We’ve sent Harpoons.

I wonder how they are going to operate them?

I don’t know, there are land based launchers, but did the U.K. ever invest in them? Or are we providing the missiles and someone else the launcher, or have they cobbled up a system to mount it somehow on a truck?

Where there's a will there's a way. the Falklands taught as that: What SHOULD have taken months took days. And that was for both sides. Exocet land-launched for example.
Going right back to Mafeking, necessity is the mother of invention, and defenders get very good at it.

Correct to a degree. I know an fj pilot who completed Valley aged 23 1/2. Had he then gone straight to fj frontline as planned he would have been 24 1/2 doing the stuff fj pilots do. A short instructor tour post-valley slowed that path but he still was frontline fj on Q and shader aged 26 and a bit.

For what it's worth, he loves it.

Seeing that nobody currently operates Harpoon as a Land based system (the Danes binned theirs nearly 20 years ago and Taiwan have only just ordered such a system in the last month). It is got to be a Lash up system if the British are giving it. Argies managed to do it with Exocet in 1982.

Afaik, the Harpoon can update its waypoints while en route, so the launch modality should be non critical. Satellite surveillance should allow targeting anywhere within the effective range of the missile.

Switchblade?

Batco

I've been informed that Babcock maintained a land-based 'reference system' to support the RN's capability and that it may be this that has been made available to the Ukrainians. But no official confirmation as far as I'm aware.

Mentioned here:

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news...he-royal-navy/

Re: Kramatorsk station attack.
I'm puzzled as to what type of warhead this missile was carrying. Widely reported to be cluster munitions yet no obvious evidence even in footage taken just after the incident of unexploded sub-munitions or flechettes.

Kramatorsk station attack
 

I'm also puzzled by the video of what is said to be the actual missile (with the message written on the side). It seems strange to me that the device is still relatively intact, one would have thought that with the combination of the HE warhead and supersonic flight it would have been completely obliterated?

Just watched a Japanese TV crew interviewing a spokesman who said the deaths and injuries were cause by ‘flying fragments’ whatever that means.

I suspect that they mean Shrapnel

IG

Makes sense and such systems do exist just north of Portsmouth (Type 42 and Type 45 systems on a Hill!!!). No requirement for jury rigging if a containerised system already exists,

I thought they said there was more than one missile, possibly three? So the one on the grass was possibly a dud. Or the delivery section.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....035b3bccc5.jpg
Here is one they prepared earlier! Wheelbarrow mounted Exocet in the Falklands 1982.
Mog

This missile has a Cluster Munition warhead which deploys said warheads around 2500 Metres from the target. As soon as it deploys those warheads, the rest of the airframe tumbles and decelerates rapidly (most likely breaking up in flight as it does so). Remains that don't go bang hit the ground at quite low velocities. The bomblets are Blast Frag.

https://armamentresearch.com/9n123k-...ions-in-syria/

If this was the weapon used it was clearly was a deliberate attempt to kill as civilians as possible. Given the numbers said to be present at the station when it hit its a miracle more were not killed or injured.

Hope anyone tanking from RAFAIR 9916 have got their sun visors down!!

So having a Harpoon set up delivered, I take it the Russian fleet will need to pull right back where they will be pretty none effective? And the suspected possible combined land and sea invasion of the ports is now out of the question?