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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
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petit_bateau
Active Member
Perfect solution for Ka-52s ......
petit_bateau
Active Member
Quite the loss rate
Drive-by ID then a full circle to starboard for impact. Apparently this was being used to ship aviation fuel to Crimea/etc. (There were also some pipelines over the Kerch bridge, but I don't know what they were used for; which bridge they were attached to; or their current status).
Drive-by ID then a full circle to starboard for impact. Apparently this was being used to ship aviation fuel to Crimea/etc. (There were also some pipelines over the Kerch bridge, but I don't know what they were used for; which bridge they were attached to; or their current status).
Sig has some history
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Thread by @Osinttechnical on Thread Reader App
@Osinttechnical: Bit of a long thread here. The Russian tanker hit overnight by a Ukrainian USV, Sig, was a prolific sanctions violator and a major lifeline for the Russian war effort in Syria. In 2019, the...…
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petit_bateau
Active Member
So 18-months to save Ukraine, and 18-months to save NATO
www.theguardian.com
John Bolton suggests US will leave Nato if ‘erratic’ Trump wins in 2024
Ex-national security adviser calls former boss ‘irrational’ and criticizes Republicans who support him on foreign policy
www.theguardian.com
Yes team Biden can't f this up like they f'd up the budget discussions by not passing debt limits prior to republicans taking over the house. They had 3 months to fix a huge problem and dithered with their thumbs up their butts and caused giant crisis that emboldened nut cases. They simply have to get everything sorted and delivered! Assume a worst case and prepare for that. Besides Ukraine clearly winning will be very helpful to Biden.
X Fan
Active Member
A thread by Trent Telenko on mines and de-mining:
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Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App
@TrentTelenko: This is going to be a thread about the Ukrainian counter offensive and some snarky comments about Ukraine 'making excuses like the Nazis' for the counteroffensive being slow due to vegetation. I'll su...…
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A thread by Trent Telenko on mines and de-mining:
Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App
@TrentTelenko: This is going to be a thread about the Ukrainian counter offensive and some snarky comments about Ukraine 'making excuses like the Nazis' for the counteroffensive being slow due to vegetation. I'll su...…
As I said the US Army would struggle with this mine environment. The US has no effective, quick counter to the PFM-1 butterfly mine. Nobody else does either.
But if they did a low level (very low) DoD guy they never got a seat in the pentagon wouldn't be someone that would know about it. I have never seen someone post so authoritatively on so many topics which were completely outside their area of expertise as Trent. Then he tries to pick fights and posts as if the world disagreed with him. Entertaining at times but not something to repost IMO.
Edited- especially as trent ignores the key points here. It is anti-tank mines that are really slowing things. In the trenches they are not coming across so many anti personnel mines. Many of the antipersonnel mines were laid by Ukriane to slow Russia in the Kharkiv area.
There have been some mixed mine fields but mostly the anti-vehicle fields are just that. It is too bad we don't have something similar to TOS russia system but I'd think Ukraine could develop one after the war. Another solution is going to be to just herbicide and burn all the fields which should set off most of them. Right now the fields are green- roundup and burn should remove most of them.
Edited- especially as trent ignores the key points here. It is anti-tank mines that are really slowing things. In the trenches they are not coming across so many anti personnel mines. Many of the antipersonnel mines were laid by Ukriane to slow Russia in the Kharkiv area.
There have been some mixed mine fields but mostly the anti-vehicle fields are just that. It is too bad we don't have something similar to TOS russia system but I'd think Ukraine could develop one after the war. Another solution is going to be to just herbicide and burn all the fields which should set off most of them. Right now the fields are green- roundup and burn should remove most of them.
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X Fan
Active Member
UK-Telegraph report today: RU is claiming a re-take of a NE town of Kupiansk
Tiger
Active Member
Are you incinerating that fire will set off mines???!???
I’m pretty sure Roundup-ing otherwise active agricultural fields with Glyphosate herbicide won’t leave enough flammable residue to make much fire; indeed, I was unaware that burning the fields would set off the mines(?).
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petit_bateau
Active Member
missile issues
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Thread by @MaxRTucker on Thread Reader App
@MaxRTucker: I spoke to a Lt. Colonel in Ukraine’s air defence command, who revealed several new facts. First, Kyiv was on the brink of evacuation in Dec due to the intensity of Russian strikes on energy...…
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X Fan
Active Member
Thx for posting.missile issues
Thread by @MaxRTucker on Thread Reader App
@MaxRTucker: I spoke to a Lt. Colonel in Ukraine’s air defence command, who revealed several new facts. First, Kyiv was on the brink of evacuation in Dec due to the intensity of Russian strikes on energy...…
Ukr has received substantial aid but it unfortunately has often been too late.
West leadership dithering is the core reason why the offensive is stalling (Ru should not have had the time to lay down those extensive minefields plus more advanced aircraft should already have been provisioned).
Trent does range outside his expertise sometimes, but he does know about DoD procurement programs as well as logistics. It was short sighted to cancel the anti-mine thermobaric artillery. His assertions may not be why the program was canceled. Many programs are canceled because they don't work the way they expected.
One famous one was the Sgt York gun AA system that was the US's answer to the Gepard. It mated the radar from the F-16 to an automated gun. I think it was 40mm, but it may have been smaller. The radar was not suited to working at ground level and had a lot of trouble detecting targets. The gun also struggled to lock onto a target. The program was canceled when a target that was rigged to blow up when the gun fired in its direction (faking the demonstration) went off out of sync with the gun firing.
I don't know much about the thermobaric system he talked about in that thread. I hadn't heard about it before. Ukraine could definitely use that now, but it doesn't exist.
In the minefields laid in the south, I have read in many places that the Russians laid a mix of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines underground. What Telenko is talking about are PFM-1 anti-personnel mines which are small (about 5 inches across) mines that are scattered by artillery and other devices. They are a long lasting cluster munition that is too small to kill most of the time, but they do cause serious wounds.
The Russians have lots of those too and they have been spreading them around in front of their positions to slow down the Ukrainians. They are above ground scattered in trees, just lying on the surface, etc. The Russians have also been slipping them under dead bodies as booby traps.
A thermobaric weapon that created a good pressure wave would set off most of the PFM-1s in an area.
The Ukrainians are moving along the tree lines which can't have hidden underground mines. If the dirt was disturbed there, it would be obvious. Putting mines in agricultural fields is easy because how do you tell between a tilled field and a mined field? The PFM-1s are a serious problem in these treed areas because most are green so they blend into the foliage and they are scattered at random. Once spotted a sapper can dispose of one in a few minutes, but there are hundreds in every treeline.
Having to stop moving every time they encounter one slows them down all the more. And there is always the risk that someone is going to run into one that wasn't detected in time. That person probably won't be killed, but they are out of the fight.
The fields that have been mined are fallow. There has been talk you can see the Russian fortified areas from space from bands of green in Ukraine. Those are areas that have gone over to weeds rather than crops.
Just burning the fields probably won't set off too many mines. The PFM-1s are scattered on the surface and at least the plastic would burn, but they might become more dangerous because the payload would be there in a smaller package. The more traditional mines are under the surface and burning grass on top of them is not going to heat them up much. Even if they are temperature sensitive, burning grass burns quick and the ground a few inches down is not going to get any warmer than a hot summer day.
The mines need to either be detected and deactivated, or blown up from pressure. The detection and deactivation are mostly a post-conflict job. We could develop a robot to do that job more safely than humans risking their lives. But that's going to be a very slow slog that will take days per acre.
A bomb that creates a good pressure wave would set off many at a time, but just fire probably won't do the job.
missile issues
Thread by @MaxRTucker on Thread Reader App
@MaxRTucker: I spoke to a Lt. Colonel in Ukraine’s air defence command, who revealed several new facts. First, Kyiv was on the brink of evacuation in Dec due to the intensity of Russian strikes on energy...…
I had a feeling from the start that Patriot missile stocks were going to run low. At the start of the war the US had only made 1000 missiles total.
The lesson the western countries need to learn from this war is whatever they think they need as far as ammunition for a war, it should be increased by an order of magnitude at least. The Czech Republic had mothballed a couple of factories that made Soviet caliber ammunition instead of tearing them down. They were able to put those calibers back into production last year.
NATO countries should look at building facilities to make ammunition in times of war and mothballing them so they can be spun up quickly when needed.
Making more dumb ammunition is easy compared to smart weapons. The complex components of the smart weapons should be pre-made in bulk and put on the shelf to be mated with the explosive components later. Explosive degrade in storage, but electronics doesn't if stored properly.
But all this is only good for the next war. They don't help Ukraine now.
Russia did start putting down the defenses while conditions were bad for an offensive so Ukraine would be facing some of these obstacles anyway. Some of the things Ukraine would have needed to really go fast were beyond their capability to deploy. To get and maintain air superiority they would need an air force of ~500 western aircraft. They have about 1/5 that many pilots. Training more would take 1+ years.
Tree lines are the best option until a good solution is found for clearing the fields, it is worth trying to find a good solution.
IMO a drone vehicle just needs to push an object that exerts more downward pressure (weighs more) than the drone vehicle itself. If the object the drone vehicle is pushing can safely clear all PFM-1 mines in the area, then it is safe for troops to follow afterwards and the object being pushed can provide some cover. It doesn't need to move fast... Troops can remove any anti-tank mines using regular manual detection and removal techniques.
I'm not sure there is a solution, but if it can be found, a good solution shifts the balance of the conflict
Yes fires will set off mine fuses. In fact Ukraine frequently set forest fires along the Russian border in Kharkiv to allow the raiders to safely cross. Doesn’t take a lot of heat. Russian telegram channels would warn border guard that forest fires meant crossing attempts. Once the field gets dry (October) but before it snows a grass fire will set them off easily. Grass fires are hot! - as a forester that does quite a bit of burning for forests management this is something I know about (fires not mines). If an understory forest fires do the trick a grass fire would do wonders and they are fast, any wind and they can move! the issue is you need dry grass! Low humidity and dry grass…. Game on.
BitJam
Active Member
Pulling out of the grain deal where Ukraine voluntarily blockaded itself has been a disaster for Russia. The tables have been turned. Ukraine is not blockaded but Russia is. There are many other videos about Russia's problems in the Black Sea now including this one from Jake Broe:
Russia's Black Sea Blockade BACKFIRES Horribly
Ukraine's naval drones are amazing and seem to be improving rapidly. It's unfortunately for Russia that they gave Ukraine such a golden opportunity to use and improve them.
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