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The_MonkeyKing

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Posts posted by The_MonkeyKing

  1. Russia claiming an imminent Ukrainian attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and Ukraine claiming the opposite

    I see this as a real possibility.

    • Russia can cause a limited and/or slow-moving accident with enough uncertainty about the cause to give them cover
    • This would again be one more huge expensive disaster for post-war Ukraine to deal with. For reference, the Three Mile Island cleanup is forecasted to cost 1.5 billion. That was just one reactor that didn't breach containment. 
    • Then Russia would play to get an international intervention that would save the situation. This would require a local ceasefire with the current lines. This would not necessarily work out but still worth hoping for.

     

  2. 1 minute ago, Sarjen said:

    Don’t know if it’s true, but if fighter jets are coming after the counter offensive than the Ukrainians are dying for nothing. 

    https://news.yahoo.com/ukraine-not-receive-fighter-jets-061255539.html
     

    This is such a nothing burger. Comments were taken out of context. From a video interview by Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of the military committee of NATO. So the guy is not even "the guy" to ask about this.

     This guy loosely quoting states that F-16 is such a big and slow undertaking it will likely come in time for the current offensive. Absolutely nothing controversial here...

    "The discussion on the fighters is an important one, but it will not be solved in the short term for this counter-offensive."

    "Training those pilots, training the technicians, making sure there is a logistic organization that can actually sustain these aircraft will not be available before this counter-offensive."

    "We shouldn’t mix the two discussions – I think it’s important and understandable that Ukraine asks for these fighter aircraft – but we should not mix it with the counter-offensive discussion now."

  3. 42 minutes ago, Carolus said:

    As per past discussions on this thread, getting them on the ground seems to be the only option due to the lack of ground-based AD for his range and manner of deployment, and the lack of air-to-air assets in Ukraine.

    But Storm Shadow would be far too expensive as a weapon, unless it targets the ATGM or fuel depot of the helicopters (which is an indirect way of dealing with them).

    I rather think some of the Ukrainian long-range drones could be deployed here, if they are available in numbers big enough to overwhelm Russian AA. 

    Making a KA-52 unsafe or unable to operate would not take 100s of lbs of explosives, something like an RPG warhead would be enough.

    I would replace the word "expensive" with the word "valuable". And that value comes from scarcity. 

     

    It is not that expensive when we compare it to other war materials:

    155mm round currently costs around 10 000e.
    According to Esa Rautalinko, CEO of Patria, the largest Finnish arms manufacturer. In an interview about a month ago.

    Storm Shadow missile cost from one million to three million
    depending on the time, contract, and source.

    Is one Storm Shadow worth 100-300 pieces of 155mm rounds? I would say it is.

  4. 20 minutes ago, JonS said:

    How many duplicates?

    Sure there are some duplicates and I saw a couple of clear misses. Also maybe even most are past mine kills that are being totaled with the ka-52.

    Still, the volume says a lot. One month of action rivals the kills of TB-2 for the whole duration of the whole war: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/defending-ukraine-listing-russian-army.html or the kills of ZALA Lancet https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/11/hit-or-miss-russian-loitering-munition.html

    with one confirmed ka-52 kill from the Ukrainians. And that was on the ground.

  5. 24 minutes ago, AlexUK said:

    Horrific. Seems like a slaughter. 

    Satellite imagery to find the helicopter bases, storm shadow the individual helicopters while they are on the ground? 

    Russia can create powerful concentrations of anti-air and electronic warfare capabilities.

    I am sure the helo bases are some of the strongest AA concentrations there are. Making it unfeasible or not worth it for the Ukrainians to hit them with their few long-range precision assets. 

    Also, KA-52 has the range to operate from internationally recognized Russia, given the restrictions imposed on Ukrainian weapons use they would become practically untouchable. So if they would feel threatened they would just start operating from Russia like most of the air force is already doing

  6. 9 hours ago, womble said:

    Wikipedia says there are 3700 ATACMS manufactured in total. A lot of those are "awaiting upgrade" though, and I can't offer a guess how useful the unupgraded ones would be to UKR at this point.

    Good point. I know that the US has only a few hundred in service and those are equipped with the "unitary warhead". 

    Those "old" stored cluster ATACMS would be the thing Ukraine needs. 

  7. 18 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

    The main difference is that the US has a lot more ATACMS that it can afford to deliver to Ukraine than the UK can deliver Storm Shadows.

    Europe contains multiple thousands of Strom Shadows with no other meaning for existence than fighting Russia. I believe the US has less than 1000 ATACMS and they have lots of "prior commitments" with the US being global military power and all.

  8. 12 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

    Sounds plausible. We will learn for sure if it is true. Back to Potato-Chips and Beer for me. 

     

     

    This was clear from the start. Wagner doesn't have the supporting arms or logistics to do anything alone. It has been integrated into army units from beginning to end. The fact that Rostov and Voronezh "fell" without a fight with their military HQs and bases clearly shows the military is in on it. No, any sort of "neutrality" from the military would not have been enough.

    The "attacks" on Wagner might have been just false-flag operations from the rebel forces to begin this. The forced integration of PMCs into MoD might have been a defensive move from the MoD. Wagner very well might just be the face of the operation. 

    I see this as a full planned rebellion of the military fighting the war in Ukraine.

  9. 1 hour ago, Grigb said:

    Dmitiry already translated Prig comments about real situation. Here is confirmation that situation for RU is very difficult - from "agent" Thirteen (infamous RU soldier in Kherson-Zaporozhye area)

    [EDIT] For those who do not want to spend time listening to Prig here are main points:

    • Pyatikhatka is under AFU control [is not new for us]
    • The northern section of Robotne is under AFU control [is new for us]
    • Urozhaine is under AFU control [is not new for us]
    • Prig concludes that the UKR controls huge areas of land
    • AFU unit (50-10) is located near Tormak in the Sadove village [is new for us]
    • RU MOD has no control over anything [is not new for us]
    • Total shortage of weaponry and ammunition (including anti-tank weapons) [is not new for us]
    • AFU advances [implying successfully] toward Molochny Lyman [village on the Azov seashore south of Melitopol - if AFU reaches it, the RU grouping will be split in half]. [is new for us]
    • AFU begins crossing the Dniepr - there were recon parties at Hola Prystan [a town south-west of Kherson] and now the main troops begin to arrive [is new for us]
    • RU suffers casualties but no reinforcement [is not new for us]
    • RU units are understaffed by 50-60% [is not new for us]
    • Everything up there has been hidden from everybody. The Russian military command is fooling Putin and the Russian people [is not new for us]
    • Disparaging Shoigy and the RU MOD,  concludes the Russian army is being destroyed [is not new for us]
    • The UKR counter-offensive causes significant losses for RU, which is not being acknowledged [is not new for us]
    • Bla-Bla-Bla [is not new for us]

     

     

  10. 5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

    More evidence that Ukraine is far more focused on grinding down Russia's forces than it is taking territory.  This is the correct strategy!  We've been saying over and over again that Russia's lines are thin and reinforcements at any scale unavailable.  Yet a relatively small number of defenders can be a real problem with all those mines and fixed emplacements.  Mines and fixed emplacements without capable defenders, though, are a different thing :)

    So it looks like Russia is stuck.  They have to stay in their positions and there's very little it can do about the attrition.  Attempts to counter attack are just going to make it worse.  And if there's one thing the Russians are consistently good at doing is taking a bad situation and making it worse!

    The big question, then, is how long will Ukraine keep this grinding up before it makes major moves forward?  We have no idea how weak Russia's forces are and how weak Ukraine wants them to be.  This means we could see the second phase of the counter offensive start at any time, either weeks, a month +, or before I hit "Submit" to this post.  My gut tells me 2 weeks max, with some interesting preludes before then.

    As for the Prig rant, it seems that he is still an outlier in terms of Kremlin messaging.  He's still out there saying everything is going to Hell in a handbasket and soon, despite many of the others falling into line.  Interesting.

    Steve

    I think the rock/paper/scissors logic of defense and offense methods is a factor;

    Now Russia has been preparing to counter Ukrainian "Blitzkrieg" with big reserves and in-depth defense. Ukraine on the other hand is now advantaged by attacking this defense with limited attrition/gains-type attacks (Ukraine gets to engage the defenders piecemeal and local superiority)

    I am sure if and when Russia transitions to forward defense Ukraine transitions to something more like "Blitzkrieg".

    In the winter Russia was attacking Ukrainian forward defense piecemeal with "attrition"/"limited gains". Bad matchup for the Russians.

     

    illustrative matrix of how this rock/paper/scissors logic:
    image.png.bb585ffbcf8f1cc11ea20abaf4984dd2.png
    image source: https://youtu.be/7dWf4ueZ9qU

  11. 3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

    I think the DOD uses the same accounting firms that Hollywood uses when they want to make a film lose money, despite being wildly profitable.  Forest Gump is often cited as the poster child of this sort of "creative accounting", because although the movie earned well over 10x what it cost to make the film, on paper it lost money.  Here's a good article on it.

    https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2021/08/what-is-hollywood-accounting-the-forrest-gump-sequel/

    Steve

    Steve

     

     

    That clears it up. Strange that they choose to call it an "error". 

    The US is moving from the most strict way of counting the amount to the loosest. From replacement capacity cost to the equipment's value on the accounting books.

  12. 2 hours ago, sburke said:

    works for me, whatever it takes to get as much stuff there as possible as fast as possible.  I'll bet you won't hear many republicans especially in the Senate complaining either.

    I would think Congress might care when the budgets they approve starts living their own life by tens of billions 💸

  13. What the is going on here? 

    There are many ways to count the aid value sums. Write-off value on the accounting books, what it cost when it was new, or the cost to replace the given capability. 

    Now the US is changing how it calculates the value. At the start did the US want to exaggerate the aid given for some reason and now thanks to US internal politics they hope to avoid going to legislative to increase the total aid budget? So they start counting in the most "cheap" way.

    In my country, it would be a very big thing when tens of billions of money's appear or disappear from anything government related.

     

  14. 39 minutes ago, Homo_Ferricus said:

    Of all the things being caught on video in this war, I would imagine catching a helicopter playing peek-a-boo 10km away would be one of the more difficult ones to film, for the reasons stated in the last page or two.

    Agreed, but still no evidence so cannot say one way or the other 

  15. 36 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

    The most viable solution to the helicopter threat is the one noted many times above... keep smashing their bases.  We saw how effective this was in Kherson in 2022, where Russians kept losing helicopters to artillery and sabotage strikes.  They eventually had to pull them very far back.  HIMARS forced them even further back.  Storm Shadow should, theoretically, cause them even further discomfort.  So much so that it seems Russia is risking keeping them within Storm Shadow range because pulling them further back effectively takes them out of the fight.

    We know Ukraine can hit the bases, so why isn't it doing so?  There's been no evidence that Russia has meaningful counter measures, so the risk of expending valuable munitions without a good chance of hitting doesn't seem to be the reason.  My guess it's another timing issue.

    Bases are notoriously hard to keep out of action.  Right now Ukraine knows where they are, as the RU bloggers are moaning about.  If they hit one of the bases they will likely take some out of action, but not all.  The survivors will go somewhere else and Ukraine will have to figure out where.  Over time this could consume a lot of Storm Shadows.  Maybe they are thinking it is best to wait until the main counter offensive is underway (i.e. target rich environment) before they hit the bases.

    Another thought is that Ukraine is using these early battles to figure out how to better deal with helicopter threats.  Bashing their bases now will disrupt this learning process.  If this is true, then it's a good indication that Ukraine doesn't think it's entirely helpless against helicopter attacks, rather it just hasn't found the right combination to counter them.

    Whatever the case it, Ukraine appears to be "allowing" Russia to continue using helicopters.

    Steve

    I would guess it is not worth it to hit those helicopters with the current munitions available. 

    Those helicopter bases must be anti-air hardpoints and the helos are dispersed(in the satellites) 100m apart so it would be 1 storm shadow = one destroyed helo + what it takes to penetrate AA.

    The target lists must have lots of higher priority targets for these low-availability high-demand deep strike assets.

    Now GLSDB that would be nice. But still, the copter will just move 50km further back when these arrive to the theater. 

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