Query. Outside of NATO and China (and I guess Iran) who makes the weapons with the range, accuracy and other capabilities to attack the Russian sources of these attacks? Could these be purchased like the Iranian drones? What about Israel or Turkey?
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Israel, for sure, probably Turkey (they are about to release a jet-based drone). I believe that South Korea also has production of medium-range weapons that would fit the bill (they have quite the budding weapons production in the past 10 years).
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
Turkey is a NATO country (which I as a Swede for some reason is rather aware of...). If NATO is wary of what it does in this conflict – then how can we expect countries like Israel and/or South Korea to take action here?... I can't see any other option except that these kinds of weapons will have to come from countries already under the protection of the NATO Nuclear umbrella...
Some of the Russian launch platforms can be targeted, but some are hard to locate. The Iranian drones have highly mobile launchers that can be easily hidden when not in use. Human intel can occasionally find them in hiding, but that requires a bit of luck.
The heavy bombers launching the air launched missiles stay out of S-300 range so they are hard to hit in the air. Now that the Ukrainians hit their main base, the Russians have dispersed them so they are harder to find and may be out of strike range at this point.
Finding and hitting the ships launching the missiles are probably the easiest targets to locate and the Ukrainians do have some missiles that can take them out, but the Russians stay out of Neptune range as much as possible. Some of the Russian naval missiles have been launched from the Caspian Sea, which is completely out of range for any Ukrainian assets today.
For the occasional Iskander long range surveillance can get a bead on the launcher at the moment of launch, but a skilled crew won't be anywhere near that location when a retaliatory strike comes in. Additionally the Russians probably have more Iskander launchers than Iskander missiles at this point. If they get Iranian missiles, they won't be getting many launchers, so taking out launchers would definitely degrade their capabilities.
There was one air to air encounter between drones a couple of months ago, but nothing like a drone fighter exists right now. I thought Hind helicopters would make good anti-drone platforms. The helicopter can match speed with the Iranian drones and the chin turret is a cheap and probably effective weapon for knocking them out of the sky. The Ukrainians have a pretty good idea where the drones are coming from, they could have Hinds up and loitering near expected paths to intercept them.
The Russian leadership doesn't care how many of their own troops they kill, nor do they care about peasant civilians getting killed. Knocking out the Russian power grid would give the Kremlin plenty of ammunition to claim the Ukrainians are being terrorists and they would just let the people affected freeze to death and blame the Ukrainians for that.
I think it would backfire. As long as Ukraine is careful to stay on the ethical high road, only targeting things of military significance, any Russian complaints fall on deaf ears out side of Russia. Attacking civilian targets with Ukraine's limited resources for attacking inside Russia is also a waste of assets. Taking out a fuel storage facility, an ammunition storage warehouse, or a barracks full of Russian troops has a trickle down effect to the battlefield. Attacking civilian infrastructure doesn't and probably hardens the resolve of the civilian population to contribute more to the war effort.
I think it was one of Perun's recent videos where he looked at the history of strategic attacks on civilians in war and the history shows it's always been a dismal failure, especially when the civilian population believes that their side could win.
If an enemy strategy is failing in it's intended goal, it's a bad idea to try the same thing. The intended goal being to reduce Ukrainian civilian morale and force the Ukrainians to quit. The Russians are causing severe material damage, but the will of the Ukrainian people is just getting stronger. Even if Russia were to somehow break the Ukrainian army in the field and overrun the country (pretty much impossible at this point, but hypothetically), the Ukrainian people would resist Russia until the sun went cold. Even if it meant most of the Ukrainian people were killed.
Ukraine is completely done with trying to accommodate Russia.
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
No, absolutely not! This is the fondest wish of Russia, to embroil NATO in a shooting war so they can extent their own list of targets to Western Europe, and to sell a general mobilization in Russia.
NATO will not get into a shooting war with Russia. NATO is a defensive allance by nature, and conducting deep strikes on civilian infrastructure in Russia to "share the pain" is EXACTLY playing into rusputin's evil hands. NATO is not going there.
It is easier to relocate the ENTIRE civilian population of Ukraine to safe areas than to fight that kind of war. It's easier to replace critical energy infrastuture with distributed power nodes (like the gensets now flooding in from Europe), including solar, batteries, and Starlink.
Rather than "shoot the archer", Ukraine must "harden the target". Anti-drone point defences such as barrage balloons and chainlink cages are cheap and effective. For ballistic missles, those need to be stopped at the border before entering Russia (squash Iran if neccessary; I'd train Tehran for London). But the Iranians will blink when shown the door.
Lessons From Ukraine? China Uses 'Barrage Balloons' To Protect Its Critical Infra From Missile, Drone Attacks
Then, let the ground war grind Russia into the soil. Glide Bombs with 160 km range will hobble the Russians as they lose most of their field HQs and logistics in the Eastern Donbas. The endgame has to include pushing Russia out of all occupied territory according to the 1991 agreements.
Then Russia should be removed from the U.N. Security Council. They are not the Soviet Union, and were not entitled to be grandfathered into that seat. Look what damage it's caused having them there. Western, indeed World resolve is necessary now to see this through.
NATO will not get into a shooting war with Russia. NATO is a defensive allance by nature, and conducting deep strikes on civilian infrastructure in Russia to "share the pain" is EXACTLY playing into rusputin's evil hands. NATO is not going there.
It is easier to relocate the ENTIRE civilian population of Ukraine to safe areas than to fight that kind of war. It's easier to replace critical energy infrastuture with distributed power nodes (like the gensets now flooding in from Europe), including solar, batteries, and Starlink.
Rather than "shoot the archer", Ukraine must "harden the target". Anti-drone point defences such as barrage balloons and chainlink cages are cheap and effective. For ballistic missles, those need to be stopped at the border before entering Russia (squash Iran if neccessary; I'd train Tehran for London). But the Iranians will blink when shown the door.
Lessons From Ukraine? China Uses 'Barrage Balloons' To Protect Its Critical Infra From Missile, Drone Attacks
Then, let the ground war grind Russia into the soil. Glide Bombs with 160 km range will hobble the Russians as they lose most of their field HQs and logistics in the Eastern Donbas. The endgame has to include pushing Russia out of all occupied territory according to the 1991 agreements.
Then Russia should be removed from the U.N. Security Council. They are not the Soviet Union, and were not entitled to be grandfathered into that seat. Look what damage it's caused having them there. Western, indeed World resolve is necessary now to see this through.
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Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
Hmm, so Germany can build critical infrastructure in a timely fashion:
Germany opens new LNG terminal in record time to replace Russian gas | DW News
Germany opens new LNG terminal in record time to replace Russian gas | DW News
For some reason I keep forgetting that Turkey is a member of NATO, probably because Erdogan frustrates me so much. Thanks for reminding me.
petit_bateau
Active Member
I'm not suggesting that Ukraine should be going after non-military targets, just the military ones. And definitely it has to be Ukraine that does the doing. There are good reasons - long may they continue - why NATO et al are correct to not be drawn into direct conflict with Russia.
So by all means work on defensive and post-strike recovery aspects for Ukraine, but also give Ukraine the means to attack valid and relevant military targets at scale further beyond the existing Ukraine front lines. Without doubt: shoot the archer, not the arrow.
However I'm afraid I find many of the specific proposals for drone/missile-interception and target-hardening simply nonsense and showing how little general understanding there is of the power and nature of modern weapons, and the fragility of humans and modern technological infrastructure.
I sincerely hope that the UN General Assembly finds sufficient resolve and a suitable mechanism to remove Russia from its current P5 status. But that is a separate strand than the military situation.
If you have valid suggestions as to how to do more to influence Iran to obediently do the US's bidding may I suggest you send them to the White House, as the last 43-years or so have been sadly devoid of such an intellect. In the meantime there is a reason why London is getting the Aster block 1 ABM upgrade, alongside Italy and France. Quite a few Europeans have observed over the years the willingness of US-ians to trade away London, Paris, etc. and that is why Europe has retained its own indigenous strategic core competences. Please try to remember we all on the same team. Aren't we ?
UK signs for Aster 30 Block 1 anti-ballistic missile weapons
The new contract amendment will oversee the conversion of Aster 30 missiles to the Aster 30 B1 Naval UK standard, as well as the development of autopilot software and logistics updates.
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
The German military is hobbled with an unbelievably bad bureaucracy, but the rest of the government can move quickly when it feels there is a need. I recall back in April the Germans predicted the terminal would be up and running by the end of the year and they hit their target.
Much faster approval versus GigaBerlin.
Doggydogworld
Active Member
To be fair, regasification terminals are not hard to build. NG really, really wants to be a gas. Liquefaction terminals at the other end cost a fortune to build and operate, because it's very hard to turn NG into a liquid. And it's hard to keep it as a liquid -- in fact despite ship designer's best efforts some of LNG unavoidably converts to gas automatically (called boil-off) during the trip. So a simple regasification terminal is mostly a matter of letting nature take its course.
petit_bateau
Active Member
What is more, these are not really full regasification terminals. They are actually 'just' hook-in points for Floating LNG Regasification terminals as it was faster to procure those and connect them with a minimum of local building work, and (I think) fewer permitting issues. Another 3-4 are planned and in progress, mostly coming onstream during 2023. My memory is that France will get 1-2 as well.
We can expect to see a lot more of this over the next year, far from Ukraine:
Unit of Siberian oil and gas condensate field catches fire
A unit at an oil and gas condensate Markovskoye (Markovsky) field in Russia's Irkutsk region in Siberia has caught fire over an area of about 1,000 square metres, the local emergency service said on social media on Sunday.
Unit of Siberian oil and gas condensate field catches fire
Interesting video describing how one of Russia's new secret weapons may be Antonov AN-2 biplanes. Loaded with explosives and converted into "drones" they could basically be used to exhaust Ukranian anti aircraft missiles. Apparently a single S300 missile costs around $1M, whereas the AN-2 is abundant and cheap. These would be easy targets for jet aircraft and attack helos, though.
petit_bateau
Active Member
"Condensate" is very similar to gasoline. Sufficiently so that I've seen my techs put it in their cars back in the day. Nasty stuff condensate/gasoline, explodes nicely, much more dangerous than diesel. What we have very little public info on is what the 'normal' level of Russian O&G facility self-immolation is, and what is abnormal. This would be a good study for one of the more techy coders in the OSINT community to look into using historical and current FIRMS satellite data.
This is the Armenia / Azeri playbook redux, now well known in the game. Both sides can play it. For some reason it has not been tried so far in this conflict by either side.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Potential hypothesis as someone who operates similar assets the industry: I'm sure the quiet thought in everyone's mind is saboteur, but I'm not at that conclusion yet. I feel that a more likely explanation is related to the exodus of technical talent and lack of availability for replacement parts/instrumentation. Developing a base of institutional knowledge around strong process safety is challenging even for the best companies. Eviscerating a workforce of talent and vendors in this space could result in an incident rate uptick as a lagging indicator.
