How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Holien]

Quote

I disagree.  It is extremely easy.

1.  Identify a drone flying in Romanian airspace

2.  Confirm it is not on any flight plan, Romanian or NATO authorized

3.  Continue to track it if it is, shoot it down if it isn't

There is *NO* obligation to hold fire and decide what the intention is.  International law is very clear that sovereign airspace can be defended by lethal means.  Whether it's smart to do that or not is up to the individual country in question.  My position is if the aircraft is manned the decision is complicated, if it isn't the decision should be "hit the red button EVERY TIME".

Steve

 

If you don't know what it is carrying and where it will crash that makes it a tad more prudent to choose a decent course of action.

That still takes time.

I think the Capt has as ever put more meat on the bones..

America took its time to respond to a Chinese Spy Balloon and I am guessing there was a lot of - what does it have on board, is it safe to down it for the folk underneath the potential impact area. Even working out the potential impact area is no easy thing.

But hey there are always Gung Ho military folk that just say shoot it if it moves...

Perhaps the Brits are a bit more cautious, we certainly hopefully have less blue on blues...

What little military we have left...

P.s. It sounds like there is no legal framework in place to do the quick shot down in Romania, so lets take that motion to a town hall and get it passed. You know how easy town halls are at getting things done..

 

 

Edited September 10 by Holien

[Holien]

This is interesting..

Why would Ukraine need spare parts for Gripen Jets?

[billbindc]

2 hours ago, Kraft said:

Maybe it is a language barrier but to me both mean identical in practical fact, flying closeby from A to B, as in police escorting someone from someone's property. It was not meant as a 'protecting' meaning

I am well aware that you cannot see the difference.

[alison]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I disagree.  It is extremely easy.

1.  Identify a drone flying in Romanian airspace

2.  Confirm it is not on any flight plan, Romanian or NATO authorized

3.  Continue to track it if it is, shoot it down if it isn't

There is *NO* obligation to hold fire and decide what the intention is.  International law is very clear that sovereign airspace can be defended by lethal means.  Whether it's smart to do that or not is up to the individual country in question.  My position is if the aircraft is manned the decision is complicated, if it isn't the decision should be "hit the red button EVERY TIME".

I understand the frustration of living next door to a bunch of nationalist weenies whose military keeps flying stuff into your airspace. It would be cathartic to watch the bully get kicked in the proverbials for once. But there's a difference between being an annoyed citizen or resident and being involved in the country's political or military leadership. Military personnel in peacetime can't just unilaterally decide to blow anything out of the sky that irks them, and outside of autocracies it's not a snap decision taken by national leaders either.

It's perhaps different if you are a citizen of the country with the biggest, baddest military in the world, and you live thousands of miles from your top strategic competitor. See a balloon? Scramble the F-22s! But smaller countries along the front lines may find ourselves in a difficult situation if we were to escalate. Like it or not, the people who shoot first tend to be seen as the aggressors, even if they had legal standing to do so. There is political calculus involved - does the leadership want to deal with that level of kerfuffle, especially knowing that the enemy's propagandists are primed and ready to blow the whole thing out of proportion and sow as much division as possible? Is it really worth it to raise tensions to that degree? Do we want to spend international political capital challenging a flyover that wasn't really threatening us anyway?

I can't speak for Romania, but here in (South) East Asia these conversations happens a lot in context of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Philippines. Everybody knows the dictators to our north and west are taking advantage of our ostensibly democratic nations to salami-slice their way across the region... but that doesn't change the fact that there is still a real debate about where the red line is or should be. Nobody wants to be the politician who got their country into another shooting war, accelerated brain drain, alienated regional allies etc. Maybe that's weak or naïve, but that's the political reality, and in a democracy we have to find a way to work within those constraints.

[billbindc]

50 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I disagree.  It is extremely easy.

1.  Identify a drone flying in Romanian airspace

2.  Confirm it is not on any flight plan, Romanian or NATO authorized

3.  Continue to track it if it is, shoot it down if it isn't

There is *NO* obligation to hold fire and decide what the intention is.  International law is very clear that sovereign airspace can be defended by lethal means.  Whether it's smart to do that or not is up to the individual country in question.  My position is if the aircraft is manned the decision is complicated, if it isn't the decision should be "hit the red button EVERY TIME".

Steve

It isn't.

1. Identifying what you are seeing on the screen is not necessarily that clear. 

2. There are going to be innocent mistakes/omissions on flight plans. 

3. Sure...but by the time you have fully ID'd a tracked object action may be impossible/dangerous.

While there is certainly no obligation to hold fire against a hostile incursion, avoiding precisely that sort of trigger happy attitude is the foundation of efforts to manage escalation into a larger war. Russia's inability to measure twice and cut once is exactly why it is in the worst military and economic quagmire since Austria-Hungary decided to punish the Serbs.

 

Edited September 10 by billbindc

[The_Capt]

22 minutes ago, alison said:

I understand the frustration of living next door to a bunch of nationalist weenies whose military keeps flying stuff into your airspace. It would be cathartic to watch the bully get kicked in the proverbials for once. But there's a difference between being an annoyed citizen or resident and being involved in the country's political or military leadership. Military personnel in peacetime can't just unilaterally decide to blow anything out of the sky that irks them, and outside of autocracies it's not a snap decision taken by national leaders either.

It's perhaps different if you are a citizen of the country with the biggest, baddest military in the world, and you live thousands of miles from your top strategic competitor. See a balloon? Scramble the F-22s! But smaller countries along the front lines may find ourselves in a difficult situation if we were to escalate. Like it or not, the people who shoot first tend to be seen as the aggressors, even if they had legal standing to do so. There is political calculus involved - does the leadership want to deal with that level of kerfuffle, especially knowing that the enemy's propagandists are primed and ready to blow the whole thing out of proportion and sow as much division as possible? Is it really worth it to raise tensions to that degree? Do we want to spend international political capital challenging a flyover that wasn't really threatening us anyway?

I can't speak for Romania, but here in (South) East Asia these conversations happens a lot in context of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Philippines. Everybody knows the dictators to our north and west are taking advantage of our ostensibly democratic nations to salami-slice their way across the region... but that doesn't change the fact that there is still a real debate about where the red line is or should be. Nobody wants to be the politician who got their country into another shooting war, accelerated brain drain, alienated regional allies etc. Maybe that's weak or naïve, but that's the political reality, and in a democracy we have to find a way to work within those constraints.

What we are really talking about are Rules of Engagement (ROEs). For something like this, a shoot down outside of an active war, the authority would be held at the political level.

Even the Russians didn't "shoot down" that MQ9 - they dumped gas on it. Pulling a trigger is a big step and not normally taken lightly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Black_Sea_drone_incident

Now all that said. Should Romania declare "closed skies" and ROEs to shoot down Russian military drones and missiles? Definitely. But at the end of the day that is a Romanian decision as they have to live with the consequences.

Edited September 10 by The_Capt

[Butschi]

56 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I disagree.  It is extremely easy.

1.  Identify a drone flying in Romanian airspace

2.  Confirm it is not on any flight plan, Romanian or NATO authorized

3.  Continue to track it if it is, shoot it down if it isn't

There is *NO* obligation to hold fire and decide what the intention is.  International law is very clear that sovereign airspace can be defended by lethal means.  Whether it's smart to do that or not is up to the individual country in question.  My position is if the aircraft is manned the decision is complicated, if it isn't the decision should be "hit the red button EVERY TIME".

Steve

Did you read the Reuters article? It explicitly states that it is an issue with Romanian law during peace time (and that it is being addressed) not international law. So apparently, if the article is correct, there is an obligation to hold fire.

[Eug85]

Here is an interesting question. How can we determine what goals a drone with 30 kg of TNT on board that has flown into a country's airspace is pursuing? By what signs can the head of the air defense determine that this drone does not threaten the residents of this country, but is only using its airspace to attack a neighboring country?

I think that a clear sign that this drone is safe is the fact that the country that launched it has a nuclear arsenal and constantly threatens to use it.

[akd]

32 minutes ago, Holien said:

This is interesting..

Why would Ukraine need spare parts for Gripen Jets?

Just include one spare of everything and next thing you know you have a Gripen.

[Eug85]

5 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Did you read the Reuters article? It explicitly states that it is an issue with Romanian law during peace time (and that it is being addressed) not international law. So apparently, if the article is correct, there is an obligation to hold fire.

This means that Romania has no legal right to shoot down air targets in its airspace, right?

[Butschi]

1 minute ago, Eug85 said:

This means that Romania has no legal right to shoot down air targets in its airspace, right?

No. It simply means that the article seems to say that they can't shoot down foreign drones during peace time.

[Battlefront.com]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

What we are really talking about are Rules of Engagement (ROEs). For something like this, a shoot down outside of an active war, the authority would be held at the political level.

Even the Russians didn't "shoot down" that MQ9 - they dumped gas on it. Pulling a trigger is a big step and not normally taken lightly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Black_Sea_drone_incident

Now all that said. Should Romania declare "closed skies" and ROEs to shoot down Russian military drones and missiles? Definitely. But at the end of the day that is a Romanian decision as they have to live with the consequences.

This is what I'm talking about.  In no universe is it a good idea to let AD command make unilateral decisions about what to shoot down and when.  But militaries are SUPPOSED to plan for all sorts of scenarios.  AD planning for an incursion by a hostile nation's aircraft (manned or unmanned) should be, uhm, kinda at the top of the ToDo List.

So yes, I understand there is risk to shooting something down without 100% knowledge of what it is and what it's doing.  But there is risk to NOT doing something as well.  "Well, how were we to know a terrorist group was going to fly a bio agent into our capital city's water supply?  We just thought it was some innocent mistake and so we didn't intercept it".

Steve

[Eug85]

Meanwhile, a well-known Ukrainian specialist in the field of electronic warfare visited a defense industry exhibition in Poland. In short, his conclusions after what he saw were not very encouraging. The largest defense corporations are in no hurry to take into account the experience of the war in Ukraine. At best, they are very far behind the latest achievements of Ukraine and Russia, and of course China (according to him, most of the electronic warfare products used by Russia are Chinese).

According to his conversations with company representatives, the closest to understanding modern innovations are those from Lithuania and Poland.

https://t.me/serhii_flash/3845

My impressions of the military exhibition in Poland are very mixed. Of course, the beautiful multi-million dollar Abrams and Leopards are impressive. Expensive radars, various air defense systems.

Of course, concerns like Boeing or SAAB have both the finances and the scientific potential to create any military solution. All this is large-scale and cool, but our war is completely different. A war in which the most modern tank will kill a dozen penny drones. A war in which cool rifles and pistols from shop windows do not solve anything, because the distances to the enemy are too great, most of the military do not see the enemy in the eyes for years.

Our continental war is not special operations or local conflicts, as is customary in the world. We have trenches here, like in 1917, and bombs "with wings" of 500 kg each.
Many interesting solutions invented by Ukrainians are no longer Ukrainian, but are shown and offered by foreign companies. This is the market. There is no demand and prospects in the homeland, and the creative team "goes west". Unfortunately, I already know dozens of such cases.

A lot of military prototypes are shown with beautiful videos. As we know from the prototype to the series is a whole chasm. I had a feeling that it was partly some kind of startup exhibition, where everyone is waiting for some sheikh buyer who will bring the company a "bag of gold".

I did not see anything new on the radio. And what will you see here. Hariss, Aselsans, Silvuss and body kits for them. There is also DMR.

As for satellite communication, after the appearance of Starlink and its use in war, all these military terminals with large unwieldy dishes for geostationary satellites look ridiculous. I am generally silent about speeds of 2-8 gigabytes per second through them.

Someone is trying to surprise everyone with simulators. We've been through that for a long time. Someone creates new systems of situational obligation and other software solutions. Nothing surprises us here either.

Ground works? Seriously? But we have more than 50 manufacturers.

There are many UAVs, but mostly they are wings. It feels like no one understands what FPV is doing in our war right now. Although the answer here is clear to me, military concerns will not earn anything from the sale of FPV solutions. I spoke at the stands with representatives of UAV companies, many winged UAVs fell behind the realities of EW. Only where there are specialists from Ukraine in the team, the solutions are at least somehow adequate to reality.

It is also difficult with EB. Of course, there are profile monsters that will give everyone a head start, like R&S or Thales. But the current war requires hybrid, cheap, portable EW complexes. And everyone has a problem with that. They do, but mostly against commercial drones at standard frequencies, and the fact that drones fly at all frequencies, no one in the world seems to think about it now.

According to the interviews, military personnel from the Polish Army and the Baltic States are the closest to understanding the reality and prospects of the military industry.

[Kraft]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

From what you have contributed to this thread as of late, I think you are in no position to be shedding crocodile tears at the death of "heathy discussion".

to better understand what you mean: I posted indicted russian agents and their million follower accounts as people will likely run into them, I have seen them before thinking they were just Qanon

I posted the 'talking point list' they were given - here I can see taking offense to including trump but 1 the list matches common maga talking points and 2 he had interviews and talk shows with 3 of them.

In connection to that I posted about the farce of russians at war movie that received Canadian money, with the alleged, not happening war crimes. It is clear that while the governments stance is clear, there seems to be a major issue when someone with 11? propaganda movies/documentaries under RT gets government funding and such a big platform to spread disinfo.

I posted the news that Scholz wants negotiations that include ceding land to russia. While it is on 'track' for me to dislike Scholz, I did not make any other inflamatory comment on it?

I have not engaged in the 'every russian should be burnt alive' rethoric, pretty much ever either even though I think collectively they are at fault.

What here posioned the discussion I am honestly curious? 

Quote

As to your Romanian quote...well it sounds like you have a problem with Romania. The PM is technically correct, ----

None of this reflects NATO policy writ large ---- As far as I can tell, you have completely made up strikes in Odessa coming from Romania (or Latvia). But hey we are looking for "healthy discussion".

I am under the impression that such actions/threats are communicated in real time with nato officials, is this not correct?

A decision would be made by Romania, after consulting. Similary, long-term strategy to handle such russian incidents would also come from a unified nato policy or would it not? I remember the Polish government backpeddling a lot after a similar incident and chalked this up to talks happening behind doors.

As for made up strikes, this changed from when I read it at night, the official Romanian source does not give this information(for or against) but they also wouldnt willingly say, we let them through vs drones "defecting" like in Latvia and crashing down.

Either or, the question of the red lines persists. Why can russia down drones in international areas but nato tolerates russian drones in its territory - passing through or not.

- to not overly extend this wrt nato being perceived as a credible threat (read:aggressor) not opponent (read: door stopper) during a cross border invasion - 

If the answer is they want to play I am being invaded card, a simple suggestion of the location of the kamikaze drones last location suffices to refute it. (As long as one assumes the people listening to this would care or believe)

Quote

And talking about strawmen...what does Iran have to do with all this? As to the "nothing happens": wiki

Or is it in your theory of international relations that the US should have conducted strikes directly on Iran?

These proxies would not have attacked US bases systematically without order from iran. I am not advocating for bombing iran but responding to the source from where this message comes from, not bombing proxies in the middle east. Such as lifting restrictions that hurt russia, and in turn will come back to iran through russia - as I believe these ME events to be connected to russia.

Quote

What you "meant" is pretty clear, you are not subtle in your intent

It may be your interpretation but it is wrong, I was calling out the fact that F-16s were up in the air and just watching as the drones flew. I am not and havent said that nato is protecting russian drones from Ukrainian AA or whatever else this imagined implication would mean.

Quote

They are easy to spot because they always say the same things and use every new piece of information to reinforce that dogma. 

Such as the ever shifting tank debate

Edited September 10 by Kraft

[Eug85]

12 minutes ago, Butschi said:

No. It simply means that the article seems to say that they can't shoot down foreign drones during peace time.

I saw what was written in the article, but I asked, what do you think as a reasonable person, does a sovereign country have the right to shoot down military air targets of another, clearly hostile country in its airspace?

[Butschi]

21 minutes ago, Eug85 said:

I saw what was written in the article, but I asked, what do you think as a reasonable person, does a sovereign country have the right to shoot down military air targets of another, clearly hostile country in its airspace?

Well, your answer did sound like you accused the messenger for the message he carried... sorry if I misinterpreted that.

I as a sometimes reasonable person think that of course a sovereign nation should have the right to shoot down hostile military targets over its own territory. However, as this is a legal question and I am a physicist/engineer, I have to acknowledge that my gut feeling is not relevant here.

For once, legally, Romania and Russia are not at war with each other, so the drone is technically not hostile (I think).

Moreover, I know nothing about Romanian law. There is usually a lot that an army can't do on its own turf during peace time. I think we have something similar in Germany concerning drones where the police is responsible to look into drones spring on military installations. (And not being equipped for it) Destroying foreign property, apart from the obvious implications, may simply not be legal. Laws don't have to make sense to you or me in order to be binding.

Lastly, it might simply be a case of legislation not being up to date - drones are a relatively new phenomenon in terms of legislation cycles.

Edited September 10 by Butschi

[billbindc]

3 hours ago, Offshoot said:

Sure, but the important fact still remains that Romania allowed a drone to transit its airspace without doing anything substantial about it. I understand, as @Holien points out, that the situation is not as easy as it seems, but you might have thought, given prior events in Romania involving Russian drones, they would have clarified the legal situation by now, if at the least to better safeguard the well-being of their own citizens.

I think it's quite worthwhile to consider whether or not we have all the factors that go into the decision. We have no idea but we can certainly guess...judging by Romania's long coast on the Black Sea...what leeway is being allowed to other combatants in this war. Without that knowledge there is no way to know what the Romanian government is balancing against an errant drone or two that was probably not escorted to an Odessa it did not actually hit. 

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Well, your answer did sound like you accused the messenger for the message he carried... sorry if I misinterpreted that.

I as a sometimes reasonable person think that of course a sovereign nation should have the right to shoot down hostile military targets over its own territory. However, as this is a legal question and I am a physicist/engineer, I have to acknowledge that my gut feeling is not relevant here.

For once, legally, Romania and Russia are not at war with each other, so the drone is technically not hostile (I think).

Moreover, I know nothing about Romanian law. There is usually a lot that an army can't do on its own turf during peace time. I think we have something similar in Germany concerning drones where the police is responsible to look into drones spring on military installations. (And not being equipped for it) Destroying foreign property, apart from the obvious implications, may simply not be legal. Laws don't have to make sense to you or me in order to be binding.

Lastly, it might simply be a case of legislation not being up to date - drones are a relatively new phenomenon in terms of legislation cycles.

Legislative clarification is always a good thing, but all nations have the inherent right to defend their airspace.  Period.  The military also has an inherent legal right to defend itself against hostile intentions provided they are not themselves committing an illegal act (such as Russia has NO legal right to defend itself in Ukraine). 

The legal subtitles come into play mostly when the legitimate ability to defend is carried out in a way that is not justified.  For example, shooting at a legitimate target and missing, then having the missed ordnance land in another country's territory.  Or doing something really bad like shooting down a civilian aircraft by mistake, as both the Soviet Union and the United States did.

A nation has no legal obligation to protect the property of a foreign country violating its sovereign territory.  It could cause diplomatic and/or military conflicts, but that's different.

Steve

[The_Capt]

20 minutes ago, Kraft said:

What here posioned the discussion I am honestly curious?

Well for this particular discuss it was the leap from scrambling Romanian F16 to "NATO provides escort to killing Ukrainians in Odessa".  That is an outright lie being employed to somehow demonstrate that NATO is somehow compliant in the destruction of Ukraine.

Hey it is great you are posting other things, but taking this incident and spinning it out of context is toxic to healthy discussion.

22 minutes ago, Kraft said:

I am under the impression that such actions/threats are communicated in real time with nato officials, is this not correct?

A decision would be made by Romania, after consulting. Similary, long-term strategy to handle such russian incidents would also come from a unified nato policy or would it not? I remember the Polish government backpeddling a lot after a similar incident and chalked this up to talks happening behind doors.

As for made up strikes, this changed from when I read it at night, the official Romanian source does not give this information but they also wouldnt willingly say, we let them through vs drones "defecting" like in Latvia and crashing down.

Either or, the question of the red lines persists. Why can russia down drones in international areas but nato tolerates russian drones in its territory - passing through or not.

- to not overly extend this wrt nato being perceived as a credible threat (read:aggressor) not opponent (read: door stopper) during a cross border invasion - 

If the answer is they want to play I am being invaded card, a simple suggestion of the location of the kamikaze drones last location suffices to refute it.

So for someone with your level of convictions, you really need to go out and get better understanding of how things really work within NATO. Romanian does not "report to NATO". Nor do they have an obligation to "consult" before taking action in their own defence. 

NATO does not own Europe either. If NATO agrees to an air control policy against Russia, a given state can choose to not apply it. A nation state owns its airspace and does not have to wait for NATO to say yea or nay on a damned thing.

May I suggest that before you continue on these anti-NATO rants that you actually do some work to understand what the alliance is, and is not. If Romania chooses it could try to declare an article 5 but that would require proof it was an attack on Romania and not an errant Russia POS drone. Right now every NATO nation on Russia's border is trying to avoid an article 5 situation as it would lead to one of two things: the collapse of NATO as nations vote "nope" to an A.5 declaration, or WW3...and no one in the West thinks Ukraine is worth that, yet.

29 minutes ago, Kraft said:

These proxies would not have attacked US bases systematically without order from iran. I am not advocating for bombing iran but responding to the source from where this message comes from, not bombing proxies in the middle east. Such as lifting restrictions that hurt russia, and in turn will come back to iran - as I believe these ME events to be connected to russia.

Again, what you do not know about VEOs in the middle east is also lacking as demonstrated by this statement. Do you think these militias sit around a red phone awaiting orders from Tehran? They are free radicals who align with Iran for support and funding, not under direct C2 of the Revolutionary Guard. We know this because we have been fighting these twits for a decade.

As to what the US is going to do about it directly against Iran? Well it likely won't have a damned thing to do with this war. Support to Israel is normally the way these things go, but it can take on a lot of different shapes and sizes. Linking it back to Russia, which is actually possible, is also something that will happen in the shadows.

33 minutes ago, Kraft said:

It may be your interpretation but it is wrong, I was calling out the fact that F-16s were up in the air and just watching as the drones flew. I am not and havent said that nato is protecting russian drones from Ukrainian AA or whatever else this imagined implication would mean.

And here is the poison. You have zero idea what those F16s were or were not doing. You have no idea if they even got to them before they crashed or left Romanian airspace. You do not know if the pilot had those drones lit and locked but were waiting for release authority. No, you saw a quick line in a news report and made the leap to "useless NATO, ah ha!" like you have dozens of times.

Look, share information, please. You can even give your perspective, please do. But you may want to spend some more time on these things. Do some deeper research. Or, and here is a crazy idea, ask a question. And maybe we can help out with it. 

In this incident you could have easily said: 

"Hey guys, looking at this report from Romania (link). I am seeing this right? Did Romanian F16s just sit back and watch Russian drones fly past?"

Then we could have had a healthy discussion and maybe learned something. 

[alison]

20 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So yes, I understand there is risk to shooting something down without 100% knowledge of what it is and what it's doing.  But there is risk to NOT doing something as well.  "Well, how were we to know a terrorist group was going to fly a bio agent into our capital city's water supply?  We just thought it was some innocent mistake and so we didn't intercept it".

Again, I can't speak for the Romanian political calculus, but I trust that their specialists are at least able to tell the difference between a Russian military drone on the way to drop its payload elsewhere and a mysterious ghost UAV heading for Bucharest.

7 minutes ago, Eug85 said:

I saw what was written in the article, but I asked, what do you think as a reasonable person, does a sovereign country have the right to shoot down military air targets of another, clearly hostile country in its airspace?

Was it clearly hostile to Romania, though?

A country may have the right to shoot down unannounced visitors, but unless there is a treaty obligation I don't think they are compelled to take the shot. You could perhaps make an argument that the more you allow a foreign military to violate your airspace, the more normalized it becomes, and the status quo could eventually shift to a point that leaves your country strategically worse off than it would have been if it had resisted... but a sovereign state should be able to make that choice for itself. A country's government may choose to exert other forms of pressure before military pressure. There might be domestic issues that are of a greater concern at any particular moment than the odd drone passing through. There are a lot of reasons why countries might choose not to immediately resort to a violent solution.

It is frustrating that we live in a world where countries with a lot of money, guns and influence can illegally bully their neighbors just enough to annoy them but not enough to make it worthwhile for those neighbors to take equally aggressive countermeasures, but that is the reality. It is worth making a case to the people of these countries being bullied that they should take a harder line, but in a democracy we also have to be prepared that there might be a lot of people who will not support it - and they're not all tankies or useful idiots, they could just as equally be cold-hearted practitioners of realpolitik.

[Tenses]

I think that you guys overcomplicate the issue with shooting down russian drones in NATO airspace. These incursions are tracked and/or intercepted but as they come back to Ukrainian airspace, nothing is done. This is due to simple fact that Poland and Romania does not want these drones to crash on their ground, possibly harming someone or damaging infrastructure. Not because there is some mythical law, which forbids it. It is logical but, in my opinion, not exactly moral decision. The only law issue, which might need to be solved here is to provide cover for military/political decision makers for any casualities, which will happen sooner or later due to shootdowns.

Another thing is what would be Russia reaction to regular drone shootdowns in NATO airspace. I fear that I know the answer to that question and this would be very bad.(HINT: Russia would love to engage NATO forces without declaring war)

[Eug85]

16 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Well, your answer did sound like you accused the messenger for the message he carried... sorry if I misinterpreted that.

I as a sometimes reasonable person think that of course a sovereign nation should have the right to shoot down hostile military targets over its own territory. However, as this is a legal question and I am a physicist/engineer, I have to acknowledge that my gut feeling is not relevant here.

For once, legally, Romania and Russia are not at war with each other, so the drone is technically not hostile (I think).

Moreover, I know nothing about Romanian law. There is usually a lot that an army can't do on its own turf during peace time. I think we have something similar in Germany concerning drones where the police is responsible to look into drones spring on military installations. (And not being equipped for it) Destroying foreign property, apart from the obvious implications, may simply not be legal. Laws don't have to make sense to you or me in order to be binding.

Lastly, it might simply be a case of legislation not being up to date - drones are a relatively new phenomenon in terms of legislation cycles.

Oh my god, so I thought, due to obsolete laws, citizens of Western countries are absolutely defenseless against a sudden and massive strike by Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. By the way, did anyone think about the drones of Kamikadze carrying miniature nuclear warheads? Once this role was played by artillery shooting nuclear shells. Today, drones like shared are able to do this much further and more precisely.

 

[The_Capt]

4 minutes ago, Eug85 said:

Oh my god, so I thought, due to obsolete laws, citizens of Western countries are absolutely defenseless against a sudden and massive strike by Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. By the way, did anyone think about the drones of Kamikadze carrying miniature nuclear warheads? Once this role was played by artillery shooting nuclear shells. Today, drones like shared are able to do this much further and more precisely.

 

That is a bit of a leap. This is where "there are no red lines" thinking leads to.

Of course there is a defence. Such an action by Russia would start WW3. Or the complete collapse of NATO and the US nuclear umbrella. Based on the fact that Russia has been just as cautious around the edges of this thing, I am betting that collective deterrence is still working.

[Kinophile]

At some point in the next 12 months or less, we're going to see an entirely drone assault on a position and then hold it against counter-attack with only drones (+overwatch fires).

Not necessarily with Drones physically in the trenches (maybe apart from those BD dogs they're experimenting with - hello to @The_Capt's spider mines at last!), but using drones to both hit counter-attacking RUS soldiers and kill any that make it in.

All this without a single UKR soldier within 50m of the position.

It's a-comin'...

Edited September 10 by Kinophile

[Kraft]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Well for this particular discuss it was the leap from scrambling Romanian F16 to "NATO provides escort to killing Ukrainians in Odessa".

I was specifically asking for other posts as you mentioned my posts as of late putting me in no position to shed crocodile tears. Feel free to reply in DM to not clog up this thread

Funnily enough I have a Nato flag on my wall. As I have said I do not think Nato protects these russian drones from whatever. Please do not read to much into escort, an escort at a bar also does not "protect" but accompany you. My point in the post was about red lines and how this signals weakness throughout the alliance.

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So for someone with your level of convictions, you really need to go out and get better understanding of how things really work within NATO. Romanian does not "report to NATO". Nor do they have an obligation to "consult" before taking action in their own defence. 

NATO does not own Europe either. If NATO agrees to an air control policy against Russia, a given state can choose to not apply it. A nation state owns its airspace and does not have to wait for NATO to say yea or nay on a damned thing.

May I suggest that before you continue on these anti-NATO rants that you actually do some work to understand what the alliance is, and is not. If Romania chooses it could try to declare an article 5 but that would require proof it was an attack on Romania and not an errant Russia POS drone. Right now every NATO nation on Russia's border is trying to avoid an article 5 situation as it would lead to one of two things: the collapse of NATO as nations vote "nope" to an A.5 declaration, or WW3...and no one in the West thinks Ukraine is worth that, yet.

I did not claim Nato is playing puppets.

I also did not claim there is an *obligation*. My question clearly asks if there *is* consultation / an overarching policy on how to proceed.

That any Nation can for itself decide to enact its airspace and it is not "dictated" by Nato is and already was clear to me. 

I find it hard to belive that Romanian armed forces would not be in direct line of communication with other Nato officials wrt this threat, as far as I know even Ukraine shares data on missiles and drones in with Nato - and gets Nato information to better combat these threats as they approach. Hence why these F-16s were likely already aware of these drones before they "popped up".

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And here is the poison. You have zero idea what those F16s were or were not doing. You have no idea if they even got to them before they crashed or left Romanian airspace. You do not know if the pilot had those drones lit and locked but were waiting for release authority. No, you saw a quick line in a news report and made the leap to "useless NATO, ah ha!" like you have dozens of times.

Since you feel the need to accuse me again that I supposedly have done this "dozens of times" see the first part of my reply.

Two points, 1: Shahed drones are so slow they can be shot down by helicoper crews flying next to them and using the door gun. They cannot use terrain to mask themselfs efficiently. They are not a stealth interceptor suddenly popping up before an attack run. I find it hard to believe these F-16s were unable to catch them. These drones at max reach 180km/h, their cruise speed will be lower, especially since these traveled a long distance. 

2: the Romanian article states that these would have been neutralized had they been recognized as a threat to Romania - but they werent.

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Do you think these militias sit around a red phone awaiting orders from Tehran? They are free radicals who align with Iran for support and funding, not under direct C2 of the Revolutionary Guard. We know this because we have been fighting these twits for a decade.

No but I imagine they get similar commands tied to weapon shipments as FSA in syria wrt TOWs or the Kurds wrt Turkey, what to engage and what not to engage on a macro scale.

Do not kill/provoke X with our weapons. Do not resell to Y. Not following will lead to funding shifting to group Z that we also support. If this doesnt work out Im sure there have also been cases of Motorola and Givi.

 

Edited September 10 by Kraft