Russian tanks

I don't watch TV news, or a lot of youtube news about Ukraine. (If you are curious about the details, Rantburg has had Russian summaries, Ukranian summaries, "Perspective from the Breakaway Republics" summaries, and a few misc stories if you want to try to tease out the facts on the ground from the claims and counterclaims. I haven't tried.)

Clickbait on Russian tanks getting blasted is everywhere. They are dramatic, David beats Goliath, and many have a strong bit of gee-whiz look-at-US-technology.

Russian tank designers weren't idiots. Autoloaders are very useful things, even if they sometimes try to load your arm and having the propellant out in the open is a pop-top risk. The fewer people you have to stuff in a tank the lower the profile can be, and the harder to hit it will be. There are tradeoffs, and when used as designed their tanks are reasonably capable. Of course, the issue is "used as designed." They don't do well in a column with enemies at the side--nobody's do. The Ukranians have managed to shape the battlefield in some places to tanks' disadvantage.

It might be interesting to plot a density map of Russian tank and armored vehicle losses over a map of where they've been deployed. I've got a suspicion some places have much lower loss rates than others.

And with respect to the gee-whiz stuff--I strongly suspect that by the next war there'll be countermeasures for those anti-tank missiles. (I gather Russian pilots are getting around misfeatures in their military GPS by taping commercial units in the cockpit.) And unless the political officers are able to remain dominant, I'll bet the Russians will be rethinking some of their army and navy structures. And I'm very curious what sorts of countermeasures people will be developing for drone recon and drone swarm and drone attacks.