How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Grigb]

35 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

 A higher altitude capable SAM that employs radar can now hide in silence, wait until the distributed C4ISR system picks up the fast movers and turn on at the last minute....like a big ass MANPAD

As far as I remember once unanimous RU aviation guy claimed that RuAF cannot destroy UKR Air Defence because UKR Air Defence does not do what Air Defence supposed to do (from RU point of view). From RU point of view glorious Air Defence must gloriously defend an objective and if it comes to it then gloriously die defending it. RuAF would easily destroy such Air Defence.

But being inglorious UKR Air Defence instead of defending the objectives, started to hide and hunt RuAF airplanes. RuAF could destroy such Air Defence but only after sacrificing an unacceptable number of airplanes (I got impression that they literally had to bait AA with real airplane losing it in the prosses). AFAIR, he complained that it was wrong because Air Defence is not as important as an objective.

 

35 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This leads to some fundamental and big questions:  What does modern mass look like (sburke, don't do it!)? 

1. Is manoeuvre warfare in trouble? 
2. Is offence in trouble? 
3. Is a principle of war - surprise, dead?   

1. No. The lack of maneuvers we see is because both sides have not developed comprehensive counters to enemy drones' tactics yet (and seems have issues with CB). Any vehicular maneuver is very dangerous now. So, both sides frequently resort to infantry-arty slog. Imagine trying to fight WW2 where both sides cannot counter other Air.

2. No. It is just Suppression of Enemy Drone Systems (SEDS) is mandatory now for vehicular offensive. As long as SEDS is done, and you have enough vehicles with APS offensive is still possible. 

3. No. Leaving SEDS aside we generally do not yet have enough information about the weak sides of the drones. For example, we think of drones as a kind of all seeing eyes. But that is not the case. Civilian drones heavily used by both sides are relatively small. Their speed is not high, their endurance and range is rather low. Their signal range is also not that big. As a result, they operate around 1-2-3 km from drone team. Because you want to put most of your drone teams at front line there is indeed Gray Zone (1-2-3 km front line) where surprise is very difficult to achieve.

But outside it is different because to see there you need to use bigger specialized drones. But being specialized you do not have a lot of them. They are not readily available. They are higher up the chain, so info goes down slower. Finally, they usually just fly higher and are much more vulnerable to AA. 

As result it looks like RU developed the following tactics. They keep the front line with infantry teams but concentrating bulk of mechanized forces several km behind. The idea is to build up enough forces along the front line to be able to attack across several axis driving fast through gray zone. And the goal is not to breakthrough in to UKR rear but to reach an urban terrain several km behind front line before UKR starts bringing reinforcements with drones.

Urban terrain allows RU to mitigate to large extent UKR drone superiority and arty accuracy. So, it enables RU both defend and advance, suffering much less losses (relatively speaking). As far as I understood this is how they managed to dismantle Zolotoe-Gorskoe bulge.

 

35 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I would close that the Russo-Ukraine war is an indicator of change but it is likely showing the tips of icebergs.

Yes, feel the same. Even drone tactics are in infancy just like design of current drones. So far, we see important but still just a small glimpse of the future war. 

[Grigb]

49 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is a very interesting "tea leaf" for our reading the future!

There is another possible reason for the new restrictions... Putin recognizes these things are in decreasing availability to Russia on the whole, so he might want to have controls in place to divert remaining supplies to Russian military forces at the expense of DLPR forces.

Steve

For that he could just restrict availability in RU civil market. Or block it completely and reroute everything through official RU Army channels like they do with weapons and ammo. He could even simply order LDNR HQs (which are puppets of RU Army) to transfer anything they want to RU army. There would be any objections.

But no, he went for specific control of unofficial LDNR supply channels. Some LDNR volunteers are already angry. So, my Tea Leaf reading skill points to his desire of better control over LDNR. 

[The_Capt]

9 minutes ago, Grigb said:

1. No. 

2. No.

3. No.

Heh, well I am glad you are very confident, because a whole lot of us are not.  

Manoeuvre warfare is not "being able to move" - although it is part of it.  It is the ability to out tempo an opponent and exploit their vulnerabilities before they can recover.  In a fully illuminated and high friction battlefield that is proving nearly impossible.  This is not about "counter-drone", that is a gross over-simplification, this is about counter-ISR - at least for the Russians.  For Ukraine it is about counter-mass.

SEDS - interesting term. This is not about APS - everyone points to it as the magic missing bullet.  APS wont stop precision artillery nor UGS, nor will it make force invisible.  If a side cannot achieve surprise, they cannot do manoeuvre warfare and right now the only route to surprise is through attrition.  The Russians have mass and a lot of it, which is also proving to be a good blunt for UA information superiority, at least so far.  This has been a defensive dominant war and how, or whether anyone can solve for that is still very much an outstanding question.

UAS - the civilian ones being pushed into service, to significant effect, are not the ones I am worried about.  It is the mil-grade ones that everyone is scrambling for right now that will be designed to offset any "weak sides" that Amazon did not account for.  Unmanned warfare is just starting and what we are seeing is...disconcerting.....

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

They also didn't seem to take into consideration that whatever Russia's successes were, it took many years and dedicated effort of an otherwise functioning economy. 

As far as I understood, even successes often were fakes. I posted an article about failure of civil aviation programs. There were a quote attributed to the top manager responsible for implementation of such program. It was something like - the program to replace imported goods failed because we could not import the required parts.

That's what my contact from Ru food industry told me - you can find food equipment which is 99% RU but last 1% is imported and nobody in RU produced it. You do not have that part. You close the shop and go home. 

[LongLeftFlank]

Short piece by Phillips O'Brien

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/rethinking-russia-ukraine-international-political-power-military-strength/661452

Russian strength has shown itself to be so overrated that it gives us an opportunity to rethink what makes a power “great” .... A military is only as strong as the society, economy, and political structure that assembled it. In this case, Russia was nowhere near a great power....

Its economy is about the tenth largest in the world, comparable to Brazil’s, but even that masks how remarkably unproductive it is, basing most of its wealth on extracting and selling natural resources, rather than on producing anything advanced. When it comes to technology and innovation, Russia would hardly rank in the top 50 most important countries in the world.

 

[dan/california]

16 hours ago, FancyCat said:

Thread that lays out Russia's failure to keep Snake Island. The fact that Russia cannot stop artillery that in photos looks like its on the beach, from shelling Snake Island is arguably a significant failure. Also, holy ****, I did not realize the UAF has less than 100 aircraft, wtf, why isn't the Russian Air Force just flooding the entire airspace with planes....decent point to be made, if Russia can't strike artillery firing from the beaches, it sure as hell can't target inland with any reasonable accuracy. 

 

It is worth pointing out that this corner of Ukraine tucks right up against Romania. It is more than likely that this operation was covered a NATO AWACS putting out enough radar to cook seagulls halfway to Crimea. Anything launched at that artillery would be spotted the instant it launched. The gun would have time to redeploy.

It isn't the Ukr air force that is holding them back, it is the SAMs

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Excellent observations and questions.  Like a lot of things about this war - we simply do not know, let alone understand a lot of what is happening, let alone why, air competition is just one more.

A lot of this was has been about denial, in fact it often looks more like a competition of denial than anything else we recognize at times.  Denial - a defensive strategy designed to make it prohibitively difficult for an opponent to achieve objectives (https://www.britannica.com/topic/denial-military-strategy), which is a sub-strategy of the broader strategy of exhaustion.  Ukraine has elevated Denial to a strategic level, in a modern context, and frankly we are still trying to figure out the implications.

How did they do it?  That is the first question.  As far as we can tell from the evidence, my guess is that they quickly adapted C4ISR and the benefits of the modern weaponry they had to create very broad denial effects across the Russian capability portfolio, while the Russians have relied on traditional mass based systems, which are extremely expensive but can create a Denial effect for the Ukrainians as well.  Ukrainian defence has leveraged some major changes in modern technology on a broad scale and that applies in the air as well. 

Suppression of Enemy AD (SEAD) - so this is more than a single capability, it is an entire system.  It encompassed a massive C4ISR effort, air platforms that rely heavily on stealth, and even integrates SOF; it is a lot more than HARMs and Growlers.  In many ways SEAD is an entire specialized operation in itself, aimed at clearing and sustaining clearance of Integrated AD Systems (IADS).  IADS is an umbrella term; however, it leans towards large multi-layered integrated systems that link C4ISR to a network of AD systems designed to cover from the ground up (even into space).

The issue modern IADS have is UAS.  IADS were designed with large manned aircraft systems in mind form tac aviation to higher altitudes.  UAS bend these systems that by being extremely small and hard to detect, able to "pop-up" without any infrastructure needed to support them beyond two guys and some batteries, and low cost = every-freakin-where: we designed IADs to hit eagles, not sand-flies.  The most powerful thing UAS bring to the battlefield is ISR.  Strike is nice but the ability to extend the range of tactical ISR, and then integrate it into an operational system is one of the key takeaways from this war: seeing beats flanking.  Further, the RA reliance on concentrated mass makes them very vulnerable to this because it is very hard to hide a BTG.

The last brick in the wall are MANPADs.  A lot of the next gen MANPADs are passive and as the name suggests "man portable".  The reality is that MANPADs were always a problem for SEAD, no military has a baked in capability to counter two guys in a bush with a Stinger.  This is where air-land integration was supposed to come in, the land forces could support the air through control and sweeping of MANPAD threats (little threats), while air supported them by hitting the big stuff - a mutually supporting system.  Within SEAD, MANPADs were also a managed threat.  The theory was that if you blinded an enemy IADs system and took out the big radar guided systems, MANPADs would be minor nuisance, largely isolated and with limited range and altitude (5000 feet).  More something for tac aviation to worry about, and why we up-armoured stuff like Apaches. 

So UAS and real-time space based ISR and communications on the back of redundant civilian systems (including space based) makes the "blinding portion" really hard, maybe impossible.  I have no doubt in Ukraine we have distributed forces with UAS seeing CAS much farther out, handing off to others which then link back to MANPADs who can now position to wait for the aircraft - this is not even considering satellite based stuff being fed by the US.  And then MANPADs did not get the memo on "5000 feet", some of these systems can hit up to medium altitudes (e.g. star streak = 16k).  Finally, those traditional IADs are still integrated but not how we thought.  A higher altitude capable SAM that employs radar can now hide in silence, wait until the distributed C4ISR system picks up the fast movers and turn on at the last minute....like a big ass MANPAD.

Note that the above is what I think we are seeing in the UA system.  The RA is relying on traditional AD but the UA does not have a lot - so this is really air self-denial by virtue of very limited Ukrainian air capability.

So What?  Well we have air parity, largely through denial on both sides.   Ukraine has far too little, and generating massive airpower takes years.  Russia has significant capability but it was never set up for this environment, no one was.  I am not sure NATO could handle what is happening to be honest.   We would make something work but the costs would be much higher than we are used to and we would have to accept loss of air superiority at some altitudes as a basic assumption going in.  The Russians could likely achieve local air superiority above 20k right now but it would be very costly.  Going below 20k feet is very dangerous as we have flooded the UA with MANPADs, and the C4ISR thing I was talking about.  I expect they are saving it for an operational emergency or for the UA to put enough density in one place to make the effort worth it - trading a fighter-bomber for a single tank is not a good equation.

As to offence-defence.  Well Ukraine made defence offensive in the first phase of this war as Russian over-extension collapsed in the north.  I think they are doing versions of this right now in the Donbas as we have entered into an attrition-based contest.  Russia's answer to this has been to devolve in terms of warfare, falling back on a very old form of over-mass.  The only report of the Russians stopping the UA unmanned-indirect fire- infantry system has been in Severodonetsk, and they did so through extremely high concentrations of forces. That mass of Russian EW did nothing against space-based assets, so we do not know how badly they got mauled, nor Russian artillery.  Russia did show that if you push enough into a small space you can advance by inches - we do not know what it cost them nor how long they can sustain it.

This leads to some fundamental and big questions:  What does modern mass look like (sburke, don't do it!)?  Is manoeuvre warfare in trouble?  Is offence in trouble?  Is a principle of war - surprise, dead?  What does modern C4ISR really look like?  Hell, we are questioning Mission Command because in this environment higher commander may very well know much more, in higher resolution, than lower commanders.  

Nothing is definitive, but a whole lot is on the auction block right now and implications are pretty big if even a few of them are confirmed. 

I would close that the Russo-Ukraine war is an indicator of change but it is likely showing the tips of icebergs.  For example, we have not really seen what self-loitering can (or cannot) do in this war.  We know the US sent the smaller Switchblades, but I have seen no reports of significant numbers of the 600 series which can hit and kill with a Javelin warhead at the same ranges as the HIMARs.  We have not see NLOS ATGM or anti-vehicle systems like Spike.  We have not seen military grade micro and small UAS.  Sticking some grenades onto a few commercial drones is one thing, a swarm of military grade micro-drones that cannot be jammed, all armed with precision DPICM is something else entirely - and we have that technology right now.  Same goes for C4ISR, this is what Ukraine could do with a fairly ad hoc civilian backbone, some of the stuff being developed is truly impressive - and we have not even started to see the effects of AI/ML.

The Crimean War of 1854 is often referred to as the "First Modern War", well history is a circle, and I suspect the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 will likely go down in history as the "The First Future War". 

 

The_Capt, we don't deserve you , but we sure as bleep appreciate you!

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/army-to-test-its-biggest-interactive-drone-swarm-ever-over-utah

The U.S. Army seems to have gotten the memo on drones, at least for the most part. Unfortunately they don't seem to have gotten the memo that helicopters are just over.  They are utterly vulnerable in Ukraine now, and as you eloquently point out neither side in Ukraine is playing with anything close to a full suite of modern capabilities

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I gotta be honest, I am not sure how much was "unintended".  Economic is a dark art and, like military affairs, what the public actually know is not anywhere near how it actually works.  Most people see sanctions as "not giving them money = hurts bottom line = coercive pressure".  Which makes perfect sense from a "you or I" personal finances position; however, is not really how modern economies work - caveat: this is not my field, so follow up anything I say.

Nor do I think Putin and his crew understand it either, as they stuffed a whole bunch of rubles in the mattress before this thing, thinking they could weather the storm.

This is not "taking money away" as much as it is "decoupling globalization" and I suspect there are folks that know exactly what this is and can do.  As I understand it, globalization creates enormous pressure to further integrate economic systems in order to remain competitive.  Autocratic nations always try to be more independent so that when they "do naughty" they are harder to coerce.  This might work for a small African dictator but a major global economy cannot exist in the modern world in isolation, and remain a major global economy. 

We have been seeing the damage decoupling is causing already, for example the hi-tech industry in Russia is tanking - and before this war it was a emerging light.  I suspect there is a lesson here with respect to China, but I am not entirely sure what it is yet. 

Let me preface this comment by reminding everyone that I am the guy that thinks NATO air power should just join the war and The Polish Army should be passing through Kyiv on the way to the front as we speak. You can't be more anti Russian/pro Ukraine than I am without arguing for a straight up nuclear first strike. 

I don't think we should cut the Russians off from the hybrid seeds. The disruption in food production is one of the strongest levers Putin has at the grand strategic level in this war, and I honestly think hurting Russian grain production costs The Ukraine/NATO/The West more problems than it causes Russia. Putin doesn't care how many Russians starve. He won't even blink if all of Africa does. Honestly, I am right back to NATO joining the war and trying to end this thing quickly...

The world clearly needs to bring more grain production on line as quickly as humanly possible, but it was getting grown in the belt extending from Ukraine thru Russia to Kazakistan for a reason. It is not going to be trivial to replace that production.

Edit: And the U.S. Congress needs to pass the bill to subsidize a BUNCH of U.S. semi conductor production NOW, before China attacks Taiwan and the world economy just dies.

Edited July 1, 2022 by dan/california
spelling

[The_MonkeyKing]

https://mwi.usma.edu/political-warfare-and-the-road-to-invasion-irregular-warfare-in-ukraine-since-2014/

insightful 20min podcast. Micheal Kofman & Kent DeBenedictis

[Cederic]

Post removed.

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Cederic
Avoiding distracting the conversation.

[acrashb]

1 hour ago, Grigb said:

 

2. No. It is just Suppression of Enemy Drone Systems (SEDS) is mandatory now for vehicular offensive. As long as SEDS is done, and you have enough vehicles with APS offensive is still possible. 

 

I'd say "yes, mostly".  Drones will and do exist in tactical, operational, and strategic models.  So think of tactical being the 1-5 km range of modern battlefield direct fire.  SEDS can be countered, for example, by volume in this regime.  One can make similar statements about operational and strategic regimes.  It's not a binary, we will get better at countering them but the drones will improve too, and until we have fusion-powered multi-sensor (visual, IR, radar, ladar, essentially covering the useful spectrum with active and passive sensors and AI interpretation and targeting) lasers that can see everything and kill anything they see - "if it flies it dies" - then drones will continue to erode surprise, because we care about losing reconnaissance personnel but don't care about losing drones.

On top of that, C4ISR is a lot more than drones.  Increased space assets, over-the-horizon radar, other sensors I haven't thought of, SIGINT, HUMINT all weave together and we're seeing that in real time right now.  The mesh of information and the ability to process and make use of it faster than the enemy can maneuver (staying inside the opponent's offensive ooda loop) isn't going away, it's going to get better.

[Gary R Lukas]

On 6/30/2022 at 11:55 AM, The_MonkeyKing said:

I am so triggered about term "tank" being used for anything with tracks. 

On the plus side maybe the public will get desensitized and nobody even notices the two Abrams brigades in the future...

This Idiot is probably talking about M-113's APC and M-48A5 Tanks, I will believe it when I see it.

[akd]

Probably first footage of Russian T-62M loss (many are saying T-80BV, but hard to tell with the quality):

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by akd

[Cederic]

9 hours ago, FancyCat said:

Until NATO gets the shipments going, Ukraine probably does not have enough IFVs for its needs.

 

9 hours ago, Huba said:

it really is mostly about armored taxis at this point

 

I had the thought the other day, and this merely reinforces it: There's an opportunity to significantly help Ukraine and improve their overall maneuverability by merely providing large volumes of cheap SUVs.

They don't need heavily armoured gun platforms to carry infantry around. They need something that can handle potholes at 80mph.

The military alternative is a lightly armoured modern (faster) equivalent of a snatch Land Rover. It's not going to be front line capable, it's not going to be resistant to IEDs but it'll get troops in and out of front line areas with protection from shrapnel and long range small arms.

If NATO wants to help Ukraine, buy six months production of Toyota 4x4s and rivet 1/4" steel plate to the wings and doors.

[Huba]

28 minutes ago, Cederic said:

 

 

I had the thought the other day, and this merely reinforces it: There's an opportunity to significantly help Ukraine and improve their overall maneuverability by merely providing large volumes of cheap SUVs.

They don't need heavily armoured gun platforms to carry infantry around. They need something that can handle potholes at 80mph.

The military alternative is a lightly armoured modern (faster) equivalent of a snatch Land Rover. It's not going to be front line capable, it's not going to be resistant to IEDs but it'll get troops in and out of front line areas with protection from shrapnel and long range small arms.

If NATO wants to help Ukraine, buy six months production of Toyota 4x4s and rivet 1/4" steel plate to the wings and doors.

I don't think there was an organized move to provide 4x4s to UA Army, but I remember people from the Baltics buying en masse all SUVs from the market and driving them to the border in the initial parts of the war. Guessing from various videos, 4x4 pick-up trucks are quite ubiquitous.

US announced the new arms package, which includes "2 NASAMS systems" I assume it's 2 batteries, with associated radars and C4. It will be very interesting to see what is the source of those systems, what launchers and what missiles are provided.

Also, RU bombed Snake Island today, probably to destroy the equipment left there:

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Huba

[panzermartin]

21 minutes ago, akd said:

Probably first footage of Russian T-62M loss:

 

Wow, they must be thinking they are all incredibly lucky to escape out of an outdated, smoking T 62. Unless it was an engine failure

[Grigb]

54 minutes ago, acrashb said:

It's not a binary, we will get better at countering them but the drones will improve too, and until we have fusion-powered multi-sensor (visual, IR, radar, ladar, essentially covering the useful spectrum with active and passive sensors and AI interpretation and targeting) lasers that can see everything and kill anything they see - "if it flies it dies" - then drones will continue to erode surprise, because we care about losing reconnaissance personnel but don't care about losing drones.

Correct that's why it is Suppression and not Destruction. Currently I believe even with all possible progress we will not be able to do DEDS.  We can already approximate the direction drones/tactics are heading. And if I am right their complete elimination would be outside of any future capabilities. They are here to stay but fortunately we will be able to mitigate their impact.  

 

54 minutes ago, acrashb said:

On top of that, C4ISR is a lot more than drones.  Increased space assets, over-the-horizon radar, other sensors I haven't thought of, SIGINT, HUMINT all weave together and we're seeing that in real time right now.  The mesh of information and the ability to process and make use of it faster than the enemy can maneuver (staying inside the opponent's offensive ooda loop) isn't going away, it's going to get better.

That's what I do not see. So far I see that tactical commanders got real real time data from their civil drones. I suspect progress of everything else is not here yet. 

[dan/california]

11 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

Wow, they must be thinking they are all incredibly lucky to escape out of an outdated, smoking T 62. Unless it was an engine failure

I don't think they spent a lot of time checking, Russian crews seem to have deeply internalized it is safer outside with the bullets.

[Huba]

8 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Interesting that in the press promo videos they are no using the autoloaders. Same with the Pzh2000

Answered

 

 

[The_MonkeyKing]

32 minutes ago, Huba said:

I don't think there was an organized move to provide 4x4s to UA Army, but I remember people from the Baltics buying en masse all SUVs from the market and driving them to the border in the initial parts of the war. Guessing from various videos, 4x4 pick-up trucks are quite ubiquitous.

US announced the new arms package, which includes "2 NASAMS systems" I assume it's 2 batteries, with associated radars and C4. It will be very interesting to see what is the source of those systems, what launchers and what missiles are provided.

Also, RU bombed Snake Island today, probably to destroy the equipment left there:

 

Next question is what is a "NASAMS system". A battery?

[Huba]

15 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Next question is what is a "NASAMS system". A battery?

Hopefully not a single launcher like in "HIMARS systems" 

Here's a link to official DoD announcement, it mentions that it was provided with cooperation with Norway, which tells us exactly nothing given that NO is the producer. 

It's either from Norwegian stocks, or it was produced for a third country but diverted to UA. Lithuania was to receive 2 more batteries this year, so it might be those - if that's the case, one battery consists of 4 launchers and 2 radars, plus all the equipment, and it's of the newest NASAMS 3 type, compatible with AMRAAM-ER. That would be the most optimistic option

More probably it is from Norwegian army stock though, in this case it will be an older type, but still extremely powerful. AFAIK Norway operates a number of mobile launchers on HMMWV ( like the old SLAMRAAM project) which would be absolutely great for future UA offensives.

This system it is compatible with regular AMRAAMs, which are really plentiful in USAF service. What is also great is that Ukraine already operates a number of AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radars, so training should be way easier, as the launchers will just plug in into already existing network.

Overall it's great news, we'll about to see a lot of downed RU aircraft

Edit: of course, there's already a Twitter thread about all I just written:

 

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Huba

[akd]

@sburke @Kinophile

Major Andrey Melikhov, senior expert of the Military Scientific Committee of the Airborne Forces of the Russian Federation:

 

[Grigb]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The above is from Girkin.  The most interesting thing about all these Girkin reports and missives is that they are largely factually correct.  It is clear that his disdain for propagandizing cheerleaders is quite real and deeply rooted in his psyche.  In the example above he voluntarily points to the slaughter of Ukrainian civilians as being a) caused by Russia and b) the result of using poor quality weaponry.  The propagandizing nationalists would not admit to either.

I have to say that Girkin is one of the most interesting "actors" in this entire 2014-2022 war.

Steve

Sorry, it looks like I confused you with my use of 'civilian Girkin'. This particular quote comes from Anatoly Nesmyan whom I call civilian "Girkin" because it is all what you need to know about him. Use him to check RU for civilian matters like I use Girkin.

But you are right in your assessment - all three guys I mainly translate (Girkin, Murz, Nesmyan) tend to be much more factually correct. All of them have unusual disdain for RU cheerleaders despite being on the same side (they are all Nationalists). And all of them prefer straight talk about issues rather than sugaring it or outright lying. Finally, they are much less crazy and blood thirsty than others. 

And indeed, Girkin himself is an interesting "actor". He is the enemy, no doubt about that, but the enemy you can respect.

[poesel]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

. I don't think we should cut the Russians off from the hybrid seeds. The disruption in food production is one of the strongest levers Putin has at the grand strategic level in this war, and I honestly think hurting Russian grain production costs .

The Russians will not starve without those seeds. But it will cut down on exports.

I get your argument but I’m afraid that any lever given to Russia it will use to stir trouble somewhere. So I’d rather give those seeds to some other country to produce grain. I guess it would not be much trouble to find one.

[dan/california]

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

It is a ground launched AMRAAM, with a very good associated radar and data link. Range varies quite a lot depending on the exact missile. Range is ~30 km and -30,000 ft. It is really exactly what the the Ukrainians need. The only flaw is that it is not a truly mobile system. It has to unloaded from a pretty good sized truck and set up. And the Ukrainians needs dozens of them. Yet another factory someone needs to get started on like they mean it.

 

Edit: Huba is much faster than I am...

Edited July 1, 2022 by dan/california

[Huba]

Just now, dan/california said:

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

It is a ground launched AMRAAM, with a very good associated radar and data link. Range varies quite a lot depending on the exact missile. Range is ~30 km and -30,000 ft. It is really exactly what the the Ukrainians need. The only flaw is that it is not a truly mobile system. It has to unloaded from a pretty good sized truck and set up. And the Ukrainians needs dozens of them. Yet another factory someone needs to get started on like they mean it.

There's a mobile version in NO service. I wonder if with standard radar setup UA uses, it is possible to detect RU aircraft and helicopters that do the "rocket toss" attacks from low altitude -  if yes, the active homing missiles will get them. Really can't wait for the videos...

https://www.joint-forces.com/defence-equipment-news/52204-new-nasams-hml-deployed-on-cold-response-2022

[Grigb]

If you think RU cannot get even crazier:

In Ekaterinburg somebody glued Putin portrait to a gas distributor surrounded by a fence as an obvious reference.

Big problem for local authorities. They could not leave it like this because it is Putin portrait. But they also could not scratch it off because it is Putin portrait. 

However, they found a solution. They covered it with cloth!