The corps’ 33rd Mechanized Brigade might be the oddest of them all. Classified documents that a braggadocious U.S. Air National Guard airman leaked online indicate the new 33rd Brigade will possess a battalion of 32 German-made Leopard 2 tanks, including 14 of the bestThat’s a strange combination of vehicles. The 33rd has some of Ukraine heaviest and best tanks, but no tracked infantry fighting vehicles.
A four-wheel, 14-ton MaxxPro with its top-mounted heavy machine gun, three crew and four passengers isan IFV. It’s too tall, too lightly armed and protected and lacking in cross-country mobility. Most MRAPs are optimized for traveling along roads and resisting mine and bomb explosions targeting their bottoms and sides.
They not only deploy the MRAPs in their designed role—transporting infantry teams through dangerous conditions right up to the edge of a battle—they also have worked out assault tactics for the armored trucks. “Units successfully employ MRAP vehicles by understanding the vehicle’s capabilities and limitations,” the U.S. Armyin a 2011 update to its Field Manual 3-06. The Ukrainians did exactly that—and deployed their MRAPs in city fights.
The longer the barrel in a tank or artillery gun, the more pressure the gun can build up before it ejects its shell. The greater the pressure, the greater the shell’s peak velocity—and the greater its range and penetrative power.should be able to penetrate the equivalent of a thousand millimeters of steel—enough to destroy even the best-protected Russian tank from thousands of yards away.