> I understand why my dad urged me to not go voluntarily to artillery.

Can you explain this further?

He told me that armour is not protection.

It is instead a death trap:

It is loud, valuable for the enemy and if they shoot at you using shape charges you'll be roasted alive.

Thanks. I’d assumed that ‘artillery’ would be back from the frontline and slightly safer than some of the other ground based roles.

Yes, I'm mixing the words here.

Heavy artillery stays behind, tanks advance.

However heavy artillery is also a target for the opponents heavy artillery, airstrikes etc.

I fail to see what purpose posting gore such as this serves. Nobody needs proof that war is bad.

It needs to be shared and break through cognitive dissonance.

So many people sit comfortably in their chairs at home opining and spew thoughts online without any real idea of how bad things really are.

This is real life.

I'm afraid a lot of people have no clue. Their only idea is action movies and FPS games.

I don't have much more myself.

But I do care deeply and this - while tragic for the poor souls and their poor parents back in Russia - isn't that bad.

> I'm afraid a lot of people have no clue. Their only idea is action movies and FPS games.

The horrors of war is like half of the history classes. It's hard to miss.

Not everywhere.

I remember intense descriptions of the death camps in primary school books (pictures of a bulldozer moving a pile of corps, detailed descriptions of murdering etc) but about war it always focused on the terror of the civilians (rape, killings, famine, becoming refugees), not the terror of the soldiers: flame throwers, the endless waiting, the fear of killing someone innocent, ambush, mine fields etc.

I think a whole lot of people think of war through the lens of the Battlefield series and CSGO where there is Valhalla style mechanic where you go out to fight every day, get slain and become alive to feast in the evening before starting the cycle anew next morning. Also there are no stench, no terrorized faces om of friends or enemy fighters etc.

Real war is brutal on a whole different level than games.

Note: I'm not saying we shouldn't teach the horrors civilians face, just that I think people have extremely unrealistic views of what war is like. If anyone is in doubt: stay out of wars if you can avoid. And a very effective way is to 1.) train for war so you become a scary target 2.) don't start a war.

What the actual flying fuck happened there, that's intensely horrible. War is hell.

What happened is Russian soldiers, either cocky or terrified depending on how much they knew came driving down the road and suddenly the entire thing shook violently,

(the rest is my best understanding based on things I learned years ago):

temperature rose quickly to become unbearable as the missile stuck the the armour and the warhead sent a payload of molten brass (or something) through the solid metal. As the poor blokes try to escape it seems like something more has gone ablaze as you can see they are frozen while trying to run.

Russians going into Ukraine should just as well put sunflower seeds in all pockets and write "this side up" on the front, then at least the grave can look nice in the summer.

It's insanely ugly and I have tears in my eyes even if this is the best outcome.

Edit: read for yourself, seems the Javelin missile kills the tank crew somewhat more humanely by just sending a multi atmospheric shockwave into the box instead of how these seems to have had time to fear and try in vain to escape.

Edit 2: My bigger point is, if you can somehow avoid being part of the attempted invasion of Ukraine it might be worth going some distance to avoid it.

> temperature rose quickly to become unbearable as the missile stuck the the armour and the warhead sent a payload of molten brass (or something) through the solid metal. As the poor blokes try to escape it seems like something more has gone ablaze as you can see they are frozen while trying to run.

Sounds like a shaped charge[1]. I know a man who was drafted during the Korean War and at first he thought it would be lovely to be in a tank protected from harm. Then he got trained on using shaped charges on old German panzers and decided he was happy to be infantry.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge

Exactly. I had forgotten the name. And yes, the man you knew probably had learned the same lessons as my dad.

Again, this was years ago and I was never equipped with one of these but based on what little I learned and what I see it seems those poor guys where roasted, not knocked dead.