(November 22, 2022 at 5:48 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: There are rumours afoot (no real reporting) that Russia may soon deploy the T-14 Armata ‘super tank’. I’m not an armaments expert, but this doesn’t strike me as a major concern, because:
-The abysmal performance of Russian armour thus far in the war is as much a failure of logistics and tactics as it is the equipment. A new tank isn’t going to solve that.
-Ukrainians have shown themselves to be very, very good at locating and killing Russian tanks.
-While the actual number of T-14 available isn’t known with any certainty, Russia claims they’ll be able to deploy about 40 of them next year. This number doesn’t strike me as a game changer.
Boru
40 by next year is very optimistic. My understanding is that they've only built about 25 or so preproduction models, and expect to start receiving the first batch of 100 production models by the end of this year. It will take a while to work out the bugs, especially on the unmanned turret -- and that turret still suffers the flaw of having the ammunition for the autoloader under the turret bustle, meaning the moonshots we've seen will likely still occur.
And that's not addressing your good point that without good doctrine and tactics, even the best kit will struggle in combat.
And on top of all that, the sanctions have reduced the production of their main factory, Uralvagonzavod, has struggled under the Western sanctions and production has essentially halted, rendering the factory to essentially repairing battle-damaged units.
So I won't be holding my breath for this to make any difference.
