Esteemed Colleagues in Military Aviation:

I recommend that you follow @dead_pan's example when you engage with what you assess as information of dubious merit.

All of us at one time or another have come across sundry rumors, information that doesn't make sense, and outright nonsense. How do we deal with it?

We do our best to find out what is correct, then we get that information out promptly. We do so because acting upon bad information risks the next operation (in peacetime or in war) ending badly.

Please adopt those professional habits to this discourse.

I have reduced some of the noise, and look forward to more aviation and military content.

Warmest Regards

T28B

Putin 24 FEB 22: SPECIAL MILITARY OPERATION.:

Not a "war", a criminal home invasion, with special circumstances; pre-meditation, conspiracy, racial profiling, genocide, rape, murder, wilful property damage.


You justify the wholesale breach of international obligations based not on law, but a talking head who benefits from book sales. The poster child that you have for your premise is..... Russia. It is Russia that attacked Chechnya 2 times and then ran follow-up subversion, it is Russia that attacked Moldova, Georgia, and the other signatory states to the agreements that Russia had obligations to expressly not interfere, attack, or otherwise annoy... Russia feels no need to keep their word, yet you get upset with the rest of the world supporting it's victims. You confirm Russia is criminal in intent. If they don't intend to honor their obligations, then don't sign treaties stating that you will. The civilized world wishes to get on with life; Russia intends to get ion with genocide, murder, and rape of its neighbors, all under the auspices of defending Russia... Russia can stay as a hermit kingdom of murderers, or it can join civilization, it doesn't get to bitch about the unfairness of the civilized world's response to their depraved actions. Russia is, how you say... the word... Nekulturny, is so? Da!.


You presume that Russia has the fortitude that the French, British and Germans had on the front. My grandfather arrived in France in August 1914, and survived at the front for all of the madness of the Somme offenses, and left the field after the armistice.

Now, Russia fell apart in 1917, and walked off the battlefield, due to the revolt. That is where Russia is heading again at this time, due to the cynical action of the new emperor V Putin. Putin has done more damage to the Russian military than WW-1 did. To be clear, Putin did that by being an agent for the corruption that was endemic within the USSR to flourish under his rapacious kleptocratic governance. Your military is slightly more effective than Eritrea's.... own goal! Putin then set up the conditions precedent to not have a valid mental model of the world, through his despotic and poisonous, lethal, fall out of the window, drown in bathtub methods of managing dissent. Hardly a surprise that he was isolated... He expected Ukraine to fold like a soufflé.... he was wrong.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....80fe6a4c9d.png


Russia is stuck, Ukraine is gaining strength, and can work tirelessly to defeat the logistics of Russia. Russia can bleed out in the field, have an internal rebellion as they have lost credibility to maintain a union under an iron rule that was found to be rusted out, or they can do themselves a favor, and ask for a cease-fire and remove themselves from all Ukrainian sovereign land. There are other options, door #5 etc, which result in the defeat of Russia's own population by the hand of Putin.

This isn't Verdun or the Somme, Russia is going to bleed out in the field, and yet Putin can't bring himself to tell the truth to the Russian population, Wars historically were dependent on the economic strength of the combatants, today, that is only partially true, what determines the outcome is the moral element; Ukraine is fighting a criminal invader on its soil. Russia didn't even bother to tell it's troops that they were going to invade a friendly neighboring country that has never attacked Russia.

I disagree; the collapse of Russia is far closer and more likely. Russia is on a trajectory down the toilet plug, and that is a non-linear process, snowball is a good metaphor. Look at your armed forces capability now, compared to 23 FEB 22, look at who your friends are.. Eritrea can come and help... What do you escalate a Special Military Operation into? A really Special one?

Russia is on the precipice of losing the federation, It will start quietly and accelerate as the states that have been under Moscow's control determine that Moscow lost the plot, corrupted itself into ignominy and that there is no material gain to remaining a pet of Putin. the good ol' days of corruption will be coming home to roost soon enough.

What "fratricide" are you referring to? You could use other adjectives but... fratricide? Huh? crazy person says what? https://www.google.com/search?q=frat...hrome&ie=UTF-8

This isn't a "war" according to your death star commander, is Social Military Operation... oops Special Military Operation....

Otherwise, glad to actually agree if you mean naked criminal aggression against a neighboring country in violation of the UN Charter.

P.S.: you do know that Russia as a belligerent party has no vote in the UNSC on any matter pertaining to a conflict they are a party to? Time for reinforcement of global condemnation of Russia's habitual aggression against its neighbor states.
I speak a little Russian, perhaps Russia will invade whatever country I am in to "protect" me? You make comments previously about protecting "Russian speaking" people, yet English is spoken by over half the world's population, yet, England doesn't feel a need to invade France anymore... because some countries have evolved, others are stuck in their glorious memories of bygone greatness. In the meantime, your national resource in energy has been mainly siphoned off to the oligarchs rather than giving benefit to the nation. The time of oil revenue dependency is coming to a close for Russia, and then what grift are they going to use to keep occupied?

A protracted war was a possibility until Russia's performance amazed all with being so incompetent and so dependent on materiel and supply staggeringly compromised by endemic corruption.

On military aviation matters, I have more confidence in the survivability fo the A-10 in the field; the predicate that air superiority needed to be in hand has been made moot by the performance of the Russian air assets, which have very little interest in actually coming into contact with the air defenses of Ukraine. Conversely, MANPADS and AAA from the Russian side of the lines will be a threat, but was ever thus. The A-10 is a veritable point source of "shock 'n awwwww"; given the chance to demonstrate, I doubt that many Ukrainian pilots will not jump at the opportunity to invite the guests to leave the country in style. One thing that has come out of the Russian tactics is the lob toss of rockets; would think that the A-10 would be a solid platform to get some 2.75"s into the area with a modicum of discomfort to the recipients. The GAU-8 is memorable, acts as a disincentive to troops mulling over the merits of assisting the criminal actions of Putin or not. Just a couple of squadrons would be a good start. Yes, don't expect them to returned serviceable, but many of the drivers will get back.

The A-10 has high operational costs, certainly. But it has a level of survivability that is nearly unparalleled, and is available from an operator that has tried for years to kill it as a program. If someone has a few squadrons of Su-25's laying around with good munitions then that's a very good option, Ukraine has trained and competent Su-25 drivers already, the A-10 would not be an arduous transition should the Su-25 availability be constrained. Pretty sure Russia is unlikely to offer many to Ukraine....

Yes, the level of corruption must be staggering, when the oligarchs murdered, stole and bribed their way into companies and took over, they reaped the fortunes they were making on yachts, homes, and art for themselves instead of reinvesting it into modernising and diversifying into goods that they could only buy from the opening up western markets, and just like the EU who sold their energy security down the river for the cheap Russian gas this is coming back to haunt them.
Their need for western electronics in their aircraft and main battle tanks etc is proving to be their Achilles heal, something thank God I believe the west has started to wake up to over the likes of China and Huawei being involved in our telecommunications systems.
I do hope the U.K. drops any plans to use them in the future and we all really need to look at our strategic suppliers for our core military and countrywide infrastructure ensuring if a war ever comes we will not be subject to the Vunerability the Europeans and Russia are finding themselves in with both energy and basic core parts used throughout industry, there is a lot to be said for homegrown.
Just look at the inability to ramp up military production the world over due to dumping production facilities and selling off parts of it means a rapid growth possibility has gone, the availability of machining equipment as an example is no longer there.

Might not be an issue, the discussion going around is that Huawai is fevorishly fighting to stave off bankruptcy atm.

One thing my Ma, who lived through the Blitz, always said when they closed a car plant, "Where will we build the tanks when we need to?" A simple argument, but so pertinent!

And who will then own them?

How old were the torpedoes that sank the Belgrano ? If they work as intended, that's good enough.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/newsletters...ile-launchers/

‘Vampire’ to transform Ukraine pickups into deadly missile launchers

WASHINGTON — The U.S. is sending Ukraine “Vampire” kits that transform pickup trucks and other non-tactical vehicles into highly portable missile launchers.

…..the Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment system is a portable kit that can be installed on most vehicles with a cargo bed for launching the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System or other laser-guided munitions.

The L3Harris-made weapon ― a small, four-barreled rocket launcher and sensor ball ― can be mounted in two hours and operated by a single person, the company said. It can be equipped with missiles to hit ground or air targets including unmanned aircraft systems.

“The Vampire system itself is a counter-UAS system, ” said Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said at a press briefing Wednesday. “It is a kinetic system that uses small missiles essentially to shoot UAVs out of the sky.”

While the Vampire system isn’t advertised as a counter-drone weapon on L3Harris’ website, Ukraine has used similar munition-style weapons to take down drones throughout its conflict with Russia…..

The Biden administration selected the Vampire — a low-cost and easy-to-assemble weapon compared to other counter-drone measures, such as electronic warfare technologies — for a package advertised as providing supplies for Ukraine’s long-term needs.

“We’re trying to be very deliberate about what systems we think makes the most sense for Ukraine to have in that context, and it also matters very much: Can they sustain it? Can they afford it? Because of course billions of dollars of international assistance may not be something 10 years from now or 20 years from now,” Kahl said….

APKWS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanc..._Weapon_System

They used them because they knew they would work

It’s not just what people think that matters, but how they think
 

Re T28B, #8450 ‘information of dubious merit

Debunking Handbook

https://skepticalscience.com/docs/De...dbook_2011.pdf

We've all seen plenty of these videos already where russkies MBT's blow up due to crew doing something idiotic so there is nothing new in this video. And that is actually the problem for them: I am overwhelmed by the scale of being stupid within the RuAF and how incredibly incompetent they are, It's as if they weren't trained at all and they would be missing even the slightest common sense. And it has been so since the war started, the day one.

There is no way they can keep up with this despite vast resources and being a military superpower (well, at least on paper). What springs to mind is that even though they are holding a fifth of Ukraine currently the collapse of RuAF will be sudden and violent once it happens.

It has been stated that if we had used the store of WW2 Barrage Balloons we might not have lost so many ships.

I’d we’d had them, and the men trained to use and maintain them, and the gas system to fill them - they’d undoubtedly have been stored on the Atlantic Conveyor…

And we need to stop vital private companies being sold to overseas owners. The Chinese have already bought too much of our vital infrastructure. Getting politicians to stop focusing on money is an ongoing problem.

Isn't there often a debate about how the armed forces want kit that works (e.g. from the US) rather than debugging some homegrown alternative? Isn't the price of 'homegrown' that you have to put up with all the problems till there's enough money to sort them out?

Regarding russian protective gear, Ukrainian soldiers from the 95th Air Assault Brigade inspect a set of captured ballistic vests.
They're probably, and I'll quote a Russian equipment expert on this; "locally made garbage from the DNR"

@fdr - have to say your posts are excellent, spot-on.

If this is all Russia can achieve after spending c.20 years modernising its armed forces during a period of relative prosperity, then we really have nothing to fear. What does surprise me is that those restive regions haven't yet twigged that the game is up and begun taking matters into their own hands.

If we went to at a UK company wouldn’t be able to meet the need anyway - we buy in penny packets spread over years and the company facilities and staff are set up to do the same - take NLAW as an example.

Assuming we don’t expect to go to war without US support, then we can draw on their reserves - as we did during the Falklands war for AIM-9Ls, fuel etc.

Two things to start with.

Nobody wants to be first whilst the others wait to see how Russia responds.

Most of their leaderships depend on Russian support to stay in power - kick out the Russians and you’ll probably quickly follow them out the door.

Hence any move would probably follow a coup by a group claiming national support.

You mean they weren't?

I thought most of the British military's gash kit in 1982 was packed onto the Atlantic Conveyor?