That’s because it is. The British Army might last a month in a conflict as intense as what’s been seen in Ukraine. It’s a very hollowed out force.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
From Soviet days as people have said.
I looked up this to show comparison between Russia and US/NATO. Although its almost impossible to know how many armoured vehicles for example are actually usable or in state of disrepair.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293174/nato-russia-military-comparison/
Don't think I've ever seen any combat footage of an IFV type vehicle in action before this war. Never understood how devastating these 30mm auto-cannons are.
Late 80's, early 90's the Soviet army had a fleet of over 50,000 main battle tanks, all the tanks we see getting destroyed in Ukraine now are leftovers from those days.
It probably is, because Britain, despite having an advanced military for a nation its size, was never really militarized as the Soviets or Americans, which continues to be the case today. I do suspect the Russians are depleting themselves and don't have the ability to replenish, which will be a turning point in the trajectory of the conflict - possibly one that will animate Putin to negotiate his way out of this.
Some of those numbers look pretty low on the Russian side, I'm pretty sure they have more than 20 Air tankers and less main battle tanks than NATO doesn't sound right at all
Great Britain is an island, it didn't need a huge tank army. Other countries had much more. For example in 1990 the German Bundeswehr had 2125 Leopard 2 MBT in active duty, after the collapse of the Soviet Union this was reduced to just more than 300 (and this doesn't even include the T-72 fleet of the GDR army). Russia simply stored their excess vehicles somewhere and are now trying to reactivate as many as possible of that stock.
While on the other hand half of the EU tank fleet consists of Leopard 2 that were sold by Germany due to the size reduction of the Bundeswehr as part of the reunification.
Don't forget that NATO vs Russia means 950 million people living in the most wealthy states on the globe vs 140 million people living in a mediocre shithole.
Actually they only have 19. Ilyushin Il-78 is the only specialized tanker in the Russian air force and only 56 planes have ever been built of which 19 is currently operated by Russia.
http://www.military-today.com/aircraft/il_78.htm
True. We put our power into the Navy but that is only something like 60 ships now all told. The armed forces have been neglected by 13 years of conservative rule. Very odd typing that.
Thanks to you both. I had no idea it was in the order of tens of thousands of tanks.
Why doesn't it sound right that NATO has more tanks than Russia? The US alone has over 6k tanks. Turkey has a couple of thousand, Greece has over a thousand, Poland has like 500, then you add up the rest and you get a few more thousand out of that. NATO has a lot of countries, after all. A lot of those tanks are going to be lower quality Cold War tanks, but then that accounts for Russia too.
Specialized tanker yes - probably should have listed it like that as there will be modified versions like the West sometimes use
Lower quality definitely but they had 50K at the end of the cold war and I doubt NATO ever had close to that number, but I don't know, mind you the US would have a heck of a job getting 6K tanks to Europe!
Also worth noting that military hardware in general is gradually lessening over time. The US has a new warfighting concept that focuses on data superiority and the Chinese are already going in that direction. Soon, we will be in a bi-polar world again, except this time, without the Russians.
For example, over 100 million AK 47s were made overall. Soviet conventional military doctrine was brute strength with numbers, especially on the ground. Overwhelm NATO was the goal.
Yes that is true, was their tactic in WW2 as well which is why their casualty numbers were many times everyone else
It doesn't need one, UK is an island, a gigantic landforce is not a priority.
But there's no excuse for having an ill-equipped under resourced one
Only other ones I know of are some of their fighters that are able to perform buddy-buddy refuelings. I think it's the Mig-29 and some of the planes from the SU-27 family but i'm not certain. Those planes can of course carry very small amounts of fuel compared to a real tanker plane.
UK has a top navy, and i assume a top airforce, thats quite sufficient.
You could be right, the number does seen low though, maybe they have a quick change facility in something like IL76's where they can put essentially a giant tank in the hold and have a drogue type system - I might be wrong but didn't the US try something like that with C-130's?
The UK has a Navy comprising of a total of about 60 ships, most of which are tiny patrol types!
Or put another way, Britannia doesn't rule the waves!
The air force is better but has a fraction the number of aircraft it once had and some of those are actually leased!
I don't know anything about that but there are many different versions of Hercules tankers, they are called KC-130 and are mainly used by the Marines.
Well, last i looked the UK was ranked at 4th best navy in the world, has to count for something.
Also, numbers alone isn't everything, let alone the most important thing, context matters.
You make it sound like UK basically don't have a navy, seems ridiculous.
Also the commander of the eastern group visited Bakhmut earlier today. Either they evacuate now or they decided to hold the city and turn it into Mariupol 2.0. They definetly could hold the city even surrounded for a couple of weeks probably and keep on inflicting massive losses to Wagner. But they'd lose all their heroic defenders in the end. We'll see his command pretty soon.
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And why would Britain need a bigger navy?
I was promised a Brexit benefit. Gunboats would do.
This.e
And in the event, admittedly unlikely, if Argentine did what they did in 1982 could the Navy do what it did then, probably not
This.
Isn't there like an actual RAF base on the islands?
Yes it has 4 RAF Typhoons based there + a Voyager anker and a transport A400
More on the previous post I wrote about Russian forces building trenches along the (western) coast of Crimea.
Some of those trenches would easily get flooded on the first high tide.
Some of those trenches would easily get flooded on the first high tide.
The navy is pretty good. The RAF is also under equipped.
They also look really useless being right on the beach. If an amphibious assault would happen, these trenches would be taken at once.
Once said the listen to the old wise women, well not in Russia..