All Russian tank engines are based on highly successful V-2 diesel engine designed in 1931 at the Kharkov Locomotive Plant. The Kharkov plants was destroyed by Russian forces in Ukraine. The V-84 (T-72s), V-92S2F (T-72B3s, T-90s), the UTD-20 (BMP-1s and BMP-2s), and UTD-29 (BMP-3s) are further upgrades of the engine. The V-2 is the Kalashnikov of tank engines. The exception to this practical Soviet approach is the T-64. This tank was fitted with the 5TDF engine which tried to copy a German wartime bomber engine. 2-3,000 T-64s in storage will never return to service.
The T-14 Armata used a Russian copy of the German X-shaped Simmering SLA 16 engine. The Germans in WW2 used the engine in the hunting Tiger tank. It was an unreliable engine for the Germans. The Russians had originally used the engine for compressor oil and gas pumping stations.
There is no assembly line for the T-14.
Russia has had a massive brain drain to the west and has crippling corruption. This is the reason their motor engines have fallen so far behind the west.
The following video describes why Russia’s tanks and military are a joke. These failures explain why Russia’s military and military gear have been exposed as failures in the Ukraine war.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
I shake my head whenever I see videos like these. All they’re doing is pandering to the reddit club. The video poster gets his clicks and revenue money from ads. The reddit club gets their smugnorance levels elevated.
Something people seem to not be aware of is the massive armory in the salt mines in the areas around Bahkmut.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_bbke_w_-C0
I’ve seen video of a Ukrainian using a natsi youth knife to dig a mine out of a road.
Aparently it wasn’t the Tigerxs engine. It was the Porsche Tigers engine, notthe one that was adopted- the Henkel
First, an old tank is not suited for offensive because it is vulnerable to modern anti tank weapons but still well suited for defensive when it has somewhere to hide when need. Second, I don’t know why russian use ideas of a german engine for t14 but it doesn’t mean t14’s engine is a crap. It’s the way human civilization work. Russian also use ideas of scramjet engine (more than 60 years old) in their zircon missile.
Older stationary tanks are easy targets. They can’t move their guns unless they are running their engine.
Tamara engine can’t even handle driving around during a parade.
From where I look from (Italy) it appears the Russians are slowly winning the war.
Slowly for a western mind, of course.
Slowly, if you think territorial conquests are the main goal.
The main goals are
1) Victory
2) Spending few Russians lives as possible
3) Killing more AFU personnel as possible
4) Depleting the weapon stockpiles of the Western World in a moment they can not replenish them fast enough.
They used a lot of old ammunition stockpiles. And there are a lot more where these come from. At the current rate of shelling, the Russians will need to slow down the pace of shelling in 20 years (if they don’t increase the production, of course). Also, they are moving to use more new and precise shells and rockets. So less shells are needed.
They need to clear up the 50s inventories because it is costly to dispose of them in other ways.
RU uses x10 the number of shells (daily) compared to the UC.
UC losses are around 10x that of RU.
RU expend more ammo than the UC and the UC expend more soldiers than RU.
Technology is nice in war but logistics MUST be always the first concern.
I don’t know how you can say the Russians are winning this war in any capacity. We can literally have a kid flying a drone sitting in Las Vegas. The West is not struggling to keep up with munitions in ANY way. It’s the Russian economy withering under the sanctions imposed by the West.
I wouldn’t say that the West isn’t struggling on the munitions front. One thing this war has done has been to expose just how shallow our ammunition reserves were, and how limited our capacity to replenish them was.
Yep. And Chona has noted this and you can bet they are factoring it into their Taiwan calculus.
Ok granted… The West was resting on its laurels because of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine. It wasn’t in the calculus of any of our strategic planning because we never thought Putin would do this. But to say that the West is struggling is absolutely ludicrous because we’re not even on a war footing. It’s Ukraine that is at war… And being part of the Democracies of the West, Ukraine is being armed and supplied…
Until the U.S. is dragged into the conflict I would be careful about making assumptions because we still make a lot of crap here
Is this the Russian chatGPT bot?
Russia conquered Lyman and the east by hail stoning the Ukrainians with artillery. They’ve had to stop that because, yes, their shells and guns are running out.
If the Ukrainian loses were greater than the Russians, they’d never be holding the front line like they are. The only possible way to say otherwise is to use weasly words that most of the Russian casualities are Wagner merceneries, so technically not Russian army.
I think reality is the opposite of everything in your post. Especially the bit about Russian logistics.
But do please keep believing this. Makes your future reality induced shock more enjoyable.
I’m not sure why people think that the russians care about having tactically sound operations, good quality equipment, and minimizing casualties.
This is an existential conflict to them.
They want to be free of western influence.
They want to have significant influence on their neighbors and world affairs.
They want to have their culture, language, and history perpetuated through the ages with the sphere of control they enjoyed pre-1990 and during various Romantic Era epsiodes of adventurism pre-Industrial Revolution.
Their culture is not consistent with individualism, the spurts and chaos of technological advancement, the unchecked spread of instantaneous information and communication, and the hedonism of consumerism and personal ambition.
They will send untold hordes of poorly trained ‘soldiers’ and inferior armament forth in desperate attempts at overcoming perceived weak and fragile territories so as to buffer against the ‘addictive’ and ‘decadent’ west.
They need to be contained at 2010 international borders, removed from the Security Council, and dislocated from advanced non-essential technologies.
If their loose assemblage of gangster territories can prosper in such containment, then they deserve to exist – I have my doubts.
These Russians are very practical. They do not throw things away and use everything. Will we soon be seeing ww1 rifles in the front lines? How far will they go? Do they have any 1890 rifles in stock that they will use?
There were so many atrocities commited in Russia in the last 100 years. I read the Black book of communism, that explaines a lot. Terrible. Communism and dictatorship does not bring civilisation any good. They need to spend so many resorces on secret police and enforcing their dictatorship, which could be spend elsewhere. Most able people are hampered by corruption and nepotism. Russian economy is based on oil, gas, metals exports. They do not produce enough high quality, tech products. How could they with such system?
If west did not resist Russian invasion, it would be even worse. Russian regime would annex whole Ukraine and forcefully mobilize Ukrainian men so they would need to fight for Russia. Then they will pressure west and Nato even more.
The economy is linked and I think there is good reason we want to help Ukraine to defend itself. If Russia got whole Ukraine, it would be indirectly more costly.
Few 10 billions of arms exports to Ukraine is nothing compared to how costly it could become if Russia wins. Iraq war expenses were about 1000 billion dollars and there were no Russia on other side.
Russia uses disinformation campains, machine learning networks to influence, manipulate public opinion in western civilisation. You can not tell directly if anonymous commentaries like “Jack Wilson” are in fact from west or is just a russian based bot. They use divide and rule military strategy, because they can not win directy. The conflict between different parties like dems and republicans are in the interest of Russia. If dems and reps fight between each other instead of work together for the good of their country the country is weakened. So called “fake news”, “stolen elections” is a way to subvert belief in working democracy and turn people against each other.
I think both sides are using some WW1 and WW2 era gear. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-fighters-with-soviet-vehicles-and-wwi-guns-channel-16th-century-ancestors
I made an article that shows the use by Russia (chechens) using 1891 era bolt action gun. Ukraine using WW1 era gatling gun. Russia using WW2 era helmets.
It was a WWI-era water cooled Maxim gun in 7.62x54R.
And it works fine for the Ukrainians in the defense. Too heavy for fire and maneuver unless on a vehicle.
It’s important to remember that 1891 is the date of the design, not the date of manufacture. The rifles themselves were produced up to 1945, with a carbine variant possibly being produced in the 1950s or early 1960s. (These may have been remanufactures of earlier stock.)
Is it obsolete in modern warfare, other than as a cheap sniper rifle, yes. Are they all 130 years old? No – just like the 1911 .45 caliber and the Ma Deuce M-2 Heavy Machine gun, the design was just that good that it stayed in production for almost 60 years.
Ukraine using WWI water cooled machine guns which are a good for Russian WWI human wave charges.
Yes and a bigger picture here:
China has been watching how Russia and the world has responded in this invasion.
And they did NOT like what happened. Ukraine and NATO did not just roll over and Russian equipment, which China either bought or copied, has been poorly performing.
Now they have to invade an island that is becoming a porcupine against a people that will resist. AND using soldiers that, thanks to One Child Policy for 2 gens, every death is the loss of a family lineage.
Theres the old saying about NASA spent millions inventing a pen that would work in space, and the Russians took pencils with them.
Turns out the good old pencil approach will only get you so far.
The old saying was rubbish.
A private US company developed the zero-G pen, then sold it to both NASA and the Russians.
The Russians were happy to buy it, because there are very good reasons to not use a pencil in space. Namely that, even if you don’t break the tip off the pencil, they still always produce powdered graphite in use.
On Earth, that powdered graphite falls to the ground. In zero-g it just floats around, until eventually it finds somewhere to get caught. You breathe it in, or it gets in your eye, or it finds its way into some electronics where conductive powder will probably be electrostatically attracted to something with electrical charges.
The space pen story is a perfect example of the US approach giving a better result.
Exactly
Perhaps it was a myth but the adage remains solid. We are a wasteful country while other countries are able to achieve the sames results as by spending a lot less.