home Diets and weight loss Although everyone knows for certain that the lifespan of a tank in modern combat... Life is half an hour long: how long does a unit live in battle? How many minutes of battle is a tank designed for?

Although everyone knows for certain that the lifespan of a tank in modern combat... Life is half an hour long: how long does a unit live in battle? How many minutes of battle is a tank designed for?

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Everyone who had even a tangential relationship with the army service or the defense industry has heard about the “lifetime in battle” - of a fighter, a tank, a unit. But what really stands behind these numbers? Is it really possible to start counting down the minutes until the inevitable end when going into battle? The prevailing ideas about the time of life in battle among the broad masses of military personnel were successfully depicted by Oleg Divov in the novel “Weapons of Retribution” - a book about the service of “Ustinov’s students” at the end of Soviet power: “They, proudly: our division is designed for thirty minutes of battle! We tell them openly: we found something to be proud of!” In these two sentences, everything came together - pride in one’s suicide, and the transfer of a misunderstood tactical assessment of the unit’s capability over time to the lives of its personnel, and the rejection of such false pride by more competent comrades...
The idea that there is a calculated life expectancy for individual units and formations came from the practice of staff work, from understanding the experience of the Great Patriotic War. The average period of time during which a regiment or division, according to war experience, remained combat-ready was called the “lifetime.” This does not mean at all that after this period all personnel will be killed by the enemy and the equipment will be burned.
Let's take a division - the main tactical formation. For its functioning, it is necessary that the rifle units have a sufficient number of fighters - and they leave not only killed, but also wounded (from three to six per killed), sick, legs worn down to the bone, or injured by the hatch of an armored personnel carrier... It is necessary that the engineer battalion had a supply of the equipment from which bridges would be built - after all, the supply battalion would carry everything that units and subunits needed in battle and on the march. It is required that the repair and restoration battalion have the necessary number of spare parts and tools to maintain the equipment in working / combat-ready condition. And all these reserves are not unlimited. The consumption of heavy mechanized bridges TMM-3 or links of the pontoon-bridge park will lead to sharp decline offensive capabilities of the formation will limit its “life” in the operation.

Disastrous meters
These are factors that influence the viability of a formation, but are not related to enemy resistance. Now let's turn to assessing the time of “life in battle”. How long can an individual soldier survive in a battle fought with the use of one weapon or another, using one or another tactic. The first serious experience of such calculations was presented in the unique work “Future War in Technical, Economic and Political Relations.” The book was published in six volumes in 1898, and its author was Warsaw banker and railway worker Ivan Blioch.

The financier Bliokh, accustomed to numbers, with the help of a unique team he assembled, consisting of General Staff officers, tried to mathematically evaluate the impact of new types of weapons - repeating rifles, machine guns, artillery pieces on smokeless powder and with a high explosive charge - for the types of tactics of that time. The technique was very simple. The battalion's offensive plan was taken from the French military manual of 1890. We took the probabilities of hitting a tall target by an entrenched shooter using three-line rifles, obtained at the training ground. The speeds at which the chain of shooters moved to the beat of drums and the sounds of horns were well known - both for walking and for running, which the French were going to switch to when approaching the enemy. Next came the most ordinary arithmetic, which gave an astonishing result. If, from a line of 500 m, 637 infantrymen begin to approach a hundred dug-in riflemen with repeating rifles, then even with all the speed of the French rush to the line of 25 m, from which it was then considered appropriate to switch to the bayonet line, only a hundred will remain. There were no machine guns, which were then used by the artillery department - ordinary sapper shovels for digging in and repeating rifles for shooting. And now the position of the riflemen is no longer able to be taken by the six times greater mass of infantry - after all, a hundred who ran half a mile under fire and in bayonet combat have little chance against a hundred lying in a trench.
Pacifism in numbers
At the time of the release of “The Future War,” peace still reigned in Europe, but in Bliokh’s simple arithmetic calculations the whole picture of the coming First World War, its positional impasse, was already visible. No matter how trained and devoted the soldiers are to the banner, the advancing masses of infantry will be swept away by the fire of the defending infantry. This is what happened in reality - for specifics we will refer the reader to Barbara Tuckman’s book “The Guns of August”. The fact that in the later phases of the war the advancing infantry was stopped not by riflemen, but by machine gunners who had sat out the artillery barrage in dugouts, essentially did not change anything.

Based on Bliokh's methodology, it is very simple to calculate the expected life time of an infantryman in battle when advancing from the 500 m line to the 25 m line. As we can see, 537 out of 637 soldiers died or were seriously wounded during the time of overcoming 475 m. From the diagram given in the book it is clear how The lifespan was reduced when approaching the enemy, as was the likelihood of dying when reaching 300, 200 m... The results turned out to be so clear that Bliokh considered them sufficient to justify the impossibility of a European war and therefore took care of the maximum dissemination of his work. Reading Blioch's book prompted Nicholas II to convene the first peace conference on disarmament in 1899 in The Hague. The author himself was nominated for Nobel Prize peace.
However, Bliokh’s calculations were not destined to stop the coming massacre... But there were a lot of other calculations in the book. For example, it was shown that a hundred shooters with repeating rifles would disable an artillery battery in 2 minutes from a distance of 800 m and in 18 minutes from a distance of 1500 m - isn’t it, similar to the artillery paratroopers described by Divov with their 30 minutes of battalion life?

World War III? Better not!
The works of those military specialists who were preparing not for the prevention, but for the successful conduct of war, as the Cold War escalated into the hot Third World War, were not widely published. But - paradoxically - it was precisely these works that were destined to contribute to the preservation of peace. And so, in the narrow circles of staff officers not inclined to publicity, the calculated parameter “lifetime in battle” began to be used. For a tank, for an armored personnel carrier, for a unit. The values for these parameters were obtained in approximately the same way as Bliokh once did. They took anti-tank gun, and at the test site the probability of hitting the silhouette of the car was determined. They used one or another tank as a target (at the beginning of the Cold War, both warring sides used captured German equipment for these purposes) and checked the likelihood of a shell hit piercing the armor or an action behind the armor that would disable the vehicle.

As a result of the chain of calculations, the very life time of a piece of equipment in a given tactical situation was derived. It was a purely calculated value. Probably, many have heard about such monetary units as the Attic talent or the South German thaler. The first contained 26,106 g of silver, the second - only 16.67 g of the same metal, but both never existed in the form of a coin, but were just a measure of account for smaller money - drachmas or pennies. Likewise, a tank that has to survive exactly 17 minutes in an oncoming battle is nothing more than a mathematical abstraction. It's about only about the integral estimate convenient for the time of arithmometers and slide rules. Without resorting to complex calculations, the staff officer could determine how many tanks would be needed for a combat mission that required covering a particular distance under fire. We bring together distance, combat speed and life time. We determine according to the standards how many tanks should remain in service across the width of the front after they go through the hell of battle. And it is immediately clear which unit of what size should be entrusted with the combat mission. The predicted failure of the tanks did not necessarily mean the death of the crews. As driver-mechanic Shcherbak cynically reasoned in the story of front-line officer Viktor Kurochkin “In War as in War,” “It would be happiness if the Fritz rolled a blank into the engine compartment: the car would be kaput, and everyone would be alive.” And for the artillery division, the exhaustion of the half-hour of battle for which it was designed meant, first of all, the use of ammunition, overheating of the barrels and recoil arms, the need to withdraw from positions, and not death under fire.
Neutron factor
The conditional “lifetime in battle” successfully served staff officers even when it was necessary to determine the combat effectiveness of advancing tank units in the conditions of the enemy’s use of neutron warheads; when you needed to figure out what power nuclear attack will burn out enemy anti-tank missiles and extend the life of your tanks. The problems of using gigantic power were solved by the simplest equations: they gave an unambiguous conclusion - nuclear war must be avoided in the European theater of operations.
Well, modern combat control systems, from the highest level, such as the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation to tactical ones, such as the Constellation Unified Tactical Control System, use more differentiated and more accurate modeling parameters, which are now carried out in real time. However, the goal function remains the same - to make sure that both people and machines survive in combat for the maximum amount of time.

Accustomed to numbers, the financier Bliokh, with the help of a unique team he had assembled, consisting of General Staff officers, tried to mathematically evaluate the impact of new types of weapons - repeating rifles, machine guns, artillery guns with smokeless powder and with a high explosive charge - on the then types of tactics. The technique was very simple. The battalion's offensive plan was taken from the French military manual of 1890. We took the probabilities of hitting a tall target by an entrenched shooter using three-line rifles, obtained at the training ground. The speeds at which the chain of riflemen moved to the beat of drums and the sounds of horns were well known - both for walking and for running, which the French were going to switch to when approaching the enemy.

Next came the most ordinary arithmetic, which gave an astonishing result. If, from a line of 500 m, 637 infantrymen begin to approach a hundred dug-in riflemen with repeating rifles, then even with all the speed of the French rush to the line of 25 m, from which it was then considered appropriate to switch to the bayonet line, only a hundred will remain. There were no machine guns, which were then used by the artillery department - ordinary sapper shovels for digging in and repeating rifles for shooting. And now the position of the riflemen is no longer able to be taken by the six times greater mass of infantry - after all, a hundred who ran half a mile under fire and in a bayonet battle have little chance against a hundred lying in a trench.

Pacifism in numbers

At the time of the release of “The Future War,” peace still reigned in Europe, but in Bliokh’s simple arithmetic calculations the whole picture of the coming First World War, its positional impasse, was already visible. No matter how trained and devoted the soldiers are to the banner, the advancing masses of infantry will be swept away by the fire of the defending infantry. This is what happened in reality - for specifics we will refer the reader to Barbara Tuckman’s book “The Guns of August”. The fact that in the later phases of the war the advancing infantry was stopped not by riflemen, but by machine gunners who had sat out the artillery barrage in dugouts, essentially did not change anything.

Based on Bliokh's methodology, it is very simple to calculate the expected life time of an infantryman in battle when advancing from the 500 m line to the 25 m line. As we can see, 537 out of 637 soldiers died or were seriously wounded during the time of overcoming 475 m. From the diagram given in the book it is clear how The lifespan was reduced when approaching the enemy, as was the likelihood of dying when reaching 300, 200 m... The results turned out to be so clear that Bliokh considered them sufficient to justify the impossibility of a European war and therefore took care of the maximum dissemination of his work. Reading Blioch's book prompted Nicholas II to convene the first peace conference on disarmament in 1899 in The Hague. The author himself was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

However, Bliokh’s calculations were not destined to stop the coming massacre... But there were a lot of other calculations in the book. For example, it was shown that a hundred shooters with repeating rifles would disable an artillery battery in 2 minutes from a distance of 800 m and in 18 minutes from a distance of 1500 m - isn’t it, similar to the artillery paratroopers described by Divov with their 30 minutes of battalion life?

World War III? Better not!

The works of those military specialists who were preparing not for the prevention, but for the successful conduct of war, as the Cold War escalated into the hot Third World War, were not widely published. But - paradoxically - it was precisely these works that were destined to contribute to the preservation of peace. And so, in the narrow circles of staff officers not inclined to publicity, the calculated parameter “lifetime in battle” began to be used. For a tank, for an armored personnel carrier, for a unit. The values for these parameters were obtained in approximately the same way as Bliokh once did. They took an anti-tank gun, and at the training ground they determined the probability of hitting the silhouette of the vehicle. They used one or another tank as a target (at the beginning of the Cold War, both warring sides used captured German equipment for these purposes) and checked the likelihood of a shell hit piercing the armor or an action behind the armor that would disable the vehicle.

We bring together distance, combat speed and life time. We determine according to the standards how many tanks should remain in service across the width of the front after they go through the hell of battle. And it is immediately clear which unit of what size should be entrusted with the combat mission. The predicted failure of the tanks did not necessarily mean the death of the crews. As driver-mechanic Shcherbak cynically reasoned in the story of front-line officer Viktor Kurochkin “In War as in War,” “It would be happiness if the Fritz rolled a blank into the engine compartment: the car would be kaput, and everyone would be alive.” And for the artillery division, the exhaustion of the half-hour of battle for which it was designed meant, first of all, the use of ammunition, overheating of the barrels and recoil arms, the need to withdraw from positions, and not death under fire.

The average life expectancy of a soldier in Stalingrad was 24 hours

Victory in Battle of Stalingrad allowed the Soviet command to make a radical change in the course of hostilities

Automatic machine gun bursts thunder at a distance of 400-500 meters from each other. The grenades explode with a deafening echo. The whistling of artillery makes your ears pop. There is no front, war is everywhere: in front of you, behind you and next to you. Our and enemy soldiers observe the devastation caused by a thousand tons of dropped bombs. A German soldier recalls: “Stalingrad turned into a gigantic pile of ruins and garbage, stretching along the banks of the Volga.”

This picture is hidden behind dry statistics: according to final estimates, 1.5 million soldiers from the Axis countries died in the Battle of Stalingrad and just over 1.1 million from outside Soviet Union. To give an idea of the scale of the battles, remember that the United States suffered just over 400,000 casualties in all the fighting in the war. When talking about battles, for some reason information about casualties among civilians is often omitted, although, according to various estimates, they ranged from 4,000 to 40,000 people. Moreover, the Soviet head of state forbade the evacuation of civilians, ordering them instead to join the fight and help build defenses.

The victory in the Battle of Stalingrad allowed the Soviet command to make, as they say, a radical turning point in the course of military operations, to pull the initiative and luck to their side. And this victory was achieved by people - soldiers and officers. It is not so widely known about the conditions under which the battles took place, what the soldiers were ready to sacrifice, how they managed to survive, and what the feelings of the enemy soldiers were when they first fell into the trap.

Reinforcements arrived along the Volga, under German fire. Most of the arriving reinforcements died, but fresh forces made it possible to defend at least part of the city, despite the constant massive attacks of the enemy. To repel another such attack, the elite of the 13th Guards Division was sent here; the first 30% of arrivals died within the first 24 hours after arrival. Overall mortality was 97%.

Anyone who moved away from the front line was considered deserters and cowards and was brought before a military tribunal, which could impose a death sentence or send the soldier to a penal battalion. There were even cases when deserters were shot on the spot. There were special secret detachments that monitored unplanned crossings of the Volga: in such cases, those who found themselves in the water were shot without warning.

The command chose close combat tactics as the most appropriate, given the enemy's superiority in firepower and air support. The tactical move of keeping the front close to the enemy line paid off. The fascist army was no longer able to use dive bombers to support ground troops due to the risk of defeating its own soldiers.

The position of the command was as follows: “Stalingrad can be captured by the enemy only on the condition that not a single defender remains alive.” Each house became a defensible fortress, sometimes even a separate floor of this house. “Pavlov’s house” became famous: Yakov Pavlov’s platoon defended its post so selflessly that the enemies remembered this house under the name of the commander who defended it.

Fighting even took place in sewer tunnels. The railway station could change hands up to 14 times in six hours. The dedication of the soldiers is amazing.

...The defense of the division, which included Mikhail Panikakha, was attacked simultaneously by about 70 tanks. Some of them managed to break through to the trenches. Then one soldier, armed with a bottle of flammable mixture, crawled towards the very first enemy tank. As he was about to throw the bottle, it was hit by a bullet. The liquid flared up with lightning speed and spread throughout the soldier’s body. He burned alive, but continued to fight. He caught up with the tank and broke the second bottle over the car's engine. The tank caught fire, the soldier completed the task at the cost of his life.

Lieutenant Grigory Avakyan was tasked with holding off a tank attack. He chose an advantageous position and waited. The attack that began was met with a friendly and successful salvo, which knocked out several vehicles. The unequal battle lasted about an hour; numerical and combat superiority was on the enemy's side. But the battery did not give up, although only one gun continued to fire. The only survivor, the wounded lieutenant, brought, loaded and sent deadly shells to the target. Having knocked out another tank, he lost consciousness and died from his wounds. But the fascist tanks did not get through. And such dedication was massive.

In close combat conditions, everything higher value acquired by snipers. The most successful Soviet sniper was Vasily Zaitsev, who killed between 200 and 400 enemy soldiers.

At the cost of enormous willpower, the city held out until the arrival of fresh large reinforcements. Soviet counter-offensive under code name"Uranus" began in mid-November 1942.

One of the Silesian soldiers, Joachim Wieder, remembers those fighting and my feelings: “November 19 will live in my memory as the day of a black catastrophe. At dawn on this dark, foggy autumn day, as we were preparing for the winter snowstorms, the Russians attacked us from the north. And the next day - from the east, squeezing our entire 6th Army in an iron vice.”

Already on December 19, it was declared that our troops had won, but this statement was somewhat premature: heavy fighting continued.

Hitler tried to maintain the same tough position in terms of city defense. According to his order, “surrender was prohibited, the 6th Army was to hold its position until the last soldier,” which, according to the Fuhrer, was supposed to reward the soldiers with eternal popular memory and admiration.

The enemy soldiers did not know their real situation. From a letter from one of the soldiers: “I was horrified when I saw the map. We were completely alone, without any outside help. Hitler left us trapped. Whether this letter reaches you depends on whether we still hold the sky. We are located in the north of the city. Other soldiers in my unit already suspect the truth, but they don't know what I know. No, we are not going to capitulate. When the city falls, you will hear or read about it. Then you will know that I will not return.”

To "save face" fascist army, Hitler awarded the surrounded commander Paulus the rank of field marshal. Not a single field marshal in the history of the Reich surrendered, which is what the Fuhrer was counting on, but he miscalculated. “Field Marshal” not only surrendered, but also actively criticized the actions of his former leader while in captivity. Having learned about this, the Fuhrer stated: “The God of War has switched sides.”

At a time when the leaders decided the fate of the commanders-in-chief (to whom glory, and to whom shame), the fascist soldiers continued to fight and test their willpower along with the blows of the icy Russian winter. Now they were not adequately provided with either food or clothing; they froze their limbs. From the memoirs of one of the soldiers: “I froze my fingers. “I am absolutely helpless: only when a person loses several fingers does he realize how much he needs them to perform various small jobs.”

Yes, the God of War is like that...

V.F.>This is of course true, but not just “inter-roller space”, but specifically between 3 and 4 and 4 and 5 skating rinks. To make it clearer, we are talking about two squares of about 15x20 cm. Not a particularly easy target. But in any case, excuse me, how do the T-72 and T-80 differ in this regard in terms of the design of the automatic loader? Why did you mention the disadvantage of the T-80 specifically?
Hm-yes? Are you sure? Do you know about the organization of projectile supply systems for these types of tanks? Strange... The T72 only has between 4 and 5, and then only on the left side (and, by the way, is not connected with the loading system). 80 has between 3 and 5 (I agree) on any of the sides. In a standard T72, there should be a “tile” in this place behind the sloths. The T90 does not have this defect...

V.F.>To be honest, my semantic parser died on this phrase. Could you please reformulate it somehow?
There was virtually no mounting (protection) on the tanks, especially on the side. I hope it’s no secret to you that the defect stated above is difficult to achieve if there are “accessories” (which just weren’t there)

V.F.>That is, in other words, 50% of the tanks were destroyed after running out of fuel? I will immediately say that I had in mind a slightly more conservative value
Half before production. You asked for my idea - I presented it to you. As for the specific quantity... somewhere more than 2/3 before fuel depletion - now the numbers are not at hand (when they were, they were of little interest - I fell for the qualitative ratio)

V.F.>It's all ersatz. Very capricious, with very serious limitations of applicability. Yes, when the conditions are met, it is a completely effective PTS. Like let's say a pistol. But an effective light anti-tank weapon is, for example, the RPG-29 grenade launcher, with a new warhead, which the T-80U and T-90 penetrates into the forehead with high probability. Feel what is called the difference with the “inter-roller space”.
However, a bottle-lighter does not give an effect (bike), but the "extraction" - brings the tank to a stationary state - and then finishing off... The RPG-29 does not penetrate the frontal armor in most cases. Additional question: Would you like to be a lobbyist for Omsk or Khokhlov?

V.F.>Data from a Ukrainian mercenary on the other side.
All clear...

V.F.>Nobody “attacked” the city.
Attack is a strict term, in this case there was an attack.

V.F.>The doomed had no understanding of what awaited them. They entered the city in marching columns, the weapons systems were not prepared for battle, and there was significant understaffing. Tomorrow you will get into your car, and its smack will be fired from a grenade launcher. “But we should have foreseen” (c) It’s amazing how much was achieved in this situation, which in itself shows how porous the defense was.
Or maybe the idea was “porosity”... Ever thought about it?

V.F.>The guilt is great, but it NOT at local command.
Who is responsible for the staffing and condition of a particular unit? Minister of Defense?

V.F.>Well? If the Chechens had more modern weapons, would the army be easier or more difficult? Where are you taking the conversation all the time?...
This question is not within my competence, it’s about fortune telling on coffee grounds. I’m not taking away the conversation, but trying to tell you that preparation and knowledge are also components of even a specific battle. By the way, about the “shots” for RPG7 - the Chechens had a sufficient number of them, you were mistaken... As in other matters and the number of ATGMs...

V.F.>Lucky (or maybe unlucky, depending on how you look at it). I had to be content video detailed inspections of equipment. But they are led personally by you-know-who. Oh, what a difficult sight. And from the batting technique, and especially from you-know-who.
I don’t know “you-know-what”, war is war. I saw the cameramen... whose film did you watch - "ballerina" or "combatant"? The truth can only be half achieved by gluing both together... Through the frame

By the way, let's finish this unrelated bazaar - I have already formed an opinion about the level of your knowledge of this topic. If you want, start a separate forum.

The idea that there is a calculated life expectancy for individual units and formations came from the practice of staff work, from understanding the experience of the Great Patriotic War. The average period of time during which a regiment or division, according to war experience, remained combat-ready was called the “lifetime.” This does not mean at all that after this period all personnel will be killed by the enemy and the equipment will be burned.

Let's take a division - the main tactical formation. For its functioning, it is necessary that the rifle units have a sufficient number of fighters - and they leave not only killed, but also wounded (from three to six per killed), sick, legs worn down to the bone, or injured by the hatch of an armored personnel carrier... It is necessary that the engineer battalion had a supply of the equipment from which bridges would be built - after all, the supply battalion would carry everything that units and subunits needed in battle and on the march. It is required that the repair and restoration battalion have the necessary number of spare parts and tools to maintain the equipment in working / combat-ready condition. And all these reserves are not unlimited. The use of heavy mechanized bridges TMM-3 or links of the pontoon-bridge fleet will lead to a sharp decrease in the offensive capabilities of the formation and will limit its “life” in the operation.

Disastrous meters

These are factors that influence the viability of a formation, but are not related to enemy resistance. Now let's turn to assessing the time of “life in battle”. How long can an individual soldier survive in a battle fought with the use of one weapon or another, using one or another tactic. The first serious experience of such calculations was presented in the unique work “Future War in Technical, Economic and Political Relations.” The book was published in six volumes in 1898, and its author was Warsaw banker and railway worker Ivan Blioch.

Pacifism in numbers

World War III? Better not!

Neutron factor

The conditional “lifetime in battle” successfully served staff officers even when it was necessary to determine the combat effectiveness of advancing tank units in the conditions of the enemy’s use of neutron warheads; when it was necessary to estimate how powerful a nuclear strike would burn out enemy anti-tank missiles and extend the life of their tanks. The problems of using gigantic power were solved by the simplest equations: they gave an unambiguous conclusion - a nuclear war in the European theater of operations must be avoided.

Well, modern combat control systems, from the highest level, such as the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation to tactical ones, such as the Constellation Unified Tactical Control System, use more differentiated and more accurate modeling parameters, which are now carried out in real time. However, the goal function remains the same - to make sure that both people and machines survive in combat for the maximum amount of time.

Diagnostics and diseases. Medicines from A to Z

Although everyone knows for certain that the lifespan of a tank in modern combat... Life is half an hour long: how long does a unit live in battle? How many minutes of battle is a tank designed for?

Pacifism in numbers

World War III? Better not!