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FlightRadar also shows USAF tankers and an Italian 767 (tanker?).
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Originally Posted by fab777
(Post 11193945)
Probably huge. But they die defending their country, which is different from dying invading another.
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Originally Posted by henra
(Post 11194116)
In that package were a few more demands: Among others a total retreat of NATO forces from the Eastern European Countries to a pre- 1997 state. They were tailored in a way that NATO/US could never accept them.
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Originally Posted by admikar
(Post 11194173)
FFS, have you never negotiated in your life? You start with something outrageous and then settle on something acceptable to all sides.
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Agreed, the stupid thing is since the cold war and the peace that ensued NATO had continued to decline in strength, something that was one of Putins goals, since his actions he has reversed that in a significant way. He has brought a new sense of purpose to it and a regeneration in its future strength.
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Originally Posted by admikar
(Post 11194173)
FFS, have you never negotiated in your life?
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The nuclear weapons in Ukraine question was settled in Budapest in 1994, when in exchange for surrendering physical control of the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world and acceding to the non-proliferation treaty Russia , the UK, and the US commited to respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine; confirmed their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force, or economic coercion to subordinate Ukraine's exercise of sovereign rights to their own interest.
By his reaction to the Euromaidan including fostering of separatism in Yanukovych supporting Oblasts and occupation of Ukrainian territory in Crimea in 2014 Putin tore up the agreement. Prolonging violient separatism was a way of indefinitely postponing the chance of NATO accepting Ukraine's wish to join. I do wonder if his plan is to create the previously threatened South-East Ukrainian Autonomous Republic as that's where he is having success and appears to be using better forces and that the action in northern central Ukraine is a brutal diversion and he declare peace and withdraw from those areas once he has consolidated his puppet state in the relevant oblasts and separating the Western leaning ones from the sea. |
Originally Posted by SLXOwft
(Post 11194193)
I do wonder if his plan is to create the previously threatened South-East Ukrainian Autonomous Republic as that's where he is having success and appears to be using better forces and that the action in northern central Ukraine is a brutal diversion and he declare peace and withdraw from those areas once he has consolidated his puppet state in the relevant oblasts and separating the Western leaning ones from the sea.
This idea (me guessing on how he'd pursue a limited war) left me puzzled at the broader push towards Karkhiv and Kiev, since a "weight the main effort" approach would focus on those two regions as a second bit taken (Crimea being the first bit a few years back) that was both digestible and manageable. My thought was that the big build up in the north was intended as a threat, even a feint, roughly a Sword of Damocles, while the move into Luhansk and Donetsk was accomplished. Obviously, my estimate was incorrect. (And it would still result in no land bridge to Crimea). The air superiority I expected the Russians to exercise seems to not have materialized. |
And don’t forget part of Moldova that was on the Belarus map.
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V o A .........
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Nadine's taken some flak ... 15735 kHz - 1800 to 2000 and 5875kHz - 0000 to 0200 Kiev Time (GMT + 2) I don't know when it's going to start but I hope it will quickly move to H24 and all of Russia. Perhaps Sky could donate their TV channel, recently forcibly 'vacated' by Russia Today ***. (Dontcha just miss the cloud cuckoo fellow-traveller fishy rubbish they broadcast ?) ... Apparently some of their presenters got conscience-struck by the editorial bias. Or Elon Musk might use a bit of his satellite tech to bring some free-to-view TV Reality to picturise the truth-starved majority across all of Mother Russia. ... Difficult to shoot down his entire murmuration. ... LFH ... *** Similar arrangement with DirecTV in the USA - also now terminated. |
An A-10 Thunderbolt II rolls in on a simulated target. (Image credit: Tom Demerly - TheAviationist.com). in the box, one of the memes circulating online these days. A-10 Pilots Say Why Stopping the Russians Outside Kyiv Is a Very Dangerous Mission.In every war, some images become iconic. So far in the Ukrainian war, the MAXAR satellite photos of Russian vehicles lined up for “40 miles” along the PO2, T1019 and T1011 highways north of the Hostomel Airport outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv have made headlines around the world. The photos of highways clogged with Russian invasion forces have prompted armchair experts on social media to post memes of the A-10 Warthog with “BRRRRRRT!” scrawled across them. The Facebook “experts” suggest a few A-10s could just roll in and use their GAU-8 30mm cannons and AGM-65 Maverick missiles to decimate the Russian vehicle column. “That’s what I told my wife!” one of the posts read. But according to current A-10 pilots, there’s only one problem, “It’s not that easy”. An Air National Guard A-10C Thunderbolt II pilot told TheAviationist.com. “It has to be a pretty permissive environment for us to just roll in and do a gun run. That doesn’t happen much anymore.” https://theaviationist.com/wp-conten...eme-A-10-2.jpg Another popular meme that you can see online these days.Even before the Russians crossed the border into Ukraine, defense and aerospace analyst David Axe wrote in Forbes magazine that, “If Russia invades Ukraine, its front-line air-defenses will be the most dangerous in the world”. Axe went on to say in his January 10, 2022 article, “If that Russian army rolls in, a whole lot of additional MANPADS and SAM vehicles will come with it. They, combined with longer-range SAMs on the Russian side of the border, could force the Ukrainian army in Donbas to fight without the benefit of any aerial support”. While some of Axe’s analysis hasn’t been entirely accurate – the Ukrainians have gotten some combat aircraft in the air- they have already suffered the loss of one of their most celebrated combat pilots, Col. Oleksandr Oksanchenko, who was shot down in his Sukhoi by a Russian S-400 Triumph surface-to-air missile (SAM) near Kyiv on Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. And even though recent upgrades to A-10C Thunderbolt II have improved its targeting and communications capabilities, the A-10 was built to fight a very different war than the one we are seeing now in Ukraine. https://theaviationist.com/wp-conten...20-706x633.jpg An A-10 Thunderbolt II Davis-Monthan AFB training at low level in the western U.S. (All images: TheAviationist/Tom Demerly unless otherwise stated) The A-10 was originally conceived to offset a massive imbalance in the number of tanks between the Soviet-backed Warsaw Pact and the NATO alliance. Strategists anticipated a huge flood of Russian tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap in Germany. At the height of the Cold War, the A-10 was intended to moderate that imbalance by providing a dedicated tactical anti-armor asset that could kill Soviet tanks. But although the A-10 was heavily armored with a titanium tub surrounding its cockpit, its prospects for survival even in the Soviet air defense era were poor due to a concentration of effective, highly mobile anti-aircraft weapons systems perfected by Russian suppliers in the real-world testing grounds of the Vietnam War and the many Arab-Israeli wars. In his 1993 book, “Warthog: Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War”, author William H. Smallwood wrote about the dangers A-10 Thunderbolt II pilots faced when performing close air support missions over Iraq: “I myself figured that, knowing the number and kind of SAMs [surface-to-air missiles] the Iraqis had, that if we ever went to war, 20 to 25 percent of us were not coming back.” Smallwood wrote about one of his experiences in Iraq: “I rolled in and as I was strafing the target I started taking AAA [Automatic Anti-Aircraft fire]- heavy AAA. I was diving at about a 60-degree dive angle – and this was my near-death experience. I saw what appeared to me to be a fireball come by my canopy. It was either heavy AAA going by or a missile…” https://theaviationist.com/wp-conten...15-706x346.jpg An A-10 Thunderbolt II of the Michigan Air National Guard.Going back as far as the Vietnam conflict, the Republic F-105 Thunderchief, a supersonic aircraft designed for high-speed medium and low level nuclear strike missions, suffered withering losses over North Vietnam, a country protected by a Soviet designed air defense network. According to researcher Rebecca Grant of AirForceMag.com, “The cumulative totals were shocking: The Air Force lost 40 percent of its total production of F-105s to combat in Vietnam.” And it was nearly as bad for the iconic F-4 Phantom II. Grant writes, “Approximately one out of every eight F-4s ever built by McDonnell Douglas—for all services—was destroyed in Vietnam”. And remember, these losses were to early Soviet Bloc air defense systems supplied to the North Vietnamese and almost always crewed by North Vietnamese, although intelligence suggested Soviet “advisors” also played an active role in the air defense of North Vietnam. In the post-Vietnam era, U.S. strike doctrine improved exponentially with the introduction of “stealth” or low radar observability when the F-117 Night Hawk, the “stealth fighter”, was introduced. For a decade, the F-117 “stealth fighter” operated with near-impunity against sophisticated Soviet-bloc air defenses during precision, low observable strikes. In December, 1989, during Operation Just Cause in Panama, U.S. F-117s dropped laser-guided bombs next to a Panamanian barracks as a diversionary strike. And in the F-117’s greatest performance on January 17, 1991, the stealth fighter brought “shock and awe” to downtown Baghdad, Iraq in the opening hours of Operation Desert Storm. But even this temporary immunity to Soviet-designed air defense systems was fleeting. On March 27, 1999, the Yugoslav 3rd Battalion of the 250th Air Defense Missile Brigade shot down a USAF F-117 Nighthawk with an S-125 Neva/Pechora surface-to-air missile (SAM) outside Budanovci, Serbia in Yugoslavia. Russian air defense doctrine had achieved parity with U.S. stealth technology. It’s important to understand that the A-10 Thunderbolt II first flew a half century ago in early 1972. It wasn’t until almost a decade later in 1981 that the F-117 flew for the first time. In fact, it could be argued that the Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II actually has more in common with its WWII namesake, the propeller-driven Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, than it does with the current low-observable F-35 Lightning II that can strike a vehicle column with impunity from a distance using precision stand-off weapons. https://theaviationist.com/wp-conten...90-706x603.jpg In reality, the A-10 Warthog is actually more similar in capabilities to the WWII P-51 Mustang than it is to the F-35 Lightning II, making it a poor choice for attacking a heavily defended vehicle column like the one outside Kyiv, Ukraine.And while the cost of hitting a $10-20,000 USD Russian truck with a $25,000-plus precision guided JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) seems high, remember, it costs between $5-million and $10-million USD to train a U.S. Air Force pilot. Consider that 31 years have passed between the first flights of the WWII P-47 Thunderbolt and today’s A-10 Thunderbolt II. But 34 years have passed between the first flight of the A-10 Thunderbolt II and the current F-35 Lightning II. And, during this entire time, the Russians have been perfecting the capability to shoot down western aircraft at test sites in Russia and real-world battlefields from Cuba to Africa, the Middle East, Indo-China and the Arctic. https://theaviationist.com/wp-conten...80-706x454.jpg Although the A-10 Warthog is an emotional favorite of aviation fans, the F-35 Lightning II is more suited to attack a vehicle column in a heavily defended area like the one we’re seeing outside Kyiv.So, while we all love the A-10 Thunderbolt II, she is better off in the asymmetrical global war on terror than she is in this new super-power slugfest in Ukraine, even though that reality ruins a lot of social media defense experts’ memes. About Tom Demerly 523 Articles
Spoiler
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Originally Posted by transport jock
(Post 11194196)
The figure I heard before the invasion started, was that for a country of Ukraine’s size, they would need atleast 300000 troops just to secure the major cities after a military victory. That’s one of the reason the person they were interviewing said they didn’t think Russia would invade because they didn’t have enough troops on the borders..
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I would think that an invading force would struggle to hold Basildon with 50,000 troops, never minds an entire country.
You would have to be pretty sure that much less than one on 800 people wanted to kill you in order to do that - and that is "welcoming parade with ticker tape territory", not "hostile invader who just flattened your city and killed your family" |
From the BBC:
Alarms raised over attack on nuclear plantUkraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says Russian troops are "firing from all sides" at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest plant in Europe.As we just reported, local officials say that a fire has broken out in the plant because of these attacks. "Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!" he wrote on Twitter. Laura Rockwood, the director of the Open Nuclear Network non-profit, earlier told the BBC's Radio 4 that the war could have an impact on Ukraine's electricity grid, which depends on nuclear power. She said military activity around a plant poses two direct risks to nuclear instillations - potential damage to a plant's infrastructure and harm to its personnel, or much more serious damage that affects a plant's operational abilities that could cause a meltdown. |
Originally Posted by Ripton
(Post 11193243)
I would have agreed but I think the longer this goes on the less likely the ascension of anyone associated with Putin will be an acceptable option as they will have become too complicit. If too much time passes they might also see themselves as being trapped. "I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er." and all that.
Lavrov being one of those already too toxic. Telegraph at 10:06am I think this is the only way now. |
Originally Posted by atpcliff
(Post 11194280)
The Russians could just stop listening to Putin. If they did this, he has no power. Putin can order this, and order that, but if no one carries out his orders, he is now only the Tzar of his bunker, cut off, isolated, and now Putin is his own Russian Empire of one person...
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Originally Posted by NAROBS
(Post 11194286)
BBC News - Ukraine: On board a Nato spy plane monitoring Russian activity
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60612255 Fingers-crossed the assembling aircraft weren't Backfires or Blackjacks, else, with their full bomb-load, you could kiss good-bye to a couple of square miles of city centre per raid of a flight of three ! And they used these on Grozny and in Syria. |
What about a B-2 strike? I heard it carries 200 bombs. Could it do a strike undetected by Russia???
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Just when it seems impossible for Putin to become more amoral in his actions, his troops start shooting directly into zaphorista nuclear power plant. This is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Putin is a global threat, to his own army, to the Ukranian, and to everyone in the northern hemisphere. A deliberate attempt to destroy a NPP that would make half of europe and Russia, Ukraine, and everything downwind of that, which include the Former CIS states, Mongolia, China, Korea, Japan, Canada USA, etc... this is an imminent global threat. It is time to do the no fly zone and start employing counter force in Ukraine to stop this insanity. The fact that Putin is now a Nixonian type "madman" wild card does not alter the potential outcome.
Here is the hard geopolitical truth to the situation. Assuming Putin won't drop a bucket 'o sunshine on a remote oblast of Ukraine or on downtown Kiev is not a zero probability. Assume he does, what is the response? We have a world that is so concerned with his state of mind that we sit around watching him commit murder in plain sight, and effectively we are on a road to a bad day. As this proceeds there is no downside to him dropping one nuke, and then the response being a resounding whimper, At that point, Putin has removed the testicles of the whole world, and there is no stopping his warning shot of the same on Helsinki, Copenhagen etc, as they know the response is a whimper. The risks of doing nothing now appear to outweigh the risks of a UN intervention in force in Ukraine to stop his insanity. https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....900bfd03c6.png |
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