Very true and everyone knows this.

British Army soldiers are some of the best in the world... but 90% of their equipment sucks!
I.e. the Warrior IFVs and Scimitar recon vehicles have ancient, unstabilized cannons that need to be reloaded BY HAND with 3 (!) round clips.
1/4

https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1619828221729705984

For decades the British governments refused to properly fund the army... and so British armoured formations use now mostly antiques:

FV432: 60 years old
CVR(T): 53 years
Warrior: 37 years

Only the Challenger 2 tank and AS-90 self-propelled howitzers are still acceptable...
2/4

Earlier I posted a thread about how Abrams, Leopard & Challenger, and Bradley, Marder & CV90 combine with infantry and armored support vehicles during an combined arms attack.
As people asked about the supporting & sustainment elements of a combined arms attack I will do now
1/25 a thread about these.

Please read my earlier thread before continuing with this one. Here I will give you a very rough overview of the elements an armored brigade or division staff has to plan, prepare and execute for a successful armored attack.

2/n

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1619058078158319618

Soon Challenger 2, Leopard 2A5/6 and M1A1/2 Abrams will roam across the Ukrainian steppe to hunt and destroy russian armor.

All three are leagues better than what the russians field, but tanks on their own are useless. So, an easy to understand thread about combined arms 🧵:
1/n Western tanks like the M1A1/2 Abrams, Challenger 2, Leopard 2A5/6/7, Leclerc, Ariete AMV, Merkava IV, K2 Black Panther have way better armor than russian tanks.

An M1A2 Abrams is visibly larger than i.e. a T-72 or a T-80, and weighs (depending on model) 15-20 tons more.
2/n

Ukraine is about to get some 70+ self-propelled artillery systems... time for an artillery thread about:

🇺🇸 M109A6 Paladin (18x donated)
🇬🇧 AS-90 (24x donated)
🇫🇷 CAESAR 8x8 (19x donated by Denmark)
🇸🇪 Archer (probably 12x donated)

1/n Before I continue: do you know how NATO 155mm howitzers work? If not, please read my earlier thread about the M777 howitzer.
Once you know how the M777 works (and what primer, fuzes, and charges are), then you will easily understand this thread.

2/n

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1526328417230241796

People forget that all US M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams tanks in service with or stored by the US Army are filled with a ton of depleted uranium (DU).
Every Abrams built after 1 October 1988 has a DU mesh between its steel and ceramic armor plates. The US won't give those tanks to
1/4 anyone. The M1A1 without DU mesh were sold years ago to Australia, Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco & Saudi Arabia.
The problem is that the mesh is top secret. Not even the workers building the Abrams at the Lima Tank Plant get to see it. It comes from a classified government facility
2/4

🇺🇦Sweden and the CV90:

Sweden acquired 355 CV90 IFVs (+ 194 support variants). The 355 CV90 come in eight versions. The main versions are:
• 9040A (pic 1)
• 9040B/B1 (pic 2)
• 9040C/C+ (pic 3)

The photos everyone is posting are actually the CV90 MkIV for Slovakia (pic 4)
1/n The three main versions are currently being upgraded:

9040A -> 9040D1
9040B/B1 -> 9040D2
9040C/C+ -> 9040E

Ukraine won't get C/C+/E, because Sweden has 145 and 143 should be in use with eleven mechanized companies.
Btw. this version is easy to recognize as the coaxial
2/n

So much nonsense on twitter about the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB)...

Ok, a thread 🧵

GLSDB uses a Lockheed Martin M26 MLRS rocket section with a Boeing GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb.
1/n The M26 was the original rocket used with the M270 to deliver cluster munitions. M26 rockets are being dismantled, which means lots of M26 rocket sections are available.
M26 rockets come in pods of six. Pods that are filled with rockets at Lockheed Martin's plant in Arkansas.
2/n

🇮🇶 Iraq 1980s: We need Sarin and Tabun to gas Iranians.
🇩🇪 Germany: We can build you the factory for that and sell you the chemicals.
🇮🇶 Excellent.
🇩🇪 How about some extra mustard gas to butcher Kurds?
🇮🇶 Thank you, you're the best.

🇱🇾 Libya 1990s: We need Sarin and Tabun
1/4 to gas.
🇩🇪 Sorry, we got caught helping Iraq with that... so we can only sell you the factory. Ok?
🇱🇾 Thank you, you're the best.

🇸🇾 Syria 2000s: We need Sarin to gas 100,000s
🇩🇪 Sorry, we got caught helping Iraq and Libya with that... so we can only sell you the
2/4

A quick Caucasus thread 🧵:

For a month now Azerbaijani "protestors" block the Lachin road between Armenia and Karabakh... ostensibly because of "ecological concerns". In reality it is about russia arming Armenian radicals in Karabakh to start a new war.
1/n After the 2020 war Armenia agreed to remove its military from Azerbaijan and to deoccupy the regions it had invaded, depopulated and razed in the early 1990s. To ensure the ceasefire russian "peacekeepers" were deployed... and Armenia and Azerbaijan began to negotiate a peace
2/n

Marder, Bradley, AMX-10RCR - a short thread:

Germany is gonna give Ukraine Marder 1A3, which are 1990s tech, as stingy Merkel upgraded way too few Marder to 1A5 or 1A5A1 standard.

And something I dislike about the Marder is that the vehicle commander has to

1/6 get out of the turret to fire the Milan anti-tank Guided missile...

But the Marder 1A3 is a very useful system, because it has better optics and comms than most infantry fighting vehicles Ukraine has now and so the Marders are gonna kill lots and lots of russian infantry.

2/6

March 2022:
🇺🇦 We want to buy 100+ Marder.
🇩🇪 Scholz: We have no Marders available.
🇺🇦 German industry has 200+ available.
🇩🇪 Scholz: Not true.
🇩🇪 industry: We request an export license for 100 Marder.
🇩🇪 Scholz: Hey Greece, want to buy 200 Marder?
🇬🇷 Yes, please.

1/4 April 2022:
🇺🇦 What?
🇩🇪 Scholz: What?
🇺🇦 You said no Marders are available!
🇩🇪 Scholz: Correct, no Marders available.
🇺🇦 You just offered Greece 200!
🇩🇪 Scholz: Exactly, now none are available.
🇩🇪 industry: We have still have 100 available moment you sign the export license.

2/4

People keep interpreting some strategic value to
Bakhmut, when there isn't any at all.

Bakhmut is a kremlin-internal power struggle: mafia-thug prigozhin wants to be the next russian defense minister, but only criticising the current defense minister
1/4
shoigu isn't gonna get him the job.
So prigozhin raised his own "army" to show putin that under his "leadership" russia would do better than with the corrupt, incompetent and cretinous shoigu.

Naturally shoigu knew this and gave prigozhin's gang of prison-recruited rapists,
2/4

Pentagon budget realignment file nr. 9 - so what is the Pentagon buying to replace stuff that has already been sent to Ukraine - a 🧵:

First the "boring" stuff, then for last the 😱😱😱

• $146,433,000 for TOW2 missiles
• $91,692,000 for counter battery radars

1/n Also included a good amount of artillery ammo:

• $266,925,000 for M795 projectiles
• $92,108,000 for M982 Excalibur projectiles
• $68,557,000 for charges, fuzes, and primers
• $63,000,000 for 105 mm ammo

2/n

This German "peace in Europe only with Russia" is garbage nowadays.

It was formulated in last century's 1970s... and made sense back then, because the russian empire (disguised as Warsaw Pact) consisted of 148 million russians and 252 million enslaved people, which gave
1/4

https://twitter.com/olivernmoody/status/1598283490403155969

the Soviets 400m people vs. 324m in European NATO nations. The Soviets had 1.24 times more people to draw armies from than the West.

Today European NATO nations (incl. Finland, Sweden) are 597 million vs. 144 million russians. That's a 4.2 to 1 superiority for the West!
2/4

Reasons the winter months will kill 100,000 russian soldiers:

1) lack of winter clothing for russian troops = death by hypothermia
2) garbage russian logistics = lack of warm food, tea, heating materiel, sleeping bags = death by hypothermia
3) no shelters and dugouts for
1/4 russian troops to hide from the elements = death by hypothermia
4) ground is frozen = you can't dig shelters anymore = russian troops have to sleep on the ground = death by hypothermia
5) russian troops can't make any fire. Fire = smoke, which attracts drones and artillery
2/4

*Spoilers*

The quality of the writing in #Andor is beyond amazing.
It's by far the best writing Star Wars has ever seen.

And these words are spoken by actresses and actors that are leagues above anything else on @DisneyPlus

Nemik's manifest - such a concise and clear
1/5 description of tyranny and oppression. Replace "Empire" with putin, mullahs, Mussolini, or Xi and it is all true for all the fascist regimes of the world and in history.

And Nemik's observation on how revolution start and grow:
2/5

After I explained how the russian soldiers in #Makiivka died during a firefight initiated by one of them feigning surrender and opening fire, @nytimes writer @malachybrowne tried to dissect my analysis.
As it turns out, one of his observations makes it even more obvious
1/n

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1594727807422185473

the Ukrainian troops had no other choice and did nothing wrong; and that the russian soldiers on the ground had no chance once their comrade initiated a firefight.

Here is Browne's tweet:

2/n

https://twitter.com/malachybrowne/status/1594850625841422338

Were the russians in Makiivka executed?

No. And I will explain all the facts in this thread 🧵:

Yesterday the @nytimes published an article about the dead russians in Makiivka... and didn't bother to ask a single military expert, officer, weapons expert, or Ukrainian.
1/n Instead they went to an Assistant Adjunct Professor for Epidemiology at UC Berkeley, who is quoted: “It looks like most of them were shot in the head,” Dr. Rohini Haar, medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights, said in an interview.

Wrong. And a military expert would
2/n

All the people calling what happened in Makiivka a "war crime" know fuck shit about surrender procedures.

Surrenders of enemy forces larger than one's own force are TRAINED and follow procedures. The Ukrainian troops followed the procedure and because of that they are alive.
1/7 If the enemy wants to surrender but outnumbers you, then you tell the enemy soldiers to move unarmed and with their hands up to a spot in front of one or two of your machine guns.

Make all the enemy troops lay down. Now if one of them changes his mind - he is in the machine
2/7

Here is a photo of Poland's RAT-31DL FADR radar at Łabunie.
This radar is 40 km from Przewodów, where the missiles exploded.
That radar is barely 10 years old and has a 11x7 m antenna. It is one of the best radars NATO has. And it feeds directly into the Polish Air Force's
1/4 Air Operations Centre in Pyry. The Poles see in real time EVERYTHING that flies towards their country from the East for 500 km.

Poland knows EXACTLY where those missiles came from.

AND Pyry feeds directly into NATO's Combined Air Operations Centre Uedem.

NATO knows EXACTLY
2/4

The reasons Italy's Army never received all the funds to modernize its heavy equipment are:

1) an army doesn't need main battle tanks, tracked IFVs, long range air defense systems, self-propelled artillery, armored bridgelayers, etc. if its adversary are the Taliban.

1/n 2) Italy focused heavily on modernizing its Navy and Air Force equipment, which costs muuuuuuuch more than army equipment.

Two F-35 (or two Eurofighter) cost the same as the yearly salaries for an entire army brigade. Italy bought 96 Eurofighter and 90 F-35.

2/n