Yet another Rus mil base on fire today, another OSHA failure?
This one is in the far far east though.

BTW I would also join in thanking FDR for the knowledgable and fascinating posts!

The are precious few of us qualified targeteers to go around and sometimes those little letters after our name can feel like a noose to the next conflict but in this case you could probably get willing volunteers from the more recently retired!

Ukraine have reported to have shot down an SU34, though the film of it he is in a flat spin.

Yeah, no, that isn't a ballistic missile, it is not a Tochka-U, unless it was a dud, and if it had speed brakes and a fanjet tied to it. It was a cruise missile, and there is... one type of those that exists. Repurposed.

The tank breach is quite stunning in that video, you can see the deformation and the release of a fuel spray, it was it's very own FAE (thermobaric) explosion. That wasn't a big warhead, it was a goldilocks size, just right for the job size. The rupture at the base of the tank can be seen after the small strike explosion, the rest of it is the secondary going off, impressively too.

Expect GPS and COSPAS to start to get messed up now by our friends in the Krimmin (a palace for Kriminals). That means we all get messed up, so carry a map in the car, and a compass in the plane.

What exactly Frogfoots can do beating up the neighborhood is lost upon me. They certainly scare the birdlife there, hope that gets reciprocated, the birds didn't do anything to them... A show of force there, well, I guess it makes the natives happy to be startled by the lads thundering overhead at mil power in a ground attack aircraft. I don't get it, but then I'm not big on Russian logic at present.

The SU-34's seem to have a bad time of it. What they are trying to do is lost upon me too. I must be slow. Beetling along at 15K over a SAM threat area in an aluminum overcast is a strategy that I don't get. It is great for the Ukrainian morale, watching the dance-like pirouette probably brings back memories of the Bolshoi in happier times, but the tactical advantage is hidden. It is a good way of removing aircraft from the inventory and getting promotions in the squadron if they can get the old guys to go fly. It seems an expensive way to plonk holes in the ground, that then need to be cleaned up, sold for scrap etc. If it is part of a SEAD hunter-killer team, sparky, you need to go and take up bus driving, Is safer, no?

That is another confirmed roadkill of a locomotive, and for mods, that is an aviation thingy, the locomotive got airborne. it flew about as far as Orville's first effort, but it did fly. Sort of. That is 3-NIL on trains, but the Russians still lead on train stations.

There is a better than even chance that Count Vlad and his sidekick the butcher of Aleppo, have fewer effective troops in the field than the defenders, and a fair chance that they have no better than parity with the defenders in MBTs. The defenders have somewhere about 10,000 ATWs, not counting RPG-7s, of which there is enough that every second or third defender seems to have one available. BTR's/BMPs don't need NLAWS/Javelins or St-P's, they can have bad days with just an RPG or two. Each BTR/BMP has between 10-12 crew/dismounts on it, and a single RPG pretty much messes up the retirement plans of anyone inside. The defenders need as much firepower as they can get, as the attack can be done on a concentrated front, and that may result in a temporary breakthrough.

The amazing thing about the current conflict is, the term "Salient"; it used to indicate a push through an opposing force for the attacker, or a retreat condition. Today, with drone spotting, it means that the salient can be attacked from every side and harassed continuously. The ground rules have changed, the defenders here know that, the Russian soldiers are feeling it , and Count Vlad has no concept of what to do about it.

In September of 1812, Napoleon was faced with a decision as to whether to await word of surrender from St Petersburg, or to withdraw from the inhospitable conditions of Moscow before winter. He waited too long, and his "Le Grande Armee" was shattered piecemeal on the withdrawal. Napoleon wished his withdrawal was as orderly as the rout of Hitler's force after Kursk, in Jul-Aug'43. Count Vlad could be taking a place in the record books replacing both of those stellar tacticians as the most disastrous single decision in history.

There is a peace with honor option that Vlad can take, and that is to acknowledge the problem and undertake a supervised withdrawal after a ceasefire, to East of the Sea fo Azov, and have the contested areas, of Crimea and Donbas undertake a referendum for determination, without coercion from either side, determining if the areas should be self-determining or not, or part of Ukraine. If they go for self-determination, they could be overseen for neutrality by a multinational force, with the proviso that Ukraine gets an article 5 like support for any further unprovoked attack from Russia. NATO's article 5 does not demand collective defense where a NATO member elects to become belligerent.

That would be one of a slew of options available if a cease-fire and settlement was to be entered into. Russia currently has well over 1 trillion in losses from the war to date, and whether they want to reduce that at all is dependent on what they do in the next 10 days. In all cases, war crimes are war crimes, and they need to be heard and then appropriate sanctions made with the consent of those that were the victims of such behavior. Vlad gets an option to negotiate a way out that doesn't send him to Siberia, but St Helena would be a good place to be, metaphorically. Vlad can remain in Russia, and be tried in absentia, and that would be the end of it, Russia has to cope with what they did, and the blueprint for that was well established by Nelson Mandela. That is a gentle way to rid the world of tyrrany, it doesn't do well in the light, like other blood-sucking vampires.

Why bring up "a "piece" with honor..." suggestion on any forum? cuz the maths suggests we are heading towards a global nightmare in the last months of this year, and the actions of Vlad the impaler have exacerbated what was otherwise going to be a tight situation for a couple of billion people that didn't vote for him, much like the citizens of Russia. We are circling the drain in 6 months, from now, and getting the food supply sorted out takes getting the energy, phosphates, nitrogen, and transportation parts of the global system going again. Doing anything less than getting this tiff sorted out now is a biblical-level disaster that will touch everyone for the rest of the century. This is just maths, check the figures, and decide what sort of world we need to be in for the next 50 years.

Just sayin'. E&OE

The flaw in that is they would simply remove the Ukrainian populace prior to the agreement to the terms, though to be honest, I bet a lot of those with Russian ties have now seen the Russian's at work robbing and raping them and would wish to see them gone and Ukraine back in control.

Much longer video of Russian Su-34 in a terminal flat spin before hitting the ground - other clips show two parachutes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFoota...eb2x&context=3

Russian forces are using artillery flechettes against civilians, imagine a burst of these falling on children. We are closing very rapidly the term WMD.

At some point the rest of the world has to say "enough."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...sian-artillery

Rarely am I so impressed, Bucha scant weeks after the nightmare, infrastructure can be repaired, it's the mental scars that will never heal.


Livemap showing what is being hit, where and when

https://liveuamap.com/

..

Unable to open any of your Reddit links.

Well, do keep on Truckin' - free or otherwise - inspirational stuff & thanks again TT

Works fine for me.

No problem viewing it here jolihokistix.

Check out the link below of the same footage. There are other, longer clips doing the rounds showing two parachutes, and another later video of a helo around the crash site possibly conducting SAR..

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical

Thanks for your comment. FWIW, The East Russia video looks like business as usual for Russian aviation. No idea where it is. "we crash, you die, any questions?"

There have been a number of videos of the SU-34 gracefully descending in the "vertical landing" mode, with the crew watching under their parachutes taking selfies I guess.

The design is an odd duck, and I'm not talking about the platypus duckbill, it is just curious, it is optimized as a bomber, yet someone decided that it was desirable to have relaxed stability, and I suspect that it is a 2nd GEN FBW system and is close to unstable, so when there is an elec power disruption from a strike or a hyd failure, the plane starts its graceful ballet to it's parking lot. A total hyd failure is going to give a canard nose-down command, and a stabilator nose up command, the tail has a greater area and a similar arm, so the plane is going to go into frisbee mode for a hyd failure that takes out the controls. Any high-speed jet without hydraulics is going to need more than depot-level maintenance, much like Humpty Dumpty. Full elec failure or FBW failure should not be a high probability event without the plane being parted out, if it did, direct control would be a nice option, which may exist, or not. If all elect fails and there was hyd power, the aircraft is going to be a lawn dart, and we don't see that so suspect that hyd failures are prominent in the shootdowns. along with SAMs, AAA, etc...

Why would you want to have relaxed stability on a bomber? The complexity is barely worth the candle, and I like 3 surface designs, but don't get the SU-34 rationale. Now if they started as a fighter and then settled on being a bomber... that would explain the design a bit more. Interesting soundtrack of the engines.

Hey up, what's going off here?


IG

<Cynical mode on.> False flag to justify 're-enforcing' region with troops who just might be also able to invade Ukraine from the West? Possibly via sea?

those ~1500 troops aren't going nowhere, they just don't have enough of anything for it, the Ukrainian forces in the west would mop the floor with them. If its a false flag it would more likely sound like the main force from east would try a push to Odessa to create a land corridor to Transnistria. That again would require the Russian to take weight off Donetsk/Luhansk as they haven't been able to do it with current force. I am struggling to see what the Russians could do militarily at this point.

Transnistria isn't connected to sea so there's nothing there either.

Absolutely, Haven't seen that for... well, every time Pukin wants a justification for an attack, or to bolster flagging enthusiasm from those at the oars on his prison galleon.
That would be the KGB attack on the apartments in Moscow that was the justification for Round II of Chechnya, the invasion set up of Afghanistan, (that went well, spetsnaz attempt.... ). Pukin is tedious to us, but when he is permitting flechettes against a civilian population, then that needs to be stopped, like his use of chem weapons in Syria.

There's nothing much in Transnistria worth blowing up, there is a great youtube travel blog by "the bald guy"? or something like that, does a blog on Moldova, interesting, like Belgrade was 35 years ago, but Transnistria is really entertaining. No one is going to want to actually live there that doesn't actually live there. Soweto is more appealing, and has a better nightlife.

And I would imagine prewar they were being supplied from Russia, so they won’t have had any replenishments since it started.

Leo 1 and Marder for Ukraine
 

Rheinmetall has applied to the German Economics Ministry to supply 88 Leopard 1 ( with 3 500 rounds ) to Ukraine: 22 within 8 weeks and the rest until end 2023 . There is another application for 100 Marder IFV

Although this is only an application, the inference is that it has been "given the nod" as a subsequent refusal would cause huge embarrassment for Scholz.

Russia is expelling 40 German diplomats in a tit-for-tat reprisal for 40 Russian expulsions from Berlin.

https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland..._57275780.html