Vantage Point North

The Russian media has published several articles about the latest round of live fire drills by the Russian tank forces. The first brief mentions caught my attention as they described a new tank tactic based on the experiences of the Russian expeditionary force in Syria.  T-72B1 at Pogonovo (Photo: © RIA Novosti / Andrey Stanavov) The details about the new tactic were scarce but there were mentions of continuous movement and a steady barrage of main gun fire. On 4th of July, the RIA published an in depth article about the 20th combined Arms Army’s field training of the new tactics (Translated to English by Sputnik ) The “Tank Carousel” is simply a drill in which a tanks of a formation, be it a platoon or a company, move around a set perimeter firing the from vantage points or openings in a berm and then move off to safety while another one moves in to the same spot to fire.  This does allow the unit to maintain sustained 125 mm tank gun fire at a target ...

Israeli F-35I and F-16I On May 9th the Iranian Quds force that belongs into the Revolutionary Guards Corps launched a rocket salvo against the Israeli forces in the Golan heights. The IDF had anticipated the move and placed several Iron Dome batteries to protect the region, so the attack did very little damage and several rockets were shot down. There have been conflicting reports on whether the weapon used to attack Israel was a Russian built BM-27 Uragan or an indigenous Iranian Fajr-5. The Fajr-5 system is an indigenous Iranian 333 mm artillery rocket that is mounted on Mercedes-Benz 2624 trucks in 4-tube launchers. System has a maximum range of 75 km and rather abysmal accuracy with a 3 km CEP. Combination of a 900 kg class conventional warhead and the low accuracy makes the FAJR-5 more of a terror weapon than any kind of precision battlefield instrument. BM-27 Uragan (Photo: Russian Propaganda) T he Israeli Air-force had apparently been waiting for a ...

Kalynivka depot explosion. (Photo: REUTERS) As the night fell, a large Ukrainian armed forces ammunition storage was engulfed in flames at Kalynivka. The fires spread rapidly across the facility that contained 188,000 tons of munitions. Luckily most of the compartmentalization features, such as bunkers and steel walls have managed to limit the damage to about 30 % of the munitions stored there. This is the third ammunitions dump fire in Ukraine recently. All of these have been active facilities that are storing relevant and modern munitions and all have been feeding the Ukrainian Army units defending Ukraine against the Russian aggression. These are not some half-derelict old depots, looked after by the washouts the military wants to hide from sight. The Ukrainian security service has claimed that the previous fires/explosions were Russian sabotage operations. The Balakliya dump was claimed to have ignited by an explosive device dropped from a Russian drone. Similar cla...

Kurdish Peshmerga The autonomous Kurdistan Region votes enthusiastically for independence. A perfect world would welcome a new member into the family of nations, but the local powers in the Middle East are preparing to extinguish the flame of freedom before it even has a change to light up properly. Iraq, Turkey and Iran all strongly oppose the creation of a Kurdish state, as they fear that the Kurdish minorities within their borders would seek to follow the lead of the Kurds in Iraq. While USA and many of the western countries are supportive to the Kurdish cause and have sent both arms and trainers to help the Kurdish Peshmerga’s to fight the Islamic State, it’s doubtful that they are willing to or even able to protect Kurdistan with either sufficient diplomatic pressure or military action. The Iraqi parliament has ordered the government to seize all border crossings from Kurdistan to Iraq and to the neighboring countries. The Iraqi prime minister ordered the I...

Latest BMBT Terminator 2 version  After the disastrous experiences of the first Chechen war that led to the destruction of the Russian mechanized forces in the concrete canyons of the Grozny, Russia has been slowly developing a heavy infantry fighting vehicle for urban combat. The vehicle is based on the tried and tested T-72 main battle tank. The vehicle it’s designated BMPT, with a catchy nickname the “Terminator”. The designs of the armored vehicles have traditionally been compromises between mobility, armor protection and fire power. In an urban setting the mobility aspect is morphed from pure maneuverability into the ability to cross and penetrate barriers and navigate the constantly changing landscape. The armor protection is more important as the fighting distances are shorter and the enemy is often able to engage from extremely short distances and even from above. In regards to the fire power, it’s often more important to be able to suppress the hostile forces ...