Exclusive: ‘Most heavily mined country on Earth’ critically short of sappers and equipment to clear frontlines

  • bluGill
    link
    fedilink
    211 months ago

    One more reason you need to scale fast, you can’t always guess what is important. For months we heard about tanks, but nobody thought too hard about mine stuff. So the tanks are not as useful as they could be while the little mine clearance equipment they have gets working.

    • tal
      link
      fedilink
      111 months ago

      I’m pretty sure that people did think about mines, as there was anti-mine stuff involved. Just didn’t expect the density and depth of them.

      I remember Michael Kofman saying that the density of mines substantially exceeded what Russian military doctrine prescribed.

      My impression is that one major issue with mines for tanks was that there were triple-stacked anti-tank mines, and that this was enough to disable anti-mine rollers in front of tanks.

      The other issue is that it sounds like there was better ability to counter the MICLICs than had been expected, since I saw some conversation about them being vulnerable. I don’t know for sure if it was via artillery or long-range ATGMs, but one or the other was apparently hitting them.