Another big tell in the casualty counts are the Russian KIA:WIA ratios, which appear to be around 1:2 right now. By comparison, US casualty rates throughout GWOT were around 1:7-8. This is because we strapped insane amounts of personal body armor to every guy/gal outside the wire (x4 E-SAPI plates) and then kept our combat units dismount…
Another big tell in the casualty counts are the Russian KIA:WIA ratios, which appear to be around 1:2 right now. By comparison, US casualty rates throughout GWOT were around 1:7-8. This is because we strapped insane amounts of personal body armor to every guy/gal outside the wire (x4 E-SAPI plates) and then kept our combat units dismounted for the most part save for insert/exfils in some cases (logistical convoys are the exception, but they're not combat units).
The point is: BMPs and T-72s are ATGM/IED-magnets, and if the Russian military spends most of its time relying on motorized armor for force protection, they will continue to see their guys get burnt alive inside of scrap vehicles at a rate of 2-8 guys per ATGM. That's where the rate of change comes from: multiple personnel kills per effective ATGM deployed. When you dismount your infantry they can't be effectively targeted by ATGMs, or certainly not as easily when they're all sitting inside of an APC. The enemy has to rely on using small arms fire to take out dispersed ground patrols, which gets a lot more dicey than firing off an ATGM and then dipping out. Bullets go both ways and artillery fire can be called in if within range. The biggest tactical error Russia is making right now is keeping a lot of their guys inside of armored vehicles that are more vulnerable than had the conscripts simply gotten out and patrolled instead of sitting inside of a BMP-2 or Tigr. You can survive bullet wounds taken on patrol. You *cannot* survive a catastrophic ATGM hit on an armored troop transport or an Mi-24 shootdown using MANPADs.
There is a false sense of security when you are sitting in a bulletproof box, especially in the era of man portable ATM systems that are reasonably effective--especially against something like a BMP.
For those of you interested in Travis' comment (really sounds like he has a lot of expertise!) but who, like me, don't have his military knowledge of acronyms, I looked some of them up: WIA: Wounded in Action (I knew that KIA is Killed in Action), GWOT: Global War on Terrorism, BMP is a Russian Infantry fighting vehicle; I think a tank, ATGM: Anti-Tank Guided Missile, and APC: Armored Personnel Carrier.
I sympathize, Travis. My career was in special education, and talk about acronyms!! I appreciate your knowledge and experience, and fortunately, "Dr. Google", as I say to my grandkids, can answer a lot of questions.
Everybody does it, my late wife was a proposal manager for a large engineering company, one of her jobs was to get everybody to define their acronyms so she could put it in the proposal. She was explaining why to a group of engineers of various disiplines, she used EOP and gave a couple of examples, one was something to do with environmental studies and I don't remember the other one. An architect came up with End of Pipe and the road guy, said no it is end of pavement. proving why she wasn't just asking dumb questions.
The Navy has its own particular language for a lot of things--plus the usual load of acronyms that any large institution generates. Sometimes when writing or talking about my experiences there I forget to translate myself ;)
Another big tell in the casualty counts are the Russian KIA:WIA ratios, which appear to be around 1:2 right now. By comparison, US casualty rates throughout GWOT were around 1:7-8. This is because we strapped insane amounts of personal body armor to every guy/gal outside the wire (x4 E-SAPI plates) and then kept our combat units dismounted for the most part save for insert/exfils in some cases (logistical convoys are the exception, but they're not combat units).
The point is: BMPs and T-72s are ATGM/IED-magnets, and if the Russian military spends most of its time relying on motorized armor for force protection, they will continue to see their guys get burnt alive inside of scrap vehicles at a rate of 2-8 guys per ATGM. That's where the rate of change comes from: multiple personnel kills per effective ATGM deployed. When you dismount your infantry they can't be effectively targeted by ATGMs, or certainly not as easily when they're all sitting inside of an APC. The enemy has to rely on using small arms fire to take out dispersed ground patrols, which gets a lot more dicey than firing off an ATGM and then dipping out. Bullets go both ways and artillery fire can be called in if within range. The biggest tactical error Russia is making right now is keeping a lot of their guys inside of armored vehicles that are more vulnerable than had the conscripts simply gotten out and patrolled instead of sitting inside of a BMP-2 or Tigr. You can survive bullet wounds taken on patrol. You *cannot* survive a catastrophic ATGM hit on an armored troop transport or an Mi-24 shootdown using MANPADs.
There is a false sense of security when you are sitting in a bulletproof box, especially in the era of man portable ATM systems that are reasonably effective--especially against something like a BMP.
For those of you interested in Travis' comment (really sounds like he has a lot of expertise!) but who, like me, don't have his military knowledge of acronyms, I looked some of them up: WIA: Wounded in Action (I knew that KIA is Killed in Action), GWOT: Global War on Terrorism, BMP is a Russian Infantry fighting vehicle; I think a tank, ATGM: Anti-Tank Guided Missile, and APC: Armored Personnel Carrier.
I need to work on cleaning up the old jargon, thanks for the translation :-)
I sympathize, Travis. My career was in special education, and talk about acronyms!! I appreciate your knowledge and experience, and fortunately, "Dr. Google", as I say to my grandkids, can answer a lot of questions.
Everybody does it, my late wife was a proposal manager for a large engineering company, one of her jobs was to get everybody to define their acronyms so she could put it in the proposal. She was explaining why to a group of engineers of various disiplines, she used EOP and gave a couple of examples, one was something to do with environmental studies and I don't remember the other one. An architect came up with End of Pipe and the road guy, said no it is end of pavement. proving why she wasn't just asking dumb questions.
The Navy has its own particular language for a lot of things--plus the usual load of acronyms that any large institution generates. Sometimes when writing or talking about my experiences there I forget to translate myself ;)
Thanks Mary! (And thank you Travis for your expert commentary.)