beardiebloke
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Posts posted by beardiebloke
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Saw this and thought it was pretty wild. Drone fitted with a really long spool of fiber optic cable to avoid EW. Obvious practical issues but if the distance is not so great it should work.
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50 minutes ago, buena said:
During WWI soldiers in trenches spent a lot of time trying to blow each other up by building tunnels under the enemy trenches. We haven't seen anything like that in Ukraine. Is there any info about tunnels being used, either to blow enemy trenches or to move underground?
There was at least one incident but it doesn't seem very common. It's been discussed here but I struggle to find the posts. I think this is the one I remember from last year around Andriivka.
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3 minutes ago, Joe982 said:
What what power does the explosive head have?
QuoteThe AQ 400 Scythe is a long-range drone with a 750 km range, specifically designed for launch from short airstrips or catapults. It boasts the ability to carry payloads of up to 32 kilograms, with the option to expand this capacity to 70 kilograms by sacrificing some range.
Not sure why kind of explosive payload but I guess they can mix it up easily enough as it's all domestic production.
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Interview with a civilian volunteer who builds/organises/flies drones. Autotranslate does an OK job but there's one word "RETRIK"? that I'ld like to understand. I think a lot of context is lost on me - how many like him are there? How many volunteer groups supply the front with FPVs. He shares some very frank opinions about government/military procurement.
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Just saw this UGV announced...
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23189
This particular weapon is probably not a game changer... I mean the flying FPV drones seem very effective already. Perhaps these are cheaper? Carry more?
I think in the future you can only prepare your drone forces based on best guesses about what you will face. Then when your plans collide with reality, strong domestic adaptable means of production will become crucial.
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1 hour ago, Haiduk said:
Dynamic of daily artillery shots.
English version of the infographic here: https://t.me/uawarinfographics/2874?comment=25382
Also curious of the source but a good sign even if it's only roughly correct.
A month old Reuters article quoting a "Western official":Quote"If you expended 10 million rounds last year and you're in the middle of a fight and you can only produce 1 to 2 million rounds a year, I don't think that's a very strong position."
If we assume production of 1-2m shells per year then any usage above 5500/day means your stocks disappear and eventually reach 5500/day *assuming* you produce 2m per year *and* get them to the front where they are actually fired. Just my amateur back of envelope take.
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https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/urban-warfare-project/id1490714950?i=1000629620464
A few pages ago folks were talking about the lack of basements in CM... this podcast covers some of the issues. It touches on a lot of topics but not overly in depth, I thought it's a nice a food-for-thought episode. One of the themes was that a less technologically advanced combatant can try to level the playing field through the use of tunnels and subterranean structures, but not the other way around. If drones level the ISR playing field enough perhaps it would pay for western armies to think about how they can dig deep, if they haven't already.
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2 hours ago, cesmonkey said:
Big numbers today for artillery destroyed:
And for drones too when you look at daily number as a percentage of the total! Which just makes the remaining artillery pieces less effective if it carries on.
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31 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Yeah, er. I watched it again and what I took to be the moon resolved itself down to two bright lights right at the end. Oops. Best case those lights were turned on explicitly because they were trying to get a visual on a radar signature. Worst case is they were on for some other reason, such as navigation, at just the wrong time.
As you point out, the shore's light pollution is substantial. As long as the Ukrainians had some idea where the ship was to start with, it would be hard to miss.
This is how U-Boats operated on the US coastline in WW2. They would use the shore's light pollution to silhouette ships. There were all kinds of measures to reduce light pollution, but I can personally attest it doesn't take much. I routinely navigate in water at night using this technique. Works like a charm. Er, except when it's foggy. In that case I bumble around until I hit something
GPS, however, is tricky. If the ship is docked that's one thing, but docked ships seem to be more difficult to hit (Ukraine seems to prefer getting them out in the open water). So the ship is moving. To get exact GPS coordinates something would have to be continually tracking it in realtime. The only viable means of something that far away at night is a satellite or HUMINT on shore. They could have either or both, however there is still the possibility of the boat's GPS being jammed to consider.
Steve
Should have been more clear. By GPS I meant that now bombers have GPS so no longer need to use lights on the ground and dead reckoning to navigate so folks can be complacent about wartime light pollution. I have vague memories of blackout drills when I was growing up in Seoul in the late 70s/early 80s, possibly for this reason. At the front where it matters more I suspect RU will be more sensible, but that shoreline doesn't look like a country on a proper war footing.
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8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
No. Nobody is going to be looking out at the water with eyeballs. Ships have fancy detection systems for spotting threats.
The Ukrainian boats, however, don't and that means they need to spot their targets visually through a grainy camera feed. Timing the attack so that the moon is near full, no clouds, and directly behind the ship silhouetting it is an excellent way to ensure a hit. Since weather and moon cycles are all known factors, they can time an attack and plot the correct angle to take advantage of it.
The above is all speculation, but it is also based on pretty sound logic. And looking at the video, it certainly was advantageous. I doubt it was by accident.
Steve
Did you mean that the big light "behind" the ship was the moon? It looks like three very bright light sources on the ship as the drone gets closer. Even without a full-ish moon the coastline appears so well lit up that this looks like a hard target to miss. If those ship lights were there to help spot drones ... well, not very effective without an alert watch. Light pollution isn't only bad for astronomers. With all the GPS etc I imagine old skool blackout curtains and light curfew doesn't happen anymore.
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4 hours ago, Hapless said:
Now with first person view:
No sound? RU may have finally attrited UKR's supply of irrelevant music clips. This marks the end.
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24 minutes ago, Butschi said:
And "stay in the war" could even mean Ukraine regained all their territory but the Russian army still remains a threat and there is no formal peace treaty.
This broadens the criteria for "Russia winning" a great deal. Anything short of Russia not comprehensively losing and starting to behave itself could be considered "Russia winning". As for time running out, it appears more likely if you extrapolate the speed of the counteroffensive based on what we've seen in the last few weeks/months, but far less likely if you anticipate a slow-then-quick bankruptcy style decline it RU's capabilities. I cautiously favour the latter.
If this does turn into a Korean style stalemate, then it will be relative stability that matters. It would suck but life could go on in relative peace.
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So all the discussion about blowing up/repairing the Kerch Bridge was a waste of time if RU can't even get there anymore?!?!
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12 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:
Thank you, for the pardon the pun... In depth explanation of submarine cables. I will keep it in mind the next time I hear Medvedev try to threaten us with this possibility most likely after having a few drinks.
Don't get me wrong, it would suck... a lot. But whatever they achieve wouldn't last forever and have no impact on the war.
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5 hours ago, Harmon Rabb said:
Medvedev threatening to destroy submarine communications cables like some two bit gangster. I think it was some smart folks on this forum who said this is a realistic option for escalation that Russia still has in this war.
But I suppose if they do carry out this threat, Ukraine will still be blamed, like for the explosion at Kakhovka dam by the Kremlin.
The globe is covered by a lot of submarine cables. In theory Russia could cut many of them and cause mayhem. However, they can be repaired (as they often are). Russia on the other hand has only two cables going east to Japan. To the west it's all terrestrial or to Kaliningrad. They can transit China but that's expensive. They could connect to the south but all of those countries are difficult and/or expensive. Basically a NATO + Japan blockade (for as long as required) of telecoms to Russia would be crippling. They could still get services via some countries to the south but they are known for being expensive at the best of times.
Bonus fun fact: telecoms is a sanctions exception (AFAIK) and a source of hard currency income. Probably nothing compared to oil but still.
So if they want to do this in a significant way the west could retaliate in kind, but a lot harder and longer.
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53 minutes ago, kraze said:
I think those russians had about 9 years to make their decision, will figure that out somehow
Yes I agree. I was just trying to make the point that videos on TG showing the army levelling a town with indiscriminate shelling isn't a good look. Public opinion may not count for that much in Russia but it's still not a good look. Kosinskoye looks like just a small group of buildings around the border crossing but Grayvoron up the road is a bit more substantial.
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6 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
If I am RU command right now, I don't know which way is up.
Not only will they need to figure out how to defeat the .. um... Russian Legion (is that what they're called?). The usual methods will destroy these towns completely. And what happens to the civilians? Can they flee south to Ukraine? Will they get across to the north without their own side shooting them? I know there is a lot said about Russian false flag ops taking civilian lives but this wouldn't be a one-off, localised event.
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Possibly taken out of context but I reckon it's plausible. RU soldiers being delivered to a treeline with regular trucks, not even up-armored mad max ones. I thought RU had a zillion BMPs.
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Quote
UK has supplied Ukraine with multiple Storm Shadow cruise missiles
Does the UK get teenage boys to name all of their weapons systems? Storm Shadow sounds extremely cool. This one even has a HARDBUT version.
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20 hours ago, Ales Dvorak said:
Such as?
Well it seems to start out just a little eccentric but gets progressively weirder. The gist of it is that US/NATO pushed Ukraine into a ware with Russia so that they could use the crisis to accelerate digitisation of the UKR government and then use Google/Azure/Amazon tech to control the country. Also that Covid wasn't really that bad and governments were scaremongering to control citizens. Sure, UKR gov't uses cloud services but so do lots of companies and governments, that doesn't mean these tech giants cooperate to undermine democracy or that UKR is no longer sovereign as a result. They also say that Zelensky banned all opposition parties, not just some Russian-linked ones.
I thought the presenter's style sounded a bit Tucker Carlson and guess what, he's an ex-Fox presenter and ex-real estate investor/promoter. The channel even states that it's not presenting news but entertainment.
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1 hour ago, Ales Dvorak said:
Some pretty wild conspiracy theories there. App looks pretty cool though.
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Happy Easter!
Update on drone development:
And poor opsec from UKR:
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I had the pleasure to attend this talk by Prof. Michael Clarke a couple of weeks ago.
He's an ex-RUSI Director General and active academic. No breaking news here but a good summary including some interesting historical background and global context.
The video didn't include the Q&A afterwards which went a little off the rails with one audience member saying she was scared of getting nuked and that we should have a dialog with Russia
. He responded by acknowledging that it was possible that the fighting stops with some never ending negotiations about Crimea/Donbas but seemed to portray this as a rather bleak future.
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49 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
If I were in a Russian trench, I'd be more worried about drone guided artillery than tanks and airplanes.
Of all the many combat videos I've seen, I can't remember any video of Ukrainian planes or helicopters actually hitting anything. And only a few of tanks causing casualties.
Of course, what's actually happening out there might be different from the media reality, but still. I think this war will be won by intel and artillery.
I agree... I just meant it's weird comparing the amount of discussion/uproar about tanks when it feels like the planes are coming.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Not convinced this will make any difference whatsoever but I would take it as a sign that the BSF isn't doing so well.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/11/kremlin-declines-to-comment-if-naval-chief-sacked