- Joined
- May 30, 2021
Look what I posted earlier. Afghanistan was a rather minor conflict for the USSR. There was no reason to use first-rate tanks against Mujahideen militants anyway. Despite that, the Soviets developed the "Drozd" APS to protect their armour from anti-tank projectiles. However, this war has demanded the commitment of the vast majority of the Russian military and from photographic evidence we have seen T-90As, the recently modernised T-80BVMs (which is suposed to be arctic warfare variant of the T-80), T-80Us, Tungushkas and Pantsir SPAAGs. All those belong in first-rate Russian formations and not in cannon fodder reserve ones.It's Russian/Soviet doctrine to keep the most advanced equipment in reserve to defend against the most likely NATO invasion routes. That's why there were no T-72s in Afghanistan.
The appearance of many T-90s would be a sign that the war is going fairly badly and Putin has to commit more than he wanted. Like a hockey team pulling the goalie in the last minutes of the game.
Funnily, "ancient" T-72As & Bs have been sighted (and destroyed) in the Sumy direction, which shows that those formations are sacrificial ones with the intention to tie down the Ukrainians.
It is a propaganda tank, constantly plagued by scaling issues to mass production. Honestly, not a bad platform, a rather good one I would say with many innovative characteristics, but Russia lacks the financial and industrial capability to seriously mass produce it.I just thought the T-14 hasn't started regular, serial production yet, just prototypes. It appears to be somewhat delayed. There might be one used for media posing, like with Kadyrov's toy soldiers and jannies.
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