TheVulture
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Posts posted by TheVulture
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Good, but long (50 minutes) video by Perun on Russian nuclear doctrine and why he thinks it's a bluff. (Perun is the guy who had some good videos linked here on Russian logistics a few weeks back).
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16 minutes ago, womble said:
I think the British media might be a bit optimistic on this one. Or at least "shading" the news. While the 56th AC might be equipped in the future (so "will be equipped" isn't quite a fib) with Dark Eagle, it seems unlikely they are currently equipped with it. Static testing of the rocket booster was only commenced in October last year... and according to Wikipedia, the Army "hopes" to begin live fire testing this year.
Now, maybe they're gonna live fire test it on a live combat range... but I kinda doubt it...
And it'd be a miracle delivery, so far ahead of schedule, for a high tech system that, IIRC, was suffering quite a lot from development issues.
I've not actually seen any British media reporting this, so it might just be Russian hyperbole for domestic consumption with people who aren't going to know (or care) what British media have actually said. Or it might just be one fringe fruitloop somewhere with as much credibility as the claims that Russia is going to drown the UK with a 500m radioactive tidal wave. There's bound to be at least some idiots publishing stuff that could be classed as "British media" (even ignoring Russia trolls).
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4 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
So some advances toward Slovyansk by RU. But as pointed out above, the terrain gets increasingly bad beyond Lyman, so would be even harder to keep going there.
Meanwhile, there's report of big UKR advances NE of Kharkiv. Any of you have any thoughts on what could be achieved NE/E of kharkiv to unhinge RU forces from Izyum and the Lyman fronts? I am of course hoping for full Romanian collapse (ooops, donetz milita, not romanian collapse -- weird I keep making that mistake......)
NE of Kharkiv is sort of isolated from the rest of the Russian forces in that area. The Siversky Donets river is about 10-15km east of Kharkiv, and there's one major bridge and a few smaller ones there under Russian control inside the Ukrainian border. The big one is at Staryi Saltiv, which is where it was being reported that the Russians took heavy casualties yesterday (or was it the day before). I don't know of any corroboration of that report though, so it might just be RUMINT.
In the north of the region between Karkhiv and the Siversky Donest, one of the two main supply routes from Russia to Izyum runs within 2km of the river for a distance. I.e. a considerably stretch of it is within artillery range from the other side of the river, which could allow Ukraine to largely stop the Russians using one of the two supply lines for their main force concentration.
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And just to keep the record going, here's today's explosion from the vicinity of Kherson airport.
https://t.me/truexanewsua/44736
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Because I'm procrastinating this evening, I decided to plot the artillery impact points from the farmhouse video on to the google maps that @chrislposted above. Red dots are from the initial zoomed in view, orange dots are from after the camera conveniently zooms out just before the first rounds land outside its previous field of view. The purple circle is an area that is clear on the map, but obviously has some degree of ground 'clutter' in the video, but I can't tell what it is. Might well be some vehicles. Green line is 200m in length.
Random observations:
The first round is a direct hit on the roof of the farmhouse and is possible the brightest explosion. Different kind of round, or just because it's up in the air rather than half-buried in the ground as it explodes?
The center of mass of the red dots seems to be different to the center of mass of the orange dots, which might suggest two different batteries with different central aim points (and the camera apparently knew when to widen its view).
Visually (and from watching the video) it seems like there are more rounds close to roads / treelines / buildings than might be expected by chance given the wide spread of impacts, but you'd have to do some kind of statistical analysis to tell really (and I'm only placing the dots approximately by eyeball, so I might be unintentionally biasing them towards roads etc.)
Here is the purple area ground clutter, before it all starts, and conveniently illuminated by a shell. Can't tell what it is, but for scale the distance between the two tree lines is about 300m, so we are talking (very approximately) vehicle scale stuff here, rather than pebbles or buildings.
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Fire and explosions at military arsenal near Tomarovka, Belgorod oblast. Confirmed by Belgorod governor.
https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/11240
На границе трёх муниципалитетов — Борисовского и Белгородского районов и Яковлевского городского округа - произошёл пожар на территории одного из объектов Министерства обороны РФ. Информация о пострадавших и разрушениях уточняется.
Все оперативные службы работают на месте, принимаются все необходимые меры для обеспечения безопасности, — сообщил Гладков -
4 minutes ago, acrashb said:
Cool, learned something new.
I'm amazed, as the barrel is the part that needs to, at least, remain straight.
Thanks!I'd have guessed that towing it by the barrel is probably better in that regard, since the barrels are pretty long. The strain on the barrel from towing the weight of the gun is relatively small and mostly along the length of the gun, which is the direction it is strongest in.
Towing it the other way around would have the gun's wheels close to the towing connection, which means that the barrel could easily swing sideways much wider than you'd expect (unlike towing by the barrel, where the whole carriage will just follow the truck). This could easily lead to the barrel taking hard lateral blows close to the muzzle, which is the situation most likely to bend the whole barrel or flatten the tube out of being cylindrical, both of which could be catastrophic.
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Optimistic twitter thread from Dr Mike Martin. Anyone know anything about who he is as to his credentials as a believable analyst?
Executive summary - Russian offensive in the east has fizzled and will likely culminate in 2-4 weeks, followed by collapse
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5 hours ago, panzermartin said:
FT claims companies In Germany, Austria, Italy and Hungary have decided to go ahead an pay russian gas in rubles.
It's behind pay wall and not sure how accurate this is.
The European Comission apparently believes it and has warned the companies that if they do so they might face punishment for breaking sanctions:
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned April 27 of the "high risk" to EU companies that agree to new Russian gas payment demands, which she said were in breach of EU sanctions.
"To pay in rubles -- if this is not foreseen in the contract -- is a breach of our sanctions. We have about 97% of all contracts that explicitly stipulate payments in euros or dollars," she said.
"The request from the Russian side to pay in rubles is a unilateral decision and not according to the contracts," she said.
"Companies with such contracts should not accede to the Russian demands. This would be a breach of the sanctions, so a high risk for the companies."
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Von der Leyen was responding to a question related to reports that 10 European companies had already agreed to the new Russian payment system and that four companies had already paid according to the new decree.
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And here are your daily air defense missile launches over Belgorod. Possible explanations:
- Ukraine is running a lot of air sorties over Belgorod
- Hungry Russian air defense crews are hunting geese for food
- The town clock is broken so they use this to signal midday
- Russia is trying to make its population feel under threat
Answers on a postcard...
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7 minutes ago, AlsatianFelix said:
I'm hopeful that this and recent Ukrainian advances in Huliaipole are setting the table for a large scale counter attack aimed towards Melitopol. I would think Ukraine would have the advantage in supply and air assets on this front. Perhaps enough to allow for a concentrated mechanized force over dried terrain. If would force Russia to create new defensive fronts to defend Kherson and Berdyansk and bisect the premise of Novorossiya.
There's logic to your thinking. Taking out a bridge isn't a permanent thing - they can be rebuild and repaired if the engineering facilities are available. So taking out a bridge buys you a window of opportunity where transport and logistics get interrupted, until alternative routes are established or the bridge is back in action.
Which suggests it there is a chance that it is something you do when it would have a good effect (assuming you have the chance to be choosy about timings). Either to undercut a Russia attack, or prepare for one of your own.
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Bridge destroyed near Melitopol (about 10 miles SW). By the looks of it, a railway bridge. If that's right, it looks like one of the two railway lines out of Crimea is out of action (one line from Crimea runs NW to Kherson, and this one runs NE through Melitopol towards all the front lines in the 'land bridge' area).
https://t.me/dvish_alive/13099
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33 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
The response from the "long war" crowd is that China will buy from Russia to make up for the loss of the EU and Chinese banks will lend the rest of what it needs. More nonsense.
First, China is not going to purchase energy resources from Russia that it doesn't need or can get from its own sources (which are vastly more stable, mind you). So unless it needs the same volume as Europe cuts off buying, then Russia will be worse off than when the war started. More importantly, do you think China is going to pay market rate or will it force Russia into selling cheap? Selling cheap, of course. That means China would have to important proportionally MORE oil/gas than the EU did.
There's also the consideration that the parlous state of the Chinese property market has got the Chinese economy on the edge of a significant problem that might just tip it in to a full scale crisis if they aren't very careful.
Even if they were inclined to throw financial support at Russia out of the goodness of their hearts to prop up an ally, it's very questionable how much support they are in a position to give right now. And honestly China is rather more likely to use its leverage over Russia to further its own interests rather than hurt itself to help Russia.
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Here's an article with a 'view from 30,000ft' on how the USA's strategy in supporting Ukraine has evolved since the start of the war. Nothing new in terms of information, just another voice affirming the view that the US / NATO countries have switched to seeing a straight-up Ukrainian victory as a viable outcome, not merely outlasting the Russians. or making it too costly for them to bother continuing.
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-ukraine-war-redefined/
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29 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:
I wonder how long it takes to actually cross train an arty crew from, say, a 152mm towed howitzer to a 155mm towed howitzer. I mean surely the ballistics are very different but I thought most of the range and bearing calculations were done by computer or chart anyway. And I mean if you know the math, you know the math. How tightly integrated are American systems and displays into the operation of a towed arty battalion? Is maintenance that different?
Im sure there are a million thinks I'm not thinking of. I genuinely dont know. I understand training a crew up from nothing takes a while, but to cross train experienced artillerists who have lost their tube?
I'm not familiar with any of this stuff, but I'd imagine the "happy path" is quite easy to learn - when all the systems function properly, learning to input a target and fire, and then reload the system is probably pretty simple. Possibly it is the 'troubleshooting' when something goes wrong that is what takes more time.
Any complex software has bugs, and a modern artillery system might well have some weird quirks like uncommon sequences of actions that can freeze up the computer, so you have to know not to do that, and how to reset the system if it does happen.
And you need to train enough to have muscle memory when working under high pressure so you do the right thing.
I know in aviation at least one accident was deduced as being caused by something trivial. A plane in poor visibility (so you can't see the horizon and have to rely on instruments) suffered an engine failure shortly after take-off, and had something else go wrong at the same time which masked the initial problem. Bit of a panic situation, but something the pilot should have been able to handle well enough to get back to the runway to land again. Instead he banked steeply and essentially fell out of the sky. The investigation concluded that one of the contributing factors was because the pilot had thousands of hours of flying experience on Russian / Soviet Tupolev aircraft, and in those aircraft the artificial horizon that shows the tilt of the plane behaves differently to those in western aircraft. I'm sure that sitting in an exam room, or in normal operating conditions, the pilot would have no trouble with the western display (or else he wouldn't have been qualified to fly the plane), but under pressure with multiple things going wrong, it's possible to take a quick glance at the artificial horizon and draw the wrong conclusion about which way the plane is banking if the wrong automatic 'muscle memory' kicks in. (https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/51791/how-is-a-confusion-possible-between-western-and-russian-attitude-indicators)
You don't want your guys, under life or death pressure, to fall back on automatic sequences of behaviour from the wrong system. They have to train enough on the new system that everything becomes unconsciously automatic.
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Getting back to the sharp end, here's a Russian convoy that got whacked near Kherson. Definitely 5 vehicles present, plus a lonesone turret that doesn't look like it came from any of them. And possibly one or two more dark stains (can't see very well on this screen) that are probably just scorched ground, but might be thoroughly trashed vehicles.
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17 hours ago, Kinophile said:
Nah. Just incompetence is needed. Both facilities andle easily flammable substances.
Rule out stupidity and incompetence first, then conspiracy. And stupidity has great depths to plumb.
Considering that Russian missile production has been suddenly overwhelmed by battle demands, I think a major accident was inevitable.
Two is a blessing.
Three would be... suspicious.
So are you suspicious yet?
5 minutes ago, DesertFox said:LOL! Spontaneous combustion?
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15 minutes ago, sross112 said:
I was thinking of this as well. Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for Moldova to eject them? I'm sure if they needed it and asked nicely the UA would help.
On another note I saw a post somewhere earlier today that Kaliningrad is voting for independence from Russia. Not sure if that is true as I just saw a headline and didn't investigate.
Don't know about that - there was a video released yesterday about Kaliningrad agitating for independence from Russia, but it was a deliberate spoof (and says so in the video). It's actually produced by the Ukrainian government (and again, this is clearly stated) to show how you can splice together out of context quotes, unrelated footage etc. to make something superficially convincing.
The point they are making of course is that they are using Russia's propaganda techniques to claim support in Donestk, Donbas, Crimea (and probably also Kherson coming soon to a propagana outlet near you), and flipping it around to show how it looks in reverse
So the point of the video isn't "Kaliningrad wants independence from Russia". It is "don't believe Russia's claims that Ukrainian oblasts want to become part of Russia".
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14 minutes ago, FancyCat said:
I don't have a source, apparently, Ukrainian forces are already in western Kupyansk.
Not to be too much of a pessimist, but that sounds really implausible unless Russia has just hit staggering new levels of incompetence. That would mean the Russia's Izyum offensive just turned into the Izyum pocket.
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21 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Putin does not look well in that video. Der Zeitgeist showed that maybe the hand grip isn't unusual for Putin (thanks for posting that!), but the jumpy leg and kinda slouched demeanor was interesting. Could be that he's physically fine, but the stress of all of this is manifesting itself in physical form.
That was my immediate thought. Yeah, he may be unwell, but the sheer stress of trying to work through a war that he started, and was quickly shown to be a catastrophic misjudgement, and being in charge as it goes from bad to worse... I'd imagine that stress takes a serious physical toll over the months.
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I'm not sure this can be said with 100% confidence, but it's still amazing that it is even something that might be true, given the force disparity at the start of the current invasion.
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51 minutes ago, Huba said:
Edit:
Nothing about weapons
- 500M for UA budget
- new program for UA refugees in US
Now there's something about weapons:
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Heart-warming footage of a Russia tank previously from Kyiv area, now burning merrily in Mariupol
And it'd be a miracle delivery, so far ahead of schedule, for a high tech system that, IIRC, was suffering quite a lot from development issues.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Yeah, you'd never find that sort of confusion in the US with a mere 91 towns called Wahington. And 35 called Lebanon, for crying out loud.