Quote:
Originally Posted by Ugly Kid Joe
It looks like Israel is finalizing a deal to export about 200 Mk II and MkIII Merkava tanks to Cyprus and Morrocco. Cyprus currently operates ~80 T-80U's and Morocco has a fleet of ~160 T-72's. Thoughts are that the T-80's and T-72's will be then donated to Ukraine.
Interesting in that Merkava's have not been exported from Israel to date. The US has to give approval (which I think it already has) as the tanks have US made engines. Also interesting is that Morrocco operates ~400 M1A1's and is rumoured to have already sent some T-72's to Ukraine.
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/0...-morocco-will/ |
Side note, I find it fascinating how this is probably going to effect Russia's arms export industry. This is a major cash cow for the Russians, even under sanctions.
But countries have to be looking at the exceedingly poor performance of Russian armor, aircraft and naval assets and be thinking twice about how good they actually are.
Russian tanks especially have to be looked at poor performers, The Russians never committed the T-14 Armata's their next generation tanks for anything but indirect firing missions, not using them in assaults.
The Russian airforce failed to gain advantage in the sky against what was originally called a 2nd rate Ukraine airforce.
Also the Russians are getting some pretty big lessons around the poor training of their soldiers. They're learning the same lessons as Afghanistan provided and Vietnam provided the Americans'. After the Soviet Union fell and Russian defense dollars were slashed they talked about a professionalization of a smaller military. Clearly they got the second point right in the wrong way and failed on the first part.