In “Who Is Open to Authoritarian Governance Within Western Democracies?” Ariel Malka, Yphtach Lelkes, Bert N. Bakker and Eliyahu Spivack examined World Values Survey data from 14 Western democracies and separate polling from Canada and the United States:“Two key findings emerged,” they wrote. “The first is that a broad conservative cultural orientation — involving traditional sexual morality and gender views, religiosity, anti-immigration attitudes and related beliefs and values — is consistently associated with openness to authoritarian governance.”The attraction of these voters to the MAGA movement, Malka and his co-authors argued, “suggests that authoritarian governance may be perceived as an efficient way of enforcing social conformity, upholding religious traditionalism and resisting multicultural diversity.”…The second key finding is that “left-wing economic views are in many cases a part of the ideological package that most strongly resonates with openness to authoritarian governance”:Specifically, the combination of right-wing cultural and left-wing economic attitudes — what has been dubbed a protection-based attitude package — was associated with higher levels of openness to authoritarian governance than was any other attitude package in half of the nations represented in the samples, including all five of the English-speaking democracies studied (Australia, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and the United States).
From here.
From Wikipedia. The 2023 data above does not exactly track the 2024 UN data analyzed below.
Russia has annexed four regions, or oblasts, of eastern Ukraine, although it does not control all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Moscow also controls Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine which it annexed in 2014. Russia's control over the regions is not internationally recognized, and Kyiv has vowed to reclaim the annexed territories.
Motivation
I've complained that surface combatants in the world's navies are too vulnerable - to submarines with anti-ship missiles and torpedos, to other ships with anti-ship missiles and torpedos, to aircraft with bombs and anti-ship missiles, to land based anti-ship missiles, and to sea mines.
Surface combatants also put lots of people in harm's way. It is like going to a battle in a land war in an RV. Also, current warships have at least twice as many crew as would be necessary in a more modern, more automated ship.
A Notional Navy Group To Replace A Destroyer
What might an alternative, at a cost comparable to that of a current technology Arleigh Burke-class destroyer of about $2 billion each, which provides 96 vertical launch system (VLS) missiles, and some secondary armaments, defense systems, and sensors?
* Suppose that you had 12 catamaran style missile boats with about 200 tons each (or less), with 8 VLS class sized missiles each, that could be reloaded at sea, and accommodations for a very small crew of four for just 24 hours, similar to China's Houbei class 220 ton (140 foot long) Type 22 missile boat.
It would be powered by batteries with 24 hours of power. With the energy density of solid-state batteries that would require to battery units of about 20 tons each (the total battery size is in the ballpark of the amount of fuel needed for a comparable sized Skjold-class missile boat which requires 35-40 tons of fuel with a range of about 800 nautical miles, which is about 32 hours of operation, and 270 tons of displacement, benchmarking to the Ellen E-Ferry, also here). Collectively, they would have the same VLS class missile capacity as a destroyer. They would be minimally manned, rather than fully unmanned (which would be technologically feasible), in order to undermine the effectiveness of methods like electronic jamming that can undermine remotely operated drones, to avoid the hard to quantify risks of having military armaments controlled purely by an artificial intelligence system, and to have someone alert and ready to immediately summon assistance in the event of an attempted boarding or if something else goes wrong. These boats would have some minimal additional weapons and/or active defense systems designed to thwart income missiles and drones including electric jamming systems and a 5 megawatt laser and a mounted heavy machine gun. These would have a crew of four. It would also have a small, electric drone that would be primarily for reconnaissance but would have an equivalent of a 6.8 mm round rifle. These would have the ability to go considerably faster than traditional naval surface combatants (about 80 km/hr v. about 55 km/hr for a modern Arleigh Burke destroyer), although they wouldn't need to be terribly fast. They could operate in shallow littoral waters. Lasers would reduce the supply chain relative to canon round or shells or missiles.
* These missile boats would be escorted by two catamaran style escort corvettes of under 750 tons each with hydrofoils, with no VLS class missiles or torpedos or large naval artillery guns, that would have anti-aircraft missiles suitable for jet fighters and bombers at higher altitudes, a small boarding speed boat, and armaments including at least one 5 megawatt laser and electronic jamming, javelin missile sized missiles, stinger missiles, one or more 25mm-40mm canons, and remotely operated 12.7mm machine guns, designed to take on missiles, airborne drones, small surface boats (e.g. pirates and boarding boats and armed speed boats), unmanned surface drones like the adapted jet ski drones used in the Black Sea by Ukraine. These would be vaguely similar to Swedish Visby-class corvettes or the U.S. Navy Pegasus-class patrol boats (see also here).
These would also have accommodations for only a minimal crew for just 24 hours. It would be powered by batteries with 24 hours of power. These might have a crew of twelve. It would also have a medium sized electric drone that would be primarily for reconnaissance but would have an equivalent of a 12.7 mm round rifle. One escort corvette in the group would have a sea adapted AH-64 helicopter gunship, and the other would have a more typical naval military helicopter (e.g. a Sea Hawk SH-60) suited to carrying a boarding party or search and rescue, and would have its own somewhat less powerful armaments and could provide limited anti-submarine warfare capabilities. These corvettes would have the ability to go considerably faster than traditional naval surface combatants (about 110 km/hr v. about 55 km/hr for a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer), which it would use to chase small craft, to rush to the aid of a missile boat in peril, or to evade torpedos and shells. They could operate in shallow littoral waters. Lasers would reduce the supply chain relative to canon round or shells or missiles.
* Crews on the missile boats and escort corvettes would be replaced every twelve hours, and these surface combatants would have half of its batteries switched out, if electric, every twelve hours at the same time, from a small manned 60 ton tender submarine with a crew of two (similar to the U.S. Navy's Dry Combat Submersible), itself powered by batteries. The tender submarine would surface below the ship between the catamarans so that it would not be visible from above or from the sides shielded by the catamaran hulls. There might be four tender submarines.
* Additional ammunition and parts and supplies for the missile boats and escort corvettes would be stored on a 200 ton supply submarine (which is bigger than the eighty tons of the U.S. Navy's Orca drone), powered by batteries. Most of the time, this would operate as an unmanned drone in the vicinity of the watercraft that it supports. But when resupply was actually needed, a tender submarine would bring a small crew of two to four sailors to it and that crew would surface the supply submarine in the same place as the tender submarine appears and would load the ammunition or supplies onto the boat or corvette (e.g. additional VLS missiles, which each weigh about 1.5 tons, or repair parts, or attack helicopter missiles or attack helicopter fuel). The group might have two supply submarines.
* There would be about four fully unmanned 15 ton sensor drone surface boats (similar in size to World War I sixty foot long coastal torpedo motor boats), powered by batteries, armed only with sensors, although it would all be networked. Segregating radar systems on these unmanned surface vessels from the missile boats and escort corvettes would make the armed vessels less vulnerable to missiles that target radar sources.
A prototype medium unmanned surface vessel from the U.S. Navy looks like this:
* The aerial reconnaissance drones armed with small arms, and the sensor drones would be recharged by the missile boats and escort corvettes to which they were assigned from those manned surface vessel's batteries.
* There would be a single large nuclear submarine mothership of several thousand tons that would house the crews for the missile boats and escort corvettes and tender submarines and supply submarines when they are not on duty on their vessels in addition to its own crew, that would operate in deep waters, at perhaps a typical 100 meters of depth, at some distance (often as much as twenty kilometers) from the surface parts of the group. It would not have any torpedos or missiles of its own, and would have only the bare minimum of on board sensors and communications equipment, in an effort to minimize detection. It would provide long term living quarters for about 200 sailors and one squad of fifteen Marines. The mothership would have a desalinization plant and would carry long term food supplies for the crew. If this navy group ran short on ammunition or other supplies, empty supply submarines could be send home in drone mode, while a new full uncrewed supply submarine could be sent to replace it, without the whole group having to return to a naval base.
It would house about 50% more personnel than a U.S. 6,900 ton Los Angeles class nuclear attack submarine, but would have a lot of space freed up due to its lack of missiles and torpedos and related sensor systems (and a somewhat smaller engine), and it wouldn't have to be able to go quite as deep as a nuclear attack submarine (which is 200-300 meters) allowing for a thinner hull. So. it might actually be smaller than a Los Angeles class submarine, perhaps on the order of 5,100 tons with a dedicated crew of thirty-six sailors (oil tankers and container ships often have crews of twenty-four sailors or less) excluding the Marine squad. The crew space is a pretty modest share of a submarine's total displacement as this diagram of a Los Angeles class attack submarine indicates:
* The submarine tenders and supply submarines would dock to the mothership which would have an induction charging station for them to recharge as needed.
* The submarine tenders would take used batteries from the missile boats and escort corvettes to the mothership to exterior induction charging station brackets to recharge for up to ten hours if necessary from the mothership's nuclear power plant supplied grid, and then would be returned and traded out for the now used batteries at the missile boats and escort corvettes.
* The total tonnage of the ships in the naval group would be about 9,700, which is the same as the displacement of a single destroyer. The total crew would be about two-thirds the size of a destroyer's crew (by comparison the Zumwalt-class destroyers have about half the crew of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer despite the fact that the Zumwalt-class destroyers have more than 50% more displacement).
Analysis
A single Arleigh Burke-class destroyer can be destroyed, or at least disabled and removed from action, with a single torpedo or anti-ship missile or sea mine, and puts almost 350 people in harm's way on the front lines of any naval battle. Since it is diesel powered, it need to be resupplied frequently from fixed naval bases or minimally armed tanker ships. It can't even reload VLS missiles at sea. And, it is a huge, slow, non-stealthy target.
In contrast, this navy group would spread that risk over fourteen manned surface combatants and four unmanned ones. The physical area over which the vessels in this naval group including the four sensor vessels, and the group's fourteen reconnaissance drones and two manned helicopters were located, would potentially provide situational awareness of threats and targets than sensors all squeezed onto the footprint of a single vessel. It would take a dozen and a half anti-ship missiles or torpedos to fully sink the entire group instead of one. And, if a vessel was lost, four to twelve sailors (or a few more if a tender submarine or supply submarine was docked with a missile boat or escort corvette at the time, rather than more than three hundred sailor's lives, would be lost.
The surface ships would also be smaller, faster targets, although with the accuracy of modern torpedos and anti-ship missiles that might not matter much.
Submarines are much harder to locate and destroy than surface combatants, and its takes multiple, highly specialized near peer resources that potential adversaries like North Korea and Iran lack, to do so effectively. So, the four tender submarines, two supply submarines, and mothership in the group would have greatly reduced vulnerability relative to the a destroyer. And, even if a few of the tender submarines or supply submarines were destroyed, the naval group could continue to function with only modest impairment. The mothership, by having no major sensors and not using weapons to draw attention to it, by operating at greater depths without ever surfacing, and by being miles away from the surface vessels in the fleet, would be at the lowest risk (although that risk is never zero).
If the mothership were damaged, the submarine tenders and supply ships (which would dump and abandon their cargo) could evacuate many, if not all, sailors on board (more than a third but less than half of whom would be aboard missile boats and escort corvettes and the ten support submarines already). The mothership could also have escape pods in lieu of life boats for sailors would could not be evacuate with its ten supporting submarines.
The group supported by the mothership to go for long periods of time without being resupplied, and could be resupplied covertly by drone submarines when it did need to be resupplied. But since only the mothership would have a nuclear power plant, the risk that this nuclear asset would fall into enemy hands would be reduced. An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer carries about 409 tons of diesel fuel when its full, which allows it to travel about 8,100 km at 37 km/hr (about 219 hours).
Despite the fact that a large portion of the naval group would be underwater, the fourteen armed surface warships would still be effective to "show the flag" which is a maneuver which politicians frequently desire.
There are two main kinds of input we receive from the general public in the U.S.
One is through elections. Access to information about the candidates is mostly superficial, the responsibility of the voter, completely unregulated for truth, involves candidates self-selected for a desire for power, and involves voters who choose to participate on a basis in a way that over represents the least moderate people in the population.
One is through juries. Access to information about the decisions to be made is in depth, the responsibility of people trying to persuade the voter, tightly regulated, involves parties who didn't plan on being in this situation when the event giving rise to the case began, and involves jurors who were required to participate and were chosen to be the most moderate people in the jury pool.
There is a fair case to be made that juries make better decisions than voters do.
New Zealand's government is hardly the most corrupt or ill-intentioned in the nation. But there, as is the case almost everywhere, going back to at least as far as the Old Testament, orphans get a raw deal and are frequently abused.
More than 30% of people in care in New Zealand from 1950 through 2019 were abused and many more were neglected. I suspect that as horrible as this is, that it is worse in many other countries (probably including the U.S.).
The mix of problems in New Zealand is multi-faceted.
Most children in care were Maori (i.e. indigenous Polynesian), even though New Zealand is currently only about 18% Maori, usually in cases where they were removed from their families, putatively, for abuse or neglect. It is a fair guess that Maori children were also on the receiving end of a disproportionately share of the abuse suffered by children within the system. This has echoes of the notorious residential schools in Canada and the U.S., long ago, in addition to the other issues with abuse in orphanages without ethnic bias and issues of the treatment of indigenous people thrown in.
The culpability of New Zealand’s Catholic, Methodist and Anglican churches is also predictable and has been mirrored in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., as well as many other places. Partially related is the religious affiliation of Maori people, of whom there are about 1,075,000 in the world (mostly in New Zealand, but with about 1/6th in Australia and about 21,000 elsewhere):
Given the total population, 0.1% corresponds to about 500 to 1500 people, and 0.2% corresponds to about 1500 to 2500 people.
Of course, while this is dismal, surely a large share of children in care in New Zealand genuinely were victims of abuse and neglect before the government stepped in and removed them from their families.
New Zealand deserves credit, at least, for a thorough investigation, for apologizing, and for resolving to take action. It is also worth noting that New Zealand apparently has a "no-fault accident compensation system" that makes sense as basically a more seamless version of a system where everyone has casualty insurance (it is discussed at the end of this post).
More than 200,000 people are estimated to have been abused by state and religious organizations in New Zealand that had been entrusted with their care, according to the final report from a landmark independent inquiry released on Wednesday.The abuse included sexual assault, electric shocks, chemical restraints, medical experimentation, sterilization, starvation and beatings, said the report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry Into Abuse in Care. Many of the victims were children who had been removed from their families and placed in state, religious or foster care.“For some people this meant years or even decades of frequent abuse and neglect,” the report said. “For some it was a lifetime; for others it led to an unmarked grave.” . . .The inquiry, established in 2018 by the New Zealand government, involved interviewing nearly 2,500 survivors as it examined orphanages, foster care systems, mental health facilities and other forms of care that were charged with supporting 655,000 people from 1950 through 2019. The inquiry’s leaders described it as the widest-ranging examination of its kind in the world.The report noted that most children in care were Indigenous Maori, even though the group makes up a minority of the country’s overall population of five million people, and said that “Maori were often targeted because of their ethnicity.”
Beyond the 200,000 people estimated to have been abused, the report said countless others had suffered neglect. . . .
The inquiry found that even when abuses by government and religious leaders were discovered, the leaders “were rarely held to account for their actions or inactions, which emboldened them to perpetrate further abuse.”Among the inquiry’s 138 recommendations were calls for public apologies from the pope, the archbishop of Canterbury, and New Zealand’s police commissioner and its top civil servant. It also urged the government to overhaul the country’s no-fault accident compensation program to provide tailored support for survivors of abuse.The report prompted New Zealand’s Catholic, Methodist and Anglican churches to promise change. “We will ensure that action follows our review of the inquiry’s findings,” Steve Lowe, president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, said in a statement. “We owe it to survivors,” the Anglican Church said in another statement.The report follows decades of complaints from survivors. “Survivors repeatedly called for justice but were unheard, disbelieved, and ignored,” according to the report. “Significant resources have been used to deny survivors their voice and to defend the indefensible. This must stop.”
From the New York Times (July 24, 2024).
The core forward looking recommendations of the report are here and focus on creation of a single national regulatory system for both secular and religious care systems.
National No Fault Accident Compensation
In 1974 New Zealand introduced a publicly-funded accident compensation scheme with the goals of minimising the incidence and impact of injury.
The scheme provides assistance with the cost of treatment and rehabilitation for all personal injuries, regardless of fault, and in exchange bans suing for compensatory damages. Medical injury has always been covered under the scheme. Consequently, in New Zealand there is no culture of suing doctors for damages and doctors pay comparatively low medical indemnity fees of around £790 per annum. Doctors are held to account under separate processes including the Medical Council of New Zealand’s competence and fitness to practise processes, an independent patient complaints system, and a separate disciplinary process.
The patient complaints system was introduced in 1994 on recommendation of a 1988 government report that found wanting the prior accountability processes in an environment where patients were unable to sue. In New Zealand, patient complaints are not a demand for financial recompense but a demand that an individual be held to account for perceived wrongdoing. A patient may lodge both a claim for treatment injury compensation and, regardless of injury, a complaint against a practitioner.Although medical injury has always been covered under the scheme, the compensation of medical injury has not always been without fault for doctors. Prior to 2005, patients could obtain compensation by proving medical error. Because all findings of error were reported to the Medical Council, compensation could bring disciplinary repercussions for doctors. Fear of punishment and/or reputational damage discouraged some doctors (and some patients) from participating in the compensation claims process, unfairly restricting access to compensation for injured patients. This situation was rectified in 2005 under the ‘no-fault’ legislative reforms. The reforms extended eligibility to all injuries caused by treatment and replaced the prior reporting duties with a new duty to report ‘risk of harm to the public’ to the ‘authorities responsible for patient safety’. These changes freed doctors to participate in the compensation claims process with little fear, and improved information flows within the system.
The program explains itself here:
Our no-fault scheme covers everyone, including visitors, who are injured in an accident in Aotearoa New Zealand. It can include events that result in mass casualties, and covers children, beneficiaries, and students. You’re covered if you’re working, unemployed, or retired.There are some limits to the support we can provide. These limits are set by Parliament, which makes laws about what we can and can’t support.
If you're injured in an accident, make sure you go and see your doctor or health provider first. They can make a claim for you. Claims can be made up to 12 months after your injury. We may still consider claims made after this time if there’s a good reason for the claim not being made sooner.
What is no-fault cover?No-fault cover means it doesn't matter what you were doing when you were injured or who was at fault. We'll cover you, as long as the injury falls within our legislation.The cover we provide helps pay for costs to support your recovery and get you back on your feet. It includes payment towards medical bills, treatment, help at home and work and help with your income.
Physical injuries we coverA physical injury is when there is actual damage to your body. This includes:
- sprains or strains - such as the ankle, back, knee or shoulder sprains
- wounds - cut, broken or bruised skin
- burns
- fractures
- dislocations
- dental injuries
- hearing loss
- concussion and loss of consciousness
- maternal birth injuries which occurred on or after 12:00am on 1 October 2022.
We cover most physical injuries if they're caused by:
- an accident
- sexual violence
We can cover injuries or conditions that happen over time and are caused by the type of work you do. This is known as gradual process conditions. We have to establish if your work tasks or workplace environment are causing your condition.We can also cover injuries that are long-term, permanent or that happened at birth.
Injuries caused by treatmentSometimes getting treatment can cause an injury. We can cover a treatment injury if:
- the treatment directly caused your injury
- a registered health professional was treating you
- it's not a normal side-effect of your treatment.
We can also cover injuries caused by treatment for an injury we've already covered.
Conditions that come on gradually from workWe can cover injuries or conditions that happen over time and are caused by the type of work you do. This could be things like:
- tendonitis from overusing muscles or heavy lifting
- deafness caused by noise at work
- infections or diseases from exposure to certain environments.
Serious injuries and disabilitiesWe can cover injuries that cause long-term effects and disabilities including spinal and traumatic brain injuries (TBI), such as concussion.Find out how we're working to reduce the number, severity, and impact of TBIs:
Mental injuries we coverIf we accept your claim for a physical injury, we can also cover mental injuries resulting from that injury. For example, post-traumatic stress disorder after a physical assault.If your physical injury is caused by medical treatment we may also be able to cover a resulting mental injury, even if the physical injury isn’t covered.We also cover mental injuries if you've experienced, seen or heard a traumatic event at work such as working in a retail shop when a robbery takes place. This is even if you haven't been physically injured.
Sexual abuseWe provide support for anyone in Aotearoa New Zealand, including visitors to the country, who has experienced sexual abuse and assault. We may also be able to help if you're an Aotearoa New Zealand resident and have experienced sexual abuse while travelling overseas. It doesn't matter if the event happened recently or a long time ago.If you've experienced sexual abuse, use the Find Support website to see the organisations that have therapists who can support you. This support is fully funded and you can start whenever you're ready. There are also services available for your family.If you're having trouble getting in touch with the right therapist, contact us. We'll help you to make an appointment.
Dental injuryWe can pay for dental injuries caused by:
- an accident
- sporting injury
- as a result of medical or dental treatment.
We don’t pay for:
- damage to your teeth or dentures due to normal wear and tear, eg chewing or biting
- damage to your teeth due to decay or gum disease
- damage to your dentures while you were not wearing them
- treatment that was done by someone that’s not a registered dentist, eg a dental technician.
Your dentist will help you to make a claim if you have an injury we cover.Injuries causing deathWe give financial help if someone dies as a result of:
- an accident
- a work-related disease or infection
- a treatment injury we're covering
- a self-inflicted injury (in some circumstances).
Maternal birth injuriesIf you have experienced an injury while giving birth on or after 1 October 2022, we may be able to help with your recovery. We have guidance on what's normal and what's not.
This is essentially "no-fault" automobile insurance and worker's compensation on steroids and has a lot to be said for it in some form. The tort system does a poor job of compensating people with smaller injuries, and people who have suffered from bad outcomes and accidents when fault is less clear cut. The tort system is also slow, uncertain, and involved immense transaction costs.
Recent images have surfaced online, showcasing the M1 “Thumper” prototype, a unique variant of the legendary M1 Abrams tank equipped with a 140mm main gun and an autoloader. Developed in the late 1980s, the “Thumper” was designed to significantly enhance the firepower and penetration capabilities of the existing M1 Abrams, which typically features a 120mm gun.The M1 “Thumper” stands out with its enlarged turret designed to accommodate the formidable 140mm gun. This development aimed to provide the tank with superior firepower, making it more effective against heavily armored adversaries. The prototype underwent a series of rigorous testing and evaluations to assess its performance and viability on the battlefield.Despite the promising advancements in firepower, the “Thumper” project was ultimately shelved. The decision to not proceed with production was influenced by several factors, primarily the high cost associated with developing and deploying a new tank variant with a larger gun. Furthermore, advancements in ammunition technology for the 120mm gun used by the standard M1 Abrams helped maintain its battlefield effectiveness, reducing the immediate need for an upgrade to a 140mm gun.In comparison, a similar project was undertaken by Germany for the Leopard 2 tank. This involved the integration of a 140mm gun autoloader system, where the main gun was positioned on the left side of the turret, with ammunition stored in the turret bustle. However, like the “Thumper,” this project was also discontinued at the end of the Cold War and never reached the battlefield.
From here. Wikipedia also discusses it:
M1 Thumper (also known as ATAC Demonstration System) was a single M1A1 fitted with a heavily modified turret to trial the experimental XM291 ATAC (sometimes referred to as LW120) smoothbore gun, a more powerful replacement for the M256 capable of firing either single-piece 120 mm or two-piece 140 mm ammunition with only a barrel change. The 140 mm rounds were too large (boasting twice the chamber volume of a M829 APFSDS and twice the muzzle energy) and heavy to be moved around by a human loader, mandating the installation of a XM91 mechanical cassette autoloader. The Thumper underwent testing in 1988 and in the 1990s at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where it demonstrated accuracy equal to an M1A1's but with significantly higher armor penetration capability.
This concept was a bad idea 35 years ago and would be an even worse idea today, informed by the experience of tank warfare since then.
For example, in the 1991 Gulf War, M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, with two TOW anti-tank missiles and a much smaller 25mm chain gun destroyed more enemy tanks than the M1 Abrams main battle tank and only about 25% of enemy tanks were destroyed with other tanks. More than 3,000 Iraqi tanks were destroyed or captured in that short and one-sided war.
Similarly, in Ukraine, very few tanks have been destroyed by other tanks (less than 5% of destroyed tanks) and tanks have otherwise proved to be a low demand resource. See here and here.
Tank casualty rates in Ukraine, one of the largest conventional wars between near peers in post-WWII history, have been extreme. Initially, Ukraine started without about 900 operational tanks (see also here) and Russia started with about 2,600 operational tanks devotes to the mission (see also here), although both sides have reactivated mothballed tanks and Ukraine has received tanks provided to it by its allies.
Oryx, a third-party non-profit (which admittedly undercounts losses by considering only photographically documented losses) has identified 866 tanks lost by Ukraine (96% of its original active tank fleet) and 3242 tanks lost by Russia (125% of its original tank fleet for the mission and 90% including at least another 1,000 tanks that it brought of out reserves and storage), since February of 2022 when the current phase of the Ukraine war began. Tanks losses by both sides have included the most modern state of the art tanks available to each side, including at least 10 out of 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks provided to it in August or September of 2023 and the most advanced T-90 tanks in Russia's arsenal. Russia pulled its small number of T-14 Armata tanks from the conflict after a brief deployment limited to secure positions (see also here).
The M1 Abrams tank has problems. An insufficiently large tank shell is not one of them (Russia uses slightly larger 125mm shells but has had more problems with the combined systems due to barrel repair issues or poor choices about where their ammunition is stored). And, the greater weight and/or lower number of shells that could be carried at once, would have made the other problems with the M1 Abrams (such as its excessive size and weight which makes it hard to deploy many of them quickly or to deploy in tight mountain passes or urban areas), which have become apparent now, even worse.
