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Hapless

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Everything posted by Hapless

  1. Yeah. I missed the speech, but apart from massed marching it looks like there was a single T34-85, a load of Tigrs, S-300/400s, ICBMs and some Bumerangs. To quote one of the commentators on Sky: "Is that it?"
  2. @Bearstronaut mentioned this earlier, but I think it got a bit lost in the mix. A little too close, if true.
  3. Meanwhile... https://www.eucom.mil/pressrelease/42314/russian-aircraft-collides-into-us-unmanned-system-in-international-waters
  4. Now that is an amazing resource! Obviously just seeing wrecks tells an incomplete story, but there is so much information in there. Very nice find man!
  5. Well, Russian strategic decision making mysteries solved, I guess:
  6. Re: Naval Blockade of Russia What are they importing by sea that isn't already sanctioned? Maybe oil etc from Venezeula, but they've got their own right? I'd imagine supplies from Iran, China, North Korea and the other CIS members are much more important and they're not coming on ships.
  7. Still fascinating that this pretty much exactly what we find in CM.
  8. So, my quick 2p on the Polish Missile Incident while we wait for more facts to come out: On the one hand, it seems likely that it was an accident, or at least unintentional (which is not quite the same thing). Missiles can do funny things in flight- I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a Russian cruise missile got lost somehow, that a Ukrainian air defence missile missed it's target and keep going west, or that a Russian missile was damaged by a Ukrainian one and went off course. We've got some spectacular footage of a missile in Luhansk deciding to do a 180 and return itself to sender- it's not a stretch to think that one might be damaged or off by a small error when fired and end up miles off target. On the other hand... it seems like there's a lot of potential deniability to this and thus uncertainty. The fact that missiles malfunction and get lost, the fact that Russia and Ukraine both use similar weapons, the fact that the missile hit a random location in Poland rather than a specific target... this is all leads to a pretty murky picture (at least, right now). Does that deniability and murkiness make it more likely that it's actually some kind of Russian signalling attempt? The timing is interesting- NATO leaders are split between Europe and Bali because of the G19 (those in Indonesia, including Biden having to be roused at stupid o'clock over there to be briefed) and the Russians have just suffered a significant set-back at Kherson. They certainly blew the Nordstream pipeline after the Kharkiv Offensive took off in what was almost certainly a signalling attempt... that obviously did not warn NATO off, so are the Russians taking a step up the escalation ladder? Just drop a missile somewhere on the Polish border at random- enough to pass off as a malfunction, or ideally a Ukrainian error- but also enough to say "Look guys, we can hit the cross-border supply routes. You've been warned." Signalling? Coincidences? Or the unfortunate but natural result of firing a hundred cruise missiles at Ukraine? Of course, it stands to reason that it could be both, with the risk of missile malfunction generating this kind of incident accepted as an opportunity to send a signal. But, too early to know yet. We'll see.
  9. Another shot. Fascinating to consider that sustained long range precision corrosion didn't blow the bridge, but instead made the enemy do it themselves. Also, I guess one for the engineers to turn around to the missileers and say "That's how you do it!"
  10. My money is on cyber being the dog that didn't bark... because it's not a dog. And it can't bark.
  11. This tickled me. In particular- "In the books everything is written, you just need to know it and be able to apply it." There's a website floating around listing VDV manuals (http://russianairbornetroops.info/) and while I can't read Russian, judging from the pictures, knowing and applying what's in the books might not help: Which is just... wow. Advance down a street with dismounted infantry sandwiched between two BMDs? No thank you. Then there are elements in these manuals that seem fairly sensible, but are somewhat sabotaged by the er, quality of the art: This is all from the manual with the CMx1 screenshots in, for extra bonus points. Of course, there's a chance it's not legit, but still the mind continues to boggle.
  12. Good point. The size of the beam in the pictures also seems ridiculous if it's supposed to be hitting a satellite at 1500km, so maybe they are trying to light up the cloud base a la Artificial Moonlight in order to mess with satellite surveillance. I have no idea how well that would work and it definitely doesn't sound like you would need a fancy high tech laser for that.
  13. Bit of background on the Peresevet laser that might be responsbile for funny light columns in Russia: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3967/1 Raises some questions with interesting answers, such as: Does dazzling/blinding US satellites constitute a direct attack on NATO? These are supposedly systems designed to accompany road-mobile ICBMs in order to make it harder for the US to track them- so (aside from the way it looks like it can't function on the move) what are they doing in Belgorod? Is this just posturing to reinforce nuclear threats, intended to reassure the Russian people or part of scheduled nuclear exercises? It looks like Peresevet lives in very easily identifiable shelters at/near bases for Russian road mobile ICBMs that the US have got to be monitoring constantly, so what countermeasures has the US got up it's sleeve? Would it be cheaper to get a load of searchlights and point them at the sky on a cloudy night to pretend you have some new Wunderwaffe?
  14. Well, those two diamond shaped enemy icons are tanks. So being 1km away means those CV90s are definitely not safe. But like Chuckdyke says- you can override the "I want to live" behaviour to some extent by using the Fast command.
  15. You can select Rhino tanks in QB, but it needs to be July or later
  16. Now this is an interesting list of coordinates: Which makes this (from further down Girkin's thread): Assuming it's not been leaked out in an attempt to give Russian milbloggers an aneurysm, it seems like a good example of the kind of ISR support Ukraine is getting from NATO.
  17. Everyone remembers how Red Storm Rising ended, right?
  18. Looks like an update on the blog, but not the site yet :https://www.iswresearch.org/2022/09/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment_10.html
  19. Going to be really interesting to see more of these kinds of videos. I keep talking about competing snowdomes- this is what I think it should look like: The Russian Air Defence layer starts getting holes blasted in it by HARMs (or is redeployed to save the bridges/ uses it's ammo up trying to hit HIMARs rockets or ground targets/ or is logistically neutered/ etc). This allows Ukrainian airpower/dronepower to penetrate the AD layer and start poking holes in the artillery layer... ... which means that Russian ground units start to lose the protection of their artillery (no support) and become more exposed to Ukrainian artillery (reduced counterbattery capability)... ... which means they become increasingly vulnerable to Ukrainian ground forces. Nothing revolutionary, but like Huba says, we haven't seen drone videos like that since Phase 1, and we all know how that ended. A pretty solid indicator that the Russians on the west bank are getting closer to collapse... providing Ukraine can keep the pressure up.
  20. Bit more on the same bridge strike at the end of this twitter column that looks like it shows more. I count 8 big hits on the bridge- plus something hitting the river near the start and something smaller that might be a cook-off towards the end. Also a windy day down in Kherson, so maybe the guy reporting on the pontoon and ferry linked earlier missed a rendezvous with destiny.
  21. The advantage the pontoon has over the bridge is that it's modular- so if one section is damaged, you just cut it loose, it floats off and you slot a new one in. I'd guess all the sections are compartmentalised too, so if one springs a leak and fills up with water, the pontoon as a whole has enough bouyancy to stay afloat long enough for the engineers to try and fix it. I'm sure there are people on here who know more than me about pontoon bridges etc. though. The issue for the Russians is probably more along the lines of having a finite amount of those chunky, really-big-river-capable pontoon sections (and having to transport them to the bridge and/or stockpile them nearby without getting them blown up) and trying to keep their specialist engineers alive when trying to fix stuff.
  22. Some footage of pontoon construction and ferry close alongside the Antonovsky Bridge: Not exactly new stuff, but a closer look than I think we've seen before. No clue on the date. Might be some indication of damage (ie. things sticking out) at about 0:24 looking along the bridge, but the angles seem tightly controlled to avoid showing anything particulalry interesting. Does give a good idea of how much bridging equipment is necessary for this though- given that these are higher level assets you have to wonder how much this construction is reducing Russian river crossing options elsewhere.
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