NutLoose

And dead

NutLoose

Challenger 2 tanks training to breach Russian defences.

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NutLoose

Whooo Mad Vlad appears to be hinting at a peace deal, I think the writing is on the wall and the only way he can salvage parts of his army is to maybe sue for peace, then fight the battles at home to stay alive.

_Agrajag_

Sure the USSR was behind in many technical areas but they were very, very good at producing simple, reliable and long-lasting kit. I was a small part of a team that took apart some captured Soviet comms kit in the late 1970's. Crude but tough and reliable. The thing that stood out to me, as a maintainer and repairer of our kit, was that their kit was designed to be repaired quickly with a minimum of tools and test gear.

Sure things have fallen off a cliff over the past 30 years because of theft and corruption mostly. I'd not write off Russia's technical competence though. Some of the most reliable and effective weapons are Russian/Soviet. It's not an accident that the AK-47 is the most popular assault rifle in the world. The bloody thing is now over 70 years old yet there are millions of them still in service. Give me a choice between an AK-47 and our own bit of complete and total ****, the SA80 and I'd put up with the extra weight of the AK and it's ammo. If only because it works and doesn't jam.

NutLoose

The point I am trying to make is take this,

https://defence-blog.com/russia-uses...mbat-vehicles/

it is full of western parts, to replace them they will need to build factories and tool up to produce them in house and that is one vehicle

Think Cuba, they still drive a lot of 50’s cars due to restrictions.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-rus...mmins-powered/

Wokkafans

Twitter

Less Hair

Soviet stuff back then was throw away stuff. They used mass produced APC guns for fighters with no replaceable and repairable parts. Jet engines with low hours until replacement. Compare this to western fighter guns or engines. Every bit like barrels can be replaced and repaired. The soviets had strategic fronts. If one was used up they moved the next into the theatre.
Eastern stuff is expendable and not made to last. It is cheapo mass produced and will be replaced instead of being repaired.

langleybaston

Post-Cold War I had a little to do with evaluating Red Met. equipment and capabilities.

Very unimpressive kit, and surprisingly poor capabilities, considering that they often had all NATO obs and publicly available analyses available in a favourable West to East prevailing scenario.
However, HQSTC and JHQ did produce forecasts and analyses for friendly eyes only. Every day the "real" forecasts for training in NW Europe were shadowed by real forecasts for East of the IGB. These latter were assessed against actuals, but actuals would have disappeared along with NATO obs if TTW looked likely

And here we are again. Depressing, unless you are an arms contractor..

Now thrive the armourers

_Agrajag_

Remind me again just how long some Soviet weapons have lasted?

On topic with regard to Ukraine, when, exactly, were the majority of the T-72s (and even T-64s and T-54s) they are using in Ukraine made? The T-72 is the most widely used MBT in the world. It's now over 50 years old. Most of those deployed in Ukraine are Soviet era and decades old but still bloody effective as we've seen (more effective than their newer T-80s and T90's). Same goes for the venerable AK-47 (first produced in 1947). The most widely used assault rifle in the world.

I'm not disputing the fact that Russia (as distinct from the Soviet Union) has fallen into the same trap as many other countries including the UK. Being reliant on cheaper imported technology impacts them just as it impacts us. We are now beholden to China for a great deal of the technology we rely on. We gave up mandating multiple sourcing decades ago for some stupid reason. At least Russia can still get what it needs from China, and as we've seen the stuff they are getting from Iran works OK.

What I saw first hand of Soviet electronics in the 1970's was that they were at least 20 years behind in technology. They did know how to make best use of what they had though. The stuff I saw was ingenious, robust, well designed and almost infinitely repairable. Easy to laugh at how crude a lot of it was but the bottom line was that it worked rather well. They designed their kit to be operated by idiots and repaired under field conditions. Wish we had done the same as much of our kit was bloody near impossible to keep serviceable without a well equipped first line workshop.

Another thing they excelled at was never replacing stuff that still did the job OK. Seemed they had an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. In the 1970's they were still using WWII era kit. No reason to replace it as it still did the job OK and had the big advantage that everyone knew how to operate it and keep it going.

The contrast between the Russian approach and our own is stark. We issue people with rifles that will most likely jam before firing a full mag. Rifles that need to be mollycoddled and kept spotless to work. Rifles with receivers made by a tin can company, that bend if you look at them the wrong way. Sure they are accurate when they work. Way more accurate than a rattly old Kalashnikov. Bugger all use having a super accurate rifle if the bit of **** jams if it sees the slightest bit of dirt. Once saw a guy proving how robust an AK-47 was. He poured a bucket of sand over it, picked it up, shook it and fired off a full mag without a hitch.

Beamr

Apparently the Z-team has found out what air defence doing.
Its going red on red. Again.

Ninthace

Looks a lot like a meteor with a little m

spinex

Thanks for that. I have to admit, my first thought was; that makes too much sense and is a potential bombshell for the red side = we're looking at a particularly clever AI deepfake. Subsequent events seem to suggest that it's genuine and been widely viewed in Russia. Interesting times for emperor vlad, methinks.

ORAC

A pair of Russian Su-34 tried to hit targets at the Grayvoron border post but despite flying low they both just hit empty fields, the 2nd one misses even by hundreds of meters. At least I don’t see any targets there.

It is anyway revealing that they fly $35 million planes but in the end just drop cheap unguided bombs, risking their planes by MANPADS.

​​​​​​​https://t.me/operativnoZSU/97947

Buster Hyman

My humble contribution to this interesting aspect of the thread was a "thorough" inspection of the An-124 Avionics bay. The sheer mass of Valves surprised me at the time but it all made sense in the long run.

Winemaker

Wasn't the use of 'valves' (tubes over here) to prevent equipment EMP consequences from nuclear explosions on transistors and printed circuit boards - the valves being much more resistant to EMP? Off topic, but there are concerns that neutron flux from nuclear explosions might potentially initiate ignition of unexploded weapons, so timing and spacing are important. Not that I hope to find out if that's true.....

rattman

That was rubbish, know 3 people personally who went through vietnam and carried M-16's at various times and they all deny that. The issue was that M-16 was advertised as never needing to be cleaned and also was never issued with cleaning kits. So guess what it never cleaned. But M-16's in australian service were regularly cleaned and while not issued with cleaning kits there was heaps due to every L1A1 / FN FAL having one. They maintain it was a training and discipline issue not a fire arm issue.

The Helpful Stacker

I think he was refering to the L85 (SA80), but it's still a load of balls anyway. Both the A2 and current A3 versions of the L85 have proven to be good weapons, aside from concerns about the effectiveness of intermediate rounds at longer ranges in Iraq/Afghanistan (something the Russians also suffered from with their 5.45mm rounds).

For our friend, regarding the AK...

Now back on topic....

ORAC

Ukraine claims it shot down ten Russian missiles and 25 drones overnight

Ukraine claims to have shot down ten missiles and 25 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks on the capital Kyiv, the city of Dnipro and eastern regions, Ukrainian officials said on Friday.

Reuters reports the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 10 missiles fired from the Caspian Sea, and 23 Iranian-made Shahed drones and two reconnaissance drones. It said a total of 17 missiles and 31 drones had been launched during the attacks, which started at about 10pm local time on Thursday and continued until 5am on Friday.

Several drones and several missiles hit targets in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, officials said. There was no immediate word of any deaths.

“It was a very difficult night. It was loud – the enemy launched a mass attack on the region with missiles and drones,” Serhiy Lysak, the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, said on the Telegram messaging app. “Dnipro has suffered.”

Lysak said several houses, cars, and private companies, including a transport company and a gas station, had been damaged.

The Kyiv Regional City Administration wrote on Telegram:

“Another air attack on Kyiv is the 13th in a row since the beginning of May! And, as always, at night. This time the attack was carried out by Tu-95MS strategic bombers, from the Caspian region, probably by X-101 cruise missiles.”

In a later post, it said that debris had damaged the roof of a shopping centre in Obolon district. There were no casualties.

jolihokistix

When I flew over the Caspian Sea last summer I had this strange feeling that with air over water like this there can be no visible border, not with the Mark I eyeball. Can these high-altitude launches be observed from Baku, Azerbaijan, I wonder? Why is it such a good launch point, apart from being a super-safe stand-off?

ORAC

​​​​​​​In Dnipro, Russia launched a missile attack on what reportedly is a psychiatric hospital. The number of victims is unclear at this moment.