MSBoxer

Have been expecting this for awhile.
 
 

Have been expecting this for awhile.
 
 

Have been expecting this for awhile.
 
 

Have been expecting this for awhile.
 
 

I have wondered if Putin's original plan, circa 2019/2020 or so, was to continue to take smaller bites of Ukraine but realized that the west might only give him one more shot so he decided to make it count and go for the whole enchilada. 

I also have to say that one of the few times I agreed with our former president was when he called for our European partners to live up to their commitment to NATO, it is unfortunate that it took Putin's invasion to make some realize that defense spending is still important.  I do however disagree with Trump's threat to leave NATO like a spoiled child taking his ball and going home.

Whose grass mod are you using?

The tank is dead, long live the tank

Launching a drone and flying it to a target takes much longer than a 120mm round.  Event calling in artillery takes longer.  Now I know that the MBT or large gun vehicle may take a few minutes to get in position, but once on target it can fire multiple rounds much faster than either artillery or drone while correcting  as needed.   Also upper level support may be occupied by other fire missions. Not to mention the fact that drones and missiles can be intercepted or guidance degraded.  Try that with a rifled round.

Plus, in most cases 120mm don't care about openings, they make their own.

The tank is dead, long live the tank

The tank is dead, long live the tank

From a Facebook post - for what it is worth

 
Military aircraft
  And this is how they did it! The most exciting news these few days, involves the question of how the Ukrainians managed to employ American supplied AGM-88 High-speed Anti Radiation Missile (HARM) against Russian radar equipment when they don't have any Western aircraft capable of using the Air-Launched HARM which requires special avionics to be integrated into the aircraft using it.
  It has now been revealed that the Ukrainian Air Force managed to integrate the AGM-88 HARM onto their Mikoyan-Gurevich Mig-29 Fulcrum's with the help of technicians from Raytheon. Raytheon is the American company that manufactures the AGM-88 HARM.
  But, the deeper question of HOW the American technicians managed to put it off? To integrate Western weaponry into a 1980's vintage Soviet era design is no walk in the park. The answer? The Americans had prior experience with the Mig-29 Fulcrum and deep technical knowledge of the aircraft that helped them to develop a way to integrate the AGM-88 HARM onto it within a short time and with apparently little effort. Back in 1997, the Americans acquired 21 units of Mig-29 Fulcrum-A, the newer Fulcrum-C and a single twin-seater Fulcrum-B conversion trainer, seen here being loaded into a USAF Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, from Moldova.

The acquired aircraft were literally studied to the last bolt by the USAF's National Air and Space Intelligence Centre (NASIC) formerly and perhaps better known as the Foreign Technology Division (FTD). These early model Mig-29 Fulcrum-A and Fulcrum-C are similar, if not identical, to the models that the Ukrainian Air Force is flying today. Hence, any information that the Americans gained from the Moldovian units 25 years ago is still relevant and useful. It is this technical knowledge gained from the exploitation of enemy equipment that gives the Americans their edge.

From a Facebook post - for what it is worth

 
Military aircraft
  And this is how they did it! The most exciting news these few days, involves the question of how the Ukrainians managed to employ American supplied AGM-88 High-speed Anti Radiation Missile (HARM) against Russian radar equipment when they don't have any Western aircraft capable of using the Air-Launched HARM which requires special avionics to be integrated into the aircraft using it.
  It has now been revealed that the Ukrainian Air Force managed to integrate the AGM-88 HARM onto their Mikoyan-Gurevich Mig-29 Fulcrum's with the help of technicians from Raytheon. Raytheon is the American company that manufactures the AGM-88 HARM.
  But, the deeper question of HOW the American technicians managed to put it off? To integrate Western weaponry into a 1980's vintage Soviet era design is no walk in the park. The answer? The Americans had prior experience with the Mig-29 Fulcrum and deep technical knowledge of the aircraft that helped them to develop a way to integrate the AGM-88 HARM onto it within a short time and with apparently little effort. Back in 1997, the Americans acquired 21 units of Mig-29 Fulcrum-A, the newer Fulcrum-C and a single twin-seater Fulcrum-B conversion trainer, seen here being loaded into a USAF Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, from Moldova.

The acquired aircraft were literally studied to the last bolt by the USAF's National Air and Space Intelligence Centre (NASIC) formerly and perhaps better known as the Foreign Technology Division (FTD). These early model Mig-29 Fulcrum-A and Fulcrum-C are similar, if not identical, to the models that the Ukrainian Air Force is flying today. Hence, any information that the Americans gained from the Moldovian units 25 years ago is still relevant and useful. It is this technical knowledge gained from the exploitation of enemy equipment that gives the Americans their edge.

I am waiting for a re-make of the bunker scene from Downfall, except with a realllllly long table.

I am waiting for a re-make of the bunker scene from Downfall, except with a realllllly long table.

I am waiting for a re-make of the bunker scene from Downfall, except with a realllllly long table.

The USAF may not have but as a (at that time, when they were first introduced) US Army FIST Chief and "occasional controller when no FAC around" my response to it, as well as all my peers, was, "Holy *(%#&*, that thing is the BOMB!!" 
Of course that was quite a few years ago and the air environment has gotten more lethal. But man, when they first showed up.....
Dave

East Germany was treated relatively well during my time in Berlin.  Proximity to the prosperous West Germany made it hard to disguise how well off the west was compared to communist east, Berlin in particular was a thorn in the side of communists.

Since it was impossible to hide the truth, the leaders attempted to match as much as possible to the determent of areas/countries farther east.
We must also bear in mind that sheer number of soviet military bases provided a massive economic boost to the East German Economy.

The result is that when the wall came down and after the eventual re-unification, many portions of East Germany were better off, but then soon suffered when the Soviet bases closed down and economic support from Russia stopped.

They quickly fell farther behind, instead of immediately matching their western counterparts they slide deeper and this caused much resentment initially.

I believe that this only helped the growth of soviet nostalgia and Russian support.

I have wondered if Putin's original plan, circa 2019/2020 or so, was to continue to take smaller bites of Ukraine but realized that the west might only give him one more shot so he decided to make it count and go for the whole enchilada. 

I also have to say that one of the few times I agreed with our former president was when he called for our European partners to live up to their commitment to NATO, it is unfortunate that it took Putin's invasion to make some realize that defense spending is still important.  I do however disagree with Trump's threat to leave NATO like a spoiled child taking his ball and going home.

While the US has explicitly stated that it did not "supply the weapons" used in Crimea, this does not mean that the US did not manufacture the weapons.

Technically it would not be out of the realm of possibility that another NATO member delivered US long range PGM to Ukraine.

I am not promoting this as the answer, just pointing out that the announcements do not preclude the possibility.

See above, I guess for optical image matching you need daylight? So maybe that tells us something about what weapon was used (if it was not SOF)?

I am waiting for Russia/Nats to claim that the missiles were launched from a grain ship to show the duplicity of Ukraine and their allies.

I am waiting for Russia/Nats to claim that the missiles were launched from a grain ship to show the duplicity of Ukraine and their allies.

So a strategic Pickett's charge?

So a strategic Pickett's charge?

Every single time they succeed at something they also lose resources that they aren't  able to fully replace.