The RAF airlift of AT-weapons to Ukraine is now 5 x C-17 sorties.
Rough order, you can fit around 400 FGM-148 or NLAW on 463L pallets on a single C-17.
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NLAW's inertial guidance is accurate versus moving targets to 400 meters and stationary at twice that. It uses a 15 cm Bill style slant down tandem HEAT warhead and will beat the front slope of any Russian tank.
You can't jam it.
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Only active defenses can stop and NLAW. And a tank hunter team can simultaneously fire several at the same tank to saturate an active defense.
Plus NLAW can be fired indoors.
Sub-tweet thread on NLAW 👇👇👇👇
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So, what does 2,000 transferred NLAW in the hands of the Ukrainian Army mean?
It answers the primary need of the Ukrainians, namely, a lot of ATGM with sure kill given a fair hit on a later Generation T-72/T-80/T-90 tank.
See Phil Karber here:
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defence-ua.com/minds_and_idea…
And also see Phil Karber here regards providing USMC surplus Humvee TOW missile launchers and US Army surplus Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine:
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defence-ua.com/army_and_war/v…
The Trump and Biden Administrations have sent 120 Javelin Missile launchers and several thousand (that number is not public where I've looked) Javelin missiles since 2017.
Given there are 40 active Ukrainian battalion battle groups with another 16 in
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defence-blog.com/ukraine-to-rec…
...reserves. That works out to three Javelin launchers and maybe 30 (speculative guess) missiles in the BTG.
This is why Phillip Karber was calling out the need for more.
While the Javelin in small numbers has won engagements like The Battle of Debecka, IRAQ, 2003
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There is simply no comparison between the Russian Army of 2021 and the Iraqi Army facing the Kurdish Peshmerga Army during invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/06/12/the…
The best a Ukrainian BTG can hope for with three Javelin launchers and 30 missiles versus a Russian regimental scale attack is 18 tank & AFV kills with a 100% loss of all three launchers & crew while being over run.
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Two thousand NLAW change this calculations by a lot.
Forty Ukrainian BTG now have another 50 NLAW on top of the three Javelin launchers & each NLAW missile is in a disposable launcher
An attacking Russian regiment can face a peak of 53 simultaneous sure kill if hit ATGMs.
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What the US Army Ft. Irwin National Training Center has shown time after time is that massed & simultaneous ATGM salvos from multiple ranges break large scale tank attacks.
The RAF airlift of 2,000 NLAW to Ukraine has given the Ukrainian Army that capability.
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The addition of NLAW to Javelins & existing older Ukrainian anti-tank weapons means the three Javelin launchers per BTG will survive several engagements.
BLUF: The Russian Army trying to take Eastern Ukraine now will lose 500 more tanks than before the RAF NLAW airlift.
/End
Correction: The Ukrainian Army has 26, not 16 reserve BTG.
There are now _SIX_ RAF NLAW supply flights to Ukraine.
The RAF anti-tank missile transfer flights to Ukraine proceed apace.
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