Aight so that was sad enough I figured I’d do a couple physical sims just to answer the question definitively:

But to cross at 30mph, you’d only need to rotate the barrel ~20° off center-line to clear the berm (which if Warthunder is to be believed (hehe), will take 5/8^ths of a second to return to axial - this is as close as I could get to the actual figure but it’s probably closer to a full second, I couldn’t find acceleration curves for the T-72 turret traversal (go figure)).

So you’re right, most likely a T-72 crew would have to rotate the turret some to clear this berm unless they’re going flat-out across that field, which is possible for them to achieve but the offroad speed of the T-72 isn’t super reliably reported (again go figure) so lets just go with you’re right.

And with that side topic settled, back to my point: this ditch ain’t going to force an AFV to slow down. Like at all.

Riding in any AFV isn’t comfortable, Russian tanks especially. This sure wouldn’t be pleasant, but it’d be a great deal more fun than being hit with an AT round because you stopped in the middle of an empty field.

Correct: IFVs* aren’t MBTs, but MBTs and IFVs are both AFVs. Using the supercategory in this case is just a nod to actual tanks being pretty rare on a modern battlefield vs. the vast number of tracked armored vehicles. This information doesn’t apply to just tanks, and since I find purely semantic arguments like this one tedious, I figured I’d err on the side of accuracy instead of informal intelligibility. More fool me, I guess.

And also yeah, no argument about gun elevation. Which is why you just go fast over a trench like this, and rely on it being < 1/2 the length of your vehicle (ex: the T-72 has a ground support length of around 9m for this roughly 4m trench) for added stability while crossing. Which totally ignores that you’d only get to where a 90° elevation would be relevant if you go so slow you’re pointing directly down into the trench, which wouldn’t happen if you impacted the angled far wall (which is why real tank ditches are shaped like the dunning kruger graph or the trench in the vid I linked - a sharp vertical wall to prevent climbing usually combined with an angled ramp to direct the bulk of the tank downwards before it’s feasible for the gap to be jumped)

Keep in mind that tanks initially existed for the sole reason of crossing ditches like this. While warfare has evolved and tanks no longer have WWI / Warhammer style gigantic climbing tracks, the basic use of a tank as an obstacle-crossing fire support vehicle has not changed.

^{edit: words}

^{edit_2: why did you change AFVs to IFVs? Nobody has been talking about IFVs except when I referenced the BMP, which doesn’t even have a protruding barrel, so what was the point here?}

… Right, which is why I said you might need to elevate the barrel, my point being that such a maneuver is not a tactical disadvantage.

A small stone wall will stop a Cupra and this ditch sure would be annoying to cross with a bicycle, but while all ditches could be anti-vehicle ditches, very few ditches are anti-tank ditches.

Really though, I’m trying to figure out how to phrase ‘how does physics factor into this’ in a more useful way, because obviously molecules stay together and gravity works, but do you have anything more than that? You can poke a tank barrel through a cinderblock wall without taking it out of battery, it’s a massive tempered steel bar, and barrel obstructions are extremely difficult to get. In modern tanks, tho iirc not on the T-72, soft barrel obstructions like dirt/mud/water/gravel/etc. can be cleared automatically from the breach controls by diverting pressure from the pneumatics (IIRC the T-72 had to use a squib to achieve the same result, which was stupid dangerous for russian-engineering-reasons). You’re just bringing up points that aren’t really relevant.

For example, this ditch alone would not be a deterrent to any AFV - but that’s why in an ideal world this would be sitting on the fronts of an AT minefield, to dissuade civilians or wildlife from walking into the field itself, separate AFVs from their support and to provide a nice little aesthetic boost. Like a ha-ha, but for tanks (though this goofy thing wouldn’t even function as a ha-ha)

^{edit: spelling}

At the very least you have to slow and turn your turret away from the place you want to go

You don’t, though, not in this case - because this isn’t an anti-tank ditch. You might have to elevate to prevent sticking your snoot in the berm, but (and not to go all war-thunder here) it’s two button presses on the gunner’s station and at very most a second’s delay to get back on sight, and thanks to the stabilization the turret is still tracking the entire time you’re doing that. And that’s just if you don’t blast the berm out of the way. And this doesn’t apply to most AFV’s, since they don’t have protruding barrels that might foul while crossing this.

There’s lots more here about the way static defenses factor into defense in depth and how modern improvements to the strategy incorporate information warfare to improve the cost/effect ratio, but I’m lazy - if you want to learn more look up Ukraine and Russia’s current anti-tank policy or Russia’s counter-counter-strike preparations from last year. At the very least it’ll give you some photos of what a legit anti-tank barrier looks like, which isn’t this goofy thing designed just to deter the so horrible “migration offensive”.

Whoops, I was curious - turns out the estonian LEO dug them (military police/border guard, not sure of distinction) but they’re anti-migrant ditches, not anti-tank ditches. From the source article:

Border Guard Chief Veiko Kommusaar said that the PPA supports all activities that help ensure security in Estonia: "The PPA’s task at the border is to prevent cross-border crime and illegal border crossings. Our neighboring countries have been facing a migration offensive for years, and although people have not been targeted at the Estonian borders in this way so far, we cannot rule out that this will always be the case. Of course, the barrier ditches built by the Defence Forces would also slow down the movement of illegal border crossers, which is why they will also support the Border Guard in preventing illegal migration.

Yeah, your first impulse was right on the money with this one.

it’s just an irrigation canal. A BMP could cross that without having to slow down, it can’t be more than 3m and has such beautiful ramped sides. The biggest threat might be getting stuck in the loose dirt of the spoil berm, but really there’s not enough there to trouble a hilux let alone an AFV or true tank.

Here’s what they probably used to dig it, you see things like this being used all the time in agri-heavy areas.

Rule of thumb, if it has two sloped sides it’s not going to stop an armored vehicle.

That’s a stock photo of an irrigation or utility trench, I suspect - it wouldn’t stop a 4x4, let alone a tank.

Strangely hard to find volunteers willing to serve papers to a CIWS - they tend to have an extremely persuasive way of responding to bad news.

I was thinking of the RCC tiles, probably should have considered that the white ones would just be health problems city. But the carbon fibers in the RCC ones are bound pretty completely in graphite, so from all the reading I just did (please help me I desperately need a job all this free time is going to kill me) it should be safe to eat those so long as they’re not reduced to, say, a fine dust. Ground down to the consistency of cornmeal though, I can’t find anything that indicates it would be a particular risk?

I think we can work with that, I’ve got a couple shuttle O-rings (not those ones) you could absolutely consume without issue. It’s probably not good to eat sharp parts like screws, but chunks of the heat tiles could be put in a pepper mill and used as a topping that way, or as a filler in a dense baked good like a scone. You could also eat any of the shielding foils, the gold foil used to protect against radiation especially would be totally safe and quite decorative.

like a truck

Who wouldn’t love to tuck into a big bowl of Mac & Cheese on their deathbed?

It’s like a less offputting cauliflower, I really recommend it. It’s both beautiful, and quite tasty.

“Orange romanesco”

Orbital Assembly Corporation

Hang on, this is just the gateway foundation’s grift again. They pop up every few few years to do the same thing, it’s just a funding scam. Last time I looked into these losers they didn’t even have an office. Nothing they’re proposing will work once you delve deeper than the pure surface level. Main guy claims to have been a JPL engineer, and he was, but iirc he worked on terrestrial power regulators for test equipment (or something similar).

He was going for "look at how this incredibly complex textured surface looks like it’s just an outline now isn’t it wild???" but failed to realize that a big pile of bullshit painted black just looks like… a big pile of bullshit painted black. It’s almost impressive how boring his ideas were. “Look the corner is triangular wooOOoooOOOooo”. He didn’t even go with something meta, like a scale model of his super reflective Bean sculpture coated in the stuff.

Just such a fuckin’ waste that vapid asshole was the artist that got to play with the stuff.

I award you the official title of “More Creative Than Kapoor”! It’s not a unique title, but it’s still one to bear with pride.

Are you perhaps confusing the EU with NATO? Most NATO countries aren’t dependent at all on russian oil - afaik it’s only Turkey, Hungary and Slovokia that are even notable importers the problem children of NATO. The rest are all hooked on their own energy or import it from baltic or arabian (?) fields (or the US? The sources got confusing fast, it seems to all get mingled and then get really speculative-investment-y).

Russia’s infrastructure is coming down around their ears, they’ve been humiliated, their global influence (non-propaganda) has been reduced to nearly nothing and they’re making desperate deals with north korea to maintain the semblance of their army, and europe is rearming.

And that’s without NATO getting brought in directly. I know it’s not glamorous, but there is huge investment of resources and material in the Ukraine conflict, so much so that the conceit you’ve presented is bordering on being dishonest. Boots on ground no, but Ukraine sure as hell isn’t fighting this alone.