How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[OldSarge]

55 minutes ago, Huba said:

New batch of US weapons is announced, and it includes 20 "mortar system" which I'd think might be M113 based mortars? This is exactly what we talked about here like 2 days ago. I think it was Grigb who suggested that this is what UA needs, and voila!

An interesting part of his announcement was this:
 

Quote

The U.S. and allies still are evaluating whether to supply aircraft to Ukraine, Kahl said. It's “not inconceivable that western aircraft down the road could be part of the mix,” he said.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinskyy early in the war launched near-daily calls for warplanes, calling them essential to protecting Ukraine's skies. The U.S. and some other NATO countries feared that could draw them into more direct involvement with Ukraine's war against Russia, and have not provided Western aircraft.

https://news.yahoo.com/us-pledges-1-billion-more-171353324.html

So, the possibility of western aircraft isn't completely off the table.

Edited August 8, 2022 by OldSarge

[Huba]

1 minute ago, JonS said:

Why would any non-native opfor a/c be wired and certified for any live native weapons?

The only answer that makes sense is that somebody researched that as a contingency at some point. But even if they started from scratch, these aircraft would be most available, and known inside out by US technicians - best starting point.

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, JonS said:

Why would any non-native  opfor a/c be wired and certified for any live weapons?

I think the Poles did a fair of work to be able to use NATO munitions on some of the legacy aircraft. Either those planes have been handed over, or the relevant tech has been transferred. Probably complete with Polish technicians to install it.

[Huba]

Just now, dan/california said:

I think the Poles did a fair of work to be able to use NATO munitions on some of the legacy aircraft. Either those planes have been handed over, or the relevant tech has been transferred. Probably complete with Polish technicians to install it.

Nothing of the sort was ever done, at least officially. No way to know about behind the scenes though, that is a fair point.

2 minutes ago, OldSarge said:

An interesting part of his announcement was this:
 

https://news.yahoo.com/us-pledges-1-billion-more-171353324.html

So, the possibility of western aircraft isn't completely off the table.

It certainly isn't. The sudden wave of attacks against RU SAMs is quite telling - I don't think they would bother with HARMs and all that just to fly a Bayraktar closer to the front, or fly an odd Su-24 sortie, they might be preparing for something here. OTOH, there was info about Azerbaijan donating some Su-25 compatible LGBs a few days ago (but only 36 units total).

To add to the excitement, UA General Staff tweeted this yesterday:

 

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, Huba said:

Nothing of the sort was ever done, at least officially. No way to know about behind the scenes though, that is a fair point.

It certainly isn't. The sudden wave of attacks against RU SAMs is quite telling - I don't think they would bother with HARMs and all that just to fly a Bayraktar closer to the front, or fly an odd Su-24 sortie, they might be preparing for something here. OTOH, there was info about Azerbaijan donating some Su-25 compatible LGBs a few days ago (but only 36 units total).

To add to the excitement, UA General Staff tweeted this yesterday:

 

If F-16s are already in country and not one photo has leaked it would be the greatest opsec victory in the history of man.

[Huba]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

If F-16s are already in country and not one photo has leaked it would be the greatest opsec victory in the history of man.

Yeah, I think so too. I wonder, if it is possible to somehow rig UA planes to use HARM, how hard would it be to do the same with JDAMs? I'm not talking Sniper pods here, but just the bombs, perhaps to be pre-programmed before take-off? Should still wreak havoc.

[dan/california]

For JDAM you have be able to verify you are in a spot the munition can reach its target from. For a harm missile it is mostly just a radar warning receiver. And yes I am aware the details are complicated, but there are reasons the HARMs might have been one of the easier things to integrate.

[dan/california]

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/silicon-lifeline-interactive-summary-report

ALL of Russias stuff more complicated than a basic 152mm shell uses Western components.

[chrisl]

35 minutes ago, JonS said:

Why would any non-native opfor a/c be wired and certified for any live native weapons?

Things engineers do when they're bored #247.

But I can imagine that once a bunch of former Warsaw Pact countries started joining NATO, there would probably have been some support for adapting NATO weapons to Warsaw Pact a/c.

[dan/california]

Really hoping this is true!

 

[cesmonkey]

46 minutes ago, OldSarge said:

An interesting part of his announcement was this:
 

https://news.yahoo.com/us-pledges-1-billion-more-171353324.html

So, the possibility of western aircraft isn't completely off the table.

Maybe if the British took the lead, others would eventually follow?

Wikipedia says they have some Eurofighter Typhoon that are scheduled to be retired anyway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_Kingdom_military_aircraft

Quote

[1] Of the 22 two seat trainer aircraft[9] 16 Tranche 1s have been progressively withdrawn and scrapped under the RTP requirement[10] which started in late 2016[11][12]
All Tranche 1s to be retired by 2025.[13]

 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

12 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Really hoping this is true!

 

That may be the reason for the Ukrainians getting and starting to exercise SEAD capability. ATACMS is more vulnerable to SAMs than HIMARS rockets, so some cleaning up before ATACMS strike makes a lot of sense.

[Cederic]

17 hours ago, paxromana said:

Perhaps armouring the legs would work? On smaller drones like the Quadcopters aren't the blades fairly light composites?

 

14 hours ago, dan/california said:

a military falcon unit would tilt the cool meter so hard it broke.

Cyborg falcons. Cybeagles? Cyborgles? Falborgs?

Cybernetically enhanced raptors make a mere military falcon unit look like a medieval hunting party.

 

14 hours ago, dan/california said:

Both of these problems are very real, but a a military falcon unit would tilt the cool meter so hard it broke. I think the, seriously non trivial, trick would be to teach the bird to drop/drag a weighted cord over the drone.

or..

https://www.france24.com/en/20170214-french-air-force-deploys-eagles-intercept-rogue-drones-military

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-falcons-drones-research/

Of course, they're missing out on the ultimate avian attack force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

 

[Cederic]

4 hours ago, poesel said:

That is physically impossible. Utter BS.

Hmm. Drones receive radio signals, have to decrypt them and assess their validity before they can discard them.

That takes power.

Overwhelm a drone with a high volume of control signals and even if none of them are accepted, it's using battery power. It may also be in danger of overheating its CPU - they won't be designed for continual running.

It wouldn't be instant but even if all you do is stop the drone having enough power to return home, your opponent has one fewer drone.

(I'm not sure how viable an attack that is, but it passes the smell test for plausibility)

Edited August 8, 2022 by Cederic

[Letter from Prague]

How does HARM work? Does it just hook into the biggest radar around or is there targetting information exchanged? I would expect anti-radar missile to be mostly fire and forget, so maybe it doesn't require much jury-rigging. It is not like some fox-1 that requires continual targeting info.

I guess, anyway.

[poesel]

3 hours ago, chrisl said:

Could be a bow and arrow with a wire to ground...

Yes - and you need to have two wires in the cable and your arrow points must hit & stick to the plus and minus pole of the battery long enough to discharge the battery. Did I mention that the cable must have a certain thickness else they melt or it takes too long?
If you manage to do THAT, you could as well just put a normal arrow through the battery. That does discharge it, too.

2 hours ago, Grigb said:

It was not a claim per se. It was just talk about their recent job the guy said something like btw, it quickly discharged drone battery so it dropped, and we picked it up. That's why I got curious. Maybe it does not affect the battery directly but sends signal to overspin engines and drain battery much faster.

An EW gun could indeed fry the motor control. That leads to an uncontrolled flight. This could be anything between dropping out of the sky or skyrocketing to god knows. I guess that happened.

[chrisl]

2 minutes ago, poesel said:

Yes - and you need to have two wires in the cable and your arrow points must hit & stick to the plus and minus pole of the battery long enough to discharge the battery. Did I mention that the cable must have a certain thickness else they melt or it takes too long?
If you manage to do THAT, you could as well just put a normal arrow through the battery. That does discharge it, too.

An EW gun could indeed fry the motor control. That leads to an uncontrolled flight. This could be anything between dropping out of the sky or skyrocketing to god knows. I guess that happened.

Well, yes.  But it's one of those RU marketing things. It sounds better to say you've got a fancy thing that will discharge the battery than to say you're arming troops with a bow and arrow for drone defense and hoping they can hit something.  

[cesmonkey]

23 minutes ago, Cederic said:

Hmm. Drones receive radio signals, have to decrypt them and assess their validity before they can discard them.

That takes power.

Overwhelm a drone with a high volume of control signals and even if none of them are accepted, it's using battery power. It may also be in danger of overheating its CPU - they won't be designed for continual running.

It wouldn't be instant but even if all you do is stop the drone having enough power to return home, your opponent has one fewer drone.

(I'm not sure how viable an attack that is, but it passes the smell test for plausibility)

If you could convince it's GPS that it was rapidly losing altitude, that might make it climb like crazy?

[Cederic]

1st July article that I don't recall seeing here. Includes insights from the initial attack on Hostomel.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/meet-the-shadowy-ukrainian-unit-that-sabotages-targets-inside-russia

(if this is a repost I'll delete it again)

[Grigb]

52 minutes ago, Cederic said:

Hmm. Drones receive radio signals, have to decrypt them and assess their validity before they can discard them.

That takes power.

Overwhelm a drone with a high volume of control signals and even if none of them are accepted, it's using battery power. It may also be in danger of overheating its CPU - they won't be designed for continual running.

It wouldn't be instant but even if all you do is stop the drone having enough power to return home, your opponent has one fewer drone.

(I'm not sure how viable an attack that is, but it passes the smell test for plausibility)

In the description it was not instant. The drone was attacked. He started to wave due to comms interruption. Then he slowed down due to quick battery discharge and then fell due to empty battery. 

[Grigb]

52 minutes ago, poesel said:

An EW gun could indeed fry the motor control. That leads to an uncontrolled flight. This could be anything between dropping out of the sky or skyrocketing to god knows. I guess that happened.

Then this is the rifle UKR (and everybody else) needs. 

[Grigb]

Evening Map time. This time I decided to add a description of patterns I see.

• RU seems to be decreasing frontal pressure on UKR strongpoints.
• Attacks stalled at important Pisky, Bakhmut and Soledar. No attacks on important Avdyivka.
• Instead, I belive RU tries to probe flanks for left hook at Vuhledar, left hook at Kodema and increase pressure at North (Ivanovo-Dayivka area). Not much sucess though
• UKR indirectly admitted they are transferring forces - stated RU goal is to fix URK forces in Donbass, inflict casualties and prevent UKR from transferring forces
• Due to the above and overall weakness of RU offensive I started to suspect it is spoiling offensive
• Where could be real RU offensive and whether it could be at all is not clear

[Huba]

1 hour ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

That may be the reason for the Ukrainians getting and starting to exercise SEAD capability. ATACMS is more vulnerable to SAMs than HIMARS rockets, so some cleaning up before ATACMS strike makes a lot of sense.

Somebody smarter than me suggested on Twitter that it actually might be the other way around. As RU are hell bent on shooting down GMLRS that are fired at the Kherson bridges and such, they go crazy with the radars, emitting all the time across the whole area. Suddenly HARM enters the field and whole right bank Kherson turned into huge trap for the AA systems. RU either tries to defend against the GMLRS and suffers losses from HARM, or allows Ukrainians to fire at them with impunity. The loop on RU throat is tightening day by day 

Edit:

Oh an when RU will stop emitting like crazy with the radars, there are LGB armed Su-25 and other fixed wing aircraft...

Edited August 8, 2022 by Huba

[Beleg85]

Quite interesting thread from Galeev; again, it touches many complicated issues only generally, but arguments for or against blocking visa permits for Russians entering EU are pretty well explained here. Also, interesting remarks about in fact hyperindividualistic nature of Russian society as counterargument for possibility of any positive, collection action taken against own government. I am not sure if he does not go too far in his conslucions, but this topic is very important for future of Russia.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1556692603890012161

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Beleg85

[Huba]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

For JDAM you have be able to verify you are in a spot the munition can reach its target from. For a harm missile it is mostly just a radar warning receiver. And yes I am aware the details are complicated, but there are reasons the HARMs might have been one of the easier things to integrate.

Not that I feel like I know enough about JDAM operations, but assuming you are to attack a fixed, previously located position, wouldn't regular bombsights be enough to put the bomb close enough so that guidance kit will manage to drive it home? That of course rules out attacking any target of opportunity, but should be fine for blasting RU defense lines and such. Artillery is fine and all, but cannot rival a quarter ton of explosives falling right on enemy head.