11/24/2023 0 Comments Drone repairIt’s not for no reason that Ukraine has reactivated scores of ex-Soviet armored recovery vehicles-and acquired scores of additional ARVs from Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and other allies. They had to maneuver in a tight spot, moving very slowly on a narrow road, avoiding going off-road into a mined field. “Right under our noses, they hit an armored vehicle, and an evacuation vehicle arrived for the guys. “They hunt for evacuation teams-both vehicles and stations,” he wrote about the Russians. The recovery process is arduous, Solon'ko stressed. “Even the most critically damaged equipment is recovered and taken for repairs,” Solon'ko wrote. The same toughness that helps Ukraine’s German-made Leopard 2 tanks and American-made Bradley fighting vehicles to protect their crews also means they tend to get damaged instead of destroyed.īut a damaged and abandoned vehicle stays damaged and abandoned until engineers tow it off the battlefield and mechanics fix it up near the front line, or ship it off to a foreign depot for major rework. The Ukrainians by contrast need recovery vehicles, access to repair depots and plenty of spare parts. And Russia’s outlying oblasts still hold significant reserves of manpower. Fortunately for them, Russia’s storage bases still contain tens of thousands of Soviet-vintage armored vehicles. As they deploy disposable vehicles and crews on one-way missions, the Russians need a large reserve of replacement vehicles and crews. well, so be it.ĭifferent ways of thinking demand different material processes. If the military price of that mindset is the loss of the crews’ training and experience. Seemingly insensitive to the human cost of their weapons-design philosophy, Russian commanders write off vehicles, bury their crews-and simply replace them with identical vehicles and freshly-mobilized personnel. “Given that Russia has greater mass than Ukraine, the accumulation of experience and longevity of troops is strategically vital for the [armed forces of Ukraine,” according to Watling and Reynolds. Leaving aside the moral and ethical considerations, this dichotomy matters because Russian forces greatly outnumber Ukrainian forces. Life support systems are a secondary consideration.” “By contrast, with Soviet-legacy platforms, the compromise of the vehicle’s armor is also usually catastrophic for those inside it. “There is a heavy emphasis in Western platforms on the survivability of dismounts even if the vehicle is mission-killed,” the analysts continued. “Ukrainian troops note that Western-provided platforms are vastly superior to their Soviet-legacy protected mobility platforms for one fundamental reason: crew survivability,” Watling and Reynolds wrote. ![]() ![]() But it also places the onus on Ukraine’s allies to help repair battle-damaged vehicles and maintain Ukrainian brigades’ front-line strength.Īnalysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds noted this technology-driven shift in thinking in their latest study for the Royal United Services Institute in London. That has the effect of preserving Ukrainian forces’ human capital: their training and experience.
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