infantry is vulnerable to everything though, especially light machine guns. whether they're moounted on an ifv, a bunker, a helicopter or somewhere else, if your dudes get spotted the'll drop like flies. it's especially bad out in the open where there is no cover.
im pretty sure infantry already had access to manpads (like stingers or the old redeyes) and anti tank missiles (panzerfaust, rpg7) 40 years ago. not high tech stuff like javelins and nlaws today, but good enough to get the job done.
It's not really relevant to the current war because Russia is practically throwing T-35s and Mosins in the well just for fun, but the utility of MBTs in shutting down lighter armor AND their incredible vulnerability to modern infantry anti-armor have been acknowledged.
Reformers got really high on the idea of putting MBT guns on smaller tanks, but this was both still too expensive and impractical. The modern goal is to procure secure and effective unmanned platforms and use these as a shield of sorts, then have the infantry on the same wave as them, then behind that medium/large unmanned platforms, and then behind that your MBTs. By stacking these tools in this way you minimize the risk to all parties and allow for much better asymmetric warfare engagements.
These unmanned platforms with modern procurement costs are about as expensive as a Javelin and can carry weapons that threaten medium or even heavy armor, so they trade up about as well as a single Javelin might or better, and on the defensive side they aren't multi-million dollar juicy targets like an Abrams.
Ya Russia has a long way to go if they want to catch up the the USA's civilian kill count. Maybe hold off on the Iraq comparisons for a bit and give them a chance to catch up
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You are an illiterate retard. It's only partially your fault because the way it's being presented is incredibly misleading, but there are enough clues you could come to the correct conclusion just from that screenshot.
When they say "violent deaths," they are deliberately including the entire period and all deaths by all forces, not strictly those caused by or inflicted by US/Coalition soldiers. Essentially all of those are due to infighting between Iraqi insurgents and other Iraqi insurgents and a vast majority of the deaths are directly from the ISIS-government fighting phase of later years, known as "war in Iraq," not the Iraq war.
During the
invasion phase of both 1990 and 2003, fewer than 10,000 civilians were killed. Estimates are 3664 and 7299
(per Iraqis, under 4300 otherwise) respectively. You can find some of these numbers on the exact same page you screenshotted, if only you bothered to read it:
They are "probably underestimates" but they are also the overwhelming majority of US contribution. Even if you double that number, Russia is almost guaranteed to pass it.
Largely these were unpreventable or due to civilian presences at/near military sites.
Russia is still in the invasion phase and is actively trying not to pass those numbers officially because it would make them look incredibly bad domestically and abroad. If you want to compare apples to apples, Russians in Chechnya during the second war killed
directly somewhere around 50,000 civilians in the first year. Iraq's population was 20x-40x that of Chechnya, but Russia is responsible for around 300,000 total so-called "violent deaths" over their continuing occupation, far greater than most of the numbers you looked at. Likewise, for the first war that count was around 80,000. Setting aside Russian mercenaries, Russian armed forces showed up in Syria and tripled the Coalition's civilian toll in just a few years, only to fuck off again. If you swapped Russia with a responsible military force (even the US), potentially millions more people would be alive in these countries. It is that simple.
In Ukraine, some Russian troops are also actively engaged in the future deaths of tens of thousands of civilians by deliberately crippling healthcare infrastructure in major cities. It isn't clear that this was explicitly a military goal, instead it may be mostly accidental and due to horrible communications networks at the frontlines. Still, that's blood directly on their officers' hands, unlike the Coalition which was incredibly contained in its aggressions.
A million or two Ukrainians will likely die due to this war, though they are only likely to die violently if Russian occupation or subversion persists.
Edit: By the way, I qualified any responsible military as "even the US" because US soldiers are notoriously gunhappy and responsible for the most friendly fire incidents among the Coalition. This is especially in the Gulf war, things improved a lot by 2003. The point is that even the most gunhappy country in the entire West makes Russia look maniacal.
greenwald.substack.com
