Talk:Export variants of Soviet military equipment

Suvorov reference
I can't find my copy, but I think the phrase may originate in, or at least have been popularized by, Viktor Suvorov's Inside the Soviet Army. It appears the text of the book is available online. —Michael Z. 2007-02-14 17:41 Z 

DELETION
This article needs to be deleted ASAP. It's a platform for Russian nationalists. Nothing else. The references are basically non-existent. Bennyman (talk) 20:23, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

--- an external link to a forum? are you kidding me? 40 and 14 year old war fanboys who gets their jollys off arguing online

the link was dead anyways —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.138.77.193 (talk) 06:42, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Going to AfD this
The reasons I will give:
 * Models of military equipment tend to vary a lot over their lifetime. The term 'monkey model' is in effect simply a slang term for 'export model', and any examples of downgraded export models could be listed in the respective articles of their examples.


 * Article appears to be a disguised promo for Suvorov's book, and his books seem to be the main original source of the term.

The article rests on very shaky ground:

The Lion of Babylon Iraqi tank was not a copy of the T-72, but of the more advanced M-84.
 * The article contains at least two material inaccuracies, used to help support its argument of poor T-72 performance in the Middle East due to poor export quality:

The supposed Sewell (1998) assertions on the superior qualities of Russian-built T-72 tanks do not appear in the online article it is implied it referred to.


 * No citations in article, none of the references are specific.

See final pages of http://www.knox.army.mil/center/ocoa/armormag/backissues/1990s/1998/ja98/4sewell98.pdf
 * The single online reference, when I tracked it down (link is dead), was very interesting, but spectacularly failed to support the premises of the article.


 * The article has a history of unacceptable references. Aside from the reference above, which I will pull, the only other references that have survived are the offline ones, and I suspect that these do not support the article either.

The 'T-72 Main Battle Tank' book reference is more likely to largely agree with “Why Three Tanks?” than disagree, as the author Steven Zaloga, assisted with the latter essay. Centrepull (talk) 15:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Rename ?
Should this article be renamed to something more meaningful - e.g. "Export variants of Soviet military equipment" ? or even "Export variants of military equipment" (with opportunity for info about other contries to be added) ? - and less emphasis on the "monkey model" term ? DexDor (talk) 20:43, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

1982 performance of Soviet equipment
In the 1982 Lebanon War article there are sourced claims that US and Israeli superiority over Soviet equipment&tactics during that war influenced Gorbachev to adopt a less aggressive stance. If the versions of Soviet equipment in the Middle East were in fact "monkey versions", surely Gorbachev would have been told by his generals that those results were irrelevant to the fighting capabilities of the Soviet forces? I find this contradictive. Also, in 1973 the Arabs did better against Israel initially, did Egypt and Syria fight those wars with monkey versions of the Soveit air defence and anti tank missiles? AadaamS (talk) 11:36, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Entire article reeks of Soviet/Russian nationalist sour grapes
The entire body of citations for this article is restricted to a few, highly opinionated and unapologetic Russian nationalists. The Zaloga reference in particular is totally false, as he never said anything like what he's being cited as saying, the ref doesn't even cite page numbers. It reeks of sour grapes, a continuation of the old Soviet vs. West pissing contest in which each side insisted that impartially-observed major deficiencies or failures in their military technology were actually minor setbacks at worst or perfectly intentional at best. Deny, deny, deny, redirect, and finally blame it on somebody else. Do whatever you must to avoid losing face or prestige in the face of a sworn enemy. It really has no place on Wikipedia.

Fact: the Iraqis, whose Asad Babil was actually slightly more survivable (owing to the crude applique laminate armor on the glacis and turret face) than the stock export T-72M1 are the "monkeys" (note overt racism) the Russian nationalists are blaming, insisting their T-72Bs had a vaguely defined "superior construction" and "superior armament". Bullshit, and I'll explain why.

Fact: 30mm of 1980s-era comp. armor and ERA doesn't mean they made the T72M1 out of pot metal and the "real thing" out of pure titanium. The ERA of the time was early "light" ERA, which only worked against HEAT rounds; Kontakt-5 which was good against long-rod penetrators wasn't put on T-72s until the late 90s, it was only on the new T80s in the late 80s. Likewise, their composite armor didn't use a DU sandwich like Chobham did, which means it also worked only on HEAT. Long-rod DU penetrators like the M829A1 Silver Bullet simply were ahead of the Russian technology curve at the time and ate their armor for lunch. This made the Russians very angry and embarrassed and spurred the above "sour grapes" reaction when their tanks did very poorly when used ineffectively in ways other than the Soviet doctrine intended (a 7:1 superiority in a massive combined-arms offensive).

Nobody's denying that the state of the art 125mm sabot ammo of 1991 (the 1986-era 3BM44) could have holed the Abrams frontally at short range. But no further. It was a TUNGSTEN penetrator rod, not a DU like the Silver Bullet, and it was 452mm long instead of 658mm for the M829A1. It was simply not that great against DU armor because tungsten will shatter itself on DU. This is why the US Army spent millions retrofitting their M1s with extra applique DU-only armor (the M1A1-HA and HA+) in addition to the Chobham composite which already had DU/ceramic. They expected the 3BM44; they didn't get it.

Fact: A T-72M1, functionally identical to the T-72B except having antiquated ammo and worse applique armor, did not constitute a radically weaker variant of the T-72B the Russians considered the pride of their military might. To argue otherwise without fact is nonsense. Bravo Foxtrot (talk) 05:25, 3 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I suspect you're right about the technical details, but actually, the nonsense here doesn't come out of Soviet nationalism -- quite the opposite. This article relies very heavily on Viktor Suvorov, a GRU defector who has made a second career out of peddling alarmist and often farcical claims about Russia and the former Soviet Union to American and Eastern European "war hawk" types (culminating in a grand conspiracy theory about WW2 that actually verges on the pro-Nazi.) His idea here is to "prove" that Russian military equipment is actually much better than its combat record would seem to indicate, and therefore, we should fear Russia and launch military buildups, etc etc. 184.145.67.120 (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2013 (UTC)