Radio War Nerd EP #390 — Armored Vehicles in Ukraine's Counteroffensive, feat. John Griffiths

Great episode but missing a lot. The Ukrainian successes in the fall of 2022 were primarily due to a tactical Russian withdrawal. And even during the early part of the war when the Russians suffered larger amounts of casualties they still destroyed much of the Ukrainian military’s combat power. The Russians have always had dominance when it comes to ISR and strike. There is nothing Ukraine can do to win this war. Nothing.

Lancet, lancet, lancet. You guys should do an episode on the Lancet https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1691343713308459008

I think this is the monument you were discussing...it used to be next to an Ikea: http://wikimapia.org/3596187/Monument-to-the-defenders-of-Moscow#/photo/6225148

I was wondering if modern tunneling methods could be applied to go below the mines. Apparently I was not the only one. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2020-04-01

imagining dumbfuck NATO officers shouting AUDACITY AUDACITY AUDACITY as they try and fail to chase conscripts towards the enemy trenches

Attack helicopters are extremely vulnerable. now defence helicopters on the other hand...

Terrific guest by the way

You guys talked about drones but I was surprised you did not talk more about how well Lancets work in combination with mine fields. They can be used precisely to target Armoured Breaching Vehicles, and in my untutored opinion they are harder to thwart than artillery or Ka52s. I think that minefields+Lancets are the biggest innovation of this war.

Mines over Matter.

I would just drive on the parts of ground with no mines unde rthem

If I remember correctly the Bangalore torpedo makes an appearance in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE (1980) builds a longer scene around it. Basically the sergeant sends out one buck private at a time to build this long, erector-set chain of pipes; when the enemy kills that soldier, the sergeant blows his whistle and the next boy goes out there, and, after enough dead GIs are scattered over the beach, they have a working contraption. It's a great movie - "episodic" as they sometimes say. In the scene, Lee Marvin is the sergeant and the last young man who completes the device is Mark Hamill, same year as THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. (I believe he's 2nd-billed under Marvin.) There's great tension when Hamill's GI shows great (and understandable!!!) reluctance to take up the project, and the sarge begins to fire rounds over his head; Hamill looks back and they have this wordless conversation that goes something like (Hamill): You're just enough of a sonofabitch to kill me if I don't get a move on, aren't you? (Marvin - you can imagine his stone face): Yep. The D-Day sequence in TBRO obviously was outshone by Spielberg but, on what was probably a tiny fragment of the later movie's production budget, it's pretty darn harrowing, relying on a lot of low-budget ingenuity and suggestion. Maybe you guys have seen it and talked about it previously, but if not, strongly recommended. Also, Hamill gets a love scene with the late great beauty of French cinema, Stephane Audran. She plays a resistance leader who gets her pick of which of the virile young men in Marvin's unit she gets to take to bed, and she picks ol' Luke Skywalker. (It's way less corny than that sounds - the prevailing mood of the film is melancholy with a lot of wry, macabre humor.)

I was in the Engineers, mine and IED clearance is mostly done by hand. To clear a mixed AP/AT mine field at night it took me 1 hour to clear a 1m x 20m lane and it was the most miserable thing I've done in my life.

Tanks for the great episode

Great episode, such an affable and knowledgeable guest in ways most hardware conversations aren't. Would love something similar to Totally Tanked about boats.

Perfectly timed episode drop for all us dads who have a weekend full of yard work ahead of us.

Excellent episode. One of your top guests.

Great work from a clearly under-the-weather Brendon, is the RWN purple heart in the mail?

Just want to note I was slightly out on the numbers of armoured breaching vehicles. 239 produced in total. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1150_Assault_Breacher_Vehicle The broader point stands that they are rare and special vehicles.

I feel seen and heard and therefore valued as a patreon customer by hearing that the m113 is a death trap pretty sure most of the APC's sent by the west were those at 400 (around 1/2 to 2/3rds I believe). Thank you aussie john

Any chance we could get some episodes about the eastern front of World War II for us angloids? I know the western front of ww II is talked to death in the Angloid world, but the eastern front is a completely different beast. We are talking 100s of thousands of death and causalities and POWs in just single battles. Like something like the Rzhev Meat Grinder is a huge battle that is hardly known outside the former ussr and Germany.