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John Kettler

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Everything posted by John Kettler

  1. Ultradave, Fuel truck losses alone amount to 33 BTG fuel fills lost. Ouch! In the "just trucks" category, what I'm seeing in the TB2 strike video is selective targeting of trucks resulting in stupendous secondaries, which tells me these are ammo trucks being hit. Believe the Ukrainians know what Russian ammo trucks look like. Also of note is that Ukrainian Navy TB2s (they had 6 and may've gotten more since) are now being officially listed on their strike videos against Russian ground forces. Regards, John Kettler
  2. dan/california, The Chinese should send rice--lots of spoiled rice, resist complaints from the Russians, then admit after the war ends there was a mix up and apologize. That is exactly the kind of thing the Chinese would do, allowing them to say, "Hey we sent food, we tried to help, but there was a problem. We're fixing it now." Regards, John Kettler
  3. Five main gun shots and no apparent return fire effects--to the tank or surrounds, though I did hear two loud sounds possibly indicative of return fire. Talk about an empty battlefield! Regards, John Kettler
  4. sburke, Melnichenko's Yacht A is one of the most hideous vessels I've ever seen, maybe the most hideous. Characterized it as the illegitimate offspring of of an incompetent blacksmith and a ship designer with no sense of beauty. The other seizures pictured are lovely vessels. Regards, John Kettler
  5. akd, Wasn't looking at it full screen, but what I was, at least in the distance shots, were white targets against a dark background, exactly what I would see, and have seen, on thermal imagery where the system was in White Hot mode. Regards, John Kettler
  6. Unless something has changed drastically over the years, Russian tanks do not have lower side hulls made of armor steel. It's just standard steel. This was absolutely true for the T-55 and T-62, and I believe true for the T-72. Not sure after that. Believe this design choice is based on both cost and expected hit location based on combat findings and OR. In Afghanistan, the muj discovered they could kill the driver of a BTR-60 via AK-47 fire into the foremost left side wheel well, ultimately resulting in the installation of a field expedient protective plate. While I don't have the 2A-42 penetration figures handy, I have every confidence that it could demolish a tank by firing into the lower side hull. Found it interesting that the Azov BTR-4 engagement was conducted on the move throughout and that display res was far better than even what I saw on a T-14 conducting a shoot with its thermals. Regards, John Kettler
  7. Haiduk, Somehow, WOW seems grossly inadequate as a response to all this stunning news. Now, the Russians will have a textbook example to use of a fire strike. Regards, John Kettler
  8. Haiduk, Glad they did, even if I had to go look it up. https://www.radartutorial.eu/19.kartei/11.ancient/karte060.en.html Thought maybe you were talking about the US supplied TPQ-36 Firefinder, a countermortar phased array radar. Regards, John Kettler
  9. panzermartin, Let me answer your Su-25 RTB question in a particularly unforgettable way. In the Georgia WAr, an Su-25 took a direct engine hit by a Buk and made it back to the base. The hit obliterated the engine, but an armored firewall between the two engines kept the disntegrating engine from destroying its neighbor. Compared to a Buk direct hit, a MANPADS to an engine, barring, say, a catastrophic fire or such, is exactly why the plane, a shameless lift of the Northrop Grumman YAX-9, was able to survive the hit and RTB. It's also why the plane, like the one that became the A-10, had two engines and fully redundant flight controls. Regards, John Kettler
  10. Haiduk, Have two questions for you ref UA armaments. The first concerns 60 mm mortars. Based on something I read about Polish arms deliveries to Ukraine, I saw something indicating only your SO guys had such weapons, but that the Poles had their own 60 mm mortar and were going to send lots of them to equip the whole force. Have such mortars arrived and on what scale? Ballpark is fine. The second concerns a weapon you've mentioned hardly at all, and that's Bar, which I believe was still in development in 2014 or so. What happened to it? MY recollection was that it was a heavy ATGM, a la TOW. Regards, John Kettler
  11. Worse than watered gremlins here! Got some sleep went to the grocery store, put things away, at lunch and now discover I'm 183 posts behind. But now I know at least that a Tor has six roadwheels and the Tor M1 seven. Progress! Who knows? Maybe I'll become fluent in GRAU. Regards, John Kettler
  12. Haiduk, The first time I ever saw imagery of the specialized ECW vehicles, my immediate reaction was that they looked like a lift of the Haglunds BV-206. On a separate note, I agree with DesertFox on the particulars of things like the mobile bridge, which was not the latest version but the smaller earlier one. The real issue is that assets held way up the echelons are being destroyed or captured at all; that he sees this as a sign of a serious problem in the Russian operations. Classically, Russian bridges have substantial guard forces, sometimes armor and usually AD to protect them, so what we saw happen shouldn't have happened. The loss of such high level vital assets is a huge telltale of organizational breakdown and loss of control. Regards, John Kettler
  13. Panserjeger, Many thanks for these! Can ID much AD gear but not in detail, such as distinguishing the various types of Buks, the first generation of which we in the US and NATO called the SA-11/GADFLY, and oh, was it a huge improvement on all fronts over the highly lethal (just ask the IAF) SA-6/GAINFUL, which was limited to one target at a time. Apparently, we've now developed another number and codename for the Buk M1 and 2. That's SA-17/GRIZZLY. Tor simply didn't exist in my threat documents through late June 1989, certainly not as a fielded system if we did have something on it, under another codename, say, SA-X-15, as a developmental item. Consequently, am therefore hopeless on distinguishing Tor versions. But hey, the 9K35 Osa SA-8/GECKO is still around, but I don't know the GRAU designators for the various versions. All I know is the SA-8B was the first one having the missiles in canisters rather than exposed on launch rails. I never had to deal with GRAU designations generally, since we seldom had them and certainly didn't work in them. We had, and had to follow, the ASCC (Air Standards Coordinating Committee) designator system, which applied not just to the US, but NATO-wide, and perhaps, in other treaty groups, such as SEATO. Here is the ASCC list for SAMs, some of which didn't exist at all when I left military aerospace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_reporting_names_for_surface-to-air_missiles Regards, John Kettler P.S. Right after posting here, I went to the Twitter discourse and rapidly determined it's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for in figuring out what I'm looking at other than the basic system.
  14. Haiduk, Since we're talking here on page 228 about when and how the UA heavies may come down on the Russians at full force, would refer you to my remarks regasrding a pic of ammo recovered from a captured Russian tank, where it was conspicuously obvious (3 rounds of HE, no CLGM and maybe 1 or 2 heat rounds, all else HE-frag) that this wasn't even close to the typical Cold War Russian loadout of 20% KE. My conclusion from this is that at least the ammo load didn't reflect a foe expecting a tank battle. Would suggest UA look at ammo loadouts on other captured Russian tanks, in terms of splits in ammo types,and round counts of actual tank killing munitions carried, including CLGM if any. As we all know, a sample size of 1 has zero statistical value, but I believe there may (note conditional) be enough captured Russian tanks, taken on multiple Russian operational axes, to see whether that pic that was posted was a one off or maybe reflects a larger pattern. If the latter, that might have significance in seeing how well the Russians, using forces already in the field and in combat, are prepared to fight UA tanks with their own tanks, something I'd further note their doctrine strongly disfavors generally. Regards, John Kettler
  15. Steve, Thought the video was pretty good and absolutely was well presented, but I have yet to see one such Javelin cage equipped T-anything (since I'm not sure the cages are confined solely to T-72B3s) that's been hit by a Javelin in the cage, let alone anything beyond that ref the shaped charge jet's hitting hitting the turret roof or the ERA covering part of it. Also, there are quite a few different overhead protection systems in use, making it, I think, unwise to make sweeping statements while analyzing only one overhead defensive scheme. Regards, John Kettler
  16. akd, News we can definitely use! Regards, John Kettler
  17. keas69, How much does NATO intelligence know about what? Faking it was de rigeur in the Soviet military long before the Russian military came to be. When the US got inspectors into Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were shocked to discover how low the true Soviet readiness rate was, for they found silos flooded to uselessness, and in some cases, missiles that clearly hadn't been maintained. Had World War III begun, the Soviet leadership would've been astounded and enraged at how few weapons actually launched. The more modern Russian weaponry in the ICBM department is largely solid fueled, which both reduces maintenance and greatly enhances safety. To give you some idea how dangerous liquid fueled missiles can be, the US Air Force lost a Titan missile in a stupendous explosion so powerful it blew the 50 ton sliding concrete lid clear off the silo. The cause? A dropped socket which hit the silo wall on the way down, ricocheted of the wall and pierced the missile's integral fuel tank, I believe. A liquid fueled missile is essentially a glorified balloon. The Russians lost the submarine K19 to what we determined was a failed attempt to launch--against Pearl Harbor!--a SS-N-4 IRBM, which was liquid fueled as well. Mobile ICBMs SS-24, SS-25 and especially the practically brand new TOPOL-M are real and extremely credible threats. Back during the Cold War I saw a German analyis of what one SS-18 MIRVed (10 warheads) heavy ICBM could do, which was basically obliterate the FRG, and even a single MIRVed SS-20 IRBM (3 warheads) could deliver immense devastation. It's worth noting that the key original reason for the B-2 was precisely to search for, locate and attack what we called SRTs (Strategic Relocatable Targets), which consisted of both rail and ground mobile ICBMs and mobile SCPs (Strategic Command Posts). Regards, John Kettler
  18. Fenris, That never hurts, either, and is another Russian comms disaster, though so far on a much smaller manpower scale. https://www.unknownsoldierspodcast.com/post/august-29-1914-the-battle-of-tannenberg Ukraine is uniquely positioned to provide priceless intel to FIVE EYES, NATO, SEATO and who knows who else. How priceless? Fully functioning Russian homeland version IFF, the latest cryptographic equipment, homeland model tactical SAMs, model AD CPs and something most people have never heard of but are potential war-winners--WRFs (War Reserve Frequencies). These we learned about during the Cold WAr in the most shocking way possible short of taking heavy casualties from them. WRFs are special frequencies only employed in wartime and never used otherwise outside of a RF secure lab or range. When we technically exploited Viktor Belenko's MiG-25 we discovered, to our horror, it had frequencies not in our electronic threat catalogues on our B-52s and other aircraft, so wouldn't have been recognized as a threat and jammed if detected. Had World War III ever broken out, our computer controlled jammers wouldn't have worked, and our planes would've been butchered. Now, let me give you some idea how sensitive the Russians are about their IFF. When Belenko defected in that MiG, the Russians contacted Japan through a back channel and said, in a nutshell, "Look, we don't care about the plane, but if you so much as unscrew the lid on our IFF system, we'll know, and we'll nuke your country." Save for the IFF system, the plane was completely dismantled and meticulously gone through. It was ultimately sent back to the SU in six enormous shipping crates. Got this directly from a Hughes colleague who had a sponsor in the CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research and was our back channel to the real Soviet threat data, not the watered down understated stuff in our weapon system contracts. Met his sponsor in person at CIA HQ Langley when he was there for a briefing I unfortunately didn't get to attend. But the. consolation prize was glorious, because he had a full day of briefings the next day, so I was able to take an entire workday exploring the Smithsonian and other museums and galleries on the Washington Mall. Regards, John Kettler
  19. Here is some additional information I didn't have before. Piorun is also called GROM-M and is entirely produced in Poland by MESKO from Polish components. It has head-on engagement capability like the Stinger (so conceivably downed that Mi-24 we sam take a MANPADS SAM in the face) robust IRCCM (to defeat flares and on-board jammers, such as that fitted to the Mi-24), can engage low-flying aircraft as fast as Mach 1.16, to a range of 6.5 kms and a ceiling of 3.95 kms, which rather redefines low-flying, doesn't it? This article not only addresses the Piorun MANPADS, but a whole range of potential Polish contributions, including the useful fact that Poland still operates 122 mm and 152 mm tube artillery. https://clarion.causeaction.com/2022/02/04/poland-is-sending-missiles-drones-and-thousands-of-artillery-rounds-to-ukraine/ This article shows what the Polish procurement (for both missiles and launchers) was for the Piorun, for which the completion of the original buy is this year. Unless the Polish government has cranked up production since, this defines the absolute limits of what Poland can give. https://clarion.causeaction.com/2022/02/04/poland-is-sending-missiles-drones-and-thousands-of-artillery-rounds-to-ukraine/ Regards, John Kettler
  20. Doc844, In some ways, Ukraine has practically become a temporary Sixth Eye in the super tight FIVE EYES (US, UK, CA, AU, NZ), with privileged access to Ukraine related ELINT shared among them, together with anything relevant obtained from pro-Ukraine countries in the area, none of which want a visit from the Bear. Ukraine is operating sophisticated comms and ISR provided by the US. It's been reported the US has recon sat teams in Poland, so would imagine that Ukrainian authorities are getting some sort of help on that end, too, whether IMINT INTSUMs alone or reduced res imagery and IMINT INTSUMs as well I couldn't say. And there is now a tremendous amount of commercial military grade recon sat imagery available, too. It helps greatly, too, that the weather has been clear, for it makes it very hard to hide anything of consequence from overhead detection, targeting and destruction. The US has provided this sort of intelligence support before, such as it did to the UK during the Falklands War, though UK is a FIVE EYES member, but remember, that's for ELINT. In the Falklands, the British maps dated back to the 1800s, so it was US IMINT, not just of the Falklands, but the sea around it and the Argentine naval and air bases, that was crucial. Regards, John Kettler
  21. sburke, Sometimes I can recall a thing I read long ago, and other times I can't recall in which of, say, a dozen tabs I looked at within the last hour I saw something important. There are times when it's completely lost from memory in a horrifying 30 seconds. Brother George has seen just this happen to me with an extremely simple rule mechanic for a WW II skirmish game. For someone who used to be a walking threat encyclopedia with a cavernous highly accurate memory, this is immensely frustrating. Am trying to be responsive to suggestions, but they have to deal with the same memory problems, too! What I'm trying to do now is get the freshest info possible and/or provide supplementary material, such as the Stinger/Piorun comparison video. Regards, John Kettler
  22. The Polish Piorun MANPADS is in-theater in Ukraine and has reportedly already downed a Russian Su-25. If done with a single missile, that's truly impressive considering an Su-25 survived a direct hit from a Buk on one of its engines in the Georgian War and still made it back to base. The short video below is a quick comparison between the Stinger and Piorun. The latter has a considerably shorter range but a higher ceiling and a warhead of twice the weight of the Stinger's, but it has to score a direct hit, since it has no proximity fuze. The ones Poland has sent come with a TWS instead of a regular optical sight. And if you've wondered how a Russian tank can wind up upside down, here's an explanation not requiring a crack FX team.
  23. sburke, How about being grateful your memory is in great shape and that you don't have to deal daily with a grab bag of deficits from a TBI sustained over 7.5 years ago? Regards, John Kettler
  24. Baneman, Just found both of those, and my ability to recall one or two items over 100 pages back is regrettably not very good (the sheer amount of information to be kept on file in my head, coupled with the all too real TBI effects make such record keeping bound to fail). Am glad your memory lets you perform such feats. The first item was intended more as a humor item. On a separate note, Ukrainian SO made a visit to Irpin. This was where, it turns out, those 4 x BMD-2 and and at least one tank, all in V markings, were videoed in an intersection. Didn't post it because there were dead Russians on the deck of the one in the foreground. Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ @CalibreObscura · 3h #Ukraine: "The Craftsman with his tools"- A UA SOF fighter with expended NLAW used to destroy a Russian BMD-4 in Irpin. Regards, John. Kettler
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