Russia/Ukraine conflict

[iPlug]

Indeed.

3 U.S. officials report damage is minimal, that the system remains operational, and that there appears no need to remove the Patriot for repairs.

This sounds like falling debris.

Live updates: Russia's war in Ukraine

How did the Russians know ?

Do you mean how did the Russians know about the location of a Patriot system component and ultimately come to learn the damage was minimal?

Even <1% Russian sympathizers/collaborators among the Ukrainian population or actual spies would be enough to send "intelligence" information back to Russia. Hard to hide this equipment from the general Ukrainian population.

One could see from watching Russian Propaganda channels such as RT that at first they suggested a Patriot system was destroyed. Hours later changed that to it might have been damaged, and today you hear nothing about it from RT. Just kinzal scientists/engineers getting arrested and charged with high treason.

 

[Surfer of Life]

Getting anything more than a light wound means lost limbs or death for almost everyone.
Thread by @ChrisO_wiki on Thread Reader App

Why do the The medics in this photo appear to be wearing chef’s hats?

 

[Artful Dodger]

One could see from watching Russian Propaganda channels such as RT that at first they suggested a Patriot system was destroyed. Hours later changed that to it might have been damaged, and today you hear nothing about it from RT. Just kinzal scientists/engineers getting arrested and charged with high treason.

See how Russian media is covering damage to Patriot system in Ukraine | CNN (1 hr ago)

 

[wdolson]

Do you mean how did the Russians know about the location of a Patriot system component and ultimately come to learn the damage was minimal?

Even <1% Russian sympathizers/collaborators among the Ukrainian population or actual spies would be enough to send "intelligence" information back to Russia. Hard to hide this equipment from the general Ukrainian population.

One could see from watching Russian Propaganda channels such as RT that at first they suggested a Patriot system was destroyed. Hours later changed that to it might have been damaged, and today you hear nothing about it from RT. Just kinzal scientists/engineers getting arrested and charged with high treason.

I read today that 8 people were arrested for posting images that gave away positions of air defense batteries around Kyiv.

@Surfer of Life
"Why do the The medics in this photo appear to be wearing chef’s hats? "

Normal quoting didn't work for this one... That appears to be what doctors in the field wear. The Russians have some odd clothing choices. The blue and white striped undershirts a lot of service people wear I've also thought antiquated but those have been standard for a long time.

 

[SageBrush]

Even <1% Russian sympathizers/collaborators among the Ukrainian population or actual spies would be enough to send "intelligence" information back to Russia. Hard to hide this equipment from the general Ukrainian population.

That makes good sense. Curious blind spot I have.

One could see from watching Russian Propaganda channels such as RT that at first they suggested a Patriot system was destroyed. Hours later changed that to it might have been damaged

Two things stand out for me in your comment. One is that RT gets its information fast. I suppose that is the world of encrypted internet we live in. The other is that I'm used to flat out lies from Russian propaganda. RT was wrong, and self-corrected. Curious that they are less deceitful than recent American politicians.

 

[iPlug]

...RT was wrong, and self-corrected...

I may have conveyed RT's actions unclearly.

They did not issue anything resembling a mea culpa. Each wrong story disappeared from their website as if it were never posted prior (nothing resembling an update/addendum/correction). And today there is no news on their site as if they never reported on it.

Would say this is more along the Stalinistic style of airbrushing out inconvenient things. You are comparatively too hard on those dreadful politicians, they may be in the same league.

 

[wdolson]

I may have conveyed RT's actions unclearly.

They did not issue anything resembling a mea culpa. Each wrong story disappeared from their website as if it were never posted prior (nothing resembling an update/addendum/correction). And today there is no news on their site as if they never reported on it.

Would say this is more along the Stalinistic style of airbrushing out inconvenient things. You are comparatively too hard on those dreadful politicians, they may be in the same league.

Right out of George Orwell's 1984. The inconvenient lies never happened.

 

[BitJam]

The Russians may be in for some nasty surprises when the Ukrainian army gets close to Melitopol.

AFAIK, Russia is still a formidable military force and during the counter-offensive they will have a significant advantage being on defense. Even with all the NATO equipment that has been delivered and promised, Ukraine could be outmatched in a head to head conflict when they push forward an offensive. Unlike the Kherson/Kharkiv gambit where the Russians were totally outwitted, there is less room for subterfuge in the coming offensive and the Russians are well fortified to defend their land bridge.

Stories like this one about resistance fighters in Melitopol give me hope that when the time comes, Ukraine will be able to oust the invaders using a variety of tactics that will take Russia by surprise. I'm glad to see Ukraine has started using long range missiles. I hope there are many many more. General Hodges said these were more important than aircraft but that might have changed due to the new glide bombs Russia has started launching from planes. IIUC Zelensky's recent whirlwind tour of allied countries was to stress why Ukraine really needs fighter jets now. Shooting down cheap glide bombs with expensive Patriot missiles is not sustainable. Ukraine now needs to shoot down the Russian aircraft that are launching the glide bombs.

Drone attacks of military targets inside of Russia have ramped up. I'm very curious to see if Ukraine really has an army of 10,000 drone operators and I want to see what they plan to do with all of those drones. Perhaps Ukraine's most important asset is the courage and conviction of its people. They know why they are fighting. The horrendous war crimes committed by Russia: torture, rape, kidnapping of children make it perfectly clear which side has the moral high ground and cannot afford to lose.

 

[wdolson]

The Russians may be in for some nasty surprises when the Ukrainian army gets close to Melitopol.

AFAIK, Russia is still a formidable military force and during the counter-offensive they will have a significant advantage being on defense. Even with all the NATO equipment that has been delivered and promised, Ukraine could be outmatched in a head to head conflict when they push forward an offensive. Unlike the Kherson/Kharkiv gambit where the Russians were totally outwitted, there is less room for subterfuge in the coming offensive and the Russians are well fortified to defend their land bridge.

Stories like this one about resistance fighters in Melitopol give me hope that when the time comes, Ukraine will be able to oust the invaders using a variety of tactics that will take Russia by surprise. I'm glad to see Ukraine has started using long range missiles. I hope there are many many more. General Hodges said these were more important than aircraft but that might have changed due to the new glide bombs Russia has started launching from planes. IIUC Zelensky's recent whirlwind tour of allied countries was to stress why Ukraine really needs fighter jets now. Shooting down cheap glide bombs with expensive Patriot missiles is not sustainable. Ukraine now needs to shoot down the Russian aircraft that are launching the glide bombs.

Drone attacks of military targets inside of Russia have ramped up. I'm very curious to see if Ukraine really has an army of 10,000 drone operators and I want to see what they plan to do with all of those drones. Perhaps Ukraine's most important asset is the courage and conviction of its people. They know why they are fighting. The horrendous war crimes committed by Russia: torture, rape, kidnapping of children make it perfectly clear which side has the moral high ground and cannot afford to lose.

I doubt Patriots are being used to shoot down glide bombs. Ukraine has other AD systems for easier to hit targets. Some of the ex-Soviet medium range systems have been modified to use NATO missiles. There are also systems like the IRIS-T and SAMP/T that have been given to Ukraine.

The progress Ukraine has been able to make around Bakhmut is a good sign of things to come. The highest concentration of Russians in all of Ukraine has been around Bakhmut for a while. I saw a Russian cell phone heat map that showed lots of activity around Bakhmut, but in many places in the south it was completely quiet.

Russian morale is poor. The Ukrainians are taking a lot of prisoners around Bakhmut and the flanks collapsed very quickly. The Ukrainian offensive is going to slow down a bit because they have reached some hills east of Bakhmut, but a lot of Russians are choosing to give up than fight.

The Russians have some veterans in the south who might put up more of a fight, but the Russians are weaker now than they were last fall. They have continued to lose equipment, and a lot of their draftees got killed or disabled over the winter.

I'm also sure the Ukrainians have some surprises stocked up for the offensive. They are good at being unpredictable.

 

[BitJam]

I doubt Patriots are being used to shoot down glide bombs. Ukraine has other AD systems for easier to hit targets. Some of the ex-Soviet medium range systems have been modified to use NATO missiles. There are also systems like the IRIS-T and SAMP/T that have been given to Ukraine.

That came from this recent interview with Prof. Michael Clarke:

where he said:

... you're exhausting the other side's missiles with a very cheap drone. The Russians don't mind how many Shahed drones come down as long as they keep exhausting Ukraine's weapons stock. And that's the problem Ukraine's got. So ideally they need aircraft as well, particularly because the Russians have developed this glide bomb now and this glide bomb is a BOG standard bomb, they've got lots of them, they're very cheap, and they've found a way, inventive as they are, of putting wings on it, fins on it, and a guidance system [like GPS] and so if an aircraft would normally drop this bomb, it just falls from the aircraft [...] but if it drops the bomb from high enough up then that bomb is now capable of gliding for forty km and it can land very accurately, and that glide bomb is playing havoc at the moment with Ukrainian artillery because it turns out to be accurate enough and the Russians have lots of them and once this bomb is set off it's almost impossible to bring it down, because, again, you're using a very expensive missile against it and you'll run out of good missiles and you can't really use your anti-aircraft and artillery against it.​

​

And so the only way to combat this glide bomb which can be launched from either inside Russian airspace or just not far over the border means that Russian aircraft don't have to take much of a chance if they can drop a bomb 40 km away from where it's going to land. And the only way the Ukrainians say that they can combat this is aircraft to aircraft. And that's one of the points we believe Zelensky's been making in Europe this past week. He's saying "we have to be able to take on the aircraft to aircraft combat in order to stop them dropping glide bombs from 40, 50 km away in ways we can't do anything about because it's playing havoc with our front line forces."​

​

Sure, I made a jump from a very expensive missile which is the only way to bring down glide bombs to a Patriot missile. Maybe Ukraine has some other very expensive anti-missile missiles that are capable of hitting glide bombs. Even so, the gist remains the same. Shooting down cheap glide bombs with very expensive missiles is not sustainable so Ukraine is asking for fighter aircraft to combat the new Russian glide bombs.

 

[Ogre]

Sure, I made a jump from a very expensive missile which is the only way to bring down glide bombs to a Patriot missile. Maybe Ukraine has some other very expensive anti-missile missiles that are capable of hitting glide bombs. Even so, the gist remains the same. Shooting down cheap glide bombs with very expensive missiles is not sustainable so Ukraine is asking for fighter aircraft to combat the new Russian glide bombs.

The German Gepards can't shoot these down? They are exceedingly inexpensive and seems like the glide bomb would be exactly the sort of thing they would be perfect at targeting.

I think the big problem is simply surface area.

 

[wdolson]

The German Gepards can't shoot these down? They are exceedingly inexpensive and seems like the glide bomb would be exactly the sort of thing they would be perfect at targeting.

I think the big problem is simply surface area.

I don't see anywhere that Gepard ammunition has proximity fuzes. And I'm not sure a proximity fuze would work very well on a glide bomb. Proximity fuzes were introduced on large caliber AA gun ammunition in late WW II. The US Navy was the primary user, though the Army got some too. The shell has a simple radar in it that when it gets near a target it goes off. Before then fuzes had to be set assuming the distance to the target and the flight time. Misjudge the distance and the shell will explode too far away from the target to be effective.

Short range gun AA is usually auto-cannons that fire a burst at the plane in the hopes of getting a direct contact with a shell. The Gepard's 35mm shell will do significant damage to any aircraft if it scores a hit.

The problem with shooting down a glide bomb is that unlike an aircraft, it's got a steel casing and it's much smaller than an aircraft. It's traveling about the same speed range as many drones, but it's only in the air a relatively short time after release. Any kind of AA needs to lock onto the bomb and launch in time to intercept the bomb before it hits its target. It's a very difficult problem to solve.

Some glide bombs are laser guided, but it requires someone to keep a laser on the target until the bomb hits. This is useful in close support where an infantry unit on the ground can keep the laser on target and the plane can escape. Otherwise the plane needs to linger until the bomb hits with the laser pointer on the target. I believe this is the old guidance system Russian aircraft used before the war. When they had smart bombs, but they used up most of them in Syria.

The other option is a GPS guided bomb which is drop and forget. Either the bomb is pre-programmed on the ground before take off, or it's programmed by the pilot before dropping. GPS guided bombs have the disadvantage that if the enemy is using GPS jamming, the bomb can get confused and not know where it's going. More sophisticated GPS guided bombs have backup systems that it will try to figure out and hit the target anyway if the GPS signal is jammed, but I doubt the Russian glide bombs being employed now have much sophistication.

Simple GPS modules are available off the shelf and China makes them. There are so many things that use GPS these days that there are lots of cheap options. Get a GPS navigation module that can be programmed with a destination and link up it's output signals to a servo system that drives the fins in flight and you have a simple, cheap guidance system to make dumb bombs into smart bombs. The servo systems are also easily available from China.

The JDAM is essentially this kit, with sophisticated purpose built components.

The JDAM has backup systems to work even if GPS is jammed, but the commercial knock off probably doesn't. The best bet for the Ukrainians is to turn on jammers if they detect Russian aircraft on a glide bomb profile. If jammed from launch the bomb will probably miss. Turn on the jammer too late and the bomb has already lined up on its target.

 

[SmokyPeat]

Seems like it's just a matter of time before Ukraine's air force get the F-16s they desperately want. First from European allies, then almost certainly from the US. Very reminiscent of how pressure to supply Abrams tanks eventually overcame the administration's reticence.

Pressure campaign on Biden to send F-16s to Ukraine goes into overdrive

Officials signal they’re still open to allowing other countries to send their U.S.-made jets.

www.politico.com

 

[Skipdd]

Seems like it's just a matter of time before Ukraine's air force get the F-16s they desperately want. First from European allies, then almost certainly from the US. Very reminiscent of how pressure to supply Abrams tanks eventually overcame the administration's reticence.

Pressure campaign on Biden to send F-16s to Ukraine goes into overdrive

Officials signal they’re still open to allowing other countries to send their U.S.-made jets.

www.politico.com

Same thing being reported by Kyiv Independent.

 

[JRP3]

Denys discusses 4 months of training needed for F16 including language instruction

 

[Surfer of Life]

Denys discusses 4 months of training needed for F16 including language instruction

I like his updates on the “sitchiation”. Liked and subscribed.

 

[SageBrush]

You are comparatively too hard on those dreadful politicians, they may be in the same league.

The lies continue without letup, and are amplified by the political party for gerrymandering and personal gain. I would dump the whole lot in Putin's jail cell

 

[wdolson]

The truth is coming out about the damage to the Patriot system. The Ukrainians fixed the damage with duct tape.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1659341944504328193

 

[wdolson]

There has been a lot of debate here and elsewhere why the more sophisticated equipment has been slow in going to Ukraine. Mark Hertling addressed that today
Thread by @MarkHertling on Thread Reader App

When a general gets above command of a division, their life becomes all about the logistics of supply and support. Hertling knows what he's talking about.

Erwin Rommel was an excellent division commander, but Afrika Korps had problems because he didn't really understand supply and support. Afrika Korps went from heady times when they had supply to being paralyzed because they ran out. The Allies were getting stronger in North Africa and would have driven the Germans out eventually, but Rommel's inability to handle his supply situation helped the Allies quite a bit and shortened the campaign.

 

[gt2690b]

Seems like it's just a matter of time before Ukraine's air force get the F-16s they desperately want. First from European allies, then almost certainly from the US. Very reminiscent of how pressure to supply Abrams tanks eventually overcame the administration's reticence.

Pressure campaign on Biden to send F-16s to Ukraine goes into overdrive

Officials signal they’re still open to allowing other countries to send their U.S.-made jets.

www.politico.com

They should be able to get some from Afghanistan since we left so much other equipment there..