petit_bateau
Active Member
I'd rather not give specific comments. Whilst I am sure that nobody is sitting in the Kremlin reading this thread every morning, it is equally obvious that it does no good for the internet to be ablaze with helpful commentary.
However here are some more general comments that are statements of the blindingly obvious and so can be said:
- Ukraine is exhibiting very good operational level joint force integration. At operational level individual actions can be single-force but still result in a coherent joint operational outcome. Some Ukraine actions are exhibiting tri-force (naval/land/air) integration for smaller operations and their efforts are showing good results.
- Ukraine now has reach 500-600km to the south of Odessa across the Black Sea, and further to the north of Kiev by about 1,000km towards Moscow.
- Ukraine's immediate campaign objectives (to my mind) are:
-- progress on land towards Azov coast;
-- reduce or ideally eliminate Russian airstrikes on Ukraine cities and (winter) power networks and (summer) grain export facilities;
-- fully break sea blockade and reinstate grain exports for economic and political reasons;
- All of these objectives are positively affected the more that Russian use of the maritime/littoral areas includng the skies above is impeded and that Ukraine use is promoted. Ideally the Russian naval vessels would be penned in harbour, and every near-sea-shore target would be pounded constantly by Ukraine from the sea, and the missile launch aircraft pushed back much further. Action towards one objective is complementary to actions towards the other objectives.
- Some of the greatest students of jeune ecole were - and continue to be - UK and USA. It is no surprise to see that knowledge transferred. It doesn't all have to be big grey warships. The relevant stuff that has been transferred recently (and some is in transit still) are at the small scale but very helpful end of the spectrum.
- Having an island gives one persistence, a base, facilities, improved speed of response, improved radar range, ESM range, comms range, launcher facilities, logistics facilities, etc. Snake Island was just one step in that direction. The rigs are another. There are many more small islands and isolated seashore/littoral areas around the Black Sea, and a lot of these offer a big enough footprint for quite an effective result. These can do (or enable) things that cannot be done from a satellite in space.
- I am pretty sure that the USA has acted to remove Musk from direct operational control, authority, and responsibility for Starlink. He may also have been taken out of the operational insight loop for some Starlink things. This both reduces the direct threat to Musk, and the threat from Musk. The USA has always insisted that a US fully native national with full clearance was the adult in charge (Glynn Shotwell for SpaceX, hence Starlink) and I suspect other discreet moves have been made more recently. But equally I hope that Musk's security precautions are fully in place and that he is thoughtful about where he travels to for the next year or so. I think it also may be part of the explanation as to why the Biden administration downplays Musk - it is deliberate, but it is not necessarily for (only) the reasons some have suggested, and it makes good sense for everyone (imho).
- I suspect that some other coms networks are in play for some of the long range activies we observe.
- (BTW I don't have a view what brought down that Legacy or whether Prizhogin was onboard. There doesn't seem to be sufficient reliable public domain evidence to be sure on either point).
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