M 2 HB? Heck, a guy with a BAR could take it out, with a single mag.
Now there's a novel take on spreading the Word.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Now I can't help but imagine seeing a tanker spouting Ezekiel 25:15 before busting an APFSDS in an enemy tank's ass.
They've been employed in narcotrafficking suppression out in the mountains, too. An M3 engaged and destroyed a narco-tank built on a truck body in 2001, and one with improvised cage armor is reported to have survived an RPG hit while engaged in narcotrafficking suppression last year.
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Looks like a BTR-D, which is in long service with the VDV. It looks like a new airdrop method, though, since the Russians have traditionally liked to use rocket-slowed airdrop pallets. (The rockets fire just before impact.)
Pretty standard cargo planes, well below Hercules level. And the Herk isn't anything particularly special in terms of cargo payload.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.For a second I thought "THAT is light?" then I realized that MB Ts are like 50~70 tons. XD
Say, does anyone know what kind of tank is shown in this scene? Is that an actual one or just a CGI prop?
Looks like a CGI attempt at mating a Challenger 2 turret, minus things like smoke grenade launchers and machine guns, to a fictional chassis. (Jesus, that huge cockpit for the driver—that just screams "weak point here!")
Incidentally, the reason the Russians have had so much experience in designing and paradropping armored vehicles out of airplanes is that they figured that airborne troops wouldn't be very useful once you dropped them, especially in an environment where everyone else would be riding APCs, and also would be both vulnerable and immobile. The solution was to give them their own rides; at their height the VDV were practically airborne mechanized troops. You need a shitton and a half of airlift to be able to drop all of it, and you wouldn't be able to drop it very far, but the Sovs could have done that easily enough by pressing Aeroflot into service, and all their airborne drop zones were intended to be relieved by armored spearheads ASAP.
Once the VDVs converted over to helicopters, I don't know what their doctrine called for in regards with the armored vehicles. Presumably the helis would air-assault the infantry in while Aeroflot dropped their armored vehicles, and the composite units would do the fighting?
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Chieftain, I suspect — probably one of several floating around Hollywood, usually as a false M1 Abrams. IMCDB seems to confirm that
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Well, as World Of Tanks has taught me, you don't need a driver. Sure, you'll go a bit slower, but so long as there's at least one crewman left alive, the tank can still operate. Red Orchestra even informs me that having more than one crewman is a hindrance and that one guy hopping between driving than gunning can both drive and aim better than any actual crew.
@AFP:
If I recall, Soviet doctrine was basically for airborne troops to seize key locations (for example, bridges, river crossing points, etc.) and targets ahead of the regular forces, who would join up with them during the course of their advance. Hence they did not anticipate that airborne units would need much sustainment, though they did recognise the relative vulnerability and firepower deficit of airborne troops and aimed to remedy this with the use of air-droppable AFVs. I would also not be surprised if it was a bid to increase their mobility post-deployment as well; the Russians seemed to be all about rapid rates of advance during that time period.
I've always wondered if retrorocket methods of slowing down an air-dropped armoured vehicle would be reliable enough, though - what if they fail to fire? I'm guessing the main advantage is that it ensures the vehicle is in the air (and hence vulnerable) for as short a period of time as possible.
Locking you up on radar since '09What I've read about Soviet doctrine generally concurs with that assessment. The VDV weren't designed as an expeditionary contingency force like the US Airborne units, but rather as specialists with a designated role to play in the Red Storm Scenario. Said role is basically that of a massive forward detachment.
Basically, think the Dnieper River airborne operation,
only, well, with less failure.
The retrorockets seem designed to cushion the landing in conjunction with a main parachute, and the Sovs seem to have worked out the major issues with it. At least, the production-model landing platforms wouldn't be suffering from Hajile
-style comedy. The biggest headache I can immediately see is that airlift requirements would be absolutely monstrous. An Il-76 strategic airlifter would barely be able to carry a platoon of vehicles and their crew.
Speaking of airborne forces, I am reading through this paper: a cross-country comparison of the evolution of airborne forces.
And here's something that is of perpetual interest: organizational changes in the Russian Airborne Forces following the Georgian War.

So for the first time in 75 years someone's actually made a "tank" in the sense of medium/heavy/MBT that can be defeated by a guy with an M2HB on a tripod or DP pintle mount.