Bulletins and News Discussion from November 27th to December 3rd, 2023 - Pain in the ASS - COTW: Burkina Faso

Image is of General Abdourahamane Tiani, leader of Niger (left) and Ibrahim Traoré, leader of Burkina Faso (right).

The Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) formed on September 16th in the wake of the coup in Niger in late July, in which Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso created a military and increasingly economic alliance in which attacking one would result in the other two joining. This was initially most relevant militarily, as ECOWAS was threatening an invasion of Niger if they did not restore civilian rule. Nonetheless, due to a mixture of a lack of real strength in ECOWAS due to Nigeria's internal problems, and the influence of Algeria, a very strong regional military power who negotiated against a war which could further destabilise an already destabilised region, and the vague promises of future civilian rule, the external military threat seems to have mostly dissipated.

However, internal threats remain. Burkina Faso is fighting against ISIS and al-Qaeda, which commit regular massacres of civilians; the government controls only 60% of the country. In Mali, the government is fighting against similar groups as well as the Tuareg, which inhabit the more sparsely populated north of the country - the government is in the process of kicking out the UN mission to Mali, and in the process retaking rebel stronghold cities like Kidal, which is raising some eyebrows as to what exactly the UN was doing all this time; and Niger is fighting against similar Islamic groups too, and is kicking out the French for being exploitative motherfuckers. Combine this with the sanctions against Niger which are crippling the country, disease outbreaks in Burkina Faso, and just the general shitty state of the world economy, and the situation is not looking very good currently.

That all being said, economy and trade ministers from all three countries have met this past weekend in Bamako, the capital of Mali. There, they recommended that the countries: improve the free movement of people inside the ASS (don't laugh!); construct and strengthen infrastructure like dams and roads; construct a food safety system; establish a stabilization fund and investment bank; and even create a common airline. This is all attracting foreign attention too - Russia has signed a deal to build Africa's largest gold refinery in Mali, and China is the second largest investor into Niger after France, ploughing money into the gold and uranium industries there. And, of course, the Wagner group is in the region - though I'm unsure if they're having a major or minor impact on events there.

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the power of American wunderwaffe (archived)
The Biggest Problem With Ukraine’s M-1 Tanks: They Don’t Like Staying Dirty
The biggest problem with Ukraine’s new fleet of 31 American-made M-1 Abrams tanks isn’t the tanks’ 1,500-horsepower turbine engines. Not really. No, it’s the filters in the engines’ intakes. The filters keep dirt and debris from fouling and wrecking an M-1’s delicate—but powerful—engine. They require constant cleaning. If an Abrams’ four-person crew neglects to clean its tank’s filters every 12 hours or so, it might so badly damage the engine that the battalion has no choice but to remove the engine, and potentially the transmission, and ship it away for a lengthy overhaul. That would remove one of Ukraine’s few M-1s from the battlefield as surely as a Russian mine or missile might do. Deep maintenance of Ukrainian Abrams takes place in Poland.
Twice a day, an M-1 crew must rev its tank’s engine to high revolutions-per-minute in order to trigger a pulse-jet system that blasts air out of the tank rather than into it, shooting dust and debris from the back grille. That keeps the filters clean across lengthy deployments. Before the Americans added the pulse-jet system to the M-1, in the early 2000s, tank crews—especially those fighting in the desert—openly complained about their vehicles’ reliability.
“Army officials are aware of the problems with high fuel consumption, unreliable fuel pumps and sand-ingestion,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in 1992. “They are working on solutions.” The solution to the sand-ingestion problem was the twice-a-day pulse-jet cleaning process. It works just fine, as long as crews rigorously adhere to its schedule. Even when they’re getting shot at. "All those things can be taught to the crew, but if ever they make a mistake—and they will—it blows a million-dollar engine that can't be repaired in the field," Mark Hertling, a retired U.S. Army general, told The Kyiv Independent.
I'm just a smol bean $10 million tank (or a lot more depending on the upgrades), I couldn't possibly handle a bit of dust in my engine!
- How do they build such a heavy paper tiger?
  
  Because export abrams is crap. American ones don't have all the good shit stripped out and replaced with cheaper and shittier stuff.(not that that makes it lighter) Such is the story of export model tanks.
- Cheap, simple stuff that works well enough wins wars. Expensive, high-tech stuff that has a billion features wins the hearts and minds of military nerds.
- Welcome to western enshittification.
- I'm surprised they sent over the Abrams with the turbine engines. Usually the export models have a conventional combustion engine.
  
  Are there actually variants with a different engine? I couldn't find anything from a cursory look, it seems the export variants mostly differ in armor, but the engine should still be the same (which makes sense, modern tanks are kind of built around their powerpack, changing it to a entirely different type would involve substantial redesigning, and with the Abrams in particular the fancy turbine was sort of the point of the design).
  
  I was wrong. The export Abrams still have the turbine engine, but one with reduced capabilities. The use of a conventional engine to power the tank was only done once, to try sell Turkey Abrams tanks. Turkey ultimately did not purchase this option, and went with leopard tanks.
  
  to try sell Turkey Abrams tanks. Turkey ultimately did not purchase this option
  It's kind of interesting how little of an export success the Abrams has been, it's mostly just a few US-aligned MENA countries, plus Australia and more recently Poland (and the Bradley's even worse, outside of the Ukraine military aid it's basically just the Saudis and a tiny amount to Lebanon). Back during the Cold War, vehicles like the M113 and the various Patton tanks made up pretty much the entire armored fleets of many NATO countries.
  I guess there's still the F-35...
  
  The problem with the export Abrams tanks is that they are not allowed to have the DU armour, the DU sabot ammunition for the main gun is also not for sale/export, the latest FLIR optics are also not for export, and an older version of the turbine engine is used. At that point, NATO countries might as well build their own tanks.

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The Biggest Problem With Ukraine’s M-1 Tanks: They Don’t Like Staying Dirty