Huba

According to The Australian Financial Review, there's discussion about transferring ex-Australian F-18s to Ukraine.

Ingenious, and can double as spaced armour/ anti-loitering munitions net:

This or the cow-delivered mines made them slip.

Everyone seems to be thinking along these lines, and that’s why this is not what they should do. Use the Leopards as a deceit somewhere, wait for the RU reserves to be rushed there, and then deliver the main blow with the battle-hardened, Soviet-equipped brigades at the other end of the frontline. Well, perhaps not exactly that, but exploiting the psychological impact the NATO equiped brigades will make when initially commited to trick the Russians migh be worth considering I guess.

Well perhaps The Hussars of Death volunteer cavalry squadron from the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920 is a real thing though. The original emblem:

Also, Polish Volunteer Corps reportedly participates in the liberation of Bilhorod:

25 M109L from Italy on the way to Ukraine. A year ago it would be absolutely huge news, but today hardly anyone cares... https://twitter.com/markito0171/status/1664699218999537664

That is at least 500m of river to bridge though - I'd love if UA could pull that off, but it sounds like quite a challenge. Do they even have enough equipment to attempt that, say in at least 3 points? Given the fate of Bilohorivka crossing, probably plain old artillery would be the biggest threat. Is it realistic to expect UA counter-battery to be good enough to protect against that, until large enough bridgehead is established? OTOH I think that UA has enough AD assets to protect the crossing against airborne threats, be it ballistic or cruise missiles or guided bombs or drones, as proven by defence of Kyiv. Another major threat to this plan would be Russians blowing up the Kakhovka dam - if they manage that, not only would existing crossings be destroyed, but further attempts stopped in their tracks, for a month at least. Capturing the whole dam area would be a pre-requisite for any bridging operation. In other news, the summit in Moldova might bring some very important developments:

Updated overview of Russian groupings in the occupied territories by col. Korowaj. It's in Polish, but should be easily understandable + Twitter translate is quite decent.

Really hard to say without further data. It seems ship was able to continue moving under it's own steam, but if the explosion was as powerful as at the other video, it couldn't be good to the electronic mission equipment it carries. In any case, the message was delivered that Black Sea is not a safe place for Russian Navy, even further away from UA coast. And it will get much worse when F-16s and/ or other aircraft capable of launching anti-ship missiles arrive in a few months.

More good news:

Not surprised, but happy to hear this confirmed. Hopefully these will come equipped with Meteor.

The problem with A10 is not that it could not be useful to the UA. It is that introducing another unique type of aircraft, with its unique engines, avionics, pilot training, all that stuff is a huge cost and effort. In return UA would get another glorified flying Grad launcher, which the Su-25 was basically reduced to. It wouldn't fare an iota better in overflying enemy positions type of missions, gun runs etc. which no side is attempting due to them being suicidal. All other types of missions that it could be used to perform can be done much better by an F-16.

We know for a fact that some od the Dutch F-16s have been undergoing additional maintenance/ upgrades since late 2022. It might very well be that Uncle Sam could send something really really modern (just keeping the F-16 myth alive would be worth it). If some airframes would come with the SABRs, the overall picture would change dramatically, and not to VVS advantage.

It really depends on the version of the aircraft and weapons that will come with it, but few things that come to mind:: - way better radars when compared to MiGs and Sukhois - Link16 giving them networking capability, so no need to emit all the time. Probably it will allow automatic exchange of information with ground based radars too, and firing missiles without turning radars on at all. - availability of various electronic warfare equipment, depending on what we are willing to send it can be very modern - ability to use targeting pods to acquire targets and launch PGMs independently, not only at pre-programmed targets - ability to do CAS with said PGMs against time sensitive targets - hugely improved SEAD abilities due to integrated EW pods and anti-radar missiles - ability to carry out anti-shipping missions with Harpoons - depending on AIM-120 version they can have quite a reach. In general later C versions should have range as good or better than R-77, and D would be vastly superior to it. - no matter the AMRAAM version they get, it will be the first time UA Air Force will have medium range fire and forget missiles at it's disposal, making defence against cruise missiles way way easier, and offering hugely increased possibilities in A2A.

Yup, that's what I was hinting at. There were so many little leaks and rumours about it during past year that it is hard no to treat the developments from last week as some kind of a theatre. What's interesting is that there were also explicit mentions of not only F-16s, but also "other aircraft" that Ukrainians are training for. Mirage 2000 seem like an obvious choice, but I still keep my fingers crossed for these Tranche1 Eurofighters from the UK. There are interesting times ahead of us.

Unless they start handing out passports of the Bilhorod Peoples Republic to the Ukrainians But seriously, I think we all agree that this is only a diversion and UA won't be reinforcing it too much. Russia has to counter It though, and it looks like local militia won't be enough for that, they will need some mobile mechanised force to stop the incursions. Or a buttload of mobik infantry. Both of which seem to be in rather short supply, at least in the immediate vicinity of Bilhorod.

It took a week from Britain's "we will start training UA pilots on trainer aircraft in the summer" to "UA pilots are already flying F-16s in Poland". There will be zero surprise on my end if it turns out that UA pilots are so talented that they manage to finish their training in a month or two from now, just in time to participate in offensive against the Russian land bridge.

It looks like the freedom fighters of Bilhorod Peoples Republic are continuing their offensive and liberating more and more settlements from the Muscovite yoke. If they manage to connect their positions, the newly created frontline will be almost 40km long. Seriously though, it seems that this hilariousness will continue until Russians bring in some meaningful forces.

It can fry one, will that do?

So reportedly Ukrainians captured a R-330Zh „Zhitel”” EW/ satellite jamming set, in it’s absolutely newest version during todays raid…

Assuming the training will indeed only take 4 months, the first aircraft can be in the sky over Ukraine in September. Coincidently, if the training was to indeed take 18 months as stated previously, and started immediately after RU withdrew from Kyiv in late March 2022, it would also be finished in exactly the same timeframe. Not sure if I should now put my tinfoil hat on, or not...

Boom!

Just to clarify, it is monthly production, not annual. My bad for not adding that, it was stated in the tweet, but it wouldn't embed for some reason.

For anti-ballistic missile defence, PAC-3CRI has a range of only 20km or so. I'm sure you'd want the launchers to be spaced tightly enough so that they can cover one another. For comparison, there's 50km from Bucha to Boryspol Airport, that would be the diameter of the zone you are defending. The batteries have to be located in the city itself, there's no other way.