and they've got defense in depth. artillery covers every inch. Every Swiss man is required to serve in the military or in the alternative civilian service. I suspect they'll be fine.
then you still have tons of defense in depth bud. Trading space for time while enemies struggle to overcome MOUNTAINS because you bright lights popped the tunnel entrances gives you time to prep other shit.
sauce: They're still there, right, the Alps? they didn't go away?
This works well against a WWII level enemy, like the fascists in the shithole to the east of Ukraine. Against a modern enemy with USA level technology it won't hold a week, because the alpine bunkers are built to withstand WWII artillery, not modern missiles and stuff.
Oh I forgot you retired your air force. Those F18s would have helped. And your ADA, what with patriot missile batteries, yeah those all sucked good thing you got rid of it.
pffffttt..
mate, I get it, you're prior service <something> from switzerland; I don't think you understand how under/unequipped some countries actually are. And you've got generations of potential defenders who are basic trained and ready to be called up. It's hard to find much credibility in your premise.
hey if it's any consolation, the US is never going to invade fucking switzerland. we have our own mountains and cheese, and you can keep the nazi gold lol
Yeah, I expect mountains are good defensive terrain even with modern technology, but they don't make you invincible. I don't know what the other guy is going on about.
gearbox did not allow for shifting into reverse while the vehicle was moving
Ummm this is probably like, a good thing? You don't want to crank 20 tonnes suddenly in reverse when it's moving full forward.
The other things are pretty bad, true. Especially the uncommanded turrent movements, that can really chop off a limb in the wrong situation. The gun firing is probably not quite as bad because I assume most of the time it wouldn't actually be loaded.
The gun firing is probably not quite as bad because I assume most of the time it wouldn't actually be loaded.
Assumptions are typically frowned upon when dealing with munitions. Not to imply that you're incorrect with that line of thought. The issue comes into play when the tank operator makes the same assumption and happens to get a little cold. Guns really should only have one trigger.
You know, I actually don't know what Switzerland is like, at least at altitudes where the cities are. Is it much colder than the rest of central Europe?
Were Soviet tanks bad? I thought they were serviceable, cheap, sort of utilitarian, maybe not the highest caliber but you could make tons of them and that was the point. Like beetles
Well, it depends on the doctrine. When you use a T tank with western doctrine (survivability>number) you have to prop them up massively. And then they become even harder to service and use than any western tank.
They used similar tactics to everyone in WWII. The human wave thing was partly derived from the accounts of ex-Nazis who were sore losers, AskHistorians had an answer about it. I don't know about Afghanistan, but that was a different kind of war.
Now, yeah. And it's going about as well as you'd expect.
You have some right points, but also in one of the most used tanks (I forgot which one), crew were attaching a pillow to a sharp metal corner that you would hit with your head all the time. I'd call that utilitarian, as head trauma was avoidable in some cases.
Soviet tanks were usually very good tankwise, but lacking in softer stats. Their big problems were that they needed to arm a huge conscript (or even worse, draftee) army, so they hoarded everything past obsolescence and most of it was below standard (T-62 wasn't that good even back then, but they're still in service) and the lagging electronics industry meaning their night sights, FCS, and in particular thermals were awful. There's solid argument that until the advent of NATO "box" tanks and the Rheinmetall 120mm soviet designs were better than everyone elses, but beyond they were quickly overtaken.
AFAIK they aren't. Western tanks are usually more optimised to be serviced in the field which makes them larger to be able to easily get to all the parts. Soviet tanks are more optimised on a lower profile while trying to cram as much stuff in there as possible.
