Eddy

Rotterdam?

Rotterdam?

Rotterdam was a contested city, so the bombing pre May 14th was not indiscriminate bombing, I think (though I'm really no expert on the topic). The most devastating bombing run happened after the Dutch has started negotiating the trend of surrendering.

Rotterdam?

I updated the post. Two missiles.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki - two nukes and Japan is capitulated. No bloody fight for country occupation, no sea battles, dozen thousands of Allied soldiers lives resqued. Not always peace time morale useful at the war. Especially if this war is not a conflict between cicvilized countries, but total war "we are or they are" between civilization and barbarism. You will never win barbarians if you show "humanism". They recognize this like your weakness. Barabarians respect and understand only brutal force 

Rotterdam?

I miss when we used to take the time to have individual country bashing days. This latest 'West Bashing Day' trend is just slapdash.

I doubt Putin would bother to invade states Russia has already suborned so thoroughly already. If NATO is on it's back foot, if say we have Trump in the WH who Putin believes might help bollix a response then the Baltic States are the place to try it. None of the three has a hinterland to retreat to, there are some significant Russian speaking minorities and most importantly it's sellable in Russia as part of the regathering of the empire. The idea would be a coup de main and then a threat to go nuclear if NATO tries a counteroffensive. 
I don't think it's incredibly likely but the mere prospect of such a move would certainly be the cudgel Moscow would wield to try and cow Talinn, Riga, etc. 

I miss when we used to take the time to have individual country bashing days. This latest 'West Bashing Day' trend is just slapdash.

I do actually. Thanks for posting this. Good to actually get some numbers.
Very roughly because the chart is actually quite hard to read and the dates don't precisely match but:
1. 11/09/22 -> 29/12/2022 => 719 missiles fired, 452 intercepted, interception percentage = ~62%
2. 06/09/23 -> 29/12/2023 => 301 missiles fired, 218 intercepted, interception percentage = ~72%
So a clear reduction in missiles fired (42% of last years number)and an increase in the interception percentage over very nearly the same period of time. 
NB: Chart does not include Shaheds

I miss when we used to take the time to have individual country bashing days. This latest 'West Bashing Day' trend is just slapdash.

I miss when we used to take the time to have individual country bashing days. This latest 'West Bashing Day' trend is just slapdash.

Naturally. I would be in favour of some joint action sea-air with Finland and Balts to make life in Kaliningrad...harder, there would probably be some non-military ways to do it. But it's pointless anyway, since Kremlin does not care about its own citizens there or anywhere else, except several districts of Moscow itself.
There was already Russian KH-55 discovered several months after its fall, anyway.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/military-object-found-polish-forest-was-russian-missile-media-2023-05-10/
There are some new developments lately in EW/ radar front here that are difficult to explain (perhaps themselves effect of captured muscovite elecronic devices), my vote  it could be connected to it. Overall, the incident is small one, compared to what is happening in Ukraine.
If anybody likes statistics:
And these actions would be... War with Russia? No, thanks, we have bad experiences here in the past of charging alone in helpless wars. NATO-level decisions; period. And if you mean about AA assets that even America can't provide, we would gladly accept some from AFU, if not the fact they are engaged in real war.

I miss when we used to take the time to have individual country bashing days. This latest 'West Bashing Day' trend is just slapdash.

We don't have any actual data on Russian missile stocks. But we can attempt to deduce from how often or not missiles are being used. So far this winter, including last night, the numbers are way down on last year. Therefore it could be they have less.
It also could be they are stockpiling them for a future campaign. Or it could be last night was the start of a missile campaign. 
If there are no further missile attacks for 2 months does that mean their stocks are low. Not definitely but it would reinforce the impression. (Impression is the wrong word but I can't think of a better one)

Not so sure about this tbh. Russia has not been deterred up to now and even today the Guardian is reporting that 70% of Kherson is without electricity due to shelling. And Shaheed attacks on civilian areas are still ongoing nightly, which also doesn't look like Russian being deterred.
I wonder whether if we don't see a cruise/hyper-sonic/ballistic missile campaign like last winter it's because the Russian no longer have the capability, not by choice. The only production numbers we have seen come from Ukraine, which is understandably incentivised to err on the side of caution. Maybe the Russian's just can't produce that many anymore and the estimates from Ukraine are wrong. 

I'm not sure about Meteor, since that is pretty much state of the art, but Ukraine should already have piles of AMRAAM because they are used in NASAMS - the whole point of NASAMS is "let's build ground based air defense system that uses NATO air-to-air missiles to simplify the supply chain", and that is why it was given to Ukraine as well, since NATO was literally running out of surface to air missiles.
Ukraine could mount some of the on F-16 for sure.
But I feel Patriot is better for "sniping" airplanes because it doesn't really lock things until the last possible moment (according to this explanatory video anyway) so it's like "all is fine, all is fine, oh no, boom" (this is very technical description, I know).
 
Ukraine also promised that if Russia tries hitting energy infrastructure again, they will retaliate by attacking oil and gas, which is the only way how Russia stays afloat financially. Now normally I would say Russians are too dumb to be convinced by something like this, but it is possible it worked.
If they are just stockpiling for a one or two big strikes so they can say "we can do this whole winter, surrender" that would of course backfire hilariously if as a response half their refineries will go boom.

I've been thinking about the Storm Shadow/SCALP attack on the ship in Feodosia. That is right on the edge of Storm Shadow/SCALP's range which means that the SU24 either went over the Black Sea or very near to Russian controlled air space in order to deliver those weapons. Either way, normally that would put them at risk of Russian fighters and the Ukrainians don't have enough SU24s to take many risks. And they need those SU24s.
However, with the downing of 5 Russian jets (from whatever source), the Russian have to pull back before they work out what the hell happened, thus creating gaps. 
So, for me, this a planned operation. First shoot down the Russian fighters and then exploit those gaps created with a Storm Shadow/SCALP attack as part of the same operation. I can't see it being an opportunistic attack. The timescales are too tight. 
Secondly, it creates a dilemma for the VVS. Do they go back to employing their fighters the same way prior to the shooting down and risk further losses. Or do they protect the fighters but leave themselves open to further Strom Shadow/SCALP attacks? 
 

I've been thinking about the Storm Shadow/SCALP attack on the ship in Feodosia. That is right on the edge of Storm Shadow/SCALP's range which means that the SU24 either went over the Black Sea or very near to Russian controlled air space in order to deliver those weapons. Either way, normally that would put them at risk of Russian fighters and the Ukrainians don't have enough SU24s to take many risks. And they need those SU24s.
However, with the downing of 5 Russian jets (from whatever source), the Russian have to pull back before they work out what the hell happened, thus creating gaps. 
So, for me, this a planned operation. First shoot down the Russian fighters and then exploit those gaps created with a Storm Shadow/SCALP attack as part of the same operation. I can't see it being an opportunistic attack. The timescales are too tight. 
Secondly, it creates a dilemma for the VVS. Do they go back to employing their fighters the same way prior to the shooting down and risk further losses. Or do they protect the fighters but leave themselves open to further Strom Shadow/SCALP attacks? 
 

I've been thinking about the Storm Shadow/SCALP attack on the ship in Feodosia. That is right on the edge of Storm Shadow/SCALP's range which means that the SU24 either went over the Black Sea or very near to Russian controlled air space in order to deliver those weapons. Either way, normally that would put them at risk of Russian fighters and the Ukrainians don't have enough SU24s to take many risks. And they need those SU24s.
However, with the downing of 5 Russian jets (from whatever source), the Russian have to pull back before they work out what the hell happened, thus creating gaps. 
So, for me, this a planned operation. First shoot down the Russian fighters and then exploit those gaps created with a Storm Shadow/SCALP attack as part of the same operation. I can't see it being an opportunistic attack. The timescales are too tight. 
Secondly, it creates a dilemma for the VVS. Do they go back to employing their fighters the same way prior to the shooting down and risk further losses. Or do they protect the fighters but leave themselves open to further Strom Shadow/SCALP attacks? 
 

I've been thinking about the Storm Shadow/SCALP attack on the ship in Feodosia. That is right on the edge of Storm Shadow/SCALP's range which means that the SU24 either went over the Black Sea or very near to Russian controlled air space in order to deliver those weapons. Either way, normally that would put them at risk of Russian fighters and the Ukrainians don't have enough SU24s to take many risks. And they need those SU24s.
However, with the downing of 5 Russian jets (from whatever source), the Russian have to pull back before they work out what the hell happened, thus creating gaps. 
So, for me, this a planned operation. First shoot down the Russian fighters and then exploit those gaps created with a Storm Shadow/SCALP attack as part of the same operation. I can't see it being an opportunistic attack. The timescales are too tight. 
Secondly, it creates a dilemma for the VVS. Do they go back to employing their fighters the same way prior to the shooting down and risk further losses. Or do they protect the fighters but leave themselves open to further Strom Shadow/SCALP attacks? 
 

I've been thinking about the Storm Shadow/SCALP attack on the ship in Feodosia. That is right on the edge of Storm Shadow/SCALP's range which means that the SU24 either went over the Black Sea or very near to Russian controlled air space in order to deliver those weapons. Either way, normally that would put them at risk of Russian fighters and the Ukrainians don't have enough SU24s to take many risks. And they need those SU24s.
However, with the downing of 5 Russian jets (from whatever source), the Russian have to pull back before they work out what the hell happened, thus creating gaps. 
So, for me, this a planned operation. First shoot down the Russian fighters and then exploit those gaps created with a Storm Shadow/SCALP attack as part of the same operation. I can't see it being an opportunistic attack. The timescales are too tight. 
Secondly, it creates a dilemma for the VVS. Do they go back to employing their fighters the same way prior to the shooting down and risk further losses. Or do they protect the fighters but leave themselves open to further Strom Shadow/SCALP attacks? 
 

I've been thinking about the Storm Shadow/SCALP attack on the ship in Feodosia. That is right on the edge of Storm Shadow/SCALP's range which means that the SU24 either went over the Black Sea or very near to Russian controlled air space in order to deliver those weapons. Either way, normally that would put them at risk of Russian fighters and the Ukrainians don't have enough SU24s to take many risks. And they need those SU24s.
However, with the downing of 5 Russian jets (from whatever source), the Russian have to pull back before they work out what the hell happened, thus creating gaps. 
So, for me, this a planned operation. First shoot down the Russian fighters and then exploit those gaps created with a Storm Shadow/SCALP attack as part of the same operation. I can't see it being an opportunistic attack. The timescales are too tight. 
Secondly, it creates a dilemma for the VVS. Do they go back to employing their fighters the same way prior to the shooting down and risk further losses. Or do they protect the fighters but leave themselves open to further Strom Shadow/SCALP attacks? 
 

The whole article is excellent, but no regular reader of the thread will be surprised.