Invincible Russian Armor columns getting wrecked by Turkish Bayraktars and man portable AT weapons was not just the start. I really don't know how the Russian arms export market recovers from this. The only people who will want their shit will be African warlords. And that only for Russias reputation to not ask any questions. Given a choice even the Congo niggas would prefer NATO stuff.
Russian armor got a boost in threat reputation due to the Yugoslav wars, where especially Serbian crews were racking up armor kills with T-72s in numbers not seen since WWII. This did a lot to erase the shame of Desert Storm, and provided cause to put a lot of the failure of Iraqi armor on deployment/tactics (which
were sub-optimal to say the least) and less on the hardware being dogshit.
The caveat there is that this these armor battles were WARPACT-on-WARPACT equipment. Because Ukraine has shown that no, WARPACT-pattern armor is in fact just that terrible when put against NATO equipment and almost everyone owes Saddam's army an apology.
A 92N6E radar station and two launchers were also destroyed.
OOF. Not only does this show S400 is able to get stomped by ATACMS but those RADARS are irreplaceable now.
Just a reminder for the less milspergy:
S400 is Russia's latest "production" (for various values of "production"; they have more 12 of them) SAM system. Remember SAM designations can get pretty fucky because launchers going back to the SA-2 launchers can be integrated into S-400, and the S400's can use one of several RADARs, including integration to fixed RADAR stations.
For comparision the S-300 has a max engagement range of about 25 miles, but the S-400 has a theorhetical max range of 240 miles (this is very likely Red Cope based on overly optimistic projections of Missile Range and clear-sky RADAR detection; realistic operating conditions against targets that aren't just straight and level target drones will have that more like 100 miles, low flying targets are also limited to 25 miles like the S300). What this means is that S300 is vulnerable to HARMs; the AGM-88 can be launched outside of the S-300's engagement bubble. S-400 can in theory engage beyond the range of the HARM AGM-88's provided to Ukraine; the AGM-88G has a range of 160 miles which puts it on the edge of an S-400's realistic max.
So what this means is that Russia has a big hole in their airdefense network that was filled with a system they cannot currently replace, except by pulling systems from elsewhere. This means something to the west or degrading overlapping coverage over the front itself, and if at the front the gap would need to be filled by S300s that would operate from inside the range Ukraine could HARM them.
