Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Military History Visualized" channel.

  1. French artillery didn’t need as many rounds early in the war because their rounds had more elán. 😝
    157
  2. Also used in Georgia. 14 years is not so long ago, and probably means they received upgrades.
    43
  3. The RightStuff and no one seems to know or remember that Germany and Russia were partners in the invasion of Poland.
    20
  4. T-62 shell storage is still on the floor, making it catastrophically vulnerable to mines and top attacks. In other words, it still has the famous Popov Mechanism, designed by famed tank designer Ivanna Popov.
    19
  5.  @martinsmolik2449  Shitzkrieg
    19
  6. Ukrainian support companies are already pulling off a miracle keeping all the various equipment from different countries repaired and maintained. I find myself often criticizing video game players yammering on about throwing new platforms into the mix (A10, Abrams, Leopards I & II, etc,). Even incorporating new munitions must be a headache, such as the HARM AGM - 88 being retrofitted on MiG 29s. Although in that case, turns out that Raytheon had previously developed a package for the U.S. Top Gun school that used Soviet aircraft for combat training. (That secret program is worthy of its own movie, imho.)
    18
  7. Some of the welds look terrible with inadequate penetration. It looks not so much like welds but like they were stitching the plates together with small diameter filler. The weld on the M-10 looks sloppy but adequate. We can’t tell from a video of painted surfaces, but I imagine that the plates had been bonded into a single plate. I find it hard to believe that the Germans didn’t understand the welding process, so I wonder in the “joinery” was to compensate for a shortage of skilled workers on certain production lines. It would have been funny if the used dovetail joints. 😅 Supposedly stronger than finger joints.
    14
  8. “On today’s video, we will be checking just how quickly Mr. Moran can exit the crew compartment of a T-34 when properly motivated.”
    12
  9. It was a failure of doctrine, as you say. And political decisions. The doctrine flowed from the strategy, which flowed from the political decisions, which flowed from the political goals, which were based on faulty assumptions and, really, a lack of historical knowledge of the Vietnamese people. Our first error was early in the Cold War, when we supported the French effort to re-impose colonial rule. (Yes, I’m aware of the major SNAFU at the end of WW2.) This was done under the guise of anti-communism, but it was just a cover for re-colonizing a fiercely independent people. There was a sincere policy of opposing communism that the French used for its own national interest. The thinking behind anti-communist policies solidified around “the Domino Theory”, meaning that if Vietnam fell to communism, so would its neighbors, etc., until all of Asia was dominated by the Soviet Union and China. This was a faulty assumption, as was the idea that Vietnam’s nationalist movement was wholly communist in nature and obedient to Moscow and Beijing. U.S. policy makers and politicians were ignorant of Vietnam’s thousand year history of fighting the Chinese and other invaders. They were unaware that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist first and a communist second. They did not know that the original armed nationalists, the Viet Minh, was a coalition of political groups fighting for independence. (VM later became the NVA in the north and the VC in the south). All of this ignorance led to U.S. politicians seeking a simple military solution to a complicated geo political problem that they didn’t fully understand. And that is the basic error. The war was unwinnable because the faulty goals were based on faulty assumptions. That is the cause of U.S. failure in SVN, not a socialist 5th column in the U.S.
    12
  10. Tread lightly.
    10
  11. A U.S. serviceman dies in battle, suicidally attacking an enemy position: “This patriot made the ultimate sacrifice, giving their life to save their comrades.” A suicide bomber or kamikaze pilot: “These savages have no respect for human life. They’re crazy fanatics.”
    10
  12. “Served” sounds like “surfed”, and we all know Charlie don’t surf.
    8
  13.  @CarrotConsumer  perhaps you meant t say, “They never won a major battle against the U.S. during the Vietnam Conflict”, because they sure as fuck rolled over SVN, then Cambodia (to take out Pol Pot), and they shut down a Chinese incursion. Their predecessor organization handed the French their asses on a plate.
    8
  14. Ice Cold It was the perfect summation.
    7
  15.  @SmotritelMayaka29  You know who is next. Putin. Russia wasn’t invaded this time.
    7
  16.  @artruisjoew5473  The mongols certainly. Moscow was just another patch of Rus ruled by some robber baron “princes”. After they were beaten by the Mongols twice, and the town of Moscow burned twice, they submitted to the Mongols who set them up as their own vassal kingdom, Moscow Rus. The “Princes of Moscow Rus” were allowed to rule their own people as long as they collected the Mongols taxes and paid the Mongols their tribute. So the Mongols created the state that today we call Russia. Russia was once a vassal of an Asian empire. There a pretty good chance it will end up a vassal to another Asian empire.
    7
  17.  @fullm3taljacket  and I agree with your doctors that fetal alcohol syndrome is to blame for your inability to think.
    7
  18. Bernard, take a welding class. You can find a weekend class that will teach you the basics of stick welding. I think you’d enjoy the class. You’d come away with a better understanding of the manufacturing process. And you can ask your welding instructor about the box welds.
    6
  19. Very good overview of how Soviet politics really F’ed up the Soviet Union’s ability to respond to German aggression. More could be said about the political appointments of incompetent “loyal party members” to leadership positions, the effects of political komissars meddling with military decisions at all levels. You also touched on the problems of manufacturing and logistics, but much more could be said about this to, as there was a major purge of engineers in the Great Purge as well as earlier purges. Much of the prewar fulfillment of quotas was more or less fraudulent/inflated, and a lot of resources were drained off to the “secondary” economy (the black market).
    6
  20.  @bigbird799  Do you know how the freshly mobilized Russian soldiers are trained? They put them on a train. There, fully trained. Then the train is sent to Ukraine, and those soldiers get killed within 12 days, on average.
    5
  21. So, I watched this video because I like almost every thing you do, and I appreciate that you are as rigorous as possible in your comparisons. But imo, tank vs tank matchups are almost always meaningless if you don’t look at the “strategic aspects” (that you enumerated as logistics and production, iirc). These strategic aspects trickle have a major impact on the tactical level. Tank vs tank comparisons are like comparing body parts isolated from the rest of the body. “If we ignore the rest of the body, who has the best toe?”
    5
  22. There’s plenty of dumbasses that have learned to wisely intone the old saw about “amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics”, but still have no idea what logistics entail. Sure, we have all seen the results of bad logistics, but do people really understand the huge undertaking of providing sufficient supply logistics from the Eastern border to the front lines. Do they understand that Ukrainian maintenance companies and battalions are stretched thin maintaining the different vehicles being sent by various countries? There seems to be the assumption that you can flip a switch between good logistics and bad logistics with no understanding of the effort involved. You’re right. Its a videogame mentality.
    5
  23.  @robertalaverdov8147  Nah, he’s one of those artistic slacker Austrians. If he seems organized, it’s from experience not national inclination.
    4
  24. Here for the Deathstar joke.
    4
  25. MHV: Speaking of skills Me: Fuck Skill Share! I can’t beli— MHV: Lets have a look at the OODA loop. Me: I feel like I dodged a bullet!
    4
  26. I am very curious about the weld penetration the Germans were achieving (or failing to achieve). And I further wonder if this was caused by material shortages (as you suggest), skilled worker shortages, or welding technology lagging plate thickness. If box joints were supposed to improve structural integrity, why not go further and use dovetails? 😂
    4
  27. I can account for the discrepancy between 879 and 878. The clerk assigned the responsibility of counting forgot to count himself.
    4
  28. I’ve never played, but I attribute much ignorance to such games. Tank duels were incredibly rare. A tank without logistical support is sculpture. Without infantry support, it will soon be sculpture.
    4
  29.  @fullm3taljacket  “trained” = put onto trains, if we are talking about mobilized Russian soldiers.
    4
  30.  @ВасяКирьянов-г3ж  Clausewitz wasn’t recommending that you destroy your own army, like Russia has been doing. He was saying you’re supposed to destroy the other guy’s war making capability.
    4
  31.  @SmotritelMayaka29  Russia is populated by 200 ethnicities, but it it ruled by “ethnic Russians” in the Kremlin. For now, anyway. It’s more and more likely that Russia will return to vassal status and be ruled by Han Chinese in Beijing.
    3
  32. Ray Hardman We’ve all seen a New Hope. There were 13 Swordfish and 17 other small ships.
    3
  33. An interesting point about civil commercial aviation: a pilot is only qualified on one model at a time. To switch models, you need months of retraining and qualification. And once you are qualified on a different model, it takes retraining to switch back. The idea that a fighter pilot can be combat effective on a different plane (even of the same airframe if the cockpit layout is different) with only a few weeks training is ridiculous. And even if you integrate same airframe planes from different countries (which does help in the support end), the idea that you can easily integrate completely different platforms/airframes is the pinnacle of stupidity (I’m looking at you, A10 fanboys).
    3
  34.  @caniconcananas7687  Don’t forget there are also Polish names for many places, plus some names made up by the Habsburgs.
    3
  35.  @Heartrose7  The autoloading tanks have a storage carousel directly underneath the turret. An ATGM hitting the top of the turret send the jet of molten metal right into the carousel. The T-62 has some handy storage in the turret, but the bulk of the ammunition is stored in boxes on the floor. Pretty much directly under the turret. I don’t know if this is wet storage, or if wet storage is even a thing anymore, but shells on the floor, whether in a carousel or in boxes, are pretty effective “Popov Mechanisms”. This clever feature propels the turret upwards 20-50 meters above the tank, allowing the tank commander to get better view of surrounding threats. The original design of the Popov Mechanism is credited to Dr. Ivanna Popov. Russian tank designers are currently working on an Unmanned Flying Turret (UFT) that could reach low earth orbit, but turrets in field tests have only achieved maximum heights of 75-100 meters.
    3
  36. That’s not what most of the Republicans are actually saying. They are claiming they will use more oversight, because they always like to claim the Democrats are profligate spenders. The support for Ukraine has been bipartisan. It’s the only thing that Dem and GOP Congress people can agree on. The small handful of extremists will make a lot of noise, but aren’t going to change the overall support for Ukraine.
    3
  37. Required
    3
  38. Aceroadholder Also (and I guess it wasn’t covered in the manual), the team-carrying slicks might themselves make a few false insertions before and after, further confusing observers. This would be in addition to false insertions mentioned in the video. Another thing not covered in the video regarding extractions: the extra body space could be (and was) used for prisoners snatched. Recon missions could be very opportunistic in their intelligence gathering.
    2
  39. For some reason YouTube is throwing this old videos into my recommendations as if I’ve never seen them. People who credit the Russian winter or the mud with the German failure in Barbarossa are also suffering from an intelligence failure.
    2
  40.  @artruisjoew5473  I’ll do you one better, that wouldn’t even involve putting American pilots in harms way. A volunteer wing of drones, leased or purchased from the U.S. and operated remotely by private contractors in the U.S. or Europe. (Not my idea, btw. Ryan Macbeth came up with the idea.)
    2
  41.  @NeuroScientician  Mines don’t care either, I imagine. In either case, more hull integrity could lead to higher turret launches! 😉
    2
  42. Ryan Grider You’re pretty touchy for a guy that needs to go into a lengthy explanation. Next time, maybe use a better analogy so you don’t have to write hundreds of words that no one is going to read. Pro-tip: cut back on your adderal.
    2
  43.  @hater9117  That is my understanding. It’s a monthly subscription deal, where the separatists get a six pack each month to replace the ones they’ve had to throw out or were unable to recover from the battlefield. Originally the tanks were disguised as juice packs, but the juicer never worked properly after it extracted about half the juice from a tank. At that point they dispensed with the subterfuge and the President of the juice start up was sent to GULAG. The last thing he was told before he disappeared into the black hole of Russia’s penal system was, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it again.”
    2
  44.  @voster77hh  Thanks for your various comments, sharing your thinking and/or knowledge. My thinking is that older gen. tanks (not specifically the Leopards) would be used as gap fillers to slow a Russian advance. Which is funny, because that was the original plan for the Leopards at Fulda Gap. Such fillers are not meant to hold, but to provide time for a reaction force to arrive (as I think you already know). The ideal gaps are areas north of Kyiv and the still contested areas north of Kharkiv.
    2
  45. Opfor has a specific use and a specific context. You can’t just throw in “Opfor” anytime the words opposing and forces meet. Don’t be a Shed. 😉 I tell you this not to embarrass you, but so that you can avoid future embarrassment.
    2
  46.  @baronknownot780  I love the work of Tolkien, disliked them Bakshi adaptation, I loved the Jackson LOTR movies, but was very meh on the Hobbit movies, which were sort of entertaining taken on their own but quite lame within the context of the entire mythos that Tolkien had created. Rings of Power bored me nearly to death halfway through episode 3. That’s why I hate it. It took material I loved and made it boring. A lot of people will complain about the Galadriel character being unsympathetically singleminded, a murder hobo, or whatever. But Galadriel is just a symptom. The real problem is the writing is crap, and the reason that the writing is crap is that the show runners don’t really know how to tell a story. They think they have a formula, but all they’ve managed to create (in me, at least) is boredom. I could go on in great detail about their storytelling failures, but I won’t. My bottom line is I don’t want to waste my valuable time being bored if I can help it. Two and a half episodes is enough time to capture my imagination or involve me emotionally with the characters. The hobbit-ish people’s subplot almost got me to entertainment town, but couldn’t overcome the wearying crap of the rest of the show.
    2
  47. Advanced amateurs sometimes talk about logistics. However, its a word they throw into discussions, intoning “amateurs talk about tactics*, professionals talk about logistics”, as if it is sufficient to merely invoke the word. To talk about logistics in a serious way is to get into the weeds. Logistics are a logistical nightmare, either in actuality or potentially. It keeps logistics people up at night. The best run systems are one crisis away from breakdown, always. *Amateurs talk about tactics, moronic videogame players masturbate to equipment capabilities.
    2
  48.  @SSN515  I think the politically correct nomenclature is FOBBIT.
    2
  49. 13:05 “Liberation Operation”
    2
  50. Combined arms is part of a balanced breakfast.
    2
  51. Lindy’s bias isn’t an issue for me. My problem is that I don’t like people yelling military history at me.
    2
  52.  @colincampbell767  I think the support companies and battalions are already stretched to the limit performing the miracle of maintaining all the different vehicles sent by various countries. You cant just throw a complicated new platform like a tank into the mix. You cant just pull out repair crews for training when they are operating 24 hours a day to maintain the vehicles already in use. I honestly don’t think you can train a diesel mechanic on all the tank subsystems in a month.
    2
  53. Ooooooo! Da Loop! 😄 Yeah, I imagine there are hundreds of videos on the topic if one were to search for OODA loop. Its a principle employable at both the tactical and strategic level. First time I heard about it was in the context of fighter aircraft dogfights. The second time was in the context of small wars/counter insurgencies. This doctrine’s fingerprints are all over the Ukrainian strategy as the counteroffensive unfolds.
    2
  54. “Second World” refers to Communist Bloc countries during the Cold War, not to economic development. Just so we’re clear—a lot of people misuse the term because of sloppy use of Third World, which indicates non-alignment to First or Second Worlds. If you want to talk about economies, try using the more accurate descriptors Developed, Developing, and Undeveloped. Thanks, and if you were aware of the correct meaning, never mind.
    2
  55. Ask him about welds.
    2
  56. Don’t go. There is a surplus of Russian prostitutes, so you won’t find any work.
    2
  57. All my cheesy Vietnam movies start with “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield. (There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear)
    2
  58. And if it’s the welds blowing out, that means their welders aren’t getting full penetration.
    2
  59.  @noelle3551  The Kremlin’s ongoing rhetoric to justify the Special Military Operation sounds like it was cribbed from Mein Kampf.
    2
  60.  @3dcomrade  nah. Not even close to being the reason.
    2
  61. I’ve heard of a “New York Minute”, maybe there’s a metric minute? /s (Yes, I know the minute is already a basic part of the metric system)
    1
  62. They say Orange County is the place you oughta beeeeeee.
    1
  63. Grundy Malone So they could retreat 100% and still maintain their front line?
    1
  64. Scullys Tie As soon as he wrote that I knew he wasn’t worth paying attention to—like the majority of “gamers-with-opinions”.
    1
  65. Václav Fejt And don’t forget Tropic Thunder, maybe the best movie about the making of a documentary about the making of a movie. Seriously, go see it right now if you haven’t seen it before.
    1
  66. Even though your unit wasn’t meant to be inserted behind enemy lines, were you given additional training for fluid battlefield? That was one of the things about Vietnam (and I suppose other asymmetrical conflicts) was there was no front line. Just curiosity how much the mil was thinking about asymmetric warfare in the 90s.
    1
  67. Sure, dog. Aren’t you the one who walked into a saloon, looking for the man that shot your paw?
    1
  68.  @ReichLife  That’s false. The Mongols creamed the Muscovite Rus, who submitted to Mongol rule. The kingdom of Muscovy was set up, and the “Princes of Moscow Rus” were set up as tax collectors for the Mongols, paying them an additional tribute for the privilege. The vassal kingdom that we today call Russia was created by Mongols to be the bitch of an Asian empire. It’s looking more and more like Russia will return to bitch status to another Asian empire. 😂
    1
  69.  @chefboyardee2223  What do you mean the freshly mobilized Russian soldiers aren’t trained? The Putin Kommissars put them on a train. There, now they’re trained and ready to be sent to the front lines!
    1
  70. I’m really good at blitzkrieg sex. Stop saying it’s pre-mature ejaculation.
    1
  71. Kosta M. This is about the run up to war and the initial operation. The Great Purge affected the RA’s ability to respond. However, by the time of Stalingrad, the RA had gotten its shit together while the German invaders had exhausted many of their own resources (men and material). The RA still had an overwhelming amount of untapped resources.
    1
  72.  @generationkilled  Of course new tanks get added mid war, usually organically. You have the various iterations of Panzer III and IV at one end. Then you have big platform changes to Tiger II for example. But the big Tigers were few in number and did suffer from logistical issues. The Panzers were still in continuous production. And the resources put into the brand new platforms took resources away from the manufacture and logistics of the older models. Maybe WWII German tanks are a bad example of successful integration 😉 Shall we use the example of the British in North Africa? There were long pauses between operations, allowing for tank crews and repair/maintenance crews to get up to speed on new equipment. These periods entailed more than just build up of forces and accumulation of supplies.
    1
  73.  @oryxland3994  You make many excellent points. There’s also the matter of where do you find the personnel to train when your repair crews are working around the clock to maintain the equipment already in use. There is a gamer mentality that says, “Just train more crews” like you can flip a switch or spend resource points.
    1
  74. A lot of Russia’s population are victims of fetal alcohol poisoning. You can’t just compare raw population to determine which side will have more combat effective soldiers.
    1
  75. Podemos URSS and then push the vowels through their noses.
    1
  76. Blue Mountain Welcome to the 90s, Blue. They’re never going to end.
    1
  77. Surprised no one in this thread mentioned biological war.
    1
  78. Have you ever read Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow? Not an easy read for most people, but if you can plow through military manuals, I don’t think it will give you any problems. The title refers to the trajectory of the V2. “But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice—guessed and refused to believe—that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return.” The novel is a twisting narrative, absurd and at times surreal. Have a look!
    1
  79.  @FatGouf  The Russians First Guard Tank Army is currently storming the gates of heaven, with about the same success they had in Ukraine.
    1
  80. I think you are partially incorrect about the U.S. immigration laws and policies, either from the 20s or currently. Hitler admired our racist immigration policies. That’s what he was talking about. As far as the maga rhetoric sounding like Hitler, yes it does and it’s horrible. But the current racist rhetoric also mirrors the anti-Asian rhetoric from the second half of the 19th Century and throughout the 20th Century. The talk of “invaders” is a word for word borrowing from how Americans talked about Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and the rhetoric gave rise to massacres and pogroms. Anti-Asian sentiment was shared by both the right and the left. Some of the greatest rabble rousers of anti-Asian violence were socialists and labor leaders. My point is that the maga racists aren’t really importing many words or ideas from Nazi Germany. Our racism is homegrown and once inspired Hitler. Maybe we had 50 or 60 years of reform, but judging by the popular vote of our last election, we are reverting to a racist normal.
    1
  81.  @charadreemurr8673  Tankies and commie-boos have a positive knee jerk reaction to anything that could be vaguely considered anti-U.S. The credo is “America is always bad”. Anything the U.S. supports is bad, any alliance or coalition in which the U.S. participates is bad. (And according to their thinking, NATO is merely an extension of the U.S. and all the other members are puppets.) So if the U.S. and the NATO alliance is helping Ukraine, Ukraine is bad, and Russia good. And because (in their view) Ukraine is a mere extension of the U.S., any crime committed by the Russians in Ukraine can be justified by historical crimes committed by the U.S. Tankies and commie-boos also make many false comparisons—for example, comparing Russia’s invasion with the Cuban missile crisis. The argument is “turn about is fair play”, but it’s an argument based on a fabrication/falsification of historic events. Are these far leftists intellectually bankrupt? Well, they somehow supported Maduro in Venezuela when he cracked down on the democratic opposition using paramilitary groups and criminal gangs to intimidate them.
    1
  82.  @mill2712  In my country we say “Grassy Ass”.
    1
  83. Think of the various artillery platforms and other vehicles already being incorporated. The logistics and support chain, especially repair & maintenance, is already being pushed to the limits.
    1
  84.  @dominikobora5385  Yup. And the T-62 stores the bulk of its ammunition on the floor under the turret.
    1
  85. Ryan Grider I’m pretty sure the Germans never hired Japanese aviators to crew their tanks. 😏 Did you just get your medical marijuana prescription refilled? 🤡
    1
  86. Ryan Grider More like Cryin’ Grinder, amirite?
    1
  87. Charles Turner What?
    1
  88. Ryan Grider How can you live with yourself when you can’t even spell The Sipmsons? I mean, the Simpsons.
    1
  89. “Id like to introduce you to our gunner. We call him nubby.”
    1
  90. Not shocking numbers wrt offense vs defense, although the number of captured tanks by Ukrainian defenders early on was a little surprising.
    1
  91. I really don’t want any tank. Not with current gas and diesel prices!
    1
  92. Not hard to tell them apart. Shrek had a donkey, while the Shreck units had horses.
    1
  93.  @woltews  What if epoxy was applied to the turret ring so the turret couldn’t move?
    1
  94. Lol at the finger icon.
    1
  95. Or rear areas to control the populace and shoot at buildings.
    1
  96. Gulaschkoenig this was my thought as well when watching that part of the video. Not used for basic tank operation training, but used for company/battalion/division operational training. Combined arms is good for you, but you have to get good at it first.
    1
  97.  @fullm3taljacket  Says the guy with a dozen comments in each thread. 😂
    1
  98. If you want a fascinating overview of Russia’s military corruption, look for Perun’s channel and take a look at his video on the topic. Be warned, the video is in the form of a power point presentation and his videos are up to an hour in length. But they don’t seem that long and if you like this channel, you’re likely to enjoy Perun’s videos. I also recommend his video “All Bling, no Basics” (I think it’s called).
    1
  99. Yes, I think support units are already being stretched to the limit. Maybe there should be a timeout of six months so Ukraine can change to new platforms. Has anyone approached Putin to see if he would be amenable to a timeout?
    1
  100. That’s not how welding works. It’s very different than wood joinery. In welding, you are bonding two pieces into one solid piece. The weld needs to penetrate the thickness of the metal and you need the proper amperage going through the electrode/filler rod. You are fusing metal together. In a wood joint, increasing the surface gives you more glue surface. That’s what you’re thinking of. The interlocking plates you saw more likely were to aid in more rapid construction—it would allow more rapid positioning of the plates before they were welded.
    1
  101.  @MilitaryHistoryVisualized  45 minutes of non stop fapping can become painful if you don’t switch your grip every ten minutes or so. 😂
    1
  102.  @novusregnum  🤷🏻‍♀️ you’d have to ask Bernard.
    1
  103.  @ВасяКирьянов-г3ж  You’re buying ammunition from North Korea, bro.
    1
  104.  @MilitaryHistoryVisualized  Make America Golf Again
    1
  105. It wasn’t a design flaw. It was a manufacturing flaw. Some of those T-34s made with brittle, over-hardened steel were quite drafty.
    1
  106. It takes more than a few months. If you’ve been watching this channel, you might have heard the word logistics. Having heard the word, you might also have heard of its importance. Having heard of its importance, you might still be ignorant of what logistics entails. If you think a new weapons platform as complicated as a tank can be incorporated in a few months, you are revealing your ignorance. Logistics is a nightmare, always. Even a well run logistics system is one big crisis away from a breakdown. This is why logistics keeps logistics managers up at night, even the successful managers.
    1
  107.  @Duskraven67  We are probably seeing both cases. I also imagine that more experienced tank crews (the survivors) like to send the inexperienced crews ahead (reconn by blundering) to find mines and ambushes. “Go ahead, we’ll be right behind you.” Better you than me, tovarish. Do you know the story about the old guy and the new guy that come across a pile of dog crap? The old guy demands the new guy smell it. The young guy resists, but the old guy forces him to smell it. “It smells like crap.” Then the old guy forces the new guy to taste it. “Taste! Taste or I kill you.” The new guy hesitantly tastes it. “It tastes like crap.” The old guy shrugs and says, “Good thing we didn’t step in it.”
    1
  108. D MO Interesting point, but that wasn’t the strategic object. It was all about the canal, and not letting it fall into the hands of drug trafficker/drug addict. The Panama Canal has a huge strategic importance. Now, I fully believe that Noriega was paid by the CIA for various things, but he became unreliable. A threat, really, to CIA shenanigans in Central and South America, if Noriega was threatening to expose what he knew. So when an ex-CIA director became president, it was time to clean up some messes that would have been very embarrassing to the U.S. government in general and the CIA specifically. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence for this (including the fact that Noriega was making the threats publicly), so I’d count it as the second objective of the campaign. Still, #1 was protecting the canal.
    1
  109.  @talldreamyopposum  Wasn’t Audi Murphy was acquired by Volkswagen Jones.
    1
  110.  @paavobergmann4920  If that were to happen, you weren’t using your TD correctly.
    1
  111. Are you suggesting that Leopard tanks be used as scarecrows to frighten the minimal forces in Transnistria? Or used symbolically on the Belarus border? I question your intelligence.
    1
  112. It’s a legal requirement in his jurisdiction to disclaim the nature of his visits to the museums.
    1
  113. Music was better in the T-80s.
    1