 Jennifer says tank Russian tank story. I think I've told the story though. I just remember that I think I told the story but When I was in a tank or that we were You know, we were really Trained we trained against the Russian t-72 the t-72 at the time was considered Was considered the most advanced tank in the world It had a very slick profile. So it was very difficult to actually hit it and it was it was relatively fast and It had what no Western tank had was it had an automatic loading system of the projectiles That a tank fires so in a typical tank you have four members. You have a driver You have a loader you have a gunner who shoots and you have a tank commander I was a gunner and and actually, you know, put my back in tank commander school And then I got shifted to military intelligence, but So we were basically training against t-72 and the t-72s and and and You know, we were we were Told that, you know, they had the best tanks and unfortunately I was in the most primitive tanks the Israelis had the Israelis had these old centurion tanks, which were British tanks from the 1950s and 60s and some of the units in the Israeli tank call had the The m60s, I think it was the American new American tank that had just been brought into service in the late 70s and Then the Israeli tank which turned out to be probably the best tank in the world at least at the time which was the mercavar which was a Very very advanced tank And very very focused on protecting the soldiers in the tank My tank was was like a coffin if it got hit you were dead I mean, there was just no way out of it and you probably died a very very slow painful death of being roasted alive In the tanks, so it was it was brutal. That's the centurion tanks Anyway, so we trained against the Russian tanks and and of course we all was told You know, we were scared of the Russian tanks and it was always a worry and it was always a fear and then Israeli tank call actually engaged with the Russians in with the Russian tanks with the Syrians had in 1982 in the in the war in Lebanon now by that point I was in military intelligence. I was not in the tank call Luckily and so I didn't see combat in that sense but I was part of my role in intelligence was to monitor what was going on and I'll give you an example of that in a minute, but so one of the things that we noticed was that That one of the things the one of things that happens to the to the Automatic loading system now automatically this system has a lot of advantages because you can you can staff the tank with only three people You have less human error and all of that stuff But what it turns out is that with the t-72 you didn't actually have to hit the tank you could hit anywhere close to the tank and the the what do you call the The explosion would rattle the tank and Basically the rattling of a tank would make the automatic loader go Basically would disable it and it would stop working So you didn't even have to hit the tank to disable the tank now without the automatic loader given that they only had three people There's no need to load load a projectile into the into the tank and the tank became useless and the crew just would get out and run so the tank would suffer in concussion and it would be completely disabled and One of the things I remember vaguely remember in during that war was The Americans and the Israelis wanted to get their whole hands on a t-72 They wanted to you know because because you wanted to get one so that you could actually train against it This is one of the great advantages the u.s. military had is it had Israel Collecting as at one wars collecting Soviet equipment so that then the Americans could train against that equipment They would study it. They would learn it. They would get every aspect of it and then they would This is what we did So one of the one of the missions during during the war in Lebanon was to get one of these abandoned tanks and to bring it Back to Israel which which the Israeli military did and then they had a they had a t-72 that they could target practice against and Could learn its weaknesses and could learn its strengths They could learn exactly how to defeat it and Israel did this with weapon system after weapon system after weapon system of in the Soviet era and I assume You know that continues in the Russian era that is that there's there's a lot of knowledge that we have about all of this Wow, all on says he's in the Pyrenees in, Catalonia Catalonia is not a country Roland. It's that's in Spain, right? So, wow, that's beautiful country. I love Spain. It's a great place. The Pyrenees are beautiful Catalonia is beautiful food is amazing. All right. That's my that's my Russian tank story. All right Are we done with tanks Ukraine and Russia for a little while Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show if you'd like to support the show We make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to Iran book show dot com slash support I go to patreon subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those any one of those channels also if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow Please consider Sharing our content and of course subscribe press that little bell button right down there on YouTube So that you get announcement when we go live and for you those of you who are ready Subscribers and those of you who ready supporters of the show. Thank you. I very much appreciate it