John Kettler

Machor,

For sure, I screwed up what I wrote the first time, but am so mentally fuzzy right now that, even after checking, am sure I got the TBs on the wrong side, but also a) which conflict is the right one, and b) whether the video creator got something crossed up. Regardless, apologies for the resulting confusion, but. the core point remains: Unless the reports are completely false, the Karushka-4 is either temporarily or permanently damaging or destroying mission-critical electronics on the Bayraktar TB2s, downing those targeted.

As it happens, I have some experience with such things as HPMs (High Power Microwave) DEWs (Directed Energy Weapons) from my Rockwell days. Indeed, was a co-founder of the DEWWG (Direct Energy Weapon Working Group). Such energies can do all sorts of unpleasant things: including fricasseeing missiles on aircraft carrier flight decks because of the energy from a plethora of radar and other transmitters gets inside via a tiny crack and fries otherwise protected microelectronics, detonate fuel and ordnance, burn out radar and ESM receivers, etc. What will jam a radar at long range can damage or destroy all manner of sensitive gear at lesser ranges. Recall, too, this is a weapon good vs ground, air and space targets. A Swiss Army Knife EW system, if you will.

The traditional Soviet approach was to field a jammer to defeat each active surveillance or bomb/nav system the opposition (led by the US) deployed, such as SLAR, JSTARS, TFR. By those standards, Karushka-4 is not evolutionary but revolutionary, because it combines so many capabilities into one devastating system. The transliterated Russian acronym for what we in the west call EW is REC, RadioElectronic Combat, and now the Russians have not just a jammer but damage inflicter, even a target killer. This is precisely why there is such urgency to get that van back to the US and begin meticulous technical exploitation to see what this immensely potent weapon system can do. Even lacking the combined intercept and jamming hardware, about which a great deal can be learned from the imagery, knowing power supplies and so on, the real secrets of Karuska-4 lie in the computers of the command van, for that is where we will learn the Russian understanding of our various targeted systems and what the strike against them looks like, in terms of frequencies, waveform, signal strength, pulse repetition interval, ERP (Effective Radiated Power) and more.

Regards,

John Kettler

Machor,

For sure, I screwed up what I wrote the first time, but am so mentally fuzzy right now that, even after checking, am sure I got the TBs on the wrong side, but also a) which conflict is the right one, and b) whether the video creator got something crossed up. Regardless, apologies for the resulting confusion, but. the core point remains: Unless the reports are completely false, the Karushka-4 is either temporarily or permanently damaging or destroying mission-critical electronics on the Bayraktar TB2s, downing those targeted.

As it happens, I have some experience with such things as HPMs (High Power Microwave) DEWs (Directed Energy Weapons) from my Rockwell days. Indeed, was a co-founder of the DEWWG (Direct Energy Weapon Working Group). Such energies can do all sorts of unpleasant things: including fricasseeing missiles on aircraft carrier flight decks because of the energy from a plethora of radar and other transmitters gets inside via a tiny crack and fries otherwise protected microelectronics, detonate fuel and ordnance, burn out radar and ESM receivers, etc. What will jam a radar at long range can damage or destroy all manner of sensitive gear at lesser ranges. Recall, too, this is a weapon good vs ground, air and space targets. A Swiss Army Knife EW system, if you will.

The traditional Soviet approach was to field a jammer to defeat each active surveillance or bomb/nav system the opposition (led by the US) deployed, such as SLAR, JSTARS, TFR. By those standards, Karushka-4 is not evolutionary but revolutionary, because it combines so many capabilities into one devastating system. The transliterated Russian acronym for what we in the west call EW is REC, RadioElectronic Combat, and now the Russians have not just a jammer but damage inflicter, even a target killer. This is precisely why there is such urgency to get that van back to the US and begin meticulous technical exploitation to see what this immensely potent weapon system can do. Even lacking the combined intercept and jamming hardware, about which a great deal can be learned from the imagery, knowing power supplies and so on, the real secrets of Karuska-4 lie in the computers of the command van, for that is where we will learn the Russian understanding of our various targeted systems and what the strike against them looks like, in terms of frequencies, waveform, signal strength, pulse repetition interval, ERP (Effective Radiated Power) and more.

Regards,

John Kettler

Machor,

Gave up too soon on my checking, I see. Concur that this version has a thermal sight (but apparently lacks an oh so helpful LRF to complement it), but the question I have ref Tunguska in the game is which version is being represented, and would the one you show have been reasonably available in the game's 2017 timeframe? ResearchGate shows Tunguska-M as entering service in 1990, but as we've seen in the current war, it's not necessarily rational to expect the latest war toys to be available, not with some version of the ZSU-23/4 now in action! Had no idea there was a likes limit, but am glad you enjoyed my analysis of the immense value the TB2 missile sponges really represent.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294263909_Tunguska_M1_operational_with_Russian_Army

Regards,

John Kettler

Machor,

The  missile sponge aspect is the least of the impacts. For starters, RuAF pilots get very little flying time, and their know-how toolkit is extremely limited in terms of what they can do. Free hunt is by far their worst historically in terms of fighter ops. It is, after all, the antithesis of rigid GCI (and these says, maybe MAINSTAY AWACS) control. Consequently, this requires the best and most experienced crews to fly the missions. These, of course, are the senior officers. Noticed how many of these guys are on the running dead and captured list? Not an accident!  These guys are already run ragged and now have a whole new unforeseen problem and a very angry customer screaming for relief from it. And. when people are tired and stressed, the already fundamentally dangerous act of flying a high performance aircraft becomes far more that way. This leads to crashes on the one hand and avoidable downings on the other.

Today's SAMs are not the SA-2s of yore and demand more more in terms of reaction time, proper CM selection and radical evasive maneuvers. Thus, the planes being flown by the best RuAF has in any unit fighting the TBs are not well postured to deal with UKR SAMs or even AAA, given how low the TB2s fly. 

But there's much more to cover.The Su-35 is, by Russian standards, an extremely sophisticated and complex bird, on par, say, with the US F-14A, at best, the F-14D. This is based on F-14 type (stolen) TWS radar, long range AAMs, etc. As of the late 1970s, the readiness rate of the F-14A was a mere 60%, a situation so dire that, in order to conduct strike ops, the US Navy had to rotate assignments between two carriers in the same battle group, with one doing nothing but strike, the other strike escorts and various CAPs. Yes, it was that bad! 

But remember, the RuAF squadron is 12 planes, not the 24 in the US Navy and Air Force, so there's far less resilience to any number of problems, including possibilities of cannibalization to keep planes flying. In turn, an entire aviation regiment of this type is 24 planes, one US squadron equivalent. The maintenance specialists are at regiment, not squadron level. And if an all-out effort to find and kill TB2s is the regimental combat assignment, that's where all the scarce resources and skilled people will be focused, sidelining most of the regiment as a result. In some ways, the Su-35 is even more complicated than even the F-14D, because it has thrust vectoring nozzles. All in all, the logistics and maintenance situation for an Su-35 unit is super demanding in peacetime and perdition defined in war. High tech is simply not the Russian strong suit, and there's much competition for technically qualified staff to keep high complexity, high leverage equipment operational. Those TOPOL-M COs, for. example.

Do you believe the RuAF is immune to the same systemic influences that have tires failing wholesale in the ground units? Do you believe that the Russian spare part situation is better than what the US has? Do you believe their supply chain is more efficient than ours? What is the RuAF fuel situation and near term forecast? How deep is the RuAF Su-35 level flight crew bench? What are the MTBFs for their FCS, engines, fly-by-wire, other avionics, etc.? 

All in all, it seems to me that Ukraine should do anything and everything to flood the sky with drones of every sort and cause the best RuAF units to wear themselves right out of the sky--in combat, in crashes by mechanical or electronic failures, exhaustion of flight crews, landing and takeoff accidents, not to cumulative wear and tear on systems and subsystems with far shorter service lives than, say, US aircraft of the same type. How well do unexpended missiles handle repeated takeoff and landing cycles? Crew burnout requires weeks of rest, might I add, to fix. The Soviets learned this the hard way in North Korea. But it's not just the aircrews that get exhausted, but the crew chiefs, techs, planners, tower personnel and more, with the resulting loss of efficiency, attention to detail, decision making and. more. The best pilots in the world can't fly if their crew chiefs and underlings can't function.

Regards,

John Kettler


 

Some humour is necessary after all. Enjoy Alexander Nezorov!
Uncanny predictions of Ukraine's war from April 2021 by former Russian MP Nevzorov
 
 

Interesting Politico piece  ( non-paywalled ) on US efforts to back fill depleted weapon stocks
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/pentagon-scrambles-to-replenish-weapons-stocks-sent-to-ukraine-00019333

Machor,

The  missile sponge aspect is the least of the impacts. For starters, RuAF pilots get very little flying time, and their know-how toolkit is extremely limited in terms of what they can do. Free hunt is by far their worst historically in terms of fighter ops. It is, after all, the antithesis of rigid GCI (and these says, maybe MAINSTAY AWACS) control. Consequently, this requires the best and most experienced crews to fly the missions. These, of course, are the senior officers. Noticed how many of these guys are on the running dead and captured list? Not an accident!  These guys are already run ragged and now have a whole new unforeseen problem and a very angry customer screaming for relief from it. And. when people are tired and stressed, the already fundamentally dangerous act of flying a high performance aircraft becomes far more that way. This leads to crashes on the one hand and avoidable downings on the other.

Today's SAMs are not the SA-2s of yore and demand more more in terms of reaction time, proper CM selection and radical evasive maneuvers. Thus, the planes being flown by the best RuAF has in any unit fighting the TBs are not well postured to deal with UKR SAMs or even AAA, given how low the TB2s fly. 

But there's much more to cover.The Su-35 is, by Russian standards, an extremely sophisticated and complex bird, on par, say, with the US F-14A, at best, the F-14D. This is based on F-14 type (stolen) TWS radar, long range AAMs, etc. As of the late 1970s, the readiness rate of the F-14A was a mere 60%, a situation so dire that, in order to conduct strike ops, the US Navy had to rotate assignments between two carriers in the same battle group, with one doing nothing but strike, the other strike escorts and various CAPs. Yes, it was that bad! 

But remember, the RuAF squadron is 12 planes, not the 24 in the US Navy and Air Force, so there's far less resilience to any number of problems, including possibilities of cannibalization to keep planes flying. In turn, an entire aviation regiment of this type is 24 planes, one US squadron equivalent. The maintenance specialists are at regiment, not squadron level. And if an all-out effort to find and kill TB2s is the regimental combat assignment, that's where all the scarce resources and skilled people will be focused, sidelining most of the regiment as a result. In some ways, the Su-35 is even more complicated than even the F-14D, because it has thrust vectoring nozzles. All in all, the logistics and maintenance situation for an Su-35 unit is super demanding in peacetime and perdition defined in war. High tech is simply not the Russian strong suit, and there's much competition for technically qualified staff to keep high complexity, high leverage equipment operational. Those TOPOL-M COs, for. example.

Do you believe the RuAF is immune to the same systemic influences that have tires failing wholesale in the ground units? Do you believe that the Russian spare part situation is better than what the US has? Do you believe their supply chain is more efficient than ours? What is the RuAF fuel situation and near term forecast? How deep is the RuAF Su-35 level flight crew bench? What are the MTBFs for their FCS, engines, fly-by-wire, other avionics, etc.? 

All in all, it seems to me that Ukraine should do anything and everything to flood the sky with drones of every sort and cause the best RuAF units to wear themselves right out of the sky--in combat, in crashes by mechanical or electronic failures, exhaustion of flight crews, landing and takeoff accidents, not to cumulative wear and tear on systems and subsystems with far shorter service lives than, say, US aircraft of the same type. How well do unexpended missiles handle repeated takeoff and landing cycles? Crew burnout requires weeks of rest, might I add, to fix. The Soviets learned this the hard way in North Korea. But it's not just the aircrews that get exhausted, but the crew chiefs, techs, planners, tower personnel and more, with the resulting loss of efficiency, attention to detail, decision making and. more. The best pilots in the world can't fly if their crew chiefs and underlings can't function.

Regards,

John Kettler


 

Machor,

The  missile sponge aspect is the least of the impacts. For starters, RuAF pilots get very little flying time, and their know-how toolkit is extremely limited in terms of what they can do. Free hunt is by far their worst historically in terms of fighter ops. It is, after all, the antithesis of rigid GCI (and these says, maybe MAINSTAY AWACS) control. Consequently, this requires the best and most experienced crews to fly the missions. These, of course, are the senior officers. Noticed how many of these guys are on the running dead and captured list? Not an accident!  These guys are already run ragged and now have a whole new unforeseen problem and a very angry customer screaming for relief from it. And. when people are tired and stressed, the already fundamentally dangerous act of flying a high performance aircraft becomes far more that way. This leads to crashes on the one hand and avoidable downings on the other.

Today's SAMs are not the SA-2s of yore and demand more more in terms of reaction time, proper CM selection and radical evasive maneuvers. Thus, the planes being flown by the best RuAF has in any unit fighting the TBs are not well postured to deal with UKR SAMs or even AAA, given how low the TB2s fly. 

But there's much more to cover.The Su-35 is, by Russian standards, an extremely sophisticated and complex bird, on par, say, with the US F-14A, at best, the F-14D. This is based on F-14 type (stolen) TWS radar, long range AAMs, etc. As of the late 1970s, the readiness rate of the F-14A was a mere 60%, a situation so dire that, in order to conduct strike ops, the US Navy had to rotate assignments between two carriers in the same battle group, with one doing nothing but strike, the other strike escorts and various CAPs. Yes, it was that bad! 

But remember, the RuAF squadron is 12 planes, not the 24 in the US Navy and Air Force, so there's far less resilience to any number of problems, including possibilities of cannibalization to keep planes flying. In turn, an entire aviation regiment of this type is 24 planes, one US squadron equivalent. The maintenance specialists are at regiment, not squadron level. And if an all-out effort to find and kill TB2s is the regimental combat assignment, that's where all the scarce resources and skilled people will be focused, sidelining most of the regiment as a result. In some ways, the Su-35 is even more complicated than even the F-14D, because it has thrust vectoring nozzles. All in all, the logistics and maintenance situation for an Su-35 unit is super demanding in peacetime and perdition defined in war. High tech is simply not the Russian strong suit, and there's much competition for technically qualified staff to keep high complexity, high leverage equipment operational. Those TOPOL-M COs, for. example.

Do you believe the RuAF is immune to the same systemic influences that have tires failing wholesale in the ground units? Do you believe that the Russian spare part situation is better than what the US has? Do you believe their supply chain is more efficient than ours? What is the RuAF fuel situation and near term forecast? How deep is the RuAF Su-35 level flight crew bench? What are the MTBFs for their FCS, engines, fly-by-wire, other avionics, etc.? 

All in all, it seems to me that Ukraine should do anything and everything to flood the sky with drones of every sort and cause the best RuAF units to wear themselves right out of the sky--in combat, in crashes by mechanical or electronic failures, exhaustion of flight crews, landing and takeoff accidents, not to cumulative wear and tear on systems and subsystems with far shorter service lives than, say, US aircraft of the same type. How well do unexpended missiles handle repeated takeoff and landing cycles? Crew burnout requires weeks of rest, might I add, to fix. The Soviets learned this the hard way in North Korea. But it's not just the aircrews that get exhausted, but the crew chiefs, techs, planners, tower personnel and more, with the resulting loss of efficiency, attention to detail, decision making and. more. The best pilots in the world can't fly if their crew chiefs and underlings can't function.

Regards,

John Kettler


 

Before a war we had about 15 % of women personnel. They can serve on combat duties including command, except comamnd duties in air-assault troops and special forces. 

Haiduk,

Propose we call the UA Pions Haiduk's pets. A most impressive sight seeing them in action, but oh, are they utterly exposed!

Regards,

John Kettler

Machor,

The  missile sponge aspect is the least of the impacts. For starters, RuAF pilots get very little flying time, and their know-how toolkit is extremely limited in terms of what they can do. Free hunt is by far their worst historically in terms of fighter ops. It is, after all, the antithesis of rigid GCI (and these says, maybe MAINSTAY AWACS) control. Consequently, this requires the best and most experienced crews to fly the missions. These, of course, are the senior officers. Noticed how many of these guys are on the running dead and captured list? Not an accident!  These guys are already run ragged and now have a whole new unforeseen problem and a very angry customer screaming for relief from it. And. when people are tired and stressed, the already fundamentally dangerous act of flying a high performance aircraft becomes far more that way. This leads to crashes on the one hand and avoidable downings on the other.

Today's SAMs are not the SA-2s of yore and demand more more in terms of reaction time, proper CM selection and radical evasive maneuvers. Thus, the planes being flown by the best RuAF has in any unit fighting the TBs are not well postured to deal with UKR SAMs or even AAA, given how low the TB2s fly. 

But there's much more to cover.The Su-35 is, by Russian standards, an extremely sophisticated and complex bird, on par, say, with the US F-14A, at best, the F-14D. This is based on F-14 type (stolen) TWS radar, long range AAMs, etc. As of the late 1970s, the readiness rate of the F-14A was a mere 60%, a situation so dire that, in order to conduct strike ops, the US Navy had to rotate assignments between two carriers in the same battle group, with one doing nothing but strike, the other strike escorts and various CAPs. Yes, it was that bad! 

But remember, the RuAF squadron is 12 planes, not the 24 in the US Navy and Air Force, so there's far less resilience to any number of problems, including possibilities of cannibalization to keep planes flying. In turn, an entire aviation regiment of this type is 24 planes, one US squadron equivalent. The maintenance specialists are at regiment, not squadron level. And if an all-out effort to find and kill TB2s is the regimental combat assignment, that's where all the scarce resources and skilled people will be focused, sidelining most of the regiment as a result. In some ways, the Su-35 is even more complicated than even the F-14D, because it has thrust vectoring nozzles. All in all, the logistics and maintenance situation for an Su-35 unit is super demanding in peacetime and perdition defined in war. High tech is simply not the Russian strong suit, and there's much competition for technically qualified staff to keep high complexity, high leverage equipment operational. Those TOPOL-M COs, for. example.

Do you believe the RuAF is immune to the same systemic influences that have tires failing wholesale in the ground units? Do you believe that the Russian spare part situation is better than what the US has? Do you believe their supply chain is more efficient than ours? What is the RuAF fuel situation and near term forecast? How deep is the RuAF Su-35 level flight crew bench? What are the MTBFs for their FCS, engines, fly-by-wire, other avionics, etc.? 

All in all, it seems to me that Ukraine should do anything and everything to flood the sky with drones of every sort and cause the best RuAF units to wear themselves right out of the sky--in combat, in crashes by mechanical or electronic failures, exhaustion of flight crews, landing and takeoff accidents, not to cumulative wear and tear on systems and subsystems with far shorter service lives than, say, US aircraft of the same type. How well do unexpended missiles handle repeated takeoff and landing cycles? Crew burnout requires weeks of rest, might I add, to fix. The Soviets learned this the hard way in North Korea. But it's not just the aircrews that get exhausted, but the crew chiefs, techs, planners, tower personnel and more, with the resulting loss of efficiency, attention to detail, decision making and. more. The best pilots in the world can't fly if their crew chiefs and underlings can't function.

Regards,

John Kettler


 

it was only a matter of time
 
 

Good example of training level of Russian forces, even elite. Captured AK-12 with 1P87 RDS. But the sight mounted backwards.

And how it should be

Nah, black smoke ...still in the election phase...once the smoke turns white they have a new president...Habemus Papa...oh wait...

Russian destroyed R-149 command&control vehicle and Buk


Captured 2S9 Nona
 

Machor,

The  missile sponge aspect is the least of the impacts. For starters, RuAF pilots get very little flying time, and their know-how toolkit is extremely limited in terms of what they can do. Free hunt is by far their worst historically in terms of fighter ops. It is, after all, the antithesis of rigid GCI (and these says, maybe MAINSTAY AWACS) control. Consequently, this requires the best and most experienced crews to fly the missions. These, of course, are the senior officers. Noticed how many of these guys are on the running dead and captured list? Not an accident!  These guys are already run ragged and now have a whole new unforeseen problem and a very angry customer screaming for relief from it. And. when people are tired and stressed, the already fundamentally dangerous act of flying a high performance aircraft becomes far more that way. This leads to crashes on the one hand and avoidable downings on the other.

Today's SAMs are not the SA-2s of yore and demand more more in terms of reaction time, proper CM selection and radical evasive maneuvers. Thus, the planes being flown by the best RuAF has in any unit fighting the TBs are not well postured to deal with UKR SAMs or even AAA, given how low the TB2s fly. 

But there's much more to cover.The Su-35 is, by Russian standards, an extremely sophisticated and complex bird, on par, say, with the US F-14A, at best, the F-14D. This is based on F-14 type (stolen) TWS radar, long range AAMs, etc. As of the late 1970s, the readiness rate of the F-14A was a mere 60%, a situation so dire that, in order to conduct strike ops, the US Navy had to rotate assignments between two carriers in the same battle group, with one doing nothing but strike, the other strike escorts and various CAPs. Yes, it was that bad! 

But remember, the RuAF squadron is 12 planes, not the 24 in the US Navy and Air Force, so there's far less resilience to any number of problems, including possibilities of cannibalization to keep planes flying. In turn, an entire aviation regiment of this type is 24 planes, one US squadron equivalent. The maintenance specialists are at regiment, not squadron level. And if an all-out effort to find and kill TB2s is the regimental combat assignment, that's where all the scarce resources and skilled people will be focused, sidelining most of the regiment as a result. In some ways, the Su-35 is even more complicated than even the F-14D, because it has thrust vectoring nozzles. All in all, the logistics and maintenance situation for an Su-35 unit is super demanding in peacetime and perdition defined in war. High tech is simply not the Russian strong suit, and there's much competition for technically qualified staff to keep high complexity, high leverage equipment operational. Those TOPOL-M COs, for. example.

Do you believe the RuAF is immune to the same systemic influences that have tires failing wholesale in the ground units? Do you believe that the Russian spare part situation is better than what the US has? Do you believe their supply chain is more efficient than ours? What is the RuAF fuel situation and near term forecast? How deep is the RuAF Su-35 level flight crew bench? What are the MTBFs for their FCS, engines, fly-by-wire, other avionics, etc.? 

All in all, it seems to me that Ukraine should do anything and everything to flood the sky with drones of every sort and cause the best RuAF units to wear themselves right out of the sky--in combat, in crashes by mechanical or electronic failures, exhaustion of flight crews, landing and takeoff accidents, not to cumulative wear and tear on systems and subsystems with far shorter service lives than, say, US aircraft of the same type. How well do unexpended missiles handle repeated takeoff and landing cycles? Crew burnout requires weeks of rest, might I add, to fix. The Soviets learned this the hard way in North Korea. But it's not just the aircrews that get exhausted, but the crew chiefs, techs, planners, tower personnel and more, with the resulting loss of efficiency, attention to detail, decision making and. more. The best pilots in the world can't fly if their crew chiefs and underlings can't function.

Regards,

John Kettler


 

If only there was a way within Russia's control that relations could be improved 🙄

Machor,

The  missile sponge aspect is the least of the impacts. For starters, RuAF pilots get very little flying time, and their know-how toolkit is extremely limited in terms of what they can do. Free hunt is by far their worst historically in terms of fighter ops. It is, after all, the antithesis of rigid GCI (and these says, maybe MAINSTAY AWACS) control. Consequently, this requires the best and most experienced crews to fly the missions. These, of course, are the senior officers. Noticed how many of these guys are on the running dead and captured list? Not an accident!  These guys are already run ragged and now have a whole new unforeseen problem and a very angry customer screaming for relief from it. And. when people are tired and stressed, the already fundamentally dangerous act of flying a high performance aircraft becomes far more that way. This leads to crashes on the one hand and avoidable downings on the other.

Today's SAMs are not the SA-2s of yore and demand more more in terms of reaction time, proper CM selection and radical evasive maneuvers. Thus, the planes being flown by the best RuAF has in any unit fighting the TBs are not well postured to deal with UKR SAMs or even AAA, given how low the TB2s fly. 

But there's much more to cover.The Su-35 is, by Russian standards, an extremely sophisticated and complex bird, on par, say, with the US F-14A, at best, the F-14D. This is based on F-14 type (stolen) TWS radar, long range AAMs, etc. As of the late 1970s, the readiness rate of the F-14A was a mere 60%, a situation so dire that, in order to conduct strike ops, the US Navy had to rotate assignments between two carriers in the same battle group, with one doing nothing but strike, the other strike escorts and various CAPs. Yes, it was that bad! 

But remember, the RuAF squadron is 12 planes, not the 24 in the US Navy and Air Force, so there's far less resilience to any number of problems, including possibilities of cannibalization to keep planes flying. In turn, an entire aviation regiment of this type is 24 planes, one US squadron equivalent. The maintenance specialists are at regiment, not squadron level. And if an all-out effort to find and kill TB2s is the regimental combat assignment, that's where all the scarce resources and skilled people will be focused, sidelining most of the regiment as a result. In some ways, the Su-35 is even more complicated than even the F-14D, because it has thrust vectoring nozzles. All in all, the logistics and maintenance situation for an Su-35 unit is super demanding in peacetime and perdition defined in war. High tech is simply not the Russian strong suit, and there's much competition for technically qualified staff to keep high complexity, high leverage equipment operational. Those TOPOL-M COs, for. example.

Do you believe the RuAF is immune to the same systemic influences that have tires failing wholesale in the ground units? Do you believe that the Russian spare part situation is better than what the US has? Do you believe their supply chain is more efficient than ours? What is the RuAF fuel situation and near term forecast? How deep is the RuAF Su-35 level flight crew bench? What are the MTBFs for their FCS, engines, fly-by-wire, other avionics, etc.? 

All in all, it seems to me that Ukraine should do anything and everything to flood the sky with drones of every sort and cause the best RuAF units to wear themselves right out of the sky--in combat, in crashes by mechanical or electronic failures, exhaustion of flight crews, landing and takeoff accidents, not to cumulative wear and tear on systems and subsystems with far shorter service lives than, say, US aircraft of the same type. How well do unexpended missiles handle repeated takeoff and landing cycles? Crew burnout requires weeks of rest, might I add, to fix. The Soviets learned this the hard way in North Korea. But it's not just the aircrews that get exhausted, but the crew chiefs, techs, planners, tower personnel and more, with the resulting loss of efficiency, attention to detail, decision making and. more. The best pilots in the world can't fly if their crew chiefs and underlings can't function.

Regards,

John Kettler


 

The Lukashenko's army doesn't have any underpinnings, they haven't bought a new piece of equipment since 1989.  I doubt their maintenance practices are much better than the Russians either. To the extent the have done, or been trained for anything it was as backup riot police. They don't like Lukashenko because he let the Russians in and made them second class citizens, among many other reasons. If they make make it over the border, which I would not by any means guarantee, I predict the biggest problem they cause the Ukrainians is having to build a bunch of POW camps, and then keeping them from sneaking into Poland.
Since it would be an unambiguous act of war it would also let the Ukrainian special forces go after the road and rail network in Belarus like they mean it. It manages the considerable feat of being a worse idea than the rest of this so called campaign. 

Hi-res version of the Mariupol BTR-4 engagement:
https://giant.gfycat.com/HiddenDapperFishingcat.mp4
Can clearly see that the tank is T-72B3M and see Relikt ERA side hull panels detonating / burning.  Still not 100% sure what the third target engaged is, but probably another BTR-82A:

Found this high res video of Russian fighting positions to be highly surprising, in that instead of firing positions on a trench, here, for the first time I can recall going back the Cold War, if not earlier, we have individual fighting positions directly next to each other in a line, but with no trench at all. Seems to me this would be a nightmare if under fire, there being no way to get from one hole to another without coming up above the ground. The holes look like they may've had pioneer assistance, too.
Mar 19
  No comments     Regards,

John Kettler              

Machor,

Bet that guy was glad he had his helmet and body armor on. This clip was like watching the Keystone Cops. AS for tank riders, the video shows why they are termed tank descents. That one was abrupt!

Regards,

John Kettler

panzermartin,

Believe the answer is sixfold: 1) combat test, 2) may be immune to all UKR SAMs, including S-300 series, 3) important target, 4) powerful 500 kg unitary warhead, 5) 2000 km range, and 6) missiles available, as opposed, to, say, badly depleted Kalibr stocks. The six listed are all valid military resons, but there are also such things as morale effects on both sides, demonstration of military potency and superiority of Russian arms in high tech warfare, negation of several reported shootdowns of Russian missiles, pressure on UKR government, pressure on NATO, US, etc., intimidation and resultant leverage. 

Let me also provide a Cold War perspective on hypersonic weapons. Per the CIA briefing at the Soviet Threat Technology Conference in 1985, the Soviets had seven (7) hypersonic wind tunnels; the US had one (1). As I said before I worked on NASP(National AeroSpace Plane, SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) and held all the security tickets to the program aspects. Part of what NASP involved were what we called NDVs (NASP Derived Vehicles), which were hypersonic craft without the ability to enter space. If you look at, say, an overhead plot of an S-300 defended zone vs a B-1B, the sites are set up in such a way that any aircraft attempting to get through will be in at least one, maybe several sites', coverage. As penetrator speed increases, the engagement zone shrinks. Go fast enough, and the once formidable S-300 coverage is now a collection of point defense systems, leaving gigantic holes through which to penetrate the strategic SAM defenses. Our hypothetical is now reality, and the Ukrainians are essentially operating, absent some sort of massive improvements I know nothing about, their best SAM systems as de facto point defenses. And Buk is even worse because it's got far less capable sensors, a shorter range missile, and I believe it's slower, too.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

On a lighter note... Can we have tankriders in CMBS? Oh wait! 😀
 

That was a great find @keas66, thank you! I think many concerns around where this conflict may be going are justified. I would like just to share a few thoughts of mine on this.
Today I had an online chat with a wargaming friend based on Seattle. As we were catching up, it became apparent to me that he was quite anxious and worried about the implicit threat posed by Putin declaring Russian nuclear forces to adopt a "higher" degree of readiness. He lives close to the water, across the huge US Navy shipyards in Puget Sound. An obvious target for an SS-25 Topol or worse. You don't need to "play" a bit with this little thing
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
to be worried.
That somebody implies a threat to start a nuclear war is something sure to attract attention and focus the minds. But to what end? Is he really going to trigger the end of the world (for Russia definitely would be the end of the world, and probably cripple our cities and economies for generations too)?
Now, let's say that you're leaving a bar in Long Beach late at night, walking to your car, and the another car stops and some dude walks out with a gun and puts it to your head (real story from a good friend from LA). Do you give them your wallet? Or you turn around, look into his eyes and dare him to shoot?
In the real world story, obviously my friend gave away the wallet. Did that make them a coward or a really smart person? I want to think it was smart because all the incentives were for that gunman to shoot at them if they weren't cooperative: there was no real possibility of retribution or "negative reward" if they were uncooperative and finished off.
Putin isn't even pulling out the gun, or putting it on top of the table, or anything like that, more like giving an order to "make sure that there are no birds roosting in the launchers, and every vehicle has their battery". Which given what we're seeing in Ukraine at the moment, it may already be a tall order.
He also doesn't know for sure how good the US anti-ballistic missile defence systems are. He doesn't know how effective the US and British SSBNs can be at making sure that him and anyone related to him would have a horrible death within 15 minutes of the first Russian ICBM taking off. What he knows is that if he started a nuclear war there would heaps of "negative reward" flowing the way of everyone, and first and foremost his people. Maybe he doesn't give a turd about his people, but I am pretty sure he gives one about his legacy. And what a great legacy would be to have all major cities in Russia become graveyards, and Siberia gingerly colonised by the Chinese in 30 years or so. Sure, you have also ruined Europe, the US and anybody else they're targeting, but not really a great legacy, by any reckoning.
Maybe he's a psychopath and doesn't give a damn about his legacy or anything or anyone else. Then we're already royally screwed guys, and we should all check out the NUKEMAP app to see where we should be relocating. Unless someone produces a time machine from their garage (John Kettler?) and goes pays a visit to Harry S. Truman to convince him to forget about the work at Lost Alamos, and give the go-ahead for Operation Olympic.
Let me consider another counterfactual, and a more serious one. Let's go back to 1938. And now let's imagine that the French and British tell Mr. Hitler to sod off, and he goes and launches a "special operation" on Czechoslovakia. Without straining credibility, let's consider that the 1938 Wehrmacht gets hopelessly bogged down trying to break through the Czech fortifications at the border (which were quite serious). Let's imagine those Panzer I and Panzer II being taken out by the same anti-tank rifles and guns from Brno that then armed the Nazi war machine early in World War 2. Would have the Third Reich then "escalated" and launched an attack on Poland (or France)? Nope. Can Czechoslovakia counterattack and go all the way to Berlin to force a German surrender? Nope.
I think we're right now at an scenario very much like the counterfactual above. The blatant difference with respect to 1938 is that Mr. Hitler's alter ego now has the means to "escalate" or to credibly threaten with escalation. But giving the appearance of having the means for an escalation doesn't mean that those means 1) are ready or 2) they are really willing to use them.