[Janes] The Russian Ground Forces has completed the reactivation of the 1st Guards Tank Army in Russia's Western Military District (WMD) and is to form two new armoured divisions, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced.
A session of the Defence Ministry Board, chaired by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, discussed the reactivation as part of the development of Russia's quick reaction force. The session also revealed that Russia will form two new armoured divisions near the cities of Voronezh (in the WMD) and Chelyabinsk (in the Central Military District: CMD) in 2016.
According to the MoD, the 1st Guards was reformed on 1 February and will be equipped with T-72B3 and T-80 main battle tanks (MBTs). A Russian tank army is typically equipped with 500 MBTs.
Meanwhile, Colonel General Vladimir Zarudnitsky, commander of the CMD, said that the mainstay of the new Chelyabinsk-based armoured division will be cutting-edge MBTs. Chelyabinsk is close to Nizhny Tagil, home of Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod, and Col Gen Zarudnitsky's comments could well indicate that this unit will be the first to receive the new T-14 Armata MBT and other new Armata-based vehicles.
As for the armoured division in the Voronezh Region, the 1st Separate Armoured Brigade has been garrisoned there in the town of Boguchar since 2015. It looks like this brigade will be transformed into a division.
#1
I not an ARMA-phile but as I understand from Daddy's tales of war in Germany, tanks are a mobile artillery and mortar platform for advancing infantry and are used to provide occupational defense. Is this a move to provide a capability, or fill a hole in a regional combined arms strategy?
#2
Yes...but the big question is: Will they reactivate Zhukov?
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/11/2016 16:08 Comments ||
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#3
Your father is right with regard to the Russian attitude towards tanks, which differs from the US in that Americans prefer infantry fight infantry and tanks fight tanks, while the Russian think tanks can fight everything.
The significance of this announcement is that the 1st Guards Tank Army has its lineage in the 1st Guards Tank Brigade, which deployed in Moscow just after October, 1941, under the command of then General Katukov just after the disaster at Vyaz'ma. The Russians will observe the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow this coming December.
Also significant is that October, 1941 was when the Russian disbanded every last one of their armored units and reformed them all as brigades, the basic maneuver component of the tank army, the first of which went into action in November 1942, Stalingrad.
It wasn't until 2009 that the Russians went back to reorganizing their forces into brigades, and now the 1st Tank Army emerges as the first of its corps sized forces organized with brigades.
Why THAT is significant is that brigade headquarters are usually larger, are staffed with more senior officers, is commanded by a flag officer and is expected to fight independently.
And as the article said the 1st Tank Army is deployed near Volodya's capital and is expected to be a fire brigade/rapid reaction force.
It will be interesting to see whether Russian commanders decide to make their armies where they can be task organized, or if they will be of fixed size with fixed components.
Task organizing make larger formations better able to deal with circumstances as they arise.
h/t Instapundit
...As a pillar of the progressive movement, the feminists want to be on the side of the refugees flooding the EU from the Middle East and Northern Africa. After all, the refugees are an oppressed minority group, and therefore should be on the feminist team fighting the Old World's white patriarchy.
But the masses of refugees include lots of men. Lots.
In fact, an estimated 75 percent of refugees to the European Union last year were men, and they weren't exactly keen on fighting for women's rights.
In fact, most of these guys really like the patriarchy, and a patriarchy far more aggressively anti-woman than anything privileged Western feminists have encountered in the liberal enclaves of Berlin and Brussels. Be careful what you ask for.
#1
AH now there's the rub, "privileged Western feminists". Their lives have definitely changed.
New clothing lines of the future, I can see it now. Women will dress like men and men will dress like women. Travel in pairs in daylight only. All public places will be a daily adventure of fear. No go zones. If they stray it will be their own fault if attacked.
#3
The useful idiots actually believing the lies of 'all cultures are equal'. It was a trope in the Left's ever waging war to destroy Western Civilization. There's a reason why all the worlds debris and detritus march to the last vestiges of Western Civ, because theirs is such a s*#! hole. Those who've managed to actually copy most of it, the east Asians are too smart to allow them in by the boatloads.
#9
Send them all to ISIS to have them show those men the error of their ways. They will instantly become beta males and do whatever you want fembots. Really. Go now.
another leftist source doesn't like Hillary
... She not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and significant influence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures.
Remember when getting those two for the price of one was considered a selling point?
That record, and her statements from that era, should be scrutinized. In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. "They are not just gangs of kids anymore," she said. "They are often the kinds of kids that are called 'super-predators.' No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel."
Both Clintons now express regret over the crime bill, and Hillary says she supports criminal-justice reforms to undo some of the damage that was done by her husband's administration. But on the campaign trail, she continues to invoke the economy and country that Bill Clinton left behind as a legacy she would continue. So what exactly did the Clinton economy look like for black Americans?
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/11/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
An interesting screed that, essentially, does little more than blame Conservatives.
Iran’s oil-dependent economy has been recently freed from the pressure of international sanctions, thanks to the July 2015 nuclear deal, but it seems the country will suffer the negative effects of embargos for a long time.
During the sanctions period, some people and entities made big money bypassing international sanctions on Iran, leading to intensification of corruption in the country, which has already been suffering from lack of transparency.
Iran’s Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi has recently said that lack of transparency in economy and business environment, which was significantly obvious during the sanctions era, remains one of Iran’s economic problems.
“The Iranian administration now makes efforts in the areas of transparency, anti-corruption and legal protection of people and entrepreneurs, as well as the promotion of business environment,” Pourmohammadi told reporters in Tehran Feb. 10.
A day earlier, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, in a similar statement, called for taking measures to counter corruption in the country. He also criticized corruption in an organization without revealing its name.
“When we want to produce, a corrupt organization, which I don't want to name or how it can smuggle [goods into country], does not allow the country to grow,” said the Iranian president.
Rouhani noted that ending monopoly and allowing competition will boost the economy.
It is not the first time that the issue of smuggling by some governmental organizations in Iran comes into the agenda.
Earlier in 2011, Iran’s then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a controversial statement that the “smuggler brothers” were using the navy docks in southern Iran to conduct their business.
Many experts agreed at the time that the term “smuggler brothers” was a reference to the IRGC commanders.
Earlier, Ahmad Tavakkoli, a senior Iranian MP, warned that systematic corruption is threatening the future of the Islamic Republic.
“Not military aggression, neither military coup, nor even velvet revolution can have any impact on the Islamic Republic, but corruption is a certain threat,” Tavakkoli said December 2015.
He also said Iran has reached a state of systematic corruption, which means that the institutions tasked to battle corruption in the judiciary branch, the security forces and parliament are themselves corrupt to some extent.
Following months of negotiations with six world powers, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear activities, in exchange to removal of the international sanctions. Last January, the US and the EU lifted their nuclear-related sanctions, as the deal, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, aka nuclear deal) came into force.
Although the “sanctions story” is already over, it apparently will be used in the future as a tool by Iranian officials to cover the economic shortcomings in the country, including the outstanding corruption.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/11/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Corruption, lack of transparency major challenges for post-Obama America.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.