing to give into NATO’s every whim and demand.
No, I’m actually referring to the Germans.
The Germans used to claim their Rheinmetall tanks were among the finest in the world. They jealously guarded the reputations of their tanks against competition from the likes of General Dynamics Land Systems – makers of the M1 Abrams – and the South Koreans, whose Hyundai Rotem K2 Black Panther is supposedly comparable to the M1. The Germans have also repeatedly argued their tanks are more than a match for the much smaller, more compact, more economical Russian T-64, T-72, T-80BV, and T-90M tanks.
They can no longer make that claim. The optics just are not there.
Now, here we must point out some significant caveats.
First, there is no such thing as pure tank warfare, not anymore. Tanks are terrifying machines on their own, but they are highly vulnerable without infantry covering the flanks and air cover in the skies. A lone tank is easy pickings for infantry with ATGMs, attack helicopters, and artillery strikes.
Anyone who sends a set of tanks off on its own, without support, against an entrenched and well-armed enemy force, might as well just sign up for a scrap metal recycling program.
Second, the Leopards are not invincible, and never were. The Turks used them against Syrian militants in their disastrous operations in the north of the country, and lost quite a few Leopard 2A4 tanks, for precisely the reasons outlined above.
Third, actual tank-on-tank battles in the Banderastan War have been relatively rare, so it is very difficult to assess who comes out the winner in a game of Top Trumps. If you talk to the Russians, they will claim their T-90M is qualitatively the equal of any Western tank – but it is very difficult to test this in real life. The Russians have assuredly lost a number of T-90M tanks, along with a substantial number of older T-64, T-72B, and T-80BV tanks in the Banderastan War thus far.
But, it is important to note that Russians do not make the outsize claims about their weapons that Western arms manufacturers do. Russians market their weapons on the basis of reliability, ruggedness, and survivability – NOT on the basis of being all-singing-all-dancing technological terrors that can “dominate the battlespace” and “go beast-mode” and other such marketing nonsense.
That being said, the Russians have made a particular point, over the last 15 months, of doing their level best to mock Western wunderwaffen – with complete justification. And nobody seems to have bothered with asking the German people – as opposed to German politicians, who are of course unrelated to those they presume to rule over – whether they are comfortable with seeing burned-out hulks of their prize Panzers being paraded through Red Square.
Let’s just say that Rheinmetall’s share price isn’t exactly doing as well as it should be, if their big cats actually hunted the way Western presstitutes said they would.
None of this flippancy should mask the tragedy of what is happening in southern and eastern 404 right now. Hundreds of Ukrainians are dying every day down there – for precisely NOTHING. They have not penetrated Russian lines of defence – they have not even gotten close to the actual fortifications. They are being picked off at range by Russian artillery and air power, without ever running past the minefields, tank traps, and dragons’ teeth.
We finally got to open the box of Schroedinger’s Offensive, and we now see there is all kinds of dead cat in it.
And that is about enough of that for a while. This post is, of course, late again, but all I can say is that I went out for a few beers with a friend yesterday. (A Muslim. Who also drinks. Which I find hilarious in and of itself.) And, given the good weather and alcohol, I could not quite muster up enough craps to give about posting anything.
So, let us rectify that error with this week’s lovely lady. This is Kristina Mamedova (Кристина Мамедова), age 27 from Minsk, Belarus, right in time for your weekend. I don’t have a clue what she does, nor do I particularly care, though I will say, she should cut back on the lip fillers.
Happy weekend, lads, and stay away from big cats.
2 Comments
“Speaking of tanks, here’s a thot!”
I’ll show myself out.
The artillery pieces she’s packing are impressive, to be sure.